"Let the citronella die," she interrupted as I bent to reach the wick with a new match.

"The mosquitoes will finish us.”  She didn’t say anything before the flame reminded my fingers to shake.  I followed the match to the ground where we sat back to back.

"I used to do acid in this field.”  She pressed against me just enough to punctuate.  "We felt safe.  Everyone knew everyone.  Nothing cluttered our patch of earth.  No metal or asphalt demons; just a field." 

"They brought my parents here.”  She squinted across the field.  "I slept in one once.  Couldn’t even fold the door closed.  When I woke up, with the dew damp air and the grass up to the fenders and steps, I swear I could smell San Francisco in ‘71.  Look how the paint is starting to match those vines." 

I looked around the field and along the road until I spotted three round, tin buildings halfway between the buses and the point where the road vanished.  They carved a cul-de-sac in the trees along the gravel.

"The silos.  They seem out of place."

"I helped paint those mushrooms on the sides.  It was a night when I dropped acid in this field.  The only light we had were strings of Christmas bulbs along the roofs.  It didn’t matter; we painted until we knew that both the grass and silos had mushrooms.” 

By this time I almost wanted to find something that felt forced into the vista, something planted there against the will of the land.  The last breath of the day was blending everything into one gray scene on the verge of losing all definition.  At the last moment possible, I noticed the trees that swallowed the far end of the road.  

"The gate,” I recalled.  “It's nothing but a metal pipe and a welcome house.  How could it keep anybody out?"

 "Who said it was trying?"

 "The next town over is  Pulaski, which devil-spawned the Klan.  Those aren’t the best neighbors." 

"No one's bothered this place.  Not in thirty years." 

By then the candle was out and a severe blackness had closed in.  I could no longer see my hands, legs or anything.  I seldom admit it, but darkness makes me uneasy, especially this kind.  No streetlights or houselights; no motors or electric hum connecting me to fluorescent and neon places with somebody, something always moving.  In this field, with its stillness and infinite black emptiness, I was isolated.  Wrinkling my eyelids tighter, I thought I glimpsed something moving where I remembered the road disappearing. 

I imagined seventh grade graduates, now sour old men, in robes crouching their way across the grass to gut two left and liberal field sitters.  The outlines could have also fit those of ball-capped spitting stars-and-bars wavers who had parked their Camaro out of view so they could sneak up and sandpaper us. 

I waited. 

Then I felt her back press against mine again. 

"Hey, look at this." 

I turned around so I was cross-legged alongside her.  In front of us, pinpoints of light spotted a black curtain along what I remembered, but couldn't see, was the far side of the field.  They continued up into a canvas, which stretched back over us.  From the ground to where I remembered treetops, the points blinked in no particular pattern.  Then the lights were static and thick on a milk-water canvas. 

"The only difference between those fireflies and the stars," she whispered into my neck, "is the fireflies are still learning to hold their glow."