I Traced his Steps

It was an early fall morning in the valley where my grandmother and grandfather made their home in Camp Verde Arizona. This time of year was cool in the evening and cooler in the mornings. During the summer, we would find ourselves collecting with each other in the shade under the willow trees in their front yard. Sometimes we would walk with our grandfather down to the Verde River… it ran behind his property… you could smell the sweet aroma of the cool waters that carved through the round river rocks we would use to build beaver dams in the shallows…

I walked along the side of the road that led to my grandparent’s house. It was paved with black oil. It once was a gravel lane that we would roam on, from one side to the other… looking for giant ant beds. We would push sticks into the entrance holes and watch the big red ants fight them like mortal enemies. If we could catch a beetle, we would add that into the fray… the road seemed much shorter on that morning.

I came to the gate that led to their home… it felt strange looking over the fence… I once would have un-latched the gate and ran into the house… but there were new owners… strangers. The house of my memory had a unique aroma. It was a mixture of the sweet perfumes of my grandmother’s dressing room… it was the aroma of the coffee pot that was filled, pot after pot…  it was the aroma of left over breakfasts of sausage and bacon, fresh hen’s eggs collected that morning and home made biscuits. They circulated through the house via the evaporator cooler that blew cool, humid air down the hallway…

I could only look over the fence… the fence my grandfather built with his hand saw and driven nails. It kept the sheep from escape when they found their way from the adjoining fields… it kept the family spaniel from running into the neighbor’s field that held his prized bull… the bull that didn’t appreciate the curious nature of a family pet. It kept in the grandchildren that wondered in the soft grass of the yard... it kept in his family and the love of the land. I walked down the fence line and traced his steps… I looked for signs of his saw and I touched the nails that had worked their way out of the timbers after so many decades. The peeling paint called his name for attention… and I stood dreaming of the days of my past…

                                                          Shannon R Killman