She pulled
the old, brick-red pickup off to the side of the road, dust spinning wildly around
as the wheels settled into the gravel.
She listened to the engine slowly putter and die, then listened to
nothing at all. It wasn’t until every
last particle of the dry cloud had sunk back to sleep on the earth that she
reached for the door.
The
afternoon sun blinded her momentarily before she could see the land in front of
her. What had been her
great-grandfather’s perfectly maintained and harmonious farmland 100 years ago
was now a tangle of arid jungle. The
bounty of the land gone, nothing remained of the farm but a slowly sinking
silo. Tumbleweeds caught in the
thorn-filled brambles like lovers intertwined.
She hugged her abdomen tightly at the image.
Taking a
deep breath, she let the hot, still air fill every last space in her aching
body. There was a bitterness to the dead
wind, as if the pain of her childhood seeped into her lungs and blood along
with the dust. It had been thirteen years
since the old woman had died, but she carried the curse of her family in
everything she saw. She kicked at a
mound of weeds.
A flash of
color caught the corner of her eye.
Stalking farther away from the safety of the truck, she approached an
especially malicious-looking thicket.
The gleam of soft red could barely be seen through the slight openings
in the vines, but she reached for it like an infant reaches for a flame. When the first thorn dug into the pale skin
of her finger, she merely looked down at the beading drop of blood with
surprise. There was no pain.
Then she
was tearing. She ripped at the hedge
with a ferocity envied by a black sky opening and roaring at the land beneath
it. She felt the hot tears stream down
her face as she madly beat and pulled apart the thicket. She didn’t stop until she had unearthed the wild
rose growing beneath the hideous mess of nature, it’s red petals matching the
color of the blood smearing her hands.
She crumpled the flower to her chest as she herself crumpled to the
earth, petals and body alike coming to curl in the soft dirt.
If only she
could lie here for a hundred years more, she thought, the land would drink and
drink every last drop of her blood and tears, soaking up every bit of her
wasteland body until she was nothing more than the dust and the field itself
was green and fertile again. The river
would return, the roses too, and the animals would stay for good. The earth would wake as she slept.
The uneven
ground cradled her as her eyes slipped closed.
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