James Schaap

In March, 1968, we drove all night long in order to get to Florida for Spring Break, Daytona Beach. When we got there--as I remember--it was late evening, and the beach was wild with college kids. We looked for some place to stay but didn't find a thing until we stumbled into what seems, in my memory, to have been a retread army barrack. We got in line. We were third. It was late, almost midnight, and we were desperate.…

Here's how I imagine it. She knows he's there but she waits, time being of little consequence, after all. He died in the fall, when the leaves were drenched in reds and oranges, and to the north the sharp lines of shorn soybean rows looked like something cut into the land. She thinks he chose the right time of year because autumn is so beautiful, and there's relief--the corn finally out, although harvest is much easier now with those lumbering…