Wanda Part 1

Wanda stands at the kitchen window, leans on the counter to stare at the car lights as they slip past on the highway, praying for a set of headlights to turn down the gravel road that leads to the farm. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d been stood up.

An hour later she gives up and walks out to the front porch to sit on the concrete steps. The western sky melts from blue-pink to blue-black. No moon, the night gives up the heat quickly and a light breeze stirs the grass where the cow lays with her two-week-old calf. If she holds her breath she can hear the soft roar of tires on the highway, just under the drone of cicadas. Looking east again, she sees lights approaching, easing around the bend in the road that keeps the oil tanker trucks from plowing into the front yard.

A two-tone Mercury slides by on the other side of the elm trees that line the front yard. She hears the soft crunch of tires on gravel, watches red triangle-shaped taillights grow smaller, then flash of brake lights, then darkness. A car door opens and closes softly and in the moment of light she sees a man emerge. Without seeing she knows he’s crossed the barbwire fence into the pasture. She looks through the front door into the dining room where her parents sit under a veil of cigarette smoke and laughter, playing canasta with Dave and Jimmie, then walks toward the darkness.