I was gone for her from the moment I saw her. She was twelve and not that tall yet, not like she would be by sixteen, so when I hopped down and got a good look at her, she would about fit under my arm. She had a big thick braid of almost black hair and I would learn too many years later that she wore it up all the time because she hated how the curls would take over in the heat and even the cold gray. I liked to let them take over, especially much later when she was up above me and that hair was all around us. I loved her slim neck but I loved her curls more because she was a naked angel up on top of me where she belonged and that wild hair was her halo and my damnation.

I wake up some days and I think she's near, just in the bathroom or out on the porch with Buck and Davey Don't at her feet, drinking her disgusting coffee in her ratty shawl. Knowing she's not, remembering that I cannot hold her, it's more than a punch to the gut. It's maybe my cross to bear and I am like Moses and not strong enough. I stand beside the bush but inside I quake with the fear of Him, for we have lost enough and I do not want life without her, too.

I need her back like I need the sun. She belongs with me. She keeps me warm. From her smart mouth to her moans when I am fucking her like she needs and I want, I am nothing now but work and memory. Broken memories. I do not know really why she's gone except maybe that it's the City of Angels, and of course they'd have to have the best.

I think I hate California almost as much as I hate her uppity mother.

Everything good God takes from me except Guv and our land. Maybe it's cause I keep hating and questioning, but hellfire we have been through enough this past year without her mama sticking her nose in, without her going off where I can't hold her and tell her I will love her no matter what happens. I keep trusting though because if I can't trust the big man, I might'n as well go off somewhere like Pickens did when he was old and had that bad front leg and just wait for it to end.

It's happy thoughts like this that are interrupted when a smartmouth says to me, like it's easy as plowing a field, "Go get her."

Emmett Everett McCarty the Third, only son of Guv's main mechanic and my best friend, hands me another Coors Light and drops into the booth across from me.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you're drinking alone on a Thursday night. Hop a plane. You're depressing me and half the bar."

The bar, dark paneling and antique neon barely lighting up booths the same old green of school bus seats, is plumb empty. Well, excepting me and Emmett, and Rosie King, the bar keep and Em's promised. I take it back. Michael Harris and Nolan "Sutty" Sutherland, both old as dirt and about as smelly, are watching some shit football game in the corner. I don't care.

"Stop giving me shit." We drink for a minute and I point at Rosie and raise my bottle. "You're a tattle tell, Blondie."

She pauses in her closing duties to flip me off. "Couldn't let you drink alone, darl'. 'Sides I need a ride home."

Emmett raises his bottle, too, and winks all exaggerated before turning back to me. He thumbs off his feed store ball cap and throws it on the table between us. "She could edit from anywhere. We got this thing called the interwebs. Why d'you think she really up and went?"

I can't tell him. I promised her I wouldn't tell nobody. I don't think her Mama even knew, because if she had she'd have hightailed it back from Dallas and refused to go back to Suburbia without her. Two dead babies in thirteen months wouldn't be a reason to circle the wagons for that bitch. They'd be a reason to take her away from me.

That's the part I can't get over. It's not bad enough losing two of what we made, is it? I know the doctor said it happens a lot. He said people have three, sometimes four before one catches, and the miscarriages are easiest if they're early like hers because there's no surgeries thata way. I close my eyes at night now and it's either her crying in that little room in Tulsa under a sheet and it's cold and I can't hold her like I want because she's half naked and there's a doctor and a nurse there both, or it's her in that field, that last day when she decided I wasn't enough to get her through. Either way, I don't sleep much lately.

"I don't know. Not for any good reason, that's for damned sure."

"Well, go after her then."

"What?"

"Are you a complete fool? Get on a goddamned plane. Nobody can stand you without her, not even yourself."

I can't go to California. We got wheat in the fields needs cut and soybeans that ain't going to harvest themselves, and that last hay will be dry enough to sell soon. She's got to come home. She's got to come back where I can put it right between us and not let Guv down either.

I pull out my billfold and lay some money down between us. "What I can't stand is you talking like a fool. I got work, man. Guv can't keep the crews in line this year."

He takes a big swallow of his beer and looks up at me as I get out of the booth. "You know your eye still twitches when you're hiding something? It's doing it right now."

"Oh, fuck off."

I'm walking out and he's still hollering at me because he's an idiot. "Rosie could book you a seat. I can take off a day or two to handle the crews!"

When I step out and head toward my truck, it's windier than when I went in. There's so much to do before first frost. I shouldn't be out when I got to be up so early.

She'll be back for Thanksgiving. She won't leave her daddy alone. She'll be back then and I'll make her see reason. I'll ask her to marry me right like I should've done before Guv got sick. I'll make her see she's the sun around here and the moon, too. She's the only reason to look up at all.