I can’t stop eating sirloin. 

My father tells me that my Great-Uncle Sam loved the cut. He’d buy a generous hunk of the beef every weekend and grill it out back over red-hot coals in the Blue Ridge of old Virginia, the one with Robert E. Lee and all. If only Sam could see me now. Stationed behind the charcoal smoker in the high grass behind the brick house where I was raised, sirloin steak has become my weekly driver. 

I like to eat it twice a week if I can find the time to drive 30 minutes to the nearest grocer. Once on the weekend, in the fashion of my great uncle, and then again during the week, fried on stainless steel. It’s always better on the grill. My methodology is simple: I look for the fattest cut I can find at the store and I buy it. I like to mix it in a marinade and let it sit for a few hours in the fridge and bring it out an hour before grilling so it can get up to room temperature.

My marinade is simple enough: Worcestershire sauce, A1, salt, pepper, and Dijon mustard to bind it all together. I’ve been listening to Jason Molina a lot lately. The Ohio-born rocker, who drank himself to death at the age of 39, provides the perfect soundtrack for such affairs. The Magnolia Electric Co., his seventh and final studio album, rips harder than a Pall Mall cigarette in the background as I stand over the grill.

Spent Saturday with my pops. We’re fixing up the place—building fences, tearing up brick, and constructing a wooden bridge over a gully that cuts across the property. Growing up just a stone’s throw from Patrick Henry’s Scotchtown, I’ve always been connected to the land, but it’s only now, as I approach my 40th birthday, that I’ve developed a true appreciation for the field. My friends keep telling me about their therapists. Out here, the only therapy anyone needs is the sun and the grass and work. Lots of it. 

I can’t stop thinking about horse racing. Thoroughbreds and quarterhorses and saddlebreds and such. On the way to the Tractor Supply store, my father recounts the story of Secretariat. I know it by heart, but I still ask him to tell me all the ins and outs. Born in the grasslands of Caroline County, Virginia, Secretariat embodied everything one could want in a champion: relentless drive, a tireless engine, and a truly poetic presence on the dirt track. When Big Red died at the age of 19 he had sired nearly 250 horses, yet none of them could reproduce his greatness. How could they? 

Secretariat's death was attributed to laminitis, a painful and debilitating hoof condition. When Dr. Thomas Swerczek, head pathologist at the University of Kentucky, performed the necropsy, he marveled at what he found. “We just stood there in stunned silence,” Swerczek recalled. “We couldn't believe it. The heart was perfect. There were no problems with it. It was just this huge engine.” Though Secretariat’s heart was never formally measured, it became legendary for what experts in the equine industry call the “x-factor” — the extraordinary quality that marks champions. The stuff of giants. The stuff that inspires films. (Well, the good ones at least.) They buried Secretariat whole. They don’t do that for horses. But Secretariat wasn’t a horse. He was the myth that fell to earth. 

I was driving to the dump with a load of fencing when Molina’s haunting lyrics hit me like a brick. I’ve been listening to Molina for the better part of 20 years now, and never once had his music tracked with such power. “We will be gone, but not forever,” roars Molina on the song “Farewell Transmission”: “The real truth about it is—no one gets it right. The real truth about it is—we’re all supposed to try. There ain’t no end to the sands I’ve been trying to crawl. Through the static and distance.” I could finally hear him.

These days, I’m spending a lot of time with my 7-year-old nephew, who was born on Valentine’s Day. We share the zodiac sign of Aquarius. He’s inquisitive and loves to run and jump and play all the sports. Over the weekend, I helped him pronounce the word “quietest.” He got it after a few tries. I’ve travelled far and wide in my life—Europe, Asia, and across the beautiful and disenfranchised corners of our America—but I would give it all up just for a few of those moments when I get to teach my nephew how to pronounce a new word. There’s something about the future that is impossible. It’s coming no matter how much the past commands our gaze. Oh, well. Guess it’ll just have to come.

I struggle to let sirloin, or any steak for that matter, rest after grilling. Ten minutes say the greats. You’ve got to let it sit for 10 minutes. I never make it past five, but I’m getting better with my patience, probably because I want this whole thing to slow down. The world, life, and the living. It goes quickly. Far too quickly. I know it’s heretical, but I prefer sirloin to ribeye. I definitely prefer it to a strip. Filet mignon? That’s another conversation. I do love a good filet mignon. But there’s something about the economy of a sirloin. It’s just so dang cheap for the payoff you get if you know what you’re doing with it. 

My father’s been coughing more than usual. Doctor says he’s fine but I know he’s struggling. He’ll be 70 here soon. He had to take on a job recently to cover the bills. My father has worked his whole life. He built a family. He helped farmers here in Virginia. That was his passion, farmers and their animals and this country. He really tried, in the most honest of ways, but it still ain’t enough. Not in Biden’s America. Not in Trump’s America. Tariffs or not, the money’s all dried up and Social Security only goes so far. I wish he’d quit smoking, but who am I to tell him anything when I’ve got a Marlboro hanging from my lips most days?

This past Saturday, my father, my mother, my sister, and my nephew were all at the house. I pulled out a thick sirloin I bought earlier in the week and asked my sister to stick around. We set the dinner table like the old days, when we were a young family on the edge of the big city. I fired up the grill and cranked Molina up—way up. 

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I like to get my first sear on it. Three minutes on both sides. Something like that. No meat thermometer, no touch test. I just cook the damn thing. Somewhere along the way, I like to dunk it back into the marinade. Who knows if it’s hygienic but boy does it taste good in the end. After about 10 minutes I pull it off. “Has to be done.”

Five minutes later, I cut into the chunk of meat. Medium rare; God is good. My nephew bows his head in prayer at the table and we all follow suit. I’ve been lax about church these last few years. I tried to get back into it. Catholic’s guilt and all. Whatever, I’ve got seven rosaries hanging from the mirror in my beat Honda Civic. Out here, in God’s country, ain’t that close enough to Heaven? 

My sister tells my nephew about how we used to tease each other at the dinner table. My mother rolls her eyes. My father is focused on his food. What a pleasant moment this is. Our little family, laughing and eating. Couldn’t have done it without sirloin, my favorite steak.