| SENSE OF PLACE |
AN EVANESCENCE by Kimberly Crowley
I
t was one of those salmon and grey sunsets—the kind of hideous color combination seen in the bathrooms of those one-owner small-town homes advertised on the For Sale By Owner website since “The Boom’’ slacked and
the flippers got desperate. Ellen rose from her knees and sighed, picking up the garden hoe. Sunsets were ineffably distressing for her. No matter how blazingly scarlet-orange or how subtly mauve-pink, no matter how they highlighted the buttes behind her house, they tried her patience, reminding her of how much was left undone. They clapped the day shut as finally as a cover seals a jar. As she stood up and stretched her neck to release the muscles she’d pinched working in the garden, she shivered and noted how much she still had to accomplish there. The evening chill was descending, and she could see the fog settling in on the grasslands to the north of the small barn, like smoke in reverse—steadily increasing, more and more visible as it writhed into the air. Ellen wended her way through the zucchini plants and the beets to the weathered chicken-coop-cumtoolshed built by some previous owner of the property generations ago. She leaned the hoe against the wall of the shed and sat on its aged stone threshold. She tossed her work gloves at her feet in a gesture of surrender. Ellen leaned against the jamb, feeling its splinters on her back. She closed her eyes and let the chill sink in. Abruptly she twitched, flicking a boxelder bug off her hand. It tumbled over the cold slab threshold and, as all primeval creatures do, righted itself and continued on. Mesmerized, Ellen watched the tiny black and orange shell as it continued climbing ceaselessly over all the twigs and leaves she put in its way. She closed her eyes for a
20
