Login | Register

Walking down Old Spain or Back Old Spain, I’ve never been sure which it is or why, but I know I need some of the intense red sweetness there. Domestic strawberrydom is forever bankrupt to me because I‘ve known these perfect gems.

I pass the factory my grandfather lost. He put it so close to the house we still live in, so close to the unclearly named dusty road. Swimming in acres of cheap space, buildings in this town huddle together, designed for the feet of horses or people, not eighteen wheels at once. The factory’s awfulness is mostly due to the semi trucks. It ate the raspberry bushes to ease their travel; it ate the ancient chestnut trees for the same reason. A barn that had seen centuries, an orchard planted in my father’s childhood, devoured and paved. We small cousins throw rotting apples and our most vicious playground curses at its ugliness. This angers and embarrasses the adults. They grasp for dignity while the white cinderblocks nibble at our land. Please don’t take the house.

I keep walking. The road hides me in clouds of brown when my feet scrape. It can’t hide the recently decapitated chicken on the edge of the cornfield, killed for sport by a well-fed dog. A man is fly-fishing in the shallow spring fed crick. Only an auslander would call it a creek. I see his pickup first, catch a glimpse of him casting, hip high rubber waders though the water is not to his knees, and wonder if he will eat what he reels in. I suspect he, like most people here, doesn’t care to know about the water.

I walk past him. The fields this far back have given up trying to yield corn; they are content to nourish riots of blue chicory. Generations ago, maybe also more recently, this tired purple soil was prodded into raising grains, though its richness has been washing towards the Chesapeake for millennia. They say this range was the tallest in the world once.

Old Spain, Back or not, is the name of the mountain, too. The road turns up and I enter its shade. The day after Thanksgiving, we poach Christmas trees here, malnourished college students, prodigal sons and their new babies, caucasian debris all. Our carols and laugher drown out the siblings’ shame. I alone among cousins keep this memory; the others are too young. Even my brother, only two years my junior, does not know his earliest holiday cheer was illicit.

The spring predictably inspires thirst when I reach it; water gurgling cheerfully from between Thomas Kincaid's moss-covered stones and perfect ferns. A small tin mug sits on one of the idyllic rocks, secured to another rock with a delicate chain. My great grandmothers house, the original on the property I’ve walked from, had a mug like this attached to a spring outside the front door. Her oldest grandson’s wife, my mother, finally took that mug away because she couldn’t get us to stop drinking what flowed so temptingly from the ground. The water is sweet because mercury is tasteless.

I turn and walk back the way I came, stopping at the edge of woods and field. It is late in the season for strawberries, there may not be any left. I drop to my hands and knees, search for hot rubies among triplet leaves. There is only one, tiny as they all are. Inside my mouth, my tongue memorizes the roughness and diamond shape, sucking a soft film of dust from delicate skin, so little sweetness draws through. I savor this prelude until I can stand it no longer, then press the berry reverently against the roof of my mouth. It does not disappoint, they never do. Sunshine and hope drip to the back of my throat with the rich pectin. I slacken my jaw, allow my teeth their pleasure, gradually. The seeds resist just enough, the texture brings ecstasy, more sugar bleeds from the pulp. One small involuntary moan escapes as I swallow.

My eyes open.

It is over.