A year and a day later: here in the precious blood I stand.

A year ago today, the neighbors came to my van to ask me to check up on their daughter. I drove down the dirt road towards Highway 93 figuring that I'd be changing a flat, or that her rusted-out hoopty had finally had enough and I'd be giving her a ride home. But for whatever reason, a dark thought crept into my head. What if it's real this time? It scared and disgusted me, and I went back to reimagining the steps to changing a flat in the dark. Find the jack, ratchet off some nuts, slide the tire off...

And then I saw the lights, a sickening cacophony of reds and blues filling up the desert and then receding, photonic harbingers of terror, and my internal world collapsed in on itself.

But let's start at the beginning. I had just started work on the road to the property I'd bought in the fall of 2019. I had pulled sagebrush, dug swales, and levelled the dirt for about one hundred feet when I went back to the nearest town, Wells. The truck stops in that town are my link to the wider world in Nevada. I can make phonecalls, check the internet, buy sundry goods necessary to the upkeep of a van. I don't know what possessed me - curiosity, probably - but instead of driving to the Love's like I usually did, I went under the I-80 overpass and blew a couple bucks on an extravagance I normally wouldn't: an Impossible Whopper at Burger King. I hadn't had one yet, and I wanted to know what a plantburger tasted like, despite the cost. I also wanted to get to better know the town where I'd staked down new roots, and the people that lived in it.

In my adopted hometown of Chadron, Nebraska, the Lakota who it rightly belongs to will tell you that it's rude to look into someone's eyes unless you're intimate. The cute auburn-haired girl that took my order proved the wisdom of that notion: when we locked eyes, we both felt something. It was palpable, a material reality. I couldn't think of basic words like "burger," she couldn't find the buttons on her register. It took me three minutes to order a combo meal, and a line formed behind me. I love Nevadans, because nobody was complaining. They could see the chemistry as well as anyone. I don't even remember the dumb stuff that we said as we both tripped over our words; sometimes language is besides the point. I sat in a booth in the corner waiting for my meal, she sat in the booth nearest the counter where she could chat with her fellow workers, exerting exactly as much effort necessary to do the job, and nothing more. A real working-class girl. I ate my meal after I got it; the plantburger tasted like plant and burger. She was busy for the rest of the night, and I didn't want to be the sort of creep that hits on a girl at her job, so I went home to my lonely beginning of a road, thinking I suddenly liked Burger King a whole lot better.

But the demands of my new collective loomed. The road needed building. I hunkered down to work, my mind on the desert garden that would one day grow at the end of this road. A week later, I came back from checking the internet in Wells. Driving on that dirt road at night, with a full moon looming over the East Humboldts, it was beautiful in a way that only a desolate desert at night can be. At a cattle gate, I decided to pull over and bust out my stash of cannabis, and smoke and enjoy the view. I don't smoke and drive, but my van is my home, and a dirt road at night four miles from my road is as good a place to catch a toke as any. I fired up a playlist of trippy ambient electronic music, and let my mind curl and twist with the tendrils of smoke...

...until a rusted-out hoopty travelling way too fast around the bend came to a screeching halt behind my van, and a door slammed to reveal an auburn-haired girl with vivid eyes.

"Are you stuck? Need any help?"

I held up my cherried piece by way of reply. "Nope, just enjoying the view. Can you get through all right?"

It was late October. The air was chilly, and she didn't have a jacket on. Neither did I; we were both not expecting to be outside very long. And yet fifteen minutes passed as we chatted about every damn thing. The cold was nothing; time itself was bigger on the outside that night. She left because her parents would begin to worry about her if she didn't. She explained that out here in the desert, it was incredibly easy to die; so every time any of them left their homestead, they'd send a message to the people back home when they reached the turnoff from the highway. If the traveller didn't get back in a reasonable amount of time after that, they'd send someone out to look for them and render assistance. So she really had to go. But I'd better come see her at BK again; she was working tomorrow night.

So I did. Cue again the slack-jawed ordering process, except now we were both trying to flirt.

"I'd like a... chicken sandwich, I guess? That hippie burger tasted like dirt."

"You don't like the food here? Fuck you!"

"Get in line."

"Later," she winked.

I tried to sit at my corner booth again, and she was having absolutely none of that bullshit. So I hung out with her and a coworker, and from then until the end of the night, we talked about all kinds of stuff. Someone ordered a bunch of tacos but then complained that they tasted godawful and wanted her money back, which in all fairness to Karen is just a recognition of reality, and then April offered me those tacos. She told me that she brought home shakes for her family every night. So since she was making some for them, she wanted to know what my favorite flavor was. Chocolate was fine. I don't think I've ever had so much Burger King in my life, and I probably never will again.

April had a second job at the Dunkin Donuts in the same truck stop, and as I came to discover, that Dunkin Donuts was the closest thing to a coffee shop that Wells had. I found myself coming down there more shifts she worked than not. My money was no good there; she may have been a conservative but her proletarian instincts were as good as anyone's. I didn't abuse it, but I also didn't let anyone who looked hungry walk out of there without a couple of the donuts she'd randomly give me. The internet at that truck stop cost money, so I didn't use it, but I could plug in my laptop and play Civ 5 to my heart's content, which my solar panels would only let me do for a couple hours out in the field. I remember I was trying to beat the Inca scenario all that fall; April asked me what I was doing with an atlas out.

"When I found cities, I want to make sure they're named correctly. It's the nerdiest thing, I know, but it's how I like to play the game."

"How did a smart kid like you end up in a pit stop like this?"

I met some of her coworkers. A seventeen-year-old blonde with a habit she was trying hard to break would ask me for help with her history homework. The convenience store had a lively black lady who smelled the unofficial state flower on me and partook with me sometimes on her breaks.

"I'm curious dude..." my new stoner friend began as she packed the bowl, "are you a Trump voter? Lots of those around here."

"No, but don't get me wrong, I sure as hell didn't vote for Hillary either."

"I hear you. I voted for Bernie in the primaries myself."

"So did I, but I don't think he goes anywhere near far enough."

"So like... an anarchist?"

"Communist, but yeah."

"That's cool. Man, April was right, you smart as hell. If I weren't a married bitch, I'd snap you up."

"You're pretty damn cool yourself, you know. But I've got certain plans in mind."

"Ooooh... you like April, don't you."

"That's, uh, classified. Not very well, I grant."

"You'd be a lot better for her than her boyfriend. I'm rooting for you two."

"Wait what."

Working with my new stoner friend was a brown-haired absolute chonk and a half who would come over to Dunkin or BK sometimes when it was his lunch break, and pet April's arm awkwardly like it was an indifferent cat. Everyone else found it exactly as weird as you do reading this.

"Okay April, weird question. Do you have a boyfriend?" I asked one day after he went back to work.

"Uh... technically, yes, but probably not for much longer."

"Why so?"

"He's a boring prude and we never do anything. He doesn't want to do anything more than pet my arm. And he's kind of a wimp. I was talking to my mom the other day and she was like 'why don't you go out with the neighbor kid? Whatever else his deal is, thinking he's gonna build a road and a house this late in the year, at least he's not a pussy.'"

"Well hell, maybe you should go out with the neighbor kid."

"Oh should I?"

"I like you. I think you're cute."

"I think you're cute too. But I want to figure out a way to let him down easy."

"I respect the hell out of that. Do what you have to, we've got all the time in the world."

Her parents told her to invite me over for dinner. They've been homesteading out in Nevada for 30 years, kindest people you'll ever meet. They also despise the town of Wells, and its unreliable lumpenproletarians coming and going with the interstate, although those libertarian Trump voters would never describe it that way. We had a... frank exchange of views once when I made the mistake of saying I was happy that a minimum wage increase had passed, but to their credit they didn't let that affect the way they felt about me. They interrogated me about my plans for the agricultural collective in detail, and after hearing about what I wanted to do, April's mom corrected me.

"You're not a socialist, kid. Socialism is free shit. You're a libertarian, because you're not asking for handouts but you're doing this to help people of your own free will."

"I was a libertarian as a kid, but no, I'm a socialist. Socialism is the worker ownership of the means of production, not free shit."

"Then what's up with Bernie?"

"He's the right wing of socialism, but that's not real socialism. He wants a really big welfare state, which is just liberalism writ large."

"Then why does he call himself a socialist?"

"Because the middle class confuses the government doing stuff with socialism. It's been a big fight on the left since forever. But you're right in a sense. Your average Bernie voter, not the college kid with a bad haircut whose favorite word is 'problematic' but the guy with a McJob, and your average libertarian are the people I want to be hanging out with, politically. The community I want to build is gonna be people like that."

"Oh, that reminds me. I don't think you own the piece of land you think you own. I'd hate to see you build that road and find out it's not even yours."

"I used to do land surveys, I'm pretty sure I'm located accurately."

"The county can't make accurate maps to save their lives. They tried telling me this wasn't my property, so I went and did the research and turns out, this dirt road is my property, and I threatened to gate it shut if they didn't leave me alone. Haven't heard from them since! But you can take a look at our maps when you come over for Thanksgiving, unless you had other plans."

Come over for Thanksgiving I did. Their lovable horse-sized puppy demanded belly rubs from me all night. April liked the turkey skin above all, so I gave her mine. We had donuts and BK milkshakes for dessert. We watched Family Guy and American Dad after the football games were over; I don't follow football but I remember their teams cleaned up that day. And then they noted that it gets bitterly cold here in wintertime, and my cat and I would probably be a lot warmer in the old house. I was welcome to stay so long as I didn't steal anything. After thinking it over, I agreed that was a good idea. I wondered to myself why they were living in a smaller house they'd built themselves if a professionally-built house was just across the way, and would find out that they lost two kids and the memories were just too painful.

So I stayed in that house. I pulled up the sofa right next to the stove. I pulled sagebrush and cheatgrass and piled it inside to cook my food, and my cat and I would warm ourselves by its embers at night. I would go across the yard to hang out with the neighbors in the evenings. The pictures of a happy family full of children hung on the walls, a reminder of those gone before. My potatoes and spices and the chicken patties and bagels April brought from her work dotted the kitchen, a reminder of the living present. Occasionally a mouse lay splayed across the floor, my kitty's contribution to the household.

April invited me over one day when her parents were shopping in Elko. We watched a movie on Netflix, Last Word. She snuggled into me under a blanket; I held her and rested my head on her shoulder. We did nothing further. Her no-longer-a-boyfriend, who she broke up with the day before Thanksgiving, texted her calling her a tramp. I told her he was wrong. He was.

I went to town on December 8th to check the internet. I downloaded every map I could find, I checked it, crosschecked it. The facts became clear: I had properly located myself. The day after, as I heard April's rusted-out hoopty lumbering down the driveway, I flagged her down.


"Good news!" I shouted. "We're neighbors! I checked the maps, and I'm positive of it! We're neighbors. You're not getting rid of me for the rest of your life."

"Glad to hear it, love."

"You should stop by after work and finally let me cook for you. I can't do a whole lot, but I think I could whip up some mean cheese fries. That sound good?"

"All right, it sounds like a good first date."

That night after she got off work, her parents sent me out when they didn't get that text. My world fell apart when I saw the sirens. I would find out later that I was present on the scene for her last living moments, although she wouldn't be pronounced dead until she got to the hospital. She wasn't conscious for it; when the semi hit her as she tried to turn onto our dirt road from the highway, she was immediately struck unconscious. I saw the medics load her into the ambulance. The cops told me what they could.

Then her ex-boyfriend showed up, and wanted to know what happened. I've worked jobs where HIPAA was a relevant part of the work, and if he wasn't her boyfriend, he didn't deserve that information. I let the cops know. They didn't let him know. He raced towards their homestead in his new pickup to tell her parents what had happened. They sent me to do that, and I wouldn't let someone who thought she was a tramp break the terrible news. So I pushed my minivan to its limit, clouds of dust spewing behind it as it hurtled at unsafe speeds to overtake him. I saw them driving their truck up towards us, and hurriedly told them what I knew: she was being taken to Elko, and would then be airlifted to Salt Lake City if anything could be done for her.

Her mom went with the ex-boyfriend, and her dad went with me in my van. I don't speed, but I sped that night. I was in the waiting room, the ex-boyfriend on the other side of it, when a nurse informed me that she'd passed. I stepped into the clinic's small chapel, praying to a God I hadn't believed in for years, begging Him to preserve her, wherever she may be. After her parents had a chance to say their goodbyes, the ex and I were permitted to go back to the operating room to join them. He declined, having a sense of propriety at long last. I didn't. I hugged her parents, and I told her that I loved her for the very first time when I didn't think they would hear. (They just lost their daughter; they didn't need my relationship drama.) Her mother decided to come back with me as well, and the ex just went home himself. We drove in silence punctuated by restrained sobs.

April was a beautiful woman in spirit, mind, and body; a worker who cared for the people around her. Her favorite band was Wilson Phillips because it was the sort of thing always playing over the loudspeaker at her various jobs; it was an ironic joke until it wasn't. Her sense of humor was fantastic. People came to the places she worked, specifically because they knew she was working then. She spent her working life tending to the truckers and those who also tended to the truckers, and one of them killed her in a fit of homicidal negligence. She was a spark of joy, and over this past year and a day, I've come back to the faith of my youth in the hope that she still is a spark of joy, out there somewhere, in some way I can't yet comprehend. I only knew her for a couple of months, and we never technically dated. We didn't have the time we thought we did, but I have never instinctually felt so close to someone as I did with her. My life's work is dedicated to the liberation of people like her the world 'round.

Rest in power, April. I love you; sleep well.