By Celeste Tomberlin

No matter how bitter or loving small-town America is, it stays with you. No matter how far you go.

There is a house in the suburbs of East-Central Texas. It is only 20 years old, a medium-sized home tucked into a medium-sized town. The floor is glistening gray tile, even under the feet of a teenage boy and two small dogs. The carpet is soft and freshly vacuumed, beds neatly made with silk sheets and a plush green comforter. The open space echoes with emptiness — but there are remnants. Pieces of a home from across the country, from a time so long ago that memories are buried beneath thoughts of meetings and paperwork.

A man will come to this house at night, a house that is quiet and clean. He will shuffle down a dark hallway full of artifacts, his bedroom at the end. His grandmother’s thimble is framed on the wall, worn so deeply that the tip is in tatters. Black and white photographs of an uncle holding a fish, an old woman holding a baby. Fragments of a lifetime poles apart from this one.

When he climbs into bed and closes his eyes, he will float through the darkness. Burrowed deep into the back of his mind, he is still in the tobacco fields, lost between the stalks. Small bed in a small house. His big brother snoring nearby, the sound filling the room already thick with summer heat. He dreams of the pretty girl a few blocks over, dreams of fuzzy moments from the afternoon before, dreams of bicycling to the department store, dreams of the owner, Mr. Charles, peering through his dirty windows.

This place is Ocilla, Georgia. 2,500 people nestled in between fields of corn, cotton, and peanuts. Three hours south of Atlanta, one hour north of the Florida line. Everyone is connected here, pickup trucks kicking up orange clouds into the air as they fly down dirt roads, old women talking quietly in each other’s ears as they gossip in the produce aisle. There are no strangers. There are no secrets.

Skin tan and glistening, he soaks up the Georgia sun. It is mid-June, and the summer is just beginning. He is with his friends in a field of watermelon, rummaging through the foliage to cut the fruit free from the earth. Ocilla is an agricultural town. When they are not bicycling down its unpaved streets, they are tending to its soil.

Sweat dripping into his eyes, his body tenses with effort as he catches a melon tossed his way. The green shell splinters, and he is suddenly covered in mush. His friends double over in laughter — the fruit is rotten. Sticky from sweat and watermelon rot, he grins and throws the sweet-smelling guts in their direction. This is his world: crooked-tooth laughter and dirty fingernails. His heart is a warm Georgia summer.

---

Wincing, he picks at a splinter rooted in his palm. He is tucked high between the branches of rich green pine, a fort constructed by him and his buddies. It stretches across a collection of trees, their fortress away from their labor, away from the whispers of their neighbors and the laughter of their drunk uncles. Gritting his teeth, he pulls the wood free from his calloused hand. It is eerily quiet, his friends asleep next to him. Even at night, he is sweating, the moisture a constant coat worn close.

He is thinking of his brother, tall, smooth-skinned, teeth straight and pearly white. They talked over dinner earlier that evening, a simple conversation about whether he should challenge himself educationally. His teacher advised against it. His brother did not.

“Don’t be like me,” he said. “Set your mind and don’t look back.”

Don’t be like me. A sentence so plain, so straightforward. But to be different from his brother is to reject Ocilla. His brother was magnetic. He slipped into friendships easily, conversation absorbing him without any question, held gently by an intimate community. Held gently by a town bound together by generations, the son of a son of a son.

Here, hidden high in the trees, the memory of his brother’s words pulled him from a daze. His friends are asleep beside him, huddled together, sweaty skin sticking to skin. He looks at where the splinter was, an angry red mark, and he feels it. Stowed away in the forest, he is still too close to his small-town bubble. And it is suffocating.

---

Tall grass tickles his calves as heat radiates from the bonfire in front of him. Beer bottle cold in his hand, he peers past the growing flames and squints at the commotion in the distance.

It is midnight, and his classmates are having a field party. Alone in the middle of nowhere, this is one of the few times that they are allowed to be reckless. No handshakes, no intense eye contact, no ‘yes ma’am’ or ‘no sir.’

Illuminated and orange from the burning wood, two boys roll in the sod. Shadowed people gather around them as they brawl, bloody and sweaty and gross. The sight weirdly irritates him. Typically, he would join the crowd of spectators, drunk and giggling, waiting to see who taps out first. But tonight is different. He is unsettlingly aware. Aware of how he has known everyone in this field since he was four. Aware of the stupidity of this fight, all miscommunication and alcohol-induced anger. Aware of how this will be the story of tomorrow, how Lee and Gator beat each other up in the field behind Mr. Henry’s house.

Setting his bottle down, he left the scene behind him. Hands in his pockets, ideas of leaving resurface. His brother’s words crept back into his consciousness.

“Set your mind and don’t look back.”

---

But he did.

He may have left, he may have set his mind to it, but Ocilla follows him in waves. An evening where the sunset is particularly orange, a song on the radio, the smell of fried catfish, the voice of an old woman. For a moment, he’s there. Creaking floors, running water, a thin layer of sweat that is always lingering. It’s not something he can just forget, not something he can simply leave behind him with no consequence. Just like the sweat that dampens his clothes every hot Georgia summer, it will always be with him. It will always be his home.

Even now, forty years later, he holds everything close. The bitterness, the encouragement, the resentment, the smothering amount of love — it’s all become fuzzy. But it is still there. He acknowledges it when he can. Telling a story to his children over supper. Posting on Facebook, “Thinking of you, Ocilla, Georgia,” with a song attached. Visiting his mom, who lives in a new house in a suburban neighborhood. But even to reach her, to pull into her clean, pale concrete driveway, he has to drive by the fields of corn, cotton, and tobacco. He has to relive memories of sweat dripping down his back as he drinks cold water from the spigot, memories of pickup trucks flying down dirt roads, kicking up clouds of orange dust. ■