Summer

Somewhere a dog was barking.
Not an alarmed bark, just conversational...a few notes in the quiet late morning that barely disturbed the air.

They were high up in the barn, where the hay was usually stored but it was empty now, the space wooden and slotted, the air dry and a few strands of loose hay strewn on the floor.  They sat cross-legged facing each other, their bare knees touching.  They were sharing a popsicle, cherry red, and in the hot air it was slowly melting down her hand.  She would take a lick and then hold it out for him.  They were 14 years old, mouths a dark shade of color from the ice and when he leaned forward he went right by her hand holding the popsicle and kissed her on her mouth.

It was their first kiss.

She tasted like the sweet fruit of the ice, a candy-like moment, her mouth a little cold from the popsicle but in the heat of the hay-bin with summer starting to rise in the morning outside of them she tasted like he had always assumed she would.

New.  Fresh, foreign.  It stayed with him...long after...way long after.

He saw her now and again....a wave from a car window...a nod in church.  But like most things young and fresh and green there are movements sideways, new things to go see...the horizon of a 14 year old is a few streets, nothing like that of a 21 year old.

Later in that first-kiss summer they found ways to find each other...moments of intersection.  He would be mowing the lawn and she would appear with a glass of tea...an iced-laden glass condensing on the outside and frigid to his throat.  He would be there standing, shirtless, bits of blades of cut grass clinging to his skinny frame, his shins green.  She would smile and in the heat of the afternoon she felt like a quick burn on his skin.  She had a knowing smile...she knew she pleased him.  He drank the glass empty, returning it and briefly glancing fingers.  She walked boldly away.  He kept on with the lawn.

Or an evening when the fireflies were in full bloom...he was walking by her house and heard her laugh...knew it like you know your own voice.  Like when you hear the first few notes of a song and immediately recognize it.  He stopped, listening to her voice call out like a siren, her high notes of laughing and then a whisper to another girl's ear.  He had taken a few steps when he heard his name called...but not like a question or a surprise...rather like a statement.  Like she knew he would be stopping by and just said it flat and factual.  He loved the sound of his name in her voice.  Even at that young age, surrounded by the bright twinkle of golden lightning bugs, he understood attraction...he understood why the males burnt brightly in the hopes of finding a female.  He wished...he remembered thinking...he wished he could burn bright for her.  She laughed, called his name again and he laughed back and said hello...and for a moment they stayed like that...until her friend started along again and he waved his goodbye, the fresh cut lawn flickering with fireflies, the evening a bit humid but with a breeze.  He didn't know the word yet but what he felt was yearning.  He couldn't explain it and that made him unsettled...departing in the dusk and following the white sidewalk back to his home.

Years later, after he had joined the Army and she had gone to school there was a town picnic.  It was very hot and humid, and the crowd was moving slow and lazily, mixed amongst park tables and lawn chairs and blankets spread across the ground.  He had somewhere perhaps hoped that she would be there, but had no definitive expectation.  He had learned of the word yearning and while it was now just a bit of a pilot-light feeling for him, low and quiet inside of him, he knew that the sight of her would perhaps change the conflagration.

He didn't see her though.  He saw her mom, and she had fussed over him and his short hair.  He had a medal, it had been written up in the paper...but he was dressed in jeans and a black tee shirt.  She was spending the summer traveling...looking for work but mostly following a boy.  He smiled at her mom when she said that it wasn't worth the follow.

He asked her if she might be home soon...he was receiving new orders and wouldn't be around much longer.  Her mom wasn't sure.

In the walk home, where the pines were across the low flat field the first fireflies of the evening were starting to blink.  A few low, some adventuresome ones braving the higher limbs, most likely perfect for when the bats would start to appear.  The town was behind him, but the grasp of it still held him..the tiny streets and the park...the white church with its steeple and the fresh cut lawns of summer.  He heard a dog bark...not a dangerous sound but a call...perhaps wondering if another animal was out there to respond.  He felt the bit of sweat slide down his cheek and he remembered the first-kiss summer and the float of fireflies and the announcement of a dog bark, the canopy of ghost-like stars and the smoke from backyard barbecues...the passing by of slow-moving cars and laughter from porches...he breathed in the things that were still her from his past and he could easily pluck from his mind and from his yearnings his memory of the  newly discovered and never forgotten taste of her.