I tried to think, to find one quiet body part. I rolled my ankles in circles, right, then left. After several minutes I unfolded and stood, wobbled painfully to the trailer door, opened it, and pissed into the gravel. I took in Matt’s view. I liked coming here. Matt lived in squalor but our visits were clean. He never asked questions. It didn’t matter if it was six months or a year in-between, he always acted like I’d never left. It’s been nine months this time. Except that Matt’s missing, nothing else has changed. Rockies to the west. A pumpjack pawing the ground to the east. Close by, the well house and dripping tap, rotting outhouse, cobwebbed shed for rusted tools. Out further, the vomit-green swamp that glows in the twilight and Matt’s quarter section of scrub brush. I stumbled into the sticky July heat, squinted into the naked sky and wished for a baseball cap. I thought I could hear the oil-sucking sounds of the pumpjack, the thump, grind, hum, but it was all in my head.
