The Flats

He walked, as if walking was all He knew.

As if compelled by their own will, His feet traced a languid path down the dusty road, warm wind stirring the lapels of His sun-stained flannel. The wind always brought the dust storms with it, and He met them with closed eyes and sealed lips. The sand traced the caverns of His face, and He brushed a waterfall of particles from His greying beard as the wind slowed to a whisper. 

Another sign, He thought. 

He met the green road marker with a stale frown, shading His eyes from that inescapable light. “August Hills Drive,” it read. At its base, the road split in two, one path continuing down the endless trail He followed presently, and another splitting the sea of sagebrush and rock litter into some parallel infinity.  Water pools born of heat on black tar engulfed the horizon, but He thought He could make out the hazy silhouette of mountains behind the shimmering. He felt oddly compelled at the prospect of a shift in land, but His vision was promptly swallowed by another sandy tempest and He found Himself gripping the rim of His dull navy hat to prevent its departure. 

If nothing else, He thought, At least I can turn from the wind. His future wishes suddenly seemed arbitrary, and He turned His trajectory down the new road, whose wind seemed to approach from a more palatable direction. 

The dust ripped through the sage, tinting the air with a bitter pine scent as the gusts ravaged the valley.  Its howl was deep and resonant, piercing far deeper than its flurries alone could manage. He found Himself stumbling as He walked, His irregular steps splitting swarms of dust that seemed to spiral around His boots, climbing the weathered denim of His pants like discontinuous serpents. 

This storm was violent, and everlasting. They seemed to grow larger and longer as the day went on, as if growing in size and strength as the sun ascended into the unclouded sky. They did nothing to relieve the hellish, blazing inferno of midafternoon, instead tearing across the planes like firestorms starved for breath. He held the bandana tightly to His face, His fingers digging into His cheekbones as He choked for air beneath the cloth. 

As the minutes turned to hours, He walked on. The wind was ceaseless, the heat unbearable. He felt its torrid lick deep beneath His flesh, feverish waves of heat radiating across His torso and down His arms. His eyes, no more than slits splitting dry skin, searched the ceaseless dust for salvation. 

After an eternity, the nearby silhouette of a skeleton house was borne from the blinding dust, a shadowy black monolith against the orange wall of sand standing a hundred feet back from the road. Its windows were empty, and the white plaster exterior was painted with age and weather. The shingles of its peaked roof had long since departed, leaving a pitiful, naked structure aged beyond its year. His mind was blank, colored and motivated by sensory impulses and free from the dizzying constraints of concrete thought. Mindlessly, He let the wind carry Him to its doorstep, and allowed Himself through its empty frame. 

Inside, it was dilapidated and decrepit, and the unkempt wooden floor seemed to welcome collapse. Wounds in the pale walls revealed a series of studs beneath the skin, and through their gaping apertures He could make out the unfurnished layout of the first floor.  Between the holes, the walls were scrawled with esoteric black paintings, many of which depicted animals free from the forms of reality, staring out with empty white eyes. Central to the wall facing Him was a portrait of an eagle, its head cocked to the side and palm-spread pools of paint giving texture to its feathers. Like the rest, it was little more than a black silhouette, but its size was startling. The blank stare from its white eye imbued Him with the distinct feeling of trespassing. Under its wingspan, various words hung suspended: ‘ellipsis,’ ‘carnation,’ ‘sin,’ and ‘rapture.’ There was another, above the wing’s curve, but the paint had coagulated so that it was made unreadable. 

With eyes sewn nearly shut by dust particles and ears still ringing from the sharp howl of the wind, He leaned against the wall and allowed Himself to slide down to the floor, a soft top layer of dust cushioning His landing. The house groaned uncomfortably from the push and pull of the wind, wooden rafters expanding and contracting with great effort. Slowly, the hypnotic sound lulled Him into a deep sleep that seemed to last an eternity. 

When He awoke, the howl of the wind had died down, and the dust storm tore across some other vista somewhere in the valley’s impossible breadth. He brushed the sand from his brow and adjusted himself, his brittle and weathered limbs mirroring the house in their creaking discontent. As He pushed himself back against the wall and gave another passing brush to His eyes, he looked up and found another pair returning his stare. 

It was a boy. He looked no older than 16 or 17, and he wore an unkempt bushing of black hair which matched the dirty cardigan he was draped in. He wore black-rimmed glasses over his eyes, although one frame appeared to be missing a lens, and the other was badly cracked.  A cross-body strap dangled loosely from his shoulder and connected to a film camera at his side, which he hugged tightly between his arm and body.  He sat atop a small wooden box in the room’s center, leaned forward with elbows planted firmly on knees, and a tinder-bundle of small branches, sage leaves, and plywood leaned against his side. The boy was staring at Him when He awoke, wearing a quizzical expression under his raised eyebrow. 

“Funny place to sleep, mister,” he spoke with the hint of a southern drawl, seemingly masked with some effort, but his stare was unbroken. The man said nothing, instead searching the boy’s face for answers, but the look he returned was one of simple innocence, unconcerned with the man’s trespass. Finally, He spoke.

“Is this your home?” He inquired with a dry and scratchy voice, barley above a whisper, and yet still powerfully resonant in the small space they occupied. 

The boy answered with a dry chuckle and a slight shake of the head before setting his camera down carefully at his side and dumping the contents of his tinder bundle onto the wooden floor. “No sur,” he replied as he began separating the sage leaves from the wood fragments. “Jus passin’ through, same as yourself I’d wager.” The boy looked up expectantly, but the man offered no insight. 

“It’s dangerous out here,” He said eventually. “There’s nothing here for you.” 

“There’s the beauty,” the boy retorted with another chuckle. He drummed his fingers gently against the side of the camera, a leather lens cap covering its black eye. “Ain’t no one here to see it, so I wanna take it back with me. No one here but you, I suppose.” 

“This is not beauty.” The man said, the resonant hum of his voice ascending into a firm and demanding tone. “This land is pestilence, it is famine. It is abandoned by God. Have you not seen the sandstorms with your glass eye, boy? Have you not felt the dust on your face? You speak as though we are here by choice, but you can’t see that we are damned. Damned.”  A bitter silence filled the room, the last orange light of the sun casting the house’s shadow deep across the flats. The paintings on the wall began to sink into invisibility in the darkness, and the two figures were nothing more than shadows against the walls. The boy removed a flint from his pocket, and began striking it against the pile of sage and sticks he had constructed while the man had spoken. The sage erupted into a brief flame at the touch of the flint’s spark, but quickly settled into a steady burn as the sticks began to smoke.

“You live in an awfully violent world, mister,” the boy retorted eventually. 

“We are born of violence, birth itself is violence,” the man replied, calmer now, his gaze lost in the dance of the flame. 

“What are you doing out here then?” the boy ventured, finally gathering the courage to ask. 

“Just looking. Looking for the end of this valley. There must be something else, something from before. It can’t go on forever,” he spoke in a strained and shaky voice. 

“The valley has many tricks, mister. If you ain’t careful, it’ll swallow you.” 

“It already has,” He said, burning tears swelling in His eyes and contorting the flame into a shapeless mass of heat. “I’ve been walking for as long as I can remember.” 

The boy watched the tears cut lines down the dirt on the man’s face with a bittersweet sadness. “Me too, mister.”