The Direction of Home
opening excerpt
She exhumed the remains of her childhood beneath the watchful eye of a meadowlark, the prairie grasses bobbed and swayed in a primal ballet around her. Scrabbling beneath the ash tree, hidden in that hollow, empty place, she dug, and cursed herself for not bringing a larger shovel. She should have known that memories are notoriously difficult to unearth, especially the heavy ones which have had to endure blizzards and thunderstorms, scorching sun and relentless wind, with little to shield them from loneliness and decay.
The arrowhead has pointed her here, steady and unwavering as always. Or rather, her therapist has pointed the way, gentle but firm in her suggestion that Alice should face her past, and the arrowhead has sealed the deal. She set it on her kitchen table that morning, worn edges blurring in the light as it spun, finally settling on East-Northeast - the direction of her childhood home.
And so, armed with nothing more than her purse, the arrowhead and a garden trowel, she set out, driving until the foothills loomed heavy on the horizon and countless windmill blades hummed in the endless prairie gale.
The familiar landmarks of town are surprisingly unchanged from the day she left twenty years previous. The grocery and hardware stores still hold their places - bookends to the shelf of main street - though their dilapidated roofs show the sag of age and their paint peels in rainbows, strips and splinters of their former glory. She sits taller in her seat and smooths down her hair, attempting to assuage the fear that any former neighbours, who may be peering surreptitiously from behind dusty, yellowed curtains at this very moment, would find her equally dilapidated and exposed.
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