DUST

Some people called her ‘Plain Jane’. Others named her ‘Skeleton’. I found her graceful. She was a skinny and frail girl who held her head high and carried a subdued confidence that walked slow and tired. She worked as a waitress and wore the bruise of poverty. In the desert, the poorest people never really look clean. Dust is another part of your wardrobe. It hangs on you and falls asleep.

I would watch her as I drank and played video poker. She fascinated me. She seemed very young. But the dust made it impossible to tell her real age. Up close, she looked older than I believed she was. Heavy make up unsuccessfully covered the acne on her chin and jaw. Her eyes were dull, but could tighten and darken when engaged.

There was something in her that I gravitated towards. I could not name or describe this gravitation but it was there. She reminded me of Audrey Hepburn. Something magnetic living and breathing was inside her bright and neon. I tried to envision the glow humming and buzzing in her chest. I knew it was there; surrounded by a fence of smooth, white ribs. I wanted to be near that glow.

We would talk to each other sweet and nice. The conversations wouldn’t last long. They were defined by an uncomfortable feeling that neither of us wanted to say anything more and ruin the pleasantness. It was as if neither of us had faith in words and gestures and nervously took what we could and then retreated.

We started to make plans to meet places. Every time, one or both of us wouldn’t show. It was a strange dance of refusing commitment based on fear of rejection. But we kept making plans, hitting our head against the wall. It became our thing, a dark and sad and twisted game of flirting; each of us taking turns extending our hand and then pulling it away.

People would tell me how she had been seen out on the edge of town. A guy I knew from the electric company told me a story about her. He was called to a transistor outside of town – out where there is nothing but stoic rocks and angry dirt and hot screaming winds you can not hide from and pretentious mountains that stand with their backs to you. When he got there, a red pickup truck was sitting next to the transistor. He swears to me that ‘Plane Jane was blowing this guy that had to be seventy years old!’

Part of me didn’t believe him and part of me thought it made sense. This desert town is so remote and other worldly, anything is usually possible. It is a land of dark magic that hides in whatever shade is found. A place marked by dried and cracked open wounds that mirror the landscape. How you ended up here is predominately the reason why you do the things you do. There are no excuses here, only the fact that everyone is broke.

It is a place not just unforgiving, it doesn’t seem to notice. The constant sun melts your strength like a box of crayons and all the colors become one – survival. The heat yelps in your ear as it rides your back. Faith must be taken away and buried deep in the earth in order to stay cool because the hot dust covers your eyes and coats your lungs and paints your brain. In no time at all, things begin to become so real, so stark and primordial, that you believe them to be unreal. All hope is lost in the middle of nowhere, saturated by poverty and dirt. The only thing to do is to see how far you can go in the only direction available, the wrong one.