The Long Way to Love

Before the oil booms and busts, before the girls and the guitars, before I knew the ache of missing someone who used to smile just for me, there was Graham, Texas. It sat under an endless sky, the kind of place where summer heat soaked through your shirt by noon and where every old-timer at the feed store could tell you who you were before you even figured it out for yourself. I was eight the first time I saw a pumpjack move.
It wasn't impressive to the men who worked the fields, but to me, it looked alive, like it had a purpose no one talked about. It kept nodding in that slow rhythm, like it was counting the heartbeats of the land. I didn't know it then, but that steady rise and fall would end up marking the rhythm of my life.