My neighbor said, “They were gathered…a thousand swallows. Last Wednesday. Where were you? You missed it. Now they’re gone.” We were sitting on his porch drinking red wine, waiting for the sun to set somewhere north of Taylor Canyon, looking at open space, not empty, but empty of swallows.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it, even though I thought he was exaggerating the numbers. It’s one of the things we do: watch for the day in June when the swallows return, surprising us as they string themselves on the power lines beside the road to Tuscarora. I'm not usually here in September, when they leave. “Do you think they really go to Capistrano?” I asked.
"Fuck’d if I know,” he replied, finishing his third glass of wine. He’s a retired teamster in his eighties with advanced emphysema. We’ve talked about how sensible it would be for him to move back to northern California near his son and near sea level. It would be easier to breathe. “I’m not going anywhere” he told me earlier, as we admired the fall light warming the valley floor. “It’s goddam beautiful here. I’m gonna die here. That’s that.” He looked right at me, as if I were going to talk him out of moving or dying. I’m not sure which.
My ninety-six year old mother hates organized religion in general and the Mormon church in particular. The mention of an afterlife makes her furious. “Their idea of ‘heaven,’” she says, her arthritic fingers making quotation marks in the air, “is stupid.” She is glad my father’s ashes are scattered in the Ruby Mountains and she has repeatedly said, “It doesn’t matter to me. Funerals are for the living,” when I ask her what her wishes are. "You don't 'go' anywhere when you die," she informs me, again making that fluttering motion with her fingers.
And yet. Last week I took her for a drive up Lamoille Canyon. The view from the top of the mountain gave us the lay of the land and an infinity of Nevada sky. “A sky like that makes you think there might be a heaven,” I heard her say to herself.
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