Your new community has less than 200 people, one main drag and a litany of dirt roads. From the top of the main hill on the edge of town, you can see everything, cabins and trailers peeking in and out of pines. Long storefronts to the south and east, reminiscent of old mercantiles, but full of gift shops, a coffee shop, a supermarket. An iron bridge rises over the river, an elegant labyrinth of steel. Vast, verdant hills loom.
            Sometimes you stand on this main hill. Try to lean out. You inevitably pull back; you’ve fallen many times. You’ve felt the world taking. Your father has taken smiles and ease—the world has levied bills. Rejected your stories and job applications.
            But this is your community, a fact that rises to you looking from the hill. You could drive down the roads, like locals in their Chevys, relishing the whirl of the road. Take to the river, hunt in the still of winter and challenge the elements. But you are still an observer after six months, a man whose life is blank now.
This move is the byproduct of choice, the culmination of savings, jobs. It is the culmination of things your father didn’t want, something you locked away with tight tenderness.
            Once, you shared constraint with your father, still in your twenties. You lived on the edge of your hometown, a mid-sized city. You were next to a soccer field where people wandered around daily, as if thinking they could go somewhere better. You called it the suckerfield. He laid on the couch and insisted you do his homework for nutrition management and anger management classes. He called you too artistic, told you to give up writing, the words predictable, but striking with precision.
            Now, he fulminates from a distant city, words playing in your mind.
            “Why do you not think about your life? See the end at the beginning. What will you
accomplish in the middle of nowhere?”
            “You’re too emotional. Life is a jungle.”
            “You always run away from challenges. I’m telling you these things because I’m your
father. I love you. Others claim they love you, but they don’t.”
            You try to lose these words in the vastness of the valley. Start walking, albeit with awkward gait. Morning and evening. You traverse curving roads. Absorb the twang of neighborly good mornings and drifting welcomes. They are voices without calculation and menace, replete with gruff tenderness. They ask where you’ve come from; you only mention coming for a change of scene, to ruminate.
            You savor low, easy nods, the sound of The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac and other ’70s
groups floating from homes. Here people fix roofs and porches; work in woodshops. There’s
something sublime in stained T-shirts.
            How content people seem, taking things apart. Song lyrics blend, an odd mélange of
possibility and darkness. Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow in the Hotel California. You relish the smell of Marlboros and oil, the Chevys and Dodges that sputter dependable assurance. And yes, the occasional Subarus that purr smoothness.
            Your father doused himself in Polo cologne, wore Khakis and striped navy-blue shirts. He drove a used Mercedes, something that connoted a man still on top of the world and not a retired soil scientist.
            You organize your little cabin. Arrange your Yates and Nabokov on the shelves, blast your own brand of music; Tchaikovsky at first. But Tchaikovsky’s superseded by the Eagles. A safe choice. On top of all this, you buy flowerpots. Festoon them with lilacs, something that conveys tenderness. Belonging. You even try to throw a barbeque but burn the burgers. You love the scent of charcoal on a summer night. Smoke rising from backyards. The laughter of mysterious families, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers who wear smiles, untrammeled by so much. Perhaps happy families are all alike, as Tolstoy said. You envy it.
            The walks are stepped up to three times a day, down your road and then all the way to the little lodge up the hill. There’s a release not being home. Up trails and paths you stride. People praise the constant walking. Your gait. Weight you’ve shed. Move forward, they laugh jovially.
            Your father would tell you to walk faster, pick up the pace. He used to take you to walk at the suckerfield, called you weak, told you to push yourself. I want you to be healthy. I do this because I love you.
            You start walking at your own brisk gait, your own awkward gait all too clear. But now you shake your butt, swing your arms, give your motions some artistic meaning.
            Looking over precipices, over pines and curvaceous hillsides, even into ponds bathed in rippled moonlight, you can’t move backwards. You know the impact of falls. Even now, sometimes you forget you’re here. Brace for another fatherly lecture. Get a girlfriend, use people. You’re too honest.
            So you lean out a little on that hill overlooking the town. A little more. Sure, the
possibility of precipice taunts, but you cannot help but laugh.
            You lean out into dirt and towards rustic storefronts stained with sunlight. The long main drag fresh with tar and newly painted blackness. The pink and purple real estate office. But there’s no need to think of the immediate consequences, the bruised leg, the subsequent limp.
            You’d rather fall forward and feel the sharp edges of something else. A good sharpness, something that will harden. Strengthen. You want to laugh and dance, not knowing. Maybe imagine, forget, or even tell stories. You don’t know what’s next, speaking those words over and over, a smile growing.