Yes, this is a “true story,” but I only witnessed the beginning, the scene being set, the cast of characters lining up off stage. Nothing will be clear at first, but by the end, you will understand. I will explain at the end, but don’t peek. Wait. I hope it is worth the wait.
The compact junker didn’t have enough power to run the AC and turn the wheels, so he opted to crank all the windows open. The dry air blasted through the car, filling it with sound and dust, helping him ignore his loneliness. But not quite. There were other routes to where he was going, but he had purposely chosen this route through the desert, a road that was popular a dozen years ago but now mainly stood forgotten. A new superhighway had replaced it, and now the narrow, pitted road was avoided by all but the most desperate travelers. He had driven through once, in the days before the new highway, and the memory, though dulled by the many years, was still unpleasant. The road was no pleasure to drive; the asphalt, dry and cracking, narrowed by the years, the edges crumbling away, heeding the desert’s command to return from whence it came. Even in the daytime, the desert scenery was too monochromatic and bland for his taste. He preferred mountains and forests, but had no choice but to take this journey. The desert lacked the austerity that makes some desert landscapes grand. Low hills crowded the desolate dust fields and occasional ghost towns, making it seem more like a vacant lot than a wonder of nature.
Driving through it at night grated on his nerves. The monotony was dangerous, as he was tired and at risk of nodding off. His weary eyes began playing tricks, leading him to believe the road was flying at him, passing under his stationary car. The radio only picked up two distant stations: a late-night bible-belt hillbilly stuttered while he preached hellfire. The only option was a polka marathon. He preferred silence, but despite his aversion to religion, he needed the noise to keep him awake. He opted for the hellfire preacher, turning up the volume to maximum.
“…And when you go down into the valley of death, remember to drink deeply from the well of repentance lest you burn for eternity in fires fueled by your own sins. Relying on God’s great mercy will only shame you when you stand in front of his throne of glory. Better to….SHHHSHH…than to abandon… SHSHSH …the next world…be damned…”
The radio suddenly died, leaving the man alone in the car full of dusty, hot air. He drove for several minutes, listening to the radio hiss. The far-off preacher had damned him. Well, so be it. He had set out on this road trip without any warning, leaving his family behind without an explanation. He had never done anything like that before and didn’t feel comfortable doing so now.
He was overly tired, annoyed that he had actually listened to the sermon. The sermon was trite, a caricature of even the most hackneyed country bumpkin preacher. But for some reason, the driver was hooked and wanted to hear more, even if just to ridicule the sermon. He slammed the dashboard over the radio, trying to twist the volume knob to turn it up even more than the maximum. The radio hissed to life in a staccato of white noise that cut off the preacher every few words.
“….long journey into his Grace…” “SSSSSHHHHHHH…SSSHHH… “as it says in the book of Ezekiel…” SSHHEEE…SSHHHEEESS “The hand of God came upon me, and He took me out by the…” SSHHH “…and set me down in the valley…” SHHHEEES WAAAAIIIITNG “…He said to me, ‘O mortal, can these bones live again?’ I replied, “O God, only You know…” SHHHEEES WAAAAIIIITNG “…I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live again…”
The radio died, but this time, no amount of banging would coax it back to life. Left with only the sound of the wind blowing through the car, he pushed on. He passed through a small town; dark silhouettes of tiny buildings huddled close together. The deserted village flashed past, dark shapes against an even darker sky. Clearly, there had once been tourist amenities, people who lived in this desert, serving motorists who passed through. He imagined rest stops and roadside attractions. But he realized that was all from a different time, and all the people had long since moved on. Now, the town was a dark memory, a shadow on the landscape that slid past his tired eyes.
His foot pressed harder on the gas as he tried to leave the illusion behind, hoping the engine wouldn’t die and leave him stranded in this horrible wasteland. He had pulled over several hours ago, just after sunset, and dug through the glove box until he found an old, wrinkled map. He had picked the route number and followed the line with his finger until he found a red dot enigmatically identified as 101, barely visible in a crease, the symbols for gas and lodging appearing faded off to the side. It was his only hope for respite on this damned drive through the desert.
A crooked road sign warned him of the impending rest stop, but the entrance still caught him by surprise when it sprang up out of the desert night. A dirt drive looping onto the main road and a dark sign were the only warnings he had. Out of habit, he glanced in the rearview mirror before braking hard, even though the last headlights seen were more than three hours and one hundred miles ago. The entrance sign simply read, “101”. He wondered whether that was the mile marker or the highway number, but, from what he knew of the road, neither explanation made sense.
With no time to ponder the strange sign, he maneuvered onto the rough drive, gravel cracklin’ under the tires. The plume of dust following his car caught up with him as he parked next to a rough stone wall. A stone arch marked the compound’s entrance, a sign hammered into the stone repeated the same limited message: 101. His first glance confused him. Nothing about this desert rest stop made sense to his tired brain. The gas pump, presumably the most essential aspect of this automotive oasis, was behind him, incongruously set in the center of the unpaved parking lot like a forlorn alien, lost and confused on an alien planet, his finger stuck in his ear. A bare bulb at the top of a pole illuminated the antiquated pump. On the other side of a stone wall, he saw the top half of a lush garden brightly lit by floodlights, a string of colorful Chinese lanterns connecting towering palm trees. The stone wall surrounded a large roadside convenience store hidden behind an incongruous lush micro-jungle that defied its desert surroundings.
He sat for a few minutes, leaning forward slowly until his forehead touched the gritty steering wheel, listening to the cooling engine tick. He felt fatigue pressing at the back of his eyes, but the static electricity running through his brain kept sleep at bay. He had been driving since early morning, but there were still many hours of travel ahead. He closed his eyes for a few moments, needing to rest but working to remain conscious. Sleep and despair were both so close, but he wasn’t ready to give in to either yet.
“D’ya need a room?”
His head lifted, and his eyes flicked open automatically as he looked up to see who had spoken. A young woman stood in the darkness a few feet from his car. She was close enough for him to reach out and touch, but he was sure she hadn’t been there when he drove up. He would have seen her in the headlights. She couldn’t have approached the parked car without the gravel under her feet announcing her presence.
“We got rooms, ya know. Nothing fancy but plenty comfortable,” she said. He couldn’t place her accent, but she spoke slowly with a bit of a country drawl. “Clean sheets, but not much of a mattress. It ain’t much, but it beats falling asleep behind the wheel by a long shot. If you want, I could set you up.”
He shook his head as he opened his car door and stepped out, cramped muscles tugging at his spine. “No thanks. I’m running late and have to get back on the road. I need gas and coffee.”
“Well, coffee I can do, but you’ll have to wait for the gas,” she said. “Cushy went out on a rescue run, and he doesn’t trust me with the keys to the pumps. He thinks I’ll take mercy on stranded souls who are short on gas and money. He’s right, so I guess it’s a good thing he keeps the keys.”
He hesitated. The enigmatic opening to a conversation invited inquiry, but he was anxious to get gas and be on his way. She seemed willing enough to prattle on, but not about what he needed to know. Suddenly, a scream flew over from the other side of the stone wall, startling him and cutting off the beginning of a question.
“That would be Sara,” the girl said calmly. “She never sleeps well when Cushy’s gone.” His alarm at the scream turned to confusion when he realized she was holding back a laugh. “Don’t worry. Sara’s a parrot who thinks she’s a person. She’s a bit neurotic because every time she screams like that, Cushy threatens to turn her into chicken soup. I reckon that makes her scream even more.” Her gaze returned to searching for the troubled parrot. “Truth is, they love each other fiercely, and if Cushy were a bit more of a bird, or if Sara were a bit more of a person, they’d be married.”
His fatigue made him stare at her as he tried to make sense of her explanation. He hoped the dark and her distraction protected him from dirty-old-man accusations. Getting caught staring would have been embarrassing since she was young and pretty. He really just wanted to gas up and go, but it looked like that wasn’t going to happen.
But he kept staring anyway. He blamed fatigue, but more likely it was something about her that made it impossible to look away. She wore jeans that were worn and torn but too tight to be comfortable, and a tank top that was too loose and comfortable to be decent. There was nothing special about her, and though she was attractive, it was simply a matter of youth. On the surface, she was no different than a million other girls, but she was nice to look at, blessed with something special, unseen but undeniable, that kept him looking. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and her hair was slightly greasy, but that made her all the more attractive, even though he usually wasn’t attracted to hippie nature girls. Not anymore. This realization hit him hard; sometime along the way, his taste in women had changed, planting a flag in his consciousness that he was an old man with no chance of returning to the untamed virility of his youth. The years had taken this from him while giving so little in return.
Free-spirited hippie-chicks had been his secret and unrealised desire when he was young. Dirty hair and spotty grooming made them seem accessible, and the big smiles drew him in with their no-lipstick kisses. They were alien to his clean suburban upbringing. But the real attraction lay in the hope of rainbow-filled futures spent chasing unicorns hand-in-hand. This girl would have been irresistible to a younger him, but tonight, he was tired, and the older him knew that as many futures as you run down, there were no slow unicorns left in the world. He had watched sadly as each of his hippie friends became a domesticated shadow of what they once were. He had hoped the same could not be said of him, but fear kept him from pondering that question too long. He had married and raised children, but in the mirror, he had always seen a man with other possibilities. Looking at this young woman made him draw a breath, a final reminder that the man with possibilities was a mirage that lay far behind him. He has taken a route with no rainbows, but his wife and children were far more than consolation prizes. They were real, requiring lots of work, but bringing powerful joy along with real worry and even more pain.
He stared as her head turned slowly, knowing he should look away and pretend like he hadn’t been ogling her like the lecher he might have been. Their eyes locked for several moments, and looking away suddenly seemed obscene, an admission of guilty thoughts.
“I’ll start the coffee,” she said plainly, accepting his stares simply. “You might as well park at the pump since it doesn’t look like anyone else is going to come in for gas tonight. I’ll leave a note for Cushy to fill it up. C’mon in when you’re ready. If you change your mind about the bed, let me know. Cushy might not be back for quite a while.”
A sudden wave of anxiety washed over him. Everything around him seemed to be conspiring to keep him from arriving at his destination. He was filled with righteous anger at the desert, the shuttered stores in the ghost town hundreds of miles behind, the unavoidable need for this trip, everything that had conspired to strand him in this dusty parking lot. He had no choice but to wait for a broken-hearted parrot’s love interest to return.
She took a few steps, turning to smile at him.
“Are you coming?” she asked. “The coffee is worth it.”
Her smile melted his anger, and he got out of the car to follow. He took a few steps, but the muscles in his back and thighs cramped up, stopping him short. He needed to stretch for a few minutes to loosen up. He used to be a road-trip junkie, able to drive for days on end. But that was many years ago. The last time he had taken this long cross-country road trip was more years ago than he cared to admit.
“You go ahead,” he called out to her. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
She waved as she walked away, without turning around. As he watched her from behind, he realized she was barefoot. Her gait was odd; she placed her feet flat on the stones without rolling from the heels, walking almost on her toes. The result took her across the gravel silently. He suspected that following her on a beach would be impossible as she probably wouldn’t leave footprints in the sand..
He looked around as he stretched. The lot appeared empty, though the night was so dark that a thousand cars could have been parked just outside the circle of light surrounding the gas pumps, and he would never have known. Finally able to walk without wincing, he stepped through the stone arch into a brightly lit garden, noting that the gravel was not as silent for him as it had been for the barefoot girl. The contrast was shocking. On the other side of the stone wall was a pitch black desert, but on this side was a sunny Eden.
The grass was perfectly trimmed, making him wonder what type of person would plant a lawn in a desert. A few rough-hewn picnic tables and a small pond in the center completed the oasis motif. Brightly colored Chinese lanterns made him strangely sad, reminding him more of a canceled wedding than a party waiting to happen.
Another scream, closer this time, led him to a corner where a large enclosure made of rough timbers and wire mesh contained a menagerie of tropical birds. A large green parrot roosted in the center of the cage, highlighted by a bright spotlight. Her brilliant colors glowed in the harsh light. He assumed that this feathered beauty was Sara, Cushy’s avian admirer. Her head sideways, she regarded him with one eye before ducking her head under her wing as if dismissing him. A large owl observed him placidly from the top of a palm tree. He hesitated before turning away. A wire-mesh tunnel framed the bright entrance to the central building, a sign declaring it an all-night convenience store open “25 hours a day, 8 Days a week.” He stepped into the tunnel and realized it was a passageway through a cage, forcing the customers to walk under a collection of snakes and lizards. A snake passed overhead, moving silently, on the metal screen.
He passed into the building, surprised at its scale. It was a small space, but no expense had been spared to overwhelm the visitor with variety, giving a feeling that there was more to the store than met the eye. Off to his right was a small mini-mart, with short aisles arranged like a full-size supermarket and half-size shopping carts lined up for shoppers’ convenience. The checkout, equipped with a modern cash register, featured a one-foot-long automatic conveyor belt.
To his left, a bead curtain blocked the entrance to a micro-casino, black lights shining on two computerized gambling machines that glowed in the artificial moonlight. A tiny disco ball spinning slowly in the ceiling dotted the walls with light, completing the micro-Vegas effect. In front of him, at the end of the hall, was a coffee bar with a miniature espresso machine, glowing white porcelain mugs hanging overhead. A single barstool ensured an intimate barista experience.
The girl, now wearing black Converse high-tops, exited the door marked ‘All the Women,’ to the left of the espresso bar. Her hair was damp; her t-shirt was spotted with water. Her bright smile made him smile back for a moment, but he caught himself, not wanting to appear overly friendly with the young woman. He walked past her into the room marked ‘All the Men.’
He was surprised at the extravagance of the bathroom. The fixtures were gaudy faux gold, and a row of open showers lined one wall. He considered taking advantage of the amenity, but didn’t want to go back outside and rummage through his luggage to fetch a towel. After scooping handfuls of hot water on his face and watching the surprisingly dirty water disappear down the drain, he inspected his face in the mirror. He was getting old, so it was no surprise that he looked old. He was used to that. But the old man staring back at him from the mirror was well and truly old, which was surprising. There are a lot of second chances in life, he thought, but life itself has no second chances.
As he looked into the mirror, numb from fatigue, he saw a message carefully printed in an upper corner in black marker. He had to struggle onto his toes to read the fine script, but the existence of graffiti in the otherwise pristine bathroom drew him to the message. It was as if it had intentionally been left to stand.
“Existence is the most binary of all things, with a built-in inevitability that makes reliving each passing moment an impossibility. All we have is life, but when it ends, we are left with handfuls of sand trickling through our fingers. They are our dreams, once a source of pleasure but now just painful reminders, mocking us after life runs its course and the world of possibilities has locked its doors and moved on without us.”
He was suddenly awake, shocked that the random message was actually an answer to his thought. In the reflection, he noticed a shelf on the wall behind him piled with fluffy white towels. A small plaque attached to the rack said, “One Dollar.” A lockbox with a slit to deposit bills sat on the shelf next to the towels. A handwritten note taped to the bottom of the plaque said, “Free if you don’t have the cash.” Written in even smaller letters, under that were additional instructions: “If you have been blessed, put in a buck for the next guy.” Next to the lockbox was a smudged cup with several crumpled bills.
He hesitated, embarrassed at having to depend on a faceless stranger’s largesse, but after a few moments, he plucked one of the bills from the cup and slipped it through the slit in the lockbox. He stripped quickly, ducking under the stream of hot water, wincing at first but quickly getting used to the heat. It was luxurious, and the stinging spray slowly massaged the ache out of his muscles. He had intended to take a quick shower, but he lingered instead. Reluctantly, he put on his dusty clothes. It seemed a shame since he was now clean. But he felt calm and rejuvenated, something he would have thought impossible ten minutes earlier. A glance in the mirror confirmed that he still looked road-worn and tired, but now he was smiling, and there was a sparkle in his eyes.
He walked out and saw her standing at the cash register in the mini-market, arranging the money in neat stacks and writing figures on a page. She looked up as he approached, her face lighting up with a smile when she saw him.
“You look better,” she said. “When you first pulled in, I thought you’d been through hell or something. You looked awful.”
“Driving that road is indeed a bit of hell, but I wouldn’t mind it nearly as much if I had some coffee in me,” he said. “I’ve got to get going as soon as I get gas.”
“Sure thing,” she said brightly, slipping the cash into a manila envelope. “Let me just put this away.”
He went to wait at the coffee bar. Without asking him how he liked his coffee, she set to work grinding beans and priming the machine. She prepared two coffees in absurdly large paper cups, handing him one and keeping the other for herself.
He took a sip, enjoying the first hit as it filled his mouth with a rich smokiness that relaxed him, letting his body know that caffeine was on the way. An image of his daughter flashed through his mind when she was four years old. She had been an early riser, and it vexed him to no end since he liked to sleep in late. But one morning, as he was stumbling around the kitchen, bleary-eyed and desperate for coffee, his four-year-old daughter asked him if she could turn on the coffee maker. He was pleasantly surprised, and they had a sweet father-daughter experience as he taught her to make his coffee. She still woke up before him but every morning after that, a steaming cup of perfect coffee would be waiting for him on the kitchen table. At one point, he didn’t know exactly when it was, but it was after she got her braces off and before her first boyfriend. It was a reverse rite of passage, a sign of her freedom from him that he wasn’t ready for. The custom returned in a different form after she dropped out of college and moved back home, giving them an excuse to share long moments of silence at a stage in her life when words were difficult. His thoughts began to stumble into painful territory when the girl interrupted his reverie.
“Do you gamble?” she asked as she stepped from behind the coffee bar.
He shook his head. “I thought gambling was illegal.”
She stopped in front of the micro-casino, pulling aside the beads so he could see the setup.
“If you don’t have cash, Cushy can front you a stake,” she said. “He’ll even take your car as collateral.”
“That seems pretty steep terms for a shot at gambling,” he said.
She shrugged. “I don’t care much for gambling, but some folks are a bit crazy. They get this glint in their eyes like they are starving and someone just threw a steak on the grill. It makes me wonder what they’ve got back home that makes them willing to risk it all.”
“So people lose their cars?” he asked. “It seems silly. What do they do after they get stuck here?” He waited for an answer, but her expression changed, and he realized that she was about to cry. He took a sip of his coffee, breaking eye contact so she wouldn’t have to know he’d seen the beginnings of her tears.
She looked down into her coffee mug as if she were searching for something, her damp hair hiding her face.
“I didn’t really think it was such a big deal,” she said, not even trying to hide her tears now. “I was riding a little scooter that barely made it through the desert. I thought it would be easy to get another ride. It’s been two months, and I am almost finished paying off what I owe. Cushy was really nice about giving me a job.”
He was about to comment, though he was unsure of what he wanted to say, when she turned and walked away. She stepped out of the front door. He followed, exiting right after her, but when he got outside, she was gone. He searched the darkness until he heard the soft strumming of a guitar. He followed the music, finding her sitting on the grass, leaning against the rough trunk of a palm tree, her hair hiding her face as she bent over the guitar. She was fingerpicking a pattern he thought he recognized. A memory struggled to surface, bothering his consciousness, eluding him until he gave up and listened.
She played inexpertly, strumming through obvious mistakes, trying to make up for lack of skill with intensity and feeling, and mostly succeeding. She had half-learned some fingerpicking somewhere along the way, and it gave her song a syncopated, sad rhythm.
My search for tomorrow has led me back to you
Hold my hand for one last time
And then set me free so I can fly
Where did the sun go when I needed it most,
In the winter of my soul’s darkest despair
Where did your smile go just a moment ago,
When love turned into a cloud in the sky
The pattern changed into something much more familiar, something he recognized right away: a John Prine classic that had been a staple of his repertoire before tendonitis forced him to give up playing guitar. It was a tricky piece of fingerpicking, but so rewarding that he always used it as an intro when he was teaching guitar. But something was off in her tuning, and the upbeat song sounded sad and plaintive in the still desert air.
Father, forgive us for what we must do
You forgive us; we’ll forgive you
We’ll forgive each other ‘til we both turn blue
Then we’ll whistle and go fishing in heaven
She played through the following few verses without singing, waiting until the guitar pattern came around again.
And when we get through, we’ll make a big wish
That we never have to do this again
The strings rang for a few moments as her fingers stopped playing.
‘Father,” she said. She hesitated, and he thought she was about to continue with the song a acapella. “You have to learn to see the difference between what happens to the body and how the soul accepts it. It’s so clear to me now that the souls that suffer the most are the ones God loves the most.”
He hesitated. “Why did you call me…” The question trailed off, incomplete because he already knew the answer and didn’t have the power to play out the pretense of not knowing. He wasn’t sure he had the strength to face the truth, but he had known it when he first saw her, had known when he planned the lonely trip through the desert. She was the reason he was here. He took a deep breath.
“Eva,” the name came out so softly he wasn’t sure she heard, so he repeated it. “Eva.”
She looked down at the ground, and though her damp hair hid her eyes, he could see her sad smile.
“I knew you would be waiting,” he said. “It made it easier for me.”
She looked up and smiled.
“And knowing you would be coming along shortly made it easier for me,” she said, pausing to reconsider her words. “Well, maybe it didn’t. But I’m glad you’re here now.”
“It shouldn’t have been easy,” he said. “Having children is the only thing that makes the trip easier. Not money, nor fame, nor anything you can find over there. It’s almost like the moment your first child is born, you’re halfway here. I felt I had become a link in a long chain connecting the first living thing to the end of time. You did that for me. Not on the day you were born, but it didn’t take too long after that. You were a baby, and then suddenly you weren’t. You were so young, so beautiful. To take you out of the chain when you were so young, disconnect you from that huge thing we call life, it just didn’t make sense. And it certainly didn’t have anything in it that could be called fair.”
Her fingers touched the strings, but no sound came out. “It made sense. Just not the kind we are used to. Not the kind of sense we like. And nothing about life is fair when you get down to the nitty-gritty. Or it is all fair, depending on how you look at it,”
She paused and worked on a picking pattern that faded off in a jangle of sound.
“Cushy explained it to me some, and then someone else came along and told me the rest,” she said. “I’m okay with it now.”
“I’m not,” he said, his voice sharper than intended. He worked to calm himself before going on. “I’d like to have a few words with Cushy and whoever else it was who thought it was okay.”
“You will,” she said softly.
She paused, and he expected her to continue speaking to explain. He wanted desperately for her to explain, but instead, she pointed over his shoulder. He twisted around, tearing his gaze away from her, afraid it was some childish ruse, a distraction that would allow her to run away and disappear again. It took a few moments for him to see the glow in the east and a few more moments to realize it wasn’t the moon rising.
“Cushy is coming back,” she said. “When he gets here, we can gas up and leave.”
He looked at her, seeing something familiar in her face that he should have noticed before. “We?” he asked.
She nodded, handing him the guitar so she could stand. She brushed off her jeans. “Yes,” she said. “I’m finished paying off Cushy, and it’s time to move on. The boss said you can take me partway there.”
He struggled for a moment, confused at what he was hearing. “I thought Cushy was the boss.”
She looked at him, surprised, before breaking into a raucous laugh that set off a screaming bout by Sara. “Cushy? The boss?” she asked incredulously. “No,” she said finally, a grim look on her face. “I haven’t met the boss but Cushy talks about him all the time.”
Sara screamed again, perhaps announcing her human lover’s imminent return. The girl slipped the guitar into its case and held out her hand to help him up.
They stood in the archway entrance, watching and waiting, until they saw headlights drawing closer, drifting slowly towards them across the impossibly long stretch of desert road. The wrecker pulled into the parking lot, raising a cloud of dust, then stopped short to back up to a pile of scrap metal in the corner. Hanging from the back were the mangled remains of a scooter, barely recognizable for what they used to be. Cushy, an old man in greasy overalls, jumped out of the cab, moving quickly to the back of the truck. He was small and wrinkled, dressed in a coverall stiff with dusty, dried grease, and looking as if all the moisture had been sucked out, leaving a tough husk that was more desert than man. He pulled a lever, and the crumpled heap crashed down, taking its place on the scrap heap.
The girl winced as Cushy pulled a helmet from the back of the truck, a gouge running along the side. He tossed it unceremoniously on top of the broken scooter.
“You outta here, girl?” he asked. She nodded in answer, and the old man turned to him. “You gonna take her to the crossroads?” He nodded as well. “Seems to me like you coulda used a little more resting up before hitting the road, but I can understand how you wanna get going.”
“Eva told me you thought it was okay what happened to her,” he said, working at maintaining eye contact before the old man turned away, working at unhitching the wrecked scooter.
“Never said no such thing,” Cushy said over his shoulder. “It wasn’t good, and it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t even a pity, though that’s what most would call it. It just was. Dats probl’y what I told Eva, but it took her a while to understand. Some folks done passed through here after too long a trip that left them free to feel hurt others along the way. Damn few pass through here happy about how it all turned out. Life ain’t supposed to be fair, so it ain’t. And every life, good or bad, ends the same. But regret is for the living. Long or short, good or bad, life is what you get. And all you’re left with at the end of the day is what you made of what you got.”
Cushy finished with the hitch, turning around to eye him for a few moments more before turning back to tend to his rig.
“Jus cuz you don’t agree doesn’t make one of us right and the other wrong,” Cushy said over his shoulder. “I got my job to do, which means I got to clean up the mess so the next poor soul coming down the highway can roll on through. You got your job to do, which means you got to scream out when good people like Eva suffer.”
The man wanted to argue because something in what he had just heard bothered him and went against his deepest-held beliefs. He opened his mouth, but none of his arguments came.
Cushy turned to the girl. “Sara’s gonna miss you. Me too, come to think of it. Thanks, fer fixing him up with coffee. You’ll be wanting some gas before you go,” he said to the man. “If you got any complaints, take ‘em up with the boss. I don’t do complaints or requests. I jes do my job.”
He followed Cushy as he walked to the gas pump, watching as the old man took out a ring of keys, searching for a few moments before opening the padlock hanging from the pump. They watched as Cushy worked the gas pump, waiting in silence until he was finished. They got into the car and put the guitar in the back seat.
He pulled out onto the dark and empty highway while Cushy watched them. The large owl flew silently over the wall and perched on the old man’s shoulder, nibbling at his ear.
“Y’all come back soon,” Cushy said into the night, watching the red taillights grow smaller. “And next time, we’d like it if you both stayed a while longer.”
The wind blowing through the windows seemed quieter than on the first leg of his journey, making the silence between them even more uncomfortable. Just as he was about to say something inane, about the shower or the coffee or questions about Cushy, she broke the silence.
“There he is,” she said, a strange tension in her voice. “Pull over.”
She was pointing at something, a shapeless dark hole in the night by the side of the road. Suddenly, he saw it: four shiny dots, eyes in the desert night, two set high and two close to the ground. A man and a dog were caught in the headlights as the car swung off the road and onto the gravelly shoulder. The man was old and worn, as was his dark suit. The dark hat and improbably dark sunglasses were amusing to the man driving the car. The old man was a poser, trying too hard to look like the classic bluesman. His smile disappeared when he saw the thin white stick clutched in the old man’s hand. The old man by the side of the road folded up the stick, slipping it into his jacket pocket before reaching out and fumbling for the door handle. The door swung wide, and the dog, an old golden retriever with sagging jowls, hopped into the back seat next to the battered guitar case, curling up behind the driver. The old man removed his hat, revealing a surprisingly thick head of pure white hair. He folded himself into the back of the car; his hand was placed carefully on the sill, ensuring he wouldn’t smack his head.
“Hi, Y’all,” he said in a calm bass voice once he was settled into the seat with his hat placed primly on his lap. “M’name’s Gabe; short for Gabriel. I sincerely ‘preciate the ride. We been waitin’ quite a spell for some kind soul to come along. This here’s Fish,” he said as he patted the dog’s flank, his hand resting gently with fingers buried in the fur, when he finished his short introduction.
The girl stretched out her hand between the seats, stopping just short of petting the dog. “Does he bite?” she asked.
“Not so far as I ever seen,” Gabe said. She hesitated, but when the blind man laughed, and the dog began wagging its tail, she realized that man and dog had probably played out this same joke countless times before. The dog’s thick tail began enthusiastically thumping the car seat as she stroked his fur.
“Where can I take you?” the driver asked.
“Wherever you’re headed,” Gabriel said. “It’s all the same to us, and we don’t want to put you out none.”
He was about to put the car in gear when he glanced over at Eva. She was twisted around in her seat, and he wanted to remind her to put on her seatbelt, but the look on her face took the words right from his mouth. Her hand was buried in the dog’s fur, clutching it in a way that should have caused the animal to yelp. Dog and girl were staring at each other and neither seemed to be breathing.
“Eva?” he said.
She blinked and took a deep breath. The sound of the dog panting filled the car.
“If’n you don’t mind, we got an appointment to keep,” Gabriel said.
He twisted around to look the man in the eye. “I thought you said you weren’t headed any place in particular,” he said.
Gabriel smiled and took off his glasses, revealing steel-gray eyes that caught him in a piercing gaze. “That’s silly. Of course, we’re headed someplace, and that’s where you need to go as well. It’s high time we got there, don’t you think?”
“I thought you were blind,” he said.
“You make a lot of assumptions. That’s no way to live your life.” Gabriel paused. “Fish always did claim you had more steel in you than meets the eye. It may be that he was right, but don’t be getting too uppity with me. I got a job to do, and if you get in the way, I will take you out of the way. And no one likes that, specially not me. Now it’s time for you to do your job, the one you were created to do; drive us there.”
He turned to Eva since she had told him to pick up this troublesome hitchhiker. She was busy buckling herself in and refused to look at him.
“Just drive,” she said sharply.
He put the car in gear, looking through the rear-view mirror before pulling onto the desert highway. As the vehicle hummed along, he saw that it led through a valley splitting the sharp mountains on either side. The sky was changing, turning various shades of deep blue in preparation for sunrise. He worried that the sun would suddenly appear directly in front of him, blinding him and making driving impossible. The car dipped forward, and he realized that the desert was actually higher than the mountains, and the road was now taking them down into a pass that led into a deep valley. Some optical illusion caused by the strange topography and the desert night had made the mountains seem much further away than they actually were, and now he was weaving down through the rocky terrain. The sun was well up in the sky, shining down into a dry crater miles across.
The man squinted, his eyes tired from the long journey and now further stressed by the sudden transition to daylight. The rocky floor of the crater appeared to be moving, writhing as if it were alive. His attention was pulled back to the road as it crawled down the face of the cavity, twisting back onto itself, sometimes hiding the desert floor and sometimes revealing brief glimpses that only confused him more.
As the road reached the crater floor and leveled out, Gabriel screamed, “Stop the car!” before throwing open the back door. The dog leaped out while the wheels were still rolling, taking off at breakneck speed.
The driver looked around, his mind trying to make sense of what his eyes were seeing. They were far from alone in the valley, which was covered as far as the eye could see with people in various stages of decay. He was sure they had not been there one minute ago. No matter how much flesh remained on the bones, each skeleton stood in place, its arms raised high and whatever was left of its face turned skyward.
The three human passengers stepped out of the car, Eva and her father swaying on shaky legs, Gabriel firm but grim as he scanned the scene surrounding them. They could hear the dog’s keening cry as it ran unseen, lost somewhere in the mass of people.
As he watched, he realized that what he was seeing was not merely a crowd of people. He was witnessing a horrible scene of carnage and decay. Some skeletons stood in place while their flesh rotted, dropping from the bones into small heaps at their bony feet, while others were fleshing out in a reverse process as muscle and skin grew, wrapping around dry bones.
All the bodies stood in place, their arms rising slowly at their sides until their palms met overhead. As their palms touched, they all murmured one word, a whisper magnified thousands of times.
“Praise,” they all breathed in unison, the low chant filling the air.
The man stood transfixed, watching the bizarre scene, fascinated by the slow repetitions. The dog came trotting back, out of breath.
“It’s time,” Gabriel said to the man, pointing to a space between two nearly bare skeletons. At first, the man didn’t understand, but after a few moments, his mind rejected the unmistakable message. The dog sat down at the empty spot, waiting.
The realization hit him that he was expected to take his place in this sea of humanity. His jaw set firm, the man asked a question.
“Will I see her again?”
Gabriel grimaced as he nodded slowly. “Yes, you’ll see her, and everyone else, when the time comes. But first, this is what you gotta do. Pretty soon, you’ll go back and do it again, and again, until you get it right. But for now, she’s got somethin’ different she’s gotta do.”
The man smiled, hugging his daughter quickly before moving to his designated spot. He closed his eyes and joined in the rhythm.
The girl watched a few repetitions before opening the door and getting into the driver’s seat. She waited until Gabriel strapped himself into the passenger seat and Fish was comfortable in the back.
“Where to?” she asked.
“To the sea,” the angel answered.
Her eyebrows lifted. “Are you sure?”
“No,” Gabriel answered, a sharp edge to his voice. “But the dog is.”
She started the engine, slipped the car into gear, and drove slowly through the field of bones and rotting flesh. The sounds coming from under the vehicle were horrific, but she gritted her teeth and pressed on. The sun was past zenith when they reached the edge of the crater and began the climb out of the valley. A desert highway had brought her father to 101, but she was driving on even less, a cloud of dust rising behind the car as she slowly drove the dirt track.
“Why’d you lie to him?”
Gabriel scowled. “Why didn’t you tell him the truth, set him straight?” She hesitated, but Gabriel jumped right in with the answer. “What I told him was the truth from the way he sees things, just not the truth according to the way things really are. By the time he realizes he ain’t never gonna see you again, it won’t matter to him. It already don’t matter to you, which is why you’re here.”
Gabriel pointed through the windshield at the thin stretch of beach, glowing white in the moonlight. She stared at the water, her expression caught somewhere between deep horror and joyful fascination. Her hands gripped the wheel with white-knuckled intensity as a nervous twitch in her ankle set the engine revving. She was a moment away from slamming the car into reverse and fleeing when Gabriel unbuckled and got out, crossing around to open her door. Her foot came off the gas, and the engine died, leaving a space for the soft sound of the waves gently lapping at the sand.
Without a word, she stepped towards the water’s edge, shedding her clothes along the way. She stepped into the water without hesitating, moving forward and lowering her body as the water deepened.
Gabriel and Fish watched silently as her head disappeared under the surface. They stood looking at the ocean until the sun rose, waiting until they were sure there was nothing left of her to exit the water. Finally, they turned back. 101 was still a long way off, and they had nothing but their feet to take them there.
I wrote at the beginning that this story was true, and it is. When I lived in Bat Ayin, one of my neighbors, a wonderful, quiet man named Tzvika Enosh, fought a losing battle against cancer for many months. At a later stage in his struggle, his teenage daughter was riding a scooter when she had an accident and died. Tzvika, in great pain and clearly close to death, spoke at her funeral. “I see her, glowing and white, waiting for me,” he said to the crowd of mourners.
This is the story of Tzvika’s reunion with his daughter.
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The Master of Return and the Eleventh Light
(Non-Fiction) The Return of the Red Heifers
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