Half an Inch of Water: Stories

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A spring-fed creek ran through the ranch and so even in the harshest summer weeks there was a narrow lane of willows and green grass. Moose and elk browsed and left deep tracks in the muddy banks. Sam Innis had grown up there with his mother, his father having died in the war in Vietnam. The woman had clung to her husband’s dream, leasing out pasture, raising a few beefs, and giving piano lessons to the ranch children in the valley. She turned down many offers on the place, saying that even imagining such a thing would be a betrayal. Love of the spread had been rubbed into him like so much salve, a barrier against whatever was out there in the world, a layer of peace. His mother held him close, not wanting to lose her only remaining family, but let the ranch, the land, shape him. She let him go for his education and died while he was away at vet school. He had the old woman cremated and her ashes were mixed now into the dusty furrows, mud, and deep tracks of life of that place. At dusk, when the owls and bats were whispering about, Sam would sit by the creek and watch the few trout rise to some hatch.

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