Pointless Field

The neighbourhood (if it could be called such) hasn’t changed much from how I remember. Almost thirty years, and the roads are still lineless, cracked, dehydrated. The evergreens that split the properties stand tall, the sort of trees we take for granted on the Island because they’re ubiquitous—they’re what children here conjure in their imaginations when asked to picture a forest, as opposed to some thin-branched English woods.

The sun is still a roaster here, and surely it doesn’t help my 130/90, but maybe if I keep trying to meditate on this block-sized field, I can lower it. Of course I stand on my side of the field. On my street. The townhouse Mom rented back then is still obscured by the street-facing row, so I don’t have to face the home I lived in when I was eleven. I didn’t come here for that.

(What did I come here for?)

The purpose of the field is still a mystery. A single structure stands nearer my side, pitched roof and boarded doors and dilapidation encroaching, and I still don’t know what it ever was. A church? And the immense field its grounds? A community centre? And the immense field for activities? The grass hasn’t changed either—bright beige. I haven’t left the asphalt, but I’m certain it’s still littered with unseeable rocks and minor pitfalls in the earth. The heat bakes it, seems to bake out all sound. A meek breeze scatters what fine dirt it can loosen from the tangled grass, and it adheres to the moisture in my nostrils. Its stench is the closest I come to reaching that version of myself: arid air seeping into the patchwork road, the way it hangs low—bouquets of sunbleach.

And the only reason we sped our bikes through this liminal zone was because the neighbourhood blocks were too wide; it would’ve taken three times longer to bike along the roadsides, even if that meant daring this field, which had toppled many hapless kids. And maybe there was an exhilaration to it, too: the size of it, the very time it took to cross—a kind of suspension like when you cross a bridge—the hue of sand in all peripheries, and the unstable ground causing our vision to quake. The threat of the wobble, that our front tire may catch a hole or rock too large, that we could be dashed. A rush that couldn’t be traded.

Your house hid, too, behind a thick sheet of these trees on the other side of the pointless field. Somewhere, but I’d probably misremember if I traversed over there, and now that I’m here it doesn’t feel right to enter this space again. It doesn’t belong to this version of me. This part of me needs to categorize its significance before I can access it.

We crossed so many times, and I never fell. Sputtered a handful of times. Your home was mine, and mine was yours. We were those kids. And on some level I understood that your parents weren’t your real parents, but they ordered you and fed you like they were. They were like parents in every way, except they never smiled at you, and I think that’s why you were reckless, callous, unafraid of the consequences if you were caught awake past bedtime. The current version of me knows what foster parents are now, and what heroes they can be to the kids who need them, but your parents unfairly coloured the concept for me.

We’d shine flashlights through your flannel quilt. I’ll never recall how we came up with the idea. The beams magnified the threads, projected them onto the ceiling, and we pointed out interesting patterns to one another, and we’d swear we saw something in the threads move, and we’d writhe and squeal quietly, both grossed out but having a blast about it, and somehow, in a few short hours, I could sleep beside you. Your legs sprouted hairs before mine did. They’d graze me, and I liked that. And in the morning I’d ride back home across the pointless field.

I can’t even remember your name.

(How can I not remember your name?)

Everyone is so adept at memory but me. I think it started with a J.

I don’t know why I came here. I slipped into the car just after sunrise and drove without purpose, but maybe the field—its breadth and tint—was always there and I finally followed it two hours northbound. A place I could never fix purpose to but never had to until I got older and it fell into dogged memory. But if memory brought me here, I can’t discern what this place has to teach me. And if the field has no purpose, then why hold it for years, for decades, on constant simmer in the back of my head? Memories without purpose—the idea an additional irritant to the dry dirt in my nose. Husks of gateways.

A distant glint from within the field breaks my reverie. A kid flies toward me on his bike. The uneven ground judders him, rattles the bike’s frame, and my fingers tingle empathetically with the tremors coursing through his. The tough grass spins his wheels.

A hitch in my chest—the best my chest has felt in ages—rises toward my throat. It’s futile to suppress my dumb grin.

He’s got a ways to go before he reaches my side.