Dutch Wonderland

The Amish fields blaze beneath the August sun. The roadside houses, built centuries ago from quarried granite, stand gray and stolid as the great-great-grandfathers who built them, stone by hand-hewn stone. The houses look uninhabited now, Anna thinks, squinting out the passenger-side window of the car. Too tidy, too well kept, like false fronts on a movie set. And yet, in the distance, she can make out a farmer working in the fields. A broad-brimmed hat moving slowly along the furrowed rows. The children are squabbling again in back. Jackson has turned the volume up on his bleeping electronic game and Caroline has punched him on the arm. Anna opens her mouth to intervene, but says nothing. The words orbit, unspoken, like an unmanned satellite inside her head. Along the road, the fields waver to the horizon: green soybean clumps, tasseled stalks of corn. She would like to walk out into those fields. She would like to feel the sting of long grasses against her skin, the loamy earth beneath her feet, the hot sun's burning palm. Out there, time would match the tempo of a cricket's wings, the heartbeat of a vole. She would turn and watch her own car disappear along the road, its windows glinting in the light.