The saloon was dusty and dark. Like no light had ever entered. The shadow she cast on the floor as she stood in the open doorway was swallowed when she entered the room and walked to the bar. Her hand reached to touch the mahogany wood. Dust accumulated around her fingertips as she caressed the bar’s smooth surface. Once pleasure was drunk here. Laughter. Now it seemed as if time stood still. As if holding its breath.
       She whispered his name. The name of the one that brought her here. Jack. He wasn’t here, nor would he ever be again. He had lay dead here. In a pool of his own blood, from a fight of his own making. This was his place and she meant to have it.
        She blew, blowing the dust from her fingers. Life would come. His life would flow back into this building even if she had to bring him back from the dead. With her clenched fist, she raked her knuckles against the bar’s dusty surface.
        This place would stand. Not in memory of his name. No. His name held no honor. But in memory of his promise and the faith she had held in a man who once was to be her husband. With one sweep of her hand she removed the dust of a lifetime to begin another. Her own.

        I tugged at the plant, gripping it close to the ground, my knees bent, my arms flexed and tight. It firmly resisted my ripping and jerking as if it knew of its inevitable end. I remember its beginning. Just a mere babe of a plant.

        Endings are so different than beginnings. Hopeful, positive, and so innocuous. Like it doesn’t really matter. Life is that way. A simple concept. A simple lie, but it grows. Grows into this grotesque thing that nothing can contain. Like the ivy that grows over an old house or the root system of a mint plant. Just looking at it, who can say where it starts? Who can say where it began? I can’t.

        I looked at the complex system of roots I held in my hand knowing full well that if I didn’t get the whole damn thing out of the ground--next spring there the idiotic plant would be again.

        Jimmy had planted it just five years ago. Right along the same time he planted himself in my life and at the same time he planted his lie. Oh, he’d be faithful. No, I didn’t see the signs. I disregarded all the phone calls. All the looks and smirks from all the others. But the lie didn’t die. They don’t, you know. They never disappear on their own. They have to be killed, much like this plant.

    I found a log outside my door.
    I needed a small spoon. So, I started to work on the log with a sharp knife. I knew it could be done.
    I worked all morning while watching the robin outside my window. By lunchtime I was halfway through the log to the spoon. I worked noticing the sparrow was where the robin had once been. I guess the robin had other things to do. By the time the sparrow had left, the log was the size of a ladle for soup. I didn’t need a ladle, only a small spoon for supper.
    The crickets came to sing me to sleep. By that time the log was a large spoon. I kept working barely noticing the night had quieted to a cool hush.
    My spoon. I found it. I jumped. I yelled. This awakened the crickets who awakened the sparrow. The sparrows fluttered from their nests awakening the robin which knocked down a branch.
    The branch. I needed a branch.
    In the morning I will make a pick for my teeth.