Golden Cellar

The place where the house once stood.

Golden Cellar

My father was sitting on the metal, corrugated barn roof with a half-eaten sandwich saying its last prayers in his hand. He was facing away from the house toward the valley known on maps across the nation as Eden, a fertile cut in the earth spilling out acre after acre of wheat ready for harvest. It was a sharp contrast to the green lush of fenced pasture across the road that sidled up to the Palouse River.

He was aware of things even with his back turned, he knew all that we did and allowed us the room to fail until we succeeded. My brother, Finch, and I built many forts all around the Eden Valley, often in the hills under the long oaks guarded by a fringe of weeping willow trees. We had many forts, but none close to the other side of the road, or close to the river. It seemed that our father preferred us in the valleys or tawny fields. Finch and I were shuttling across the road when Daddy called out from the barn roof, “Don’t go near the river!”