What others have

Some suns don't burn long. At least not ones I've known. They are too bright against an already bright blooming sky and people rage to put them out because their eyes hurt. Eyes should be peaceful, inside and outside and behind. Peaceful like the top of a cloud that only God sees. Golden white, like a fallen steeple in the sand. 
"What are you afraid of?" 
"Alchemy," I said. "It turns something real into something useless." 

My cousin Brad is very good at building ladders. Excellent, I would say. I saw him sometimes, chopping wood. 
I thought about swiping one of Brad's ladders when I was a child. I used to creep out on the screened-in porch and watch him, shielding my face from him with a fleece, blinking--
He heard me blink. "Come here, Jesse." 
I swallowed. 
"Help me chop some wood," he said. But I was afraid of my cousin because, among other reasons, Brad was bald, and the burning sun beat down on his bald head and it pained me.
"I'll let you have a ladder if you help me chop wood." 
Within myself I knew I would just steal one. I'm a thief, you know. I'll fight for what others have, because others have beautiful things and I don't. Fascinating, isn't it, how some have their knitting and some have their music and others have their sin. 

There are three parts of this home: house, field, canyon. 
This house is white because all self-respecting houses should be white.
These fields are full of corn because what else makes the cows fat?
This canyon. . . Well, I would like to own this canyon. This is my canyon. I can hear it blinking if I come right up to the side of it and close my eyes. Maybe it is afraid of not-being-heard, of being useless. "It's ok, darling," I whisper to the canyon before I fall asleep in the very white house. "I am not an alchemist." 

Of course, there are other parts of home. There are subcategories such as the screened-in-front-porch and the cheese-in-the-refrigerator and the "people." I don't know the "people" very well because I'm generally so concerned about myself.
From the top of my favorite tree I watch the people scurrying about: pieces of wind. Brad built a new ladder today. I can tell because beyond the field is Brad's forest, and one of the treetops I usually stare at is gone. He must have chopped it down, unless a giant ate it for a snack. But this is morning. Who eats snacks in the morning?

     "Momma," I asked once, "Why does Brad make ladders?" 
"He wants to see the tops of the clouds." 
"But only God sees the tops of clouds." 
Momma just drank her coffee. "Well, at least Brad's trying to get there. That's worthwhile at least -- there's nothing wrong with trying to see beauty." I saw that her eyes were pools, and I remembered looking far down into the canyon where who-knows-what looked back up -- piercing, pale pools compared to the rest of humanity and all the hummingbirds shrieking. 
Brad'll never get there. You can't just set up a ladder in the ground and expect it to stay straight while you climb up like Jack in his bean stalk. Maybe if the clouds fall - that's the only time we can hope to see the tops of them. Then we'll harvest bunches and bunches of cloud like sterling silver babies' breath.

Old. What a ghastly long word to say. When you say it your mouth feels like a black hole. You imagine something like a long face, drooping, licking the last fudge popsickle because the ice cream truck won't come around anymore. Not in Hell, at least. 
I've grown old and things have died. There are a few good things that come with old age.
Really? I am not so sure. I have lost a degree of certainty, as though the antique clocks I so treasured have begun to disappear from a long hallway of useless comforts. That is good maybe, when our own pretty perceptions of time vanish. 

"Won't you grieve?" Fowler asked me, at Brad's funeral. Fowler is an old friend. We used to sit in the driveway and eat fudge popsickles. I gave my popsickle sticks to Brad and he made miniature ladders with them. 
Funeral is an old friend too. He wears steel-toed boots and long-sleeved shirts. He prefers roast duck to stew, and hums a little in the evenings when everyone has gone off to bed. I've realized now, that being a thief is not so nice as I thought it was. The other end of theft is loss. Some say that Hell is a permanent sense of loss - not just because something is lost but because you lost it. 
"No." I won't grieve. Mother said I was a sentimental child, but I used up all my sentiment. Now I'm an indifferent adult with an unpoetic soul, searching for the beauty I cannot see. 

I buy brown eggs from Fowler. He says brown eggs have a thick shell, like walnuts, armadillos, thick saddles mules making their way down, down, down into the canyon. Graceful, such a descent. It's too bad that folks worry so much about falling. Too bad that folks don't just float when they want to, like egg yolks or clouds -- useful things and beautiful too. 
I guess the canyon is mine now. Brad said, "Have everything, Jesse, even though you aren't very good at chopping wood." That's what he said in his will. I wonder - do you see those clouds coming at me? They are pushing down with all of their not-tears and they are dry heaving pearl-drops into the canyon. 
It's a good day for a descent.
"Proceed cautiously" says the entrance to the trail head. I swallow. Brad was never able to make it to the clouds. I always thought he would. I always thought I would wake up one morning and there he would be, gone--

with his ladders, gone--

That was today, I suppose. Though he did leave one ladder for me. But the sun is too bright against an already bright blooming sky, so I think I prefer to climb down into the canyon instead of going up to the clouds. Down, down, down . . . . and there I learn that there are beautiful things in the canyon too. You can't steal those things, no matter how good of a thief you are -- others have to help you get there.