The ratchet lay at my feet. It lay where it had been since Nancy, my sister-in-law, had tossed it, without looking up, away from the open hood. It was where it had lain, but already I could hear it rusting, feel the soil beneath it beginning to churn.

The chassis had rusted in place, but all through the years it remained above the weeds and grasses, even at night lit by the spotlight of my mind. Seeing Nancy there, for the first time, I'd seethed, watching her pass her hand along the steel and wait contentedly for my brother to return. I hadn't known then that she'd had plans, already had plans, posited germs sworn to endure, to reemerge like a cicada from soil.

Somehow, blindy, she and the car had reuned, here, in the weeds, again beneath my gaze. Before my brother died, he'd taught her a bit about fixing cars, and here she was, in her grief, trying to pry out spark plugs and to uncover the counter sense and sense of their meeting. I could no longer resent her, having fed in adolescence on her kindness, knowing the weeds were already beginning to grow.

When she's done rebuilding the car, this is how it will be: at first acceleration will be rough, but soon we will find among and along the gears the sweet spot where the wheels no longer feel the road, neither gravel nor tar, and we will swoop like a rollercoaster sprung from the tracks, the landscape spooling beneath us, the wind and tassled grasses whipping past, sounding like wings, and we will never again need to land.