September

Parish

Chapter 23: September

The heat breaks. Not dramatically — not with a front or a storm or a single morning that announces: The summer is over. The heat breaks the way it breaks in Louisiana, by degrees, the way a fever breaks, the temperature declining in increments so small that the decline is not noticed on any single day but is noticed across days, the accumulation of the small declines producing the recognition, the recognition being: Something has changed. The air is different. The morning is different. The evening is different. The difference is not a fact but a direction, and the direction is: away from the heat, toward the cool, toward the thing that Louisiana calls fall, which is not fall in the way that the northern states experience fall but is the reduction, the dialing-down, the easing of the condition that has been the parish's state of being since May.

Ninety-eight becomes ninety-five. Ninety-five becomes ninety-two. The numbers change on the bank sign in Vidalia, the sign that displays the time and the temperature in alternating red digits, the sign that Clem drives past every day on Carter Street, the sign being the parish's thermometer, the public thermometer that the parish reads the way it reads the river gauge, with the attention of a people who live by numbers, the numbers measuring the forces that define their lives.

The humidity drops. This is the thing the parish notices first, before the temperature, because the humidity is the thing that makes the temperature unbearable, the humidity being the difference between dry heat (which is uncomfortable) and wet heat (which is hostile), and the dropping of the humidity is the removing of the hostility, the air becoming merely hot instead of aggressively hot, the merely-hot being the improvement, the improvement that the parish registers in the body before it registers in the mind, the body feeling the change before the mind names it, the body saying: I can breathe, I can move, I can work without the shirt being wet by 8 AM, and the not-wet is the change, and the change is September.

Clem notices. He notices the way he notices all changes in the parish, through the body, through the work, through the physical experience of being outside in the air that is the medium in which the work happens. The air in September is different. The air has a quality that the July air did not have, a quality that is not coolness exactly but is the potential for coolness, the potential that the evening will cool to 72 instead of 82, the potential that the morning will start at 68 instead of 78, the potential being the direction, the direction being the turning.

The turning. The word that the parish uses for the season's change, the turning being the pivot, the moment when the year turns from the heat to the cool, from the growing to the harvesting, from the summer to the fall, and the turning is not a moment but a duration, a week or two or three during which the direction becomes visible, the visible being the mornings.

The mornings carry the first suggestion of a season that is not summer. Clem wakes at 4:30 and the air through the bedroom window is different, the air carrying a temperature that is not cold but is less than warm, the less-than-warm being the suggestion, the suggestion of the thing that is coming, the thing that is fall, the thing that will arrive fully in October but that announces itself in September the way a guest announces itself by the sound of the car in the driveway, the sound coming before the arrival, the sound being the anticipation.

He makes his coffee. He drinks it on the porch. The porch in September is a different porch than the porch in July. The July porch was a place of endurance, the porch-sitting being the enduring of the heat that the inside air conditioning could not fully eliminate. The September porch is a place of pleasure, the porch-sitting being the enjoying of the air that is pleasant, that is the temperature that the body wants, that is the temperature at which the body does not have to work to regulate itself, the body at rest in the air, the air and the body in agreement.

The cattle notice. Clem sees it in their behavior. The cattle in September move more. The cattle in July stood in the ponds and the shade and the standing was the endurance. The cattle in September graze in the mornings and the evenings and the grazing is the activity, the activity that the heat suppressed and that the cooling has released, the release being the cattle's September, the cattle's version of the turning.

They graze earlier. They graze later. The grazing window expands as the heat contracts, the expansion being the inverse of the contraction, the cattle's day growing longer as the temperature grows shorter, the shorter temperature being the September gift, the gift that allows the cattle to eat more and the eating-more being the preparation, the preparation for the fall and the winter and the demands that the cooler months will make on the cattle's bodies, the demands being the maintenance of body heat that the summer did not require, the summer providing the heat for free and the winter charging for it, the charging being the calories that the body must burn to stay warm, and the calories come from the grazing, and the grazing comes from the grass, and the grass is what the cattle are eating now, in September, in the mornings and the evenings, eating the preparation.

The horses notice. Marie-Claire's horse, Dex, is livelier in September. The liveliness is visible in the way he moves, the way he carries his head, the way he responds when Lily approaches with the halter, the response being quicker, more alert, the alertness being the September version of the horse's personality, the personality that the heat suppressed, the suppression lifted now, the horse returning to the horse he is when the heat is not pressing him down, the pressing-down being July's effect on everything and the lifting being September's gift.

The soybeans are turning. The fields that were green in July are yellowing, the yellowing being the maturity, the plant reaching the end of its growing season and preparing for the harvest, the preparation visible in the color change, the green becoming yellow becoming brown, the brown being the readiness, the ready-to-harvest that the farmer watches for and that the watching is the farmer's September activity, the watching of the fields for the color that says: I am ready, cut me, thresh me, take what I have produced, the production being the beans, the beans being the crop, the crop being the income, the income being the reason.

The river is low. September low. The gauge at Natchez reads twenty-eight feet, the number being the September number, the river having passed its summer's water south to the Gulf, the passing being the river's September activity, the river settling into its channel the way the parish settles into the cooler air, the settling being the easing, the easing of the pressure that the summer applied, the pressure of the heat and the water and the rising and the watching, the watching no longer necessary, the gauge at twenty-eight being the number that does not require watching, the number being the comfortable number, the number that says: The river is where the river should be, the levee is not stressed, the margin is large, the large margin being the September gift, the gift of the river's retreat.

The levee is quiet. The quiet of September is different from the quiet of July. The July quiet was the quiet of the vigil, the quiet of a people watching a number and waiting for the number to change. The September quiet is the quiet of the release, the quiet of a people who have been watching and who have stopped watching because the watching is no longer necessary, the gauge having dropped below the level that requires attention, the attention redirected from the river to the harvest, from the water to the crop, from the fear to the work.

Clem drives through the parish on a Wednesday morning in the second week of September. The air through the truck's open window is 74 degrees. He has the window open. He has not had the window open since May. The opening of the window is the September act, the act of letting the air in, the act that says: The air is welcome now, the air is not the enemy, the air is the ally, the air carrying the temperature that the body wants and the smell that the parish produces in September, the smell of the turning, the smell of the soybeans drying in the field and the grass going dormant and the earth cooling, the smell that is not one smell but a composite, the composite of the season's change.

He drives to Earl's ranch. The cattle are in the south pasture, grazing in the morning light, the light that is different in September, the light angled lower because the sun is lower, the sun having begun its retreat toward the winter solstice, the retreat producing the angle, the angle producing the light that is golden in the morning and amber in the evening and that is the September light, the light that photographers and painters know, the light that is the year's best light, the light that makes the parish beautiful in a way that is different from the parish's other beauties, different from the green of spring and the lush of summer, this beauty being the beauty of the turning, the beauty of a thing in the process of changing from what it was to what it will be.

Earl's roses are still blooming. The fall flush. The roses that bloomed in May and that rested in July's heat and that are blooming again in September, the September bloom being the second bloom, the second offering, the roses producing their flowers as the soybeans produce their beans, the production being the plant's purpose, the purpose continuing into the turning.

Earl is by the pens. He is not working cattle today — the fall cattle work will begin in October, the weaning and the sorting and the selling — but he is at the pens because the pens are where Earl goes in the morning, the pens being his office, his place, the place where the work happens and where the waiting-for-work happens, the waiting being the rancher's September activity, the waiting for the fall work that is coming, the coming being the direction, the direction being the turning.

Clem stops. He is not here for a call. He is here because the driving brought him here, the driving being the practice's September pattern, the pattern that includes the checking, the checking-on that is not a medical visit but a social visit, the visit that says: I am here, I am driving through, I am checking on you, the checking-on being the practice's care, the care that is not medicine but presence.

They stand by the pens. They do not speak about the blood work. They do not speak about the diagnosis that Clem received last week, the diagnosis that Clem has not shared with Earl because the sharing is not what Clem does, Clem being the listener and not the teller, the holder and not the held.

They speak about the cattle. They speak about the October sale. They speak about the calves that will be weaned in three weeks and sold in four and the selling being the ranch's September anticipation, the anticipation of the income that the year's work has produced, the income being the calves, the calves being the product, the product being the care.

"Good-looking calves this year," Earl said. "They'll bring a good price."

The good price. The September hope. The hope that the market will be strong and the calves will bring what the calves should bring and the bringing will be the payment, the payment for the year of feeding and watering and fencing and doctoring and caring, the year that is ending now, in September, in the turning, the year's work coming to its conclusion in the sale barn in October.

Clem nods. He looks at the cattle. He looks at the calves that he vaccinated in May, the calves that were two months old and that are now seven months old, the calves that have grown from the small wobbly things that stood in the barn light at 3 AM to the 500-pound animals that graze beside their mothers in the September morning, the growth being the evidence, the evidence of the care, the care that the parish has given and that the calves have received and that the receiving has produced the growth.

He drives on. The parish unfolds. The September parish. The parish in the turning. The parish that is the same parish it was in May and in July and in August, the same roads and the same farms and the same people, but the parish is different now, the difference being the light and the air and the temperature and the season, the season having turned the parish from the summer version to the fall version, the fall version being the same place in a different light.

The light changes everything. The light in September makes the parish look like a painting, the painting that the parish has always been but that the summer's glare obscured, the glare being the July light that was too bright and too hot and too direct, the directness washing out the colors, the colors returning now in the September light, the reds of the turning leaves (the sweetgums, the first to turn, the sweetgums along the bayous going red in September while the oaks hold their green and will hold their green until November) and the yellows of the soybeans and the browns of the harvested fields and the blue of the sky, the September sky that is bluer than the July sky because the humidity is lower and the lower humidity produces the deeper blue, the deeper blue being the sky's September gift.

Clem drives and the parish is beautiful. He has always known the parish is beautiful. He has driven these roads for twenty-eight years and the driving has been the seeing and the seeing has been the knowing and the knowing is: This place is beautiful. This flat, poor, hot, vulnerable, stubborn place is beautiful. The beauty is in the flatness and the light and the river and the levee and the soybeans and the cattle and the roads and the people, the beauty being the composite, the composite of all the things that the parish is and that the being produces the beauty.

He notices the beauty more in September. He notices it more because the turning has sharpened his attention, the sharpening being the season's effect on the seeing, the season that says: Look, the year is turning, the summer is ending, the fall is beginning, and the beginning of the fall is the ending of the heat and the ending of the heat is the opening of the eyes and the opening of the eyes is the seeing and the seeing is the beauty.

And there is another reason he notices the beauty more. There is another reason the seeing is sharper. The other reason is the diagnosis. The other reason is the blood work. The other reason is the thing that the doctor told him last week, the thing that Clem carries now the way he carries the confessions, in the body, in the space between the ribs where the heart beats and the lungs breathe and the blood carries the truth.

The truth has sharpened the seeing. The truth has made the parish more visible, more present, more beautiful, the beauty being the beauty of a thing that you might lose, the beauty that the possibility of loss reveals, the possibility saying: Look at this, look at what you have, look at the parish in the September light, look at the cattle in the morning, look at the soybeans turning, look at the river low in its channel, look at the levee quiet in the September air, look at the roses blooming their second bloom, look at all of it, because the looking is the having, and the having is the thing, and the thing is the parish, and the parish is the life, and the life is the September morning, and the September morning is the turning, and the turning is the direction, and the direction is: Pay attention. Pay attention. Pay attention to the thing you have been driving through for twenty-eight years without seeing it fully, the fully-seeing being the thing that the diagnosis provides, the diagnosis being the lens, the lens that focuses the seeing, the focusing being the sharpening, and the sharpening is September, and September is the turning.

Clem drives. The window is open. The air comes in. The air is 74 degrees and the air carries the smell of the turning and the turning is the season and the season is the parish and the parish is the morning and the morning is beautiful.

He drives through the beauty. He drives through the parish. He drives through the September morning in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, and the driving is the practice, and the practice is the life, and the life is the thing that the turning has revealed, the thing that was always there, under the heat and the work and the carrying, the thing that is the beauty, and the beauty is the parish, and the parish is home.

The heat breaks. The turning begins. September arrives in Concordia Parish, and the arriving is the gift, and the gift is the morning, and the morning is this morning, and this morning is enough.