Standing before the glass wall of her office, Katie Williams peered out at the expanse of water below, snaking its way along concrete banks flanked by parking lots, businesses, and a city convention center that featured a frozen ice skating rink in winter, the locals said.  On the door her new title:  Assistant Vice President,  Research.  In her hand the tiny guidebook from her peers at the new company, identifying the multitude of flags streaming from the lakers that made their way down the Detroit River just outside her window, carrying commodities into the Great Lakes.  On her lapel, a red heart-shaped “I Love Michigan” pin.  Except for the Texas drawl, Katie seemed ready to blend into the new landscape. 

This escape had been long coming.  In her home state, people were known to put down roots clear to the middle of the earth.  The blowing West Texas sand anchored them.  It caked on their bare feet, stung bare arms, weaved its way between clinched teeth to produce a grittiness impervious to everything but ice house beer.  Katie was certain that the fine granules that blanketed this desolate part of the earth eventually sifted into brains, dulling synapses, producing robotic labors and stunted conversations. 

“Dad, can I PLEASE skip fifth grade?  Mrs. Murcheson says I’m reading on Seventh Grade level already, and she’ll tutor me on the math. I’m way ahead of the other kids on every other subject.  Why I’ve read the entire Book of Knowledge, cover to cover.” 

“Nope” — just that one word — is all that Katie could coax from her sun-baked father, crouching before his tractor wheel, dislodging a large stone from its tread.  “Nope” was the answer to entreaties to visit her city cousin in Ft. Worth, to go on a school trip to the Amarillo Railroad Museum, and to attend a ninth grade dance with one of the Johnson twins from the neighboring ranch—Joel—a tall sprout of a boy with his first chin stubble of manhood.  Clyde Williams was a man of few words. 

“Yep” was  the response to Katie’s request to raise a laying hen for high school 4-H competition.  It was the only affirmative answer Katie could recall from her childhood.  Clyde failed to tell her how to raise chickens or how to keep out the coyotes.  The project was a disaster of feathers and bones. 

“Nope” was the response to Katie’s plea to move to Ft. Worth and attend college.  She went anyway, scrambling to find funds, living in a tiny room on top the garage of an ancient widow woman.  It was fifteen years, a Master’s in Econ, and some banking experience later before Katie returned to the farm—for her mother’s funeral. 

Katie slipped her arm around her father’s waist, and laid her head next to his.  Softly falling tears created rivulets through the fine dusting of sand on each sad face.  The wind whipped across the plains and stirred up little dust balls around the gravesite as the undertaker’s assistant shoveled in the dirt. 

“Coming home?” the gruff old man spoke to the top of his daughter’s head. 

“Can’t Dad. I’m taking a new job.  In Detroit..”  Katie glanced up at her father’s stony face.  “There’s nothing for me here, Dad.  And I have things I need to do with life.  You understand that, don’t you?” 

“Nope.  Can’t say that I do.”