Sarah’s eyes snapped open at the sudden lack of momentum. Her world split. Moments before, she had been flying through mist, and now, though her eyes immediately adjusted to the morning, her mind struggled with the concept of wakefulness. The connection to the physical reeled her in from a dream of blue into a dim morning, winding her to earth by a thread of silver silk. A quiet hiss of cooling metal surrounded her.
Her ears popped. Her fingers twitched as she reached for mysteries her wakened super-ego informed her were not real. The desert morning, visible through Sarah’s passenger window, brightened like a cold polaroid photo. She began to remember: she wasn’t at the University of Texas where she was supposed to be; she was far from home, and travelling with a dozen gallons of the essence of life in her back seat. Memories of her life associated her with solid ground and with the days spent rolling over it, days which had no boundaries other than the beginnings and endings of wind and engine noise.
There was a taste of salt at the corner of her lip and her chin felt connected to her right toe. A few parts of her body refused to answer roll call. Her left ankle protested with hot pins to be moved. She examined the desert, sparse, dry, and stubbornly uninhabitable. This stubbornness impressed her. Her dream evaporated, and she remembered her plan to experience The End of It All. Sarah blinked as her consciousness returned. She sighed.
Jennifer, in the driver’s seat, itched with a familiar discomfort as she waited for the cigarette lighter in the volvo to pop. For the past several hours the drive had meant a steady rush of wind and now the silence made the world seem empty. She opened her door and stepped onto the asphalt of the highway, feeling again an overwhelming yearning which surpassed the emptiness of her stomach.
“Hey girl, are you awake? It’s morning,” Jennifer said quietly.
“Where are we?” Sarah’s voice cracked. She calculated it was Tuesday.
“I’m not sure–I saw a turnout so I pulled off. It’s your turn to drive,” Jennifer said. The cigarette lighter popped. “Hand me a smoke?”
Sarah stirred and wrapped her short hair behind her ears. She rubbed her neck and thought for a moment, then searched through the disorganized backpack on the car floor between her feet. “Two left,” Sarah said, grudgingly pointing a white cigarette at the driver side door. She took a stick of gum for herself. “I’ll get a couple cartons when we stop in Dustin.”
“Thanks.” Jennifer leaned down and took the cigarette and the volvo’s lighter, then straightened and faced away from the car. She enjoyed looking into the metal heating coil as it touched the tobacco. The act reminded her of a movie scene she had watched as a child. The scene was a close-up of a couple in the front seat of a black 50’s Chevy, a serious looking young man and a rosy cheeked brunette. The young man’s face was smooth, freshly shaved. She placed a cigarette between her lips, and he leaned close to her, the lighter in his hands. The red glow of the lighter’s heating coil reflected in each of their eyes. He palmed the lighter to the girl’s cigarette; she gazed into his hands, inhaling slowly. The tobacco smoldered and caught. The brunette would explain that world wouldn’t allow them to be together, that this moment would be their last together. Jennifer remembered nothing else of the film.
Jennifer drew in a breath through her cigarette and exhaled upwards. She turned and leaned into the car to return the lighter, holding her cigarette outside, on the volvo’s roof. “We need gas. You were sleeping in a pretty weird position, but I didn’t want to wake you since you were so tired.” She walked behind the Volvo to sit on the car’s sagging rear bumper. The smoky arms of her exhalations curled quickly in the morning air. “I wish we were there already. I want The End of It All now,” she said, continuing in a mock chant: “_instant gratification_, now, now, now!”
Sarah smiled with Jennifer’s enthusiasm and checked her watch. “We’re making good time–we should make it to the turn-off around two.” She turned around to the back seat to check on the water bottles, a habit she had acquired on their trip. The nine three-gallon water bottles, their most valued possession once they made it to the salt flat, still looked safely stacked, pressed deeply into the back seat’s vinyl. Compressed beneath the bottles were a few layers of towels. The towels looked dry; the bottles hadn’t leaked. The rest of their cargo she felt was safe; everything had been sealed within ziploc bags, within plastic containers, or within their two ice chests, including their pre-made food.
She climbed out of her seat, popping the stick of gum in her mouth, and wiggled her toes on the asphalt, sensing the prior day’s lingering warmth. She felt the silence of the highway and walked to it’s center, working out a kink in her ankle and expecting high speed traffic to greet her. “We’ll definitely make it in time to set up before dark,” she said, as if talking to the imaginary traffic. The asphalt held a reservoir of temperature like water reserved in a sponge. Only the cooling creaks of Cassandra’s engine interrupted the silence. She reached her hands to the sky, flexing and stretching.
A high-pitched call tore into the air, echoing through the canyon floor. The howl began high and reached higher, a howl sounding as old as the desert. Sarah scanned the small ridge along the highway, recognizing the first notes and expecting at any moment to witness the wild coyote with snout pointed skyward. The call was answered–with a chorus of responses, the sounds tearing into the earth and awakening native spirits. The chorus repeated, the echoes fading into the distance, then repeated again. Sarah’s mind hummed with images of Indian apparitions, the warriors of ancient desert tribes, appearing around her after being summoned by the coyotes. She imagined the chief walking forward with his fellow warriors at his flanks, stepping through the desert without sound or disturbance of nature. The chief took her in with his large empathic eyes and offer her a necklace of two bones bound to a feathered, circular amulet. The final echoes of the coyote chorus trailed off into the air.
“Intense! I hope that happens every morning out here.” Jennifer, with her cigarette clutched between two fingers, released an audible exhalation. Her brown eyes searched north along the highway for any signs of action.
Sarah listened intently to the desert. “We should get going.”
“Are you afraid of coyotes?”
Sarah chewed on her gum. “Coyotes are okay. They’re just telling each other to go back home. You?”
“I’m only afraid of scorpions.”
“Shouldn’t be any out here. I’m more concerned about snakes.” She shivered, then changed the subject. “Ready to go?” Seeing Jennifer nod, she walked to the driver’s side of Cassandra. She wiggled her toes on the ground once more, took a deep breath of the desert air, then fastened herself into the driver’s seat.
Jennifer circled to the passenger side of Cassandra and reached into her backpack to retrieve a round metal tin. She opened the tin and squashed her cigarette into the bottom of the tin, leaving the butt, carefully resealing the lid and tossing the tin back in the bag. The shapes in the canyon stood out as the sun cracked over the ridge and the flat shrubs woke to the first rays of the morning, the rays glistening on their branches like hot amber.
very vivid, the descriptions are like a dream. I’m not sure where the story is going yet. I can see there is some buildup and lots of open questions..