Land Run. Mark Graham

      The remaining light of the sun spread across the lake and seemed to mourn with Rusty Watson. He could only see in this evening event the impending darkness that would soon envelop him. The hazy red and orange reflection of the lake was probably a pretty sight to someone, seen as something like the hope of a new day only a fool could find. Cold darkness came packaged in every pointless day. He took another beer from the bag next to his lawn chair. Rusty imagined this day’s dying as a changing of the guard and, in a way, just a nasty little play God put on every day, something done just to say, “I’m in charge in case you forget.” He sat down before the lake alone.

      Contentment never suited Rusty much. He was moving all the time and excited at everything he found to do. And he remembered having a reason for everything he did, even trusted that there was always something bigger going on around him with even greater reason. What crap, he thought. He opened his beer.

      The horizon was the same from every angle in central Oklahoma. A flat, straight line always lay before him, a seemingly benign constant where in a sudden moment, the weather could upset with deadly force, terrorize with lightning shows unmatched anywhere on the planet, hail like golf balls, heat so sizzling a body forgets it has mass, freak ice storms that would immobilize whole cities and then dry the very next day—a country that once produced such a man as him and his ways, steady but never boring or predictable.

      The dark was now in full both outside and inside Rusty. He finished his Corona and pulled a blanket from the bag. He closed his eyes and saw his wife for a moment and then the boy. Rusty finally moved into the familiar state somewhere between falling asleep and passing out.

      Within four hours, he woke before the opening act of the new day. Rusty stumbled to the nearby woods to relieve himself before breaking his makeshift campsite. He dreaded that he would have to stop at his empty house before going to the trailer at the stagnant construction site. The traffic was busier than he expected coming back from the lake. Then he remembered it had been a weekend. Time had recently become a problem for him. Rusty sluggishly sorted and prioritized the day’s tasks when his cell phone rang. Since he was jammed in traffic, he decided to answer it. He knew better but answered anyway.

      “Yeah.”

      “Rusty Watson?”

      “What?”

      “Mr. Watson, we have been trying to get a hold of you for weeks. I’m Cort Johnson, and I need to inform you that you are grossly overdue on your construction loans with Sooner National. We need payment of—”

      “Who is this?”

      “Cort John—”

      “Tell your boss that I’ll get it to him. I got a new deal he’s gonna like.”

      Rusty hung up and tossed the phone to the passenger seat of his truck. He was offended that he was just a name on some no-name list. He was better than that, generated more revenue than that.

      The road took over the trip. Plans for the day abandoned now. He just drove with some sense of restlessness. Rusty found himself doing this more than ever. He would just drive as he did in high school when it was just important to be out of the house. Where you went never mattered, just away.

      The morning’s lie came back to him after