The smoke came over the fields

"How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!" — Psalm 133:1

Labor Day, and the town has gone quiet in the particular way it goes quiet on a Monday that is not a Monday.

The hardware store is closed. The bank is closed. The post office is closed and the flag is up and there is nobody on the sidewalk in front of it. The diner is open because the diner is always open, and the parking lot had four trucks in it when I drove past at nine, which is about right for a holiday. Somebody has to be somewhere.

There is charcoal smoke coming from somewhere down the road. I have been smelling it since eleven. Somebody is grilling for the last time this year, or telling themselves it is the last time, the way we all tell ourselves that in September and then find one more warm Saturday in October and drag the grill back out. The smell comes across the fields the way it has come across the fields every Labor Day I can remember, and it is a good smell, and it means what it has always meant, which is that people are together somewhere not far from me.

I am not at any of those tables. I want to be clear that this is not a complaint. Becca asked and I said no because I wanted a quiet day and I meant it, and she said all right, Mama, and did not push, which is one of the ways my eldest is good to me. She will have me over before long. Today I wanted the porch and the paper and nothing on the calendar.

But I like knowing they are out there. That is the thing about a county road on a holiday. You do not have to be at the cookout to be inside it. A truck goes by that does not usually go by. The smoke comes over the fields. Somebody's music carries for a second on the wind and then does not, and you are in it, on your own porch, with your own glass of tea, and you belong to the afternoon without having to talk to anybody.

The verse says it is good and pleasant when kindred live together in unity. I used to read that and think of a family around a table. I have started to read it wider than that. Kindred is a bigger word than family. Kindred is four miles of county road on a Monday in September with the grills going and nobody in a hurry.

The light is coming in long across the porch floor. Summer is closing its account.

Lord, for the ones nearby, and for the smoke that carries.