Sometimes it got so bad the only thing Will could do was put a 12-pack of Budweiser in the old 4X4, some Hank Williams on the tape machine, and burn up the two-lane straight as a carpenter's rule out into the empty heart of the prairie.
He wasn't a drinking man, not really. But it kind of built up in him slowly, that hollow feeling, like he was one of those dried Indian gourds and there was nothing inside him but a handful of tiny, rattling seeds, hard as stones.
It was more than just missing Rose, although of course he did miss her, every day, even after five years. Will still slept alone under the bedspread she'd made for them with her own small hands, and her needlepoint Lord's Prayer still hung on the living room wall, right over the television.
No, it was more like when she died it left a space in him that never filled, and these trips were like the wind rushing in to claim it.
He was well out of Salina now, coming up onto the intersection with County 7. Will reached over to the carton on the seat next to him, pried out a beer, and pulled the top up one-handed as he turned onto the little blacktop road. It stretched ahead of him, winking in and out of sight with the gentle contours of the land, and Will felt it pulling him forward like a wire to some place beyond the low, distant hills.
Hank was singing "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," and Will crooned along with him, belting out the words loud in the cab of the pickup. He caught a glimpse of himself in the rear-view, his leathery face scrunched up like he'd caught his foot in a door. He laughed, and he felt the borders of that darkness in him push back a little farther.
You just keep doin' it for me, Hank. Just don't stop talkin' to me.
Will loved the prairie, everything about it. When you looked at it from a distance it looked smooth and featureless, just miles and miles of tall, waving grass, but when you got up close you could see the wrinkles and scars. There was a rolling motion to the land that was gentle on the eye but sucked the strength out of you on foot, and the contours hid a cross-hatched pattern of stream-beds and hidden arroyos. A person could get lost out here and never get found.
Will had a favorite spot and that's where he was headed. He turned onto a rutted dirt road that snaked around a low hill, and when the road widened just a bit, he pulled over and stopped. He put the beers in a rucksack along with a couple of ham sandwiches neatly wrapped in wax paper, and walked straight out into the waist high grass, following the faint path.
The land gradually fell, and as it did the grass got higher and higher, until it was over his head and Will felt like he was walking on the bottom of an ocean of rustling tan.
Suddenly, the high grass opened up in front of him and he stood on the edge of a dry stream bed. Rocks of all sizes were scattered in the shallow bed, ranging from stones no bigger than a baby's fist to huge, rough boulders the size of a Buick. There was a cluster of big ones downstream a bit, just above a fork in the bed. One of them had a flat, sloping surface perfect for sitting and Will picked his way towards it, stepping from one stone to another along the rough stream bed as if water still flowed between them.
He dropped the rucksack and sat down next to it, wincing with the familiar protest in his knees and back.
Won't be able to do this for much longer, he thought, and shook his head.
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