She

"Bring Me Myself..."

Dad told me when I was younger that the Sun always set in the mountains. I can see him in the rocking chair on our front porch, looking out at Pikes Peak, a cup of coffee in his hand (black, two sugars, no matter the time of day), pointing to the summit.

“Down she goes, into the mountaintop. Down, down, down,” he would say in a sing-song voice. And the Sun was always a she. I still don’t know why.

I’m 15 now, sitting on an Adirondack chair I found marked “Free” while out exploring one weekend, watching the Sun fall at the end of the day. The trailer mom and I call home is sitting behind me, lonesome as I am. It’s the only building standing for miles in any direction. I’m holding a cup of coffee (black, two sugars), staring out into nothingness—flat, open space. No trees. No hills. Not even a boulder to block the view.

And no mountains. So where does the sun set?

Where does she go, Dad?

Where did you go?

We’d come here when I was 11 so you and Mom could continue your studies of the volcanic fields that make up northern Arizona. All I know—all I’m ever told—is that you were headed toward a strange steam vent that had appeared “out on the horizon” one evening, and you never returned. I often have dreams. The ground belches, buckles, burns, and bleeds.

You always say the same thing: “Bring me myself.” And just as I’m reaching for you and our fingertips are about to touch, I always wake up.

Always. Every single time.

Mom seems to be tireless. There’s an endless supply of fuel somewhere within her. I’m not sure how or where. I catch a glimpse of her at sunrise when she leaves, and feel the softness of her breath on my cheek when she kisses me goodnight when she gets home.

There’s a song you used to sing when I was very young: “We’re two ships that pass in the night. And we smile, and we say it’s all right.” That describes us to a T.

My hand is steady, but the black coffee inside suddenly trembles. There’s nothing around to cause such reverberation; no hum of a motor, no pound of an animal’s movement, not even a breeze in the air. Nothing. I move my gaze from the distant horizon to the mug and then back to the horizon. In that instant, far off, out of the nothingness, a great mountain has risen from the land, gargantuan and magnificent.

The Sun is setting into the summit.

“Down she goes, into the mountaintop,” I hear him whisper as if he were standing right at my shoulder.