White Sands

One car made its way down the sand-covered highway. To the left, nothing but charred scrub brush that was more ash than brush, too insubstantial to even make a tumbleweed. To the right, far away mountains gave the horizon a spiny dinosaur-back texture.

The drive to Albuquerque should have taken two days: slow enough to not raise suspicions but fast enough to get away. The tires on the green station wagon had been bald for months but the car should still be able to make the trip, even four days into a two day journey.

The driver had enough gas from siphoning off a rusted tractor in a cotton field a few days ago. Had there still been birds in the world, there would have been a suspicious murder of crows circling the bone dry field.

She drove with the windows down, not trusting the car battery to successfully run the A/C. She tried not to kick up a cloud of dust.

As she drove, something person-shaped rose out of the heat-hazed horizon. A woman in a floral dress with long, matted hair was holding an umbrella to hide her face and pulling a red wagon full of things: objects wrapped in blankets, a lamp, boxes, and a penguin pillow pet. The driver slowed down but the umbrella lady gave no notice of the car except to hold the umbrella a little lower and hunch her shoulders away.

The driver kept going. Stopping was dangerous but so was being alone.

The sun climbed and the hot air whipped her face as she drove. It smelled sickly sweet like death and rotting fish.

Her necklace heated against her skin, the chain of the heart-shaped locket stinging her neck like a mosquito bite. She pulled it free of her sweat-stained shirt so the sun sparkled on the untarnished bits of silver. The necklace was old and bent so the heart concaved and the tip was sharper than it should be. There were letters on the back: two someone’s initials in a heart.

A green highway sign unfolded out of the landscape, one screw still attached to a pole, the sign listing drunkenly towards the ground. 80 miles to Truth or Consequences, 227 miles to Albuquerque. She must be close to whatever was left of Las Cruces. The highway was more sand than road and she veered to the right, towards the dinosaur hills, through the sand. Not thinking about water and how the earth looked like the sea. Thinking about water changed nothing. She had enough. It would be OK.

The necklace burned her skin where her neck met her shoulder. She growled low in her throat, grabbed the heart, and pulled. The chain came free and she threw it out the window. The locket burned her hand but she drove across the sand, nothing but the sound of her car and the whisking wind across the desert.

She stopped. Slammed on the brakes and kicked up dirt. With another low growl, knowing she was an idiot, she reversed, looking over her shoulder because the car hadn’t had a rearview mirror when she found it. She saw a flash of silver like a fish in the water and turned the wheel, angling so she could pull up, stop only briefly to open the door and pick up the locket so that she wasn’t stationary for too long but she wanted the necklace for reasons she didn’t care to explore.

She reversed a bit faster and foom, her rear tire popped; what was left of the rubber slapped against the car and she fishtailed before sliding to a stop. She shouldn’t have but she got out, shaded her eyes with her hand and looked. She saw a small silver heart, the chain curled in the sand like a snake, sharpened tip pointing up to the orange sky.

She picked up the locket, tucked it in her pocket, and got back in the car. She drove, three wheels sliding on the fine sand and the fourth slapping a drum beat. White sand rose up between the hills like a vast ocean. The car stopped by sliding into a sandy white hill, fine granules like sugar falling on the cracked windshield.

She got out and walked across the sand. The undulating hills gave way to valleys of low trees that looked almost green like they could still be growing. Small footprints of something like a fox made trails across the sand. They were new. There was something alive.

She slipped and slid her way up a white hill; the surface cracked and gave way to the soft sand beneath. She pulled the locket out of her pocket and sank to the ground at the top of the hill. From up here, she saw the sandy ocean, she saw purple mountains vanishing on the horizon, and far away storm clouds brewing with rain that wouldn’t fall.