Connie saw him, sitting tall in the saddle two hundred yards from the road shoulder, hat in hand, his face weathered, his clothes dust-covered, his hair tinged red by the setting sun. He wiped his face with his sleeve. She’d stopped to check her left front tire. Had that jagged-edged hubcap torn the tread of the used tire her father told her to buy in El Paso? “It’ll get you to Las Cruces, and I’ll use the warranty for a new one,” he promised.
Why the hell did her father retire in the desert? There’s nothing to see except empty space and, occasionally, the bleached bones of cows and coyotes. Now, on the roadside, was the Marlborough Man watching her suffer from mechanical ignorance. She waved. She had a portable inflator. Maybe he had a tire gauge. Sure, for his horse.
She knelt down and inspected the damage. Well, glory be, the tire was fine. Maybe she hit an oil slick. She’d heard it can cause a car to slide like black ice does.
She waved again and shouted, “Helll-oo!”
He waved back in slo-mo and put on his hat, but his pony didn’t move toward her.
Disgusted, she got int the drivers seat, and revved her Camaro convertible. Momentary concern gave way to chronic frustration. She’d show his cranky-ass real horsepower! She glanced to her right. He had moved closer to her. She could see him smiling. He turned his pony right, and trotted away. She caught up to him, and the pony broke into a lope. She kept pace as they headed westward. 10 mph —20 mph —a full gallop at 30 mph.
But my car can run farther and faster on a tank of gas than your horse can on a bag of oats. And your horse will tire and die someday, while I’ll be showing this baby at classic car show when I’m sixty.
The pony jumped a corral fence without a stumble. Alright, her car couldn’t jump. She heard a snap! and fishtailed again. Damn it! She’d call Triple ‘A’ and flirt. It was better than playing the fool in a new car … in a stagnant water ditch … with a blown used tire.
The cowboy was a quarter mile ahead. “Come back!” she yelled to him. Can’t you see, I need you?”
She shaded her face with her hand. He was riding towards her. When he got to her, he said nothing, and she … she couldn’t speak. He wasn’t a young man. His eyes squinted at her as he leaned forward, resting his hand on the pommel of the saddle. He seemed to be questioning what he was looking at. He rubbed his eyes with a dirty fist. “C’mon, Eliza,” he said, and slowly rode off into the sunset.
An old rider of the purple sage.
Somewhere in space, OnStar’s four satellites were calculating her location and sending help. But, until help arrived, she was alone, a damsel in distress armed with a can of mace, watching as darkness revealed a cloudless, star-sequined sky. Vast and silent. Like God. Limitless beyond comprehension, so we rub our eyes and marvel. Maybe this was why her father, Edward Dearborn, chose to retire in the desert. It was an astronomer’s dream come true, far away from city lights that obstructed the view, the only competition being the white globe that seemed to hover above the horizon.
Edward wasn’t an astronomer, but his heroes had always been cowboys. He loved bleached bones. Shiny arrowheads. A turquoise studded hat band. Hand-tooled boots. Dancing the two-step at a country-western bar. Her friends would always ask if Ed was home before they visited, fearing Hank Williams Jr. would be wailing about somebody’s cheatin’ heart. Or Marty Robbins warning about ghost riders in the sky. Yippy-yi-ayyyyy. Or the one about the stampeding cattle, and how lightning showed the face of Jesus. It was possible to hear the Master call your name …
“Someday this will all be yours,” her father said about his vinyl record collection. She’d roll her eyes. “They’re the songs of America’s youth,” he said to himself as held the record by the rim and slipped it into a plastic sleeve. Reverentially. “My Grandfather said the whole family would gather ‘round the radio to hear broadcasts from the Grand Ol’ Opry. Imagine that, Connie. ”
When she was ten, she prayed he wouldn’t get dementia. Imagining can lead to all kinds of problems. Delusions. Hearing voices of non-existent people. Dreaming in the daytime. They spoke less and less or … maybe, she stopped listening. The last time he called, he said little except, “I’d like to have you visit.” That was Wednesday night.
She reached into the back seat for the sweater she kept folded on the seat. The hostile heat was evaporating quickly; the shadows on white sand as stark as the shadows of the backyard walnut trees on snow. Was the cowboy safe in the bunkhouse? She imagined him pulling the saddle off Eliza and filling her feedbag and treating her to an apple, hearing the steps creak as he climbed the stairs to a drafty cabin, and keeping his gloves on as he added kindling to the fireplace grate. Only when the fire crackled strong would he takes off his yellow-leather gloves, and rub liniment on hands aching from hours of plain ol’ hard work.
“He’s drinking coffee after washing the dust off his hands and face, Connie,” she heard her father whisper. “He’s looking at the sky, as we are. Together with our music, our memories and our mistakes. Maybe he’s thinking about the prettiest woman he ever saw in Abilene, Wichita, or Omaha ̶ and saying no to them all because around his neck he wears a locket that holds his dead wife’s hair on one side and a little girl’s ringlet on the other. He’ll hold the heart-shaped metal in his fingers, and bring to his lips for a kiss. For the last time in his life.”
It was her father’s voice, wasn’t it? Or maybe it was just the wind flooding the air with the scent of bitter-sweet sage. Does it ever rain in the desert? “Yes,” he said, “when you least expect it. You’ll feel a drop or two on your cheeks.”
Jenean McBrearty taught sociology and political science, and recently graduated from Eastern Kentucky University with an MFA Creative Writing where she was awarded the English Department’s Award for Best Graduate Creative Non-fiction. She writes full time … unless she’s watching basketball.