The sun came up anyway. Tomorrows are blind and ruthless. With them came humans, rabbits, sweet grass. Then new, strange humans in wagons. Wives already with child, walking with sticks beside the wheels; tins of meat riding under the canvas. The new folk drank from creeks. They saw painted faces in the bushes, feathers and spearheads, and kept their powder dry. Men circled the wagons with the women and children safe in the middle. They drove off the natives, ate the rabbits, chased bison through reeds for meat and tanning. Dan knew the story of westward struggle like everyone, and as he trudged up to the oak in failure, he tried now to gather strength from it, from success, from the men before who’d sweated through troubles, dug wells with picks and shovels a few seasons on when there was time for “leisure,” since a creek was fine for running water. They made gates for their oxen with split trees, ate their oxen when starved. Wives died left and right. Oxen died. The men married sisters off trains from Baltimore who thought they’d come out to see the new babies.

“Cheer up,” she said. “You can always get yourself some other wife. Pick of the litter.”

Dan doubled over and she passed him by. He took up the rear.

“Life moves in mysterious fucking ways,” he said, or asked.

“No it doesn’t,” Ginny said without turning. “It’s all happened ten million million times before this, ten billion times fifty.”

“Not this exactly.”

“Nothin’ new under the sun.”

“You’re fucking wrong.”

“No I’m not and you know it.”

The old folk planted eastern corn that sometimes grew, scrawny and mealy. Potatoes were best against western birds but the elk and bison liked them. Sluices turned mills till drought. Plows broke against hidden rocks. Blades were ordered from St. Louis. They came in three months. Blades and sisters arriving by train. The men built barns and doors of rough-sawn. It was always sunshine, terrible sun, Indians in every crack and crevice, scheming. Girls made wildflower crowns and waited for eastern boys. In other times, in other places, cheating wives fed volcanoes. Fornication versus copulation is a delicate point anywhere, something to do with pleasure or sin? But these mountains were sedimentary, or lacked calderas. For somewhere to chuck a faithless wife you’d need to go south, the Yellowstone region or farther. But wait, didn’t volcanoes want virgins? Virginia, I do take Virginia, for ovulation, ejaculation, insemination, fertilization. Who decided those words should rhyme?

“What in hell are you on about?” Ginny said. Then, “Quit this muttering and march on up.”

She was pointing at the poor little mare up at the big old oak that didn’t belong here, that shouldn’t have set down roots here, not by rights or nature, and the sight of the mare’s suffering moved Dan to action. He rose and walked but talked on still.