Rough Likeness: Essays by Lia Purpura Page A

and waiting, they’re tired, they stopped where the grass was fresh and a pond provided. It’s dusk coming on, a slight chill picking up that turns them toward home, but they don’t raise their heads, catch a scent of dog, of round-up coming. The herd’s mixed. “MsBob” is all in with “Luvbun” and “GoTide.” “Bubbaboy,” “Nully,” and “Sphinx” are there, too. The stock are purebred Camaros, Explorers, Elantras, Legends. Docile and ragged. Worn, overfed.
    More is wrong.
    The flags are frozen. They’re fifty feet high but don’t move in wind and they carry no sentiment, like “these we hoist high over our small town/farm/ranch to keep alive spirit, memory, fervor. . . .” The flags have names: Ryan’s, Outback, Hooters (best saloon in town, I’d say, judging by all the horses tied up out front). IHOP. Waffle House. Wal-Mart on a far—I’d like to say “hill” but that’s out of the question, the hill’s been dozed, subdued into “rise.”
    Here is a field between parking lots—real grass and dirt with bottles tossed in, amber longnecks, flat clears of hard stuff. The word “artifact” comes, but it’s bumped out by “garbage,” the depths are all wrong, and in a matter of weeks it will all be turned over. Not a field’s breaking. Not loamy and clod-filled. More Tyvek and tar. By which things are wrapped, laid in, erected. How easily the new names for “seasons” come forth: undeveloped, developing, development, developed . Skirting the site I lose options like “fallow,” that yearlong rest wherein land regains strength. I’m losing the language for thoughts about gleaning. “Crop” goes to “cropping” as in Photoshop fixing. (And the term “Photoshopping”—wow, that gets confusing.)
    Here is a farm woman, her shawl held against wind. It’s late February in Tuscaloosa, and the tornadoes that hit farther south last week are still lending their kick. She leans into the gust as she crosses, with bags, the black earth (I’m thinking that black below tar), the damp earth (I say earth out of habit, I see), but it’s very well marked, white lines intersect, and the acre or so she’s covered (I’m holding on here, with “acre” as measure) is field distance, but it’s not a field anymore. She’s juggling bags and pinning her name tag, she works at the Cobb, the town’s multiplex, and she’s late for her shift. On my next turn around the series of lots, she’ll be behind glass, with money and tickets. Smoothing her hair. Gulping her Big Gulp. Settling. ( Settler. Settlement . Sigh.)
    A bit farther on, here is a mailbox with its red flag flipped up, in front of the Marriott, my closest neighbor (I’m a Hilton-Tuscaloosa guest for the week.) It’s a wooden mailbox on a wooden post, which means “rustic”—and truly, it is weatherworn. Around each fire hydrant—the hotels here in parking lot land are each fitted with two stumpy blue ones—grows a thicket of bushes. To hide the hydrant. Though in any small town, hydrants are red and freestanding on actual street corners. This greenery means to convey “tended garden.” Which makes the hydrant a reverse sort of flower, one that emits water. Which I guess fits the whole upended scene.
    Here are four tall trees in a tangly grove—former trees because now they’re dead, though a grove, I know, accommodates all forms of growth and decomposition, all cycles and stages. Long, bare branches and rough, broken ones alternate all the way down. It’s the kind of ex-tree that might draw an owl (that’s what I’m conjuring, a native barred owl), it’s got to be full of grubs just beginning to stir, and it offers a safe, clear view of the land. In the air is the scent of burning something. Highway and rubber. Diesel and speed. In fact, it’s all over—had I known such a smell as a kid, I’d not notice, or only on days when the wind kicked up. Poor farm wife in her booth, her hair tangled and blown. Gusts helping my