{"id":385,"date":"2018-09-20T01:03:59","date_gmt":"2018-09-20T01:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=385"},"modified":"2018-08-12T17:06:40","modified_gmt":"2018-08-12T17:06:40","slug":"highway-migrants-by-ben-ririe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2018\/09\/20\/highway-migrants-by-ben-ririe\/","title":{"rendered":"Highway Migrants by Ben Ririe"},"content":{"rendered":"
Ben Ririe is an English Major at BYU-Idaho. Growing up in San Antonio, Texas, he first took an interest in writing fiction at the age of eleven after reading several books by R.L. Stein. He now writes fiction, poetry, and music for the enjoyment of it. He writes with such influences as Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O’Connor, and Robert Frost.<\/em><\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

Highway Migrants<\/h3>\n

A dry wind brought the scent of fire from out of the west as if it were coming from the sun.\u00a0 It sat behind a veil of smoke, burnt and low over the plain, and Charlie held it there in his gaze without squinting.<\/p>\n

The boy walked alongside an old black lab at the rear of a highway caravan going north along I-15 away from Blackfoot.\u00a0 He kicked at pieces of gravel and talked to the dog, said things to it about the hardness of the asphalt and how it must hurt walking all day without shoes, while the dog just looked ahead and let droop its tongue as it sauntered with him down the middle of the road.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re gettin tired,\u201d Charlie said.\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019ve been walkin all day.\u201d<\/p>\n

They lagged some twenty yards behind the group in the knee-high shadow of a volcanic shelf running alongside the interstate.\u00a0 A dead tangle of weeds blew in front of them and wheeled over into the shoulder of the road.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you can lie down when we make camp for the night.\u00a0 I\u2019ll get a big old bowl of the soup for you, and you can have that.\u201d<\/p>\n

From up ahead, Charlie\u2019s mother called his name.\u00a0 He ran up into the group, leaving the dog behind where it plodded at a slowing pace.\u00a0 The sun fell lower and the dog trailed further behind.\u00a0 When Charlie looked back, it walked a long stone\u2019s throw from the group.\u00a0 He turned to his dad who pushed a dolly with stacked and bungeed cardboard boxes.\u00a0 \u201cDad.\u201d\u00a0 He pulled on his dad\u2019s flannel shirtsleeve.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRingo\u2019s still back there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dad didn\u2019t turn to look.\u00a0 \u201cHe\u2019ll catch up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s way back there though.\u00a0 Look.\u00a0 We have to slow down for him.\u00a0 He can\u2019t keep up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019ll catch up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou sure?\u201d<\/p>\n

The dad looked ahead smiling.\u00a0 \u201cYeah.\u00a0 Don\u2019t worry about him.\u00a0 He\u2019s a dog.\u00a0 He\u2019s tough.\u00a0 Always been tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

A while later the sun settled under the horizon and left the sky overhead blue and fading and turning almost all dark opposite in the east.\u00a0 Charlie looked back, and the old lab was gone somewhere to the divots in the highway or maybe behind the stretch of road going all the way past the last point where it dipped down and out of sight.<\/p>\n

He yanked on his dad\u2019s shirtsleeve again, trying to pull it away from the dolly.\u00a0 \u201cDad, look.\u00a0 He\u2019s gone.\u201d\u00a0 His voiced cracked.<\/p>\n

The dad turned his head to the boy and then over his shoulder for a second and then back to the boy.\u00a0 \u201cHe\u2019s okay.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, he\u2019s not.\u00a0 He\u2019s gone.\u00a0 What are we gonna do?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, he\u2019ll find us when we make camp.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s lost, and he won\u2019t<\/em> find us.\u00a0 We have to go back and get him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s okay.\u00a0 But if you want, you can go out there and find him.\u00a0 Bring him back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charlie looked back down the highway.\u00a0 It ran a straight course down the plain and out of sight, and nothing moved out there except tall grass in the wind.\u00a0 The pavement grayed to a black against the darkening cyanic blue of the horizon, hardly visible.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t,\u201d he said.\u00a0 He started to cry.<\/p>\n

Charlie walked along blubbering behind his dad and whimpering with no words.\u00a0 He quieted to a sniffle after a while, and the group made a late camp off the side of the interstate.\u00a0 They built the fire and boiled pots of mixed soups and ate at the edge of the firelight, the night now a deep-oil black with only the stars.\u00a0 No shades of blue at the west edge of the sky.<\/p>\n

While the men and women sat on mesh chairs and stumps and talked in low voices, Charlie stood at the edge of the camp and looked up toward the highway.\u00a0 He glanced back to see if anyone might notice him, and then he made through the sagebrush.\u00a0 Coming up onto the road, he looked south.\u00a0 Charlie saw nothing down the highway the direction they came from save the dark column of the asphalt going away and out of the fire\u2019s light a little ways ahead.\u00a0 A black dog in that black night was impossible to see.\u00a0 He stepped forward as if to venture blind into the void, but he stopped.\u00a0 His own feet disappeared beneath him in the dark, and he grew hot and wet about the eyes.\u00a0 The night just outside the fire might have stretched out forever in all directions, and all of it was unseeable, and all of it was unknowable too, and perhaps nothing could abide it alone whether it be man or woman or boy or girl or dog.<\/p>\n

Charlie ran down off the shoulder of the road and back to the campfire.\u00a0 He slowed to a stagger and stopped to bury his face in his dad\u2019s chest.\u00a0 \u201cWe have to go back and find Ringo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSon, we\u2019re not gonna get him back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s out there.\u201d\u00a0 He pulled on both his dad\u2019s sleeves.\u00a0 \u201cWho\u2019s gonna help him if we don\u2019t?\u201d<\/p>\n

The dad ran his fingers through the boy\u2019s hair.\u00a0 \u201cNo one.\u00a0 If he hasn\u2019t found us by morning, we\u2019ll just have to move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut what if he\u2019s still looking for us?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe he will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we can\u2019t leave.\u00a0 We have to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t stay.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSon, Ringo\u2019s old.\u00a0 He isn\u2019t gonna live much longer anyways even if we do find him.\u00a0 But he\u2019s been a good dog.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charlie started to whimper again.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people have lost their dogs before.\u00a0 It\u2019s part of life.\u00a0 And these days a lot of people are losing a lot more than their dogs.\u00a0 They\u2019re losing their parents or their best friends.\u00a0 And they just have to move on same as us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charlie didn\u2019t cry less.\u00a0 He only pulled harder on his dad\u2019s sleeves and cried himself all the way out until the fire was low to a glowing red patch, no flames escaping over the cinders.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben Ririe is an English Major at BYU-Idaho. Growing up in San Antonio, Texas, he first took an interest in writing fiction at the age of eleven after reading several books by R.L. Stein. He now writes fiction, poetry, and music for the enjoyment of it. He writes with such influences as Cormac McCarthy, Flannery … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-6d","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":388,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions\/388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}