The road had never seemed so still.  It was like one dry, meandering river of dust that stretched out from the centuries-old farm over the horizon toward town.

She sat, rocking away the dry, sunny afternoon in her worn rocker just as she spent every afternoon since her son’s enlistment was up.  It had been over for two weeks now, the papers even said they had invaded that beach in France, that it had been a great success, that the war was over.  But she still had no word, no telegram, no smiling face running up the sun-baked porch to great her.

So she rocked on.  The long Nebraska day simmered in front of her.  Long unchanging prairie of dried grass sat idly and stretched to the infinite junction with the huge sky.

A huge, barren sky.  No clouds filtered out the sunlight that constantly baked the land.  No birds clattered their way across the currentless ocean of blue.  It stayed a still and stagnant pool, so motionless that sometimes she would wonder if time was even passing at all.  The days, as they slowly stacked onto each other, were only just memories invented in the sterile suspense of waiting.

The tree, only one in sight, that sat silently about a hundred yards away, offered her no conversation – as is common of trees and people who are waiting.  Instead it  just  immersed itself in the bitter silence of the unending day.  She hated the tree, and cursed it.  She wasn’t sure what kind it was, but its branches were bare and dead, like it had
long ago given up hope, and was only still standing to whisper a spiteful, “I told you so.”

She rocked on, the ancient rocker keeping time with its creaks and groans, pitifully begging her to stop, go inside and cry again, for he wasn’t coming home today.  At first it was easy to ignore it, but as the day grew old and the blue sky decided it too was tired of waiting and retreated into the night, she would sigh and stand.  Her bones would complain of the lost time, and she would wipe away a tear to take one last look at the road.  It had never seemed so still.