How We Forgive is Different for Everybody

Out on 9, as the locals call it, the highway runs parallel to a flat plain that runs the stretch of road over ten miles. Lines of wire fences, not noticeable from the roadway unless you’re looking for them, block off the plots of land every few hundred yards. Every so often a row of power lines cut gently through the fields. The farm-kept bison and horses catch any traveling eye. Cows, destined for slaughter and dairy production, dot several farms with modest houses on them. There are small ponds and marshes off the side of the road from the melting snow. Ravens and magpies quarrell through the air. Elk and pronghorn bask in the sun, some lying down while others slowly, cautiously grab nibs of grass. On the west side of the plain, nearly a mile wide across, is a small ridge line with different firs and pines leading up the spine, the first break of the flat plain in any direction. Beyond that, enormous snow-capped mountains like a panoramic photograph. The sky above, blue in the way only a clear mountain sky is, stretches like a sheet further than the human eye can see. It dissipates into the horizon the same way the mountain range does. One does not overtake the other, rather, they travel together, softly until neither can disconcerted from the other. Small puffs of white clouds hang lightly in the air.

Jake, smoking a cigarette, sits outside of his car, naturally a Subaru, as he leans back onto the hood of his car, his legs crossed at the ankles. It isn’t cold, but it isn’t a hot day. He’s in a loose t-shirt and jeans. Emily, inside the car still, grabs the two pairs of eclipse glasses they picked up at the local library from her purse. 

“I got our glasses,” she says. 

“Thanks.”

Still smoking, he puts the glasses on, the cigarette pursed between his lips. He looks directly at the sun, a small dot with the edge of the moon just starting to block it. He pulls a drag, still staring at the sun, says, “This it?”

“Not entirely.”

“Okay.”

Emily grabs her glasses, and before putting them on, looks out at the mountains. She starts to think about everything that she could have been that she isn’t. She stares a little harder, as if she were looking for herself in those peaks. She looks at Jake, still with his glasses on looking up toward the sun. She waits for him to look at her. When he doesn’t, she puts her glasses on and looks up at the sun. 

Not in totality, yet still enough to cast shadows a little longer, to make the fields glow in a warm hue of gold and orange, and a sense that the world is in a time that doesn’t exist. The entire event lasts only minutes, but in those brief moments, with the wind blowing a chill of unease, Emily begins to cry. She takes her glasses off, walks back to the car, and gets in. Her tears start slight, then increase to a heavy sob. Her elbows on her knees and her wet face in her hands, she can’t seem to control herself. Jake continues to look out, his glasses still on, at nothing in particular, a cigarette resting between his fingers. 

A red-tail hawk glides through the air over the plains. It doesn’t seem as if it’s going anywhere in particular. Taking a break from her sobs, Emily looks up and sees the hawk gliding into the distance, smaller, smaller, and smaller. With each inch she tells herself that she will stop crying when it is completely gone. She has to give herself these types of limitations. It is gone moments later, disappearing the way an airplane disappears across the sky. She places one hand on the window, as if to say goodbye to the bird. She looks at Jake through the windshield, still leaning against the hood of his car, both hands now rested back onto the hood holding him up, the cigarette nearly entirely gone resting in the web of his index and middle fingers. He has taken his glasses and is holding them in the other hand. He’s looking up, not at the sun, but up at the enormousness of the sky with a contemplative look in the wrinkle of his forehead and brow.

The air outside of the car is cool, brisk as the first day of spring. Her long hair gets tossed across her face and shoulders and she doesn’t try to control it. She doesn’t look at the mountains or the plains or the endless sky, too afraid to embrace her own soul. Without noticing, small tears begin to trickle slowly down her reddened cheeks, hang on her chin for a brief moment, then fall to the dirt. She stands in front of Jake, his hazel eyes looking at the mountains in the distance. His blonde hair is blowing in the wind, standing up in the back like he just woke up from a deep sleep.

“Do you ever feel like we aren’t enough for the world?” she asks.

“Sometimes.”

She places one hand on his face, cupping it softly in her palm. He takes a drag of his cigarette, flicks it into the dirt, and exhales a big cloud of smoke. She rubs his cheek with her thumb in slow circles. 

“Do you think you can ever forgive me?” she asks.

He doesn’t answer right away. He looks over the plains, a single elk stalking slowly over the crest of a hill. 

“I think so.”

She nods, pulls her hand away, and walks over to the cigarette butt that Jake tossed and picks it up. She snubs it into the dirt and brings it back to the car. She gets in the passenger seat, puts the orange cigarette butt in an empty cup holder, and buckles her seat belt, Jake still leaning on the hood of the car. A few cars drive by at high speeds down 9, slightly blowing the car side to side. She doesn’t resist, only moves with the car, as if she were a blade of grass blowing in the heavy winds outside. She looks for the hawk from earlier, and when she doesn’t see it, decides not to cry any longer.

The door creaks open, and heavily Jake sits in the driver’s seat. Neither of them say anything. He starts the engine and pulls onto the highway, the slow hum of the static radio station in the background like an afterthought. Jake rolls down his window, a heavy breeze throwing itself through the car. One hand on the steering wheel, one arm out the window, the wind cutting through the webs of his fingers as he moves his hand up and down like a wave, he feels a hand rest on his thigh. It startles him, but not enough that Emily notices, and he doesn’t remove her hand.

“The next one isn’t for twenty years,” she says. Jake doesn’t answer, but nods. “We’ll have to go somewhere to see the whole thing next time.”

“Yeah.”

And in a way, that was all she needed to know. Life was about to change. She reached over, turned off the radio, and watched as the world drove by.