Sunday afternoon

It was Sunday afternoon and not too cold for late November. The sun had been out earlier in the day, but now the clouds masked the world over in a thin gray. The wind blew through the naked fingers of the trees, swaying the smallest of the branches and the last of the leaves still clinging tenaciously to their umbilical cord that connected them to summer and the last nutrients of the earth before the winds would finally sever them, and they too would go back into the ground to enrich new generations of spring leaves.

Wearing her oversized green sweatshirt and a stocking cap, Billie Holliday carried the red plastic rake she'd bought from Wal-mart for $5 across the yard, swinging it like a baton, the first song by a band named Flyleaf gearing up on her iPod. She'd gone to church earlier that day, then left after a few songs, unable to continue. She needed to get away and think, she told herself, and so she'd sped out of the parking lot, stopped at Wal-mart, picked up $5 of cheap therapy (aka the rake), and had driven the ten minutes across town for home.

Fall afternoons. Raking leaves. The music had an edgy, gritty feel to it and Billie cranked it up, coccooning herself in a world of noise and the rhythmic scraping of the rake across the grass and dead brown leaves. One foot, and then another, until soon the yard was littered with small mounds of yellow leaves, like dead carcasses piled up after the kill. The grass underneath was still green, still tender and alive, and still very much in need of a last mowing.

Her body began to feel warm and the first trickle of sweat ran its way down her back. Her breathing became uneven, and she had to remind herself to take deep breaths as she raked. In spite of the cold, a glowing warmth began to spread its way into her arms, her legs, and feet. She began to remember how much she enjoyed this, being outside, working in the yard, feeling like she was taking care of a piece of her world, taming it, nurturing it, making it beautiful. She didn't care that this wasn't her yard, that she was renting it. For now, it made her feel like she was part of something.

Feeling part of something hadn't come easily. The last two years she'd been a leaf, blowing on the wind. She'd started out at the bottom, a sales rep for a computer firm, and when she'd agreed to commute six hours to Cleveland 2-3 days a week to close a $5 million deal with a potential client, she told herself the fast-track promotion would make it worth it. But then Carlye got another deal for $6 million, out of Grand Rapids, in less time and became Billie's supervisor.

It hadn't helped that her dad had died in the midst of this. He lived in Tennessee, but she'd called him at least twice a week. Now she was alone, with no one to talk to, her life heading quickly into a tailspin. She submitted her resignation and transferred to a company in Illinois. It would be a new start, she said, a redo and a chance to meet new people. Maybe feel connected again.

She continued to rake the piles together, combining them, pushing them toward the edge of the yard until a small mounded wall had grown up about two feet high around the perimeter, a boundary between green grass and the gray, lifeless concrete road. The dead leaves and gravel underneath served as a "no man's land" between them.

The phone was set to silent in her pocket. No one usually called, but today she wouldn't have talked with them if they had. Today she felt lonely, alone. She didn't know why she did this, but on days like this she turned the phone off, a conscious choice, a cutting free of the tether. She was a leaf blowing on the wind, cut off from her lifeline and rootedness, but at the same time no longer bound to the pressures of fitting in, of worrying about whether someone would call, or feeling the silent disapproval of not being enough. Knowing no one would call and choosing to not answer were differences by degree, she knew, but it was that space of her choosing that made a difference. Somehow she had control, she could wrap the aloneness around herself like a blanket and find solitude within it. Tomorrow she'd call someone. Tomorrow. But for right now, it was time to swim in silence. The last song ended, and she could once again hear the wind blowing past her ears, feel it through her hair.

There had been other days like this: going on hayrides on farm tractors and back country roads, trying to stay warm and not fall off the wagon, trying to stuff her friends as scarecrows without getting hay stuffed in undesirable places between her own clothes. When the hayride was over there'd be a roaring fire, hot chocolate, chili, and after that marshmallows that would blacken at the edges and burn her fingers as she'd try to pull the sticky mass off the stick before popping its warmth into her mouth.

There was pulling up cornstalks and tomato and pepper vines and rotten zucchini and squash into a mound in the center of the garden where her dad would stuff gaps at the bottom with newspaper and light a match as they stood there watching the flames for over an hour, the dying embers of the summer produce.

She fumbled in her pocket for a lighter. She squatted down near the edge of the pile she'd brushed into her makeshift wall, heard her knees pop, placed her thumb on the cold metal wheel of the lighter, then flicked it hard. A small flame shot up, orange and yellow with a faint hint of blue at the center, and she passed it close to the dead leaves, back and forth, until they began to smoke, blacken, and then catch with yellow flame. She stood up, stepped back and watched as the flames licked slowly at first, then hungrily, then combined together and took hold. The leaves were ablaze, sending out enough heat that she had to take a step back. She turned and walked toward the house, hearing the wind blow and the crackle of flame ending the silence.