I didn’t mean to follow the old couple into the field, although this sounds like the sort of sentence written by someone who very much meant to follow the old couple into the field and would prefer to appear accidental about it; what I mean is that if you had asked me earlier that same evening while I was sitting on what Cherl called my thinking rock behind her parents’ house, whether I would abandon my car in a muddy pull-off to investigate an unplugged floor-model Zenith television buzzing beside two elderly strangers, I would have said no, that is not the sort of person I am.

I am steady. Practical. The kind of person who budgets for 14-karat necklaces and summer internships and townhouses near Kingsport where rafting the Watauga River will serve as proof that I am an adult.

I am not the sort of person who drives into fields.

And yet. That morning Cherl told me she still loved me, which sounds reassuring until one notices that such sentences are often followed by clauses; in this case the clause concerned a man twenty-three years older than she is, which she described as the prime of his life. I nodded as if I too had always believed the prime of one’s life was transferrable, capable of relocating itself conveniently into the body of a gray-haired man in a heliotrope shirt.

I had brought orchids. There were always orchids. Even pictures of them I snapped near the top of Bays Mountain. I’m no artist, but I would have framed them and pretended.

My father once told me flowers were proof of effort and effort was indistinguishable from love, and I believed him long enough to spend a full week’s pay demonstrating this theorem.

When the white 1987 Buick Century arrived, the man stepped out holding violets. He did not knock. They left together. She leaned from the passenger window and asked if I could compost the orchids because they were too pretty to throw away.

It was an elegant sentence. I wrote it down.

That evening, I drove, not with direction but with deliberate speed, and I saw the field again.

The flower-adorned white cross I was certain was there the day before was gone. The couple was still there. Beside them stood the Zenith. It twinkled with a gray-blue light that resembled a bug zapper. There was no cord. No back panel. The man waved, hopping slightly in place. My steering wheel locked, physically, not metaphorically, and the car drifted toward the mud with a passivity that felt shared.

I walked toward them in white socks because the mud took my shoes. Given my day, this seemed fair.

Up close, the television emitted fog thick enough to gather between my fingers. I did so. The woman smiled with what I can only describe as encouragement. The man pointed deeper into the field.

There were more televisions. Dozens.

Wood-paneled antiques glowing among the saplings like misplaced living rooms from another decade. Inside one I saw Cherl at her art exhibit, surrounded, not literally but socially, which is to say the room oriented itself toward her. The heliotrope man rested a suspicious hand on her spine. She looked radiant.

Inside another I saw myself in Kingsport alone, paddling at dusk, the river tinted purple. I appeared neither tragic nor heroic. I appeared sufficient.

In another I saw myself older, explaining to someone, perhaps a child, that sometimes the world opens sideways instead of forward, and if you are careful you may step through.

In one of the screens I saw only black sky, no field.

I would not describe myself as spiritual. And yet the couple moved among the televisions with the calmness of museum docents.

The white cross, I began to suspect, had not marked a death but a decision. This alarmed me less than it should have. Strangeness, I thought, once accepted incrementally, becomes clerical work.

I stepped toward the Kingsport screen. The fog warmed my wrist and fingers. Behind me my car ticked as its engine cooled, reminding me that things prefer resolution.

The woman reached out a leathered hand, then slipped something into mine. Orchids. Fresh. Uncomposted. I considered explaining that these had already been deemed unworthy in another version of the evening, that beauty is often declared too pretty to keep.

Instead, I held them.

The field purred. The televisions twinkled. The couple had already moved on to another set, another driver. It occurred to me that regret is too narrow a word for what I felt. Wonder is not precise either. But it is closer.

I reached into the fog and wondered if the world ever tilts, or if that is only something I ask myself so I don’t have to turn around.