The Long Walk

His eyes were quick and shifty as he looked across the desert he had been rudely dumped into. How could this have happened? He wondered, but wondering was meaningless, useless, and depressing. Wondering wouldn't get him out of this hot hell hole. Wondering couldn't send a helicopter down to pick him up and whisk him away to some tropical resort destination where he could be having a tequila sunrise with some hot babe in a string bikini. No, wondering did nothing. The sky above him started to shift from a dark purplish-grey to a faded blue. Morning was on its way and with it the heat would follow. There would be no hiding from what was about to happen. Only strategically planned moves. A game of chess on a board that was miles long and boiling hot.

He looked down at his beaten hands. They hurt, but he could ignore that for now. The blood running down his fingers had finally stopped. He rubbed his palms down the sides of his Levi’s, boot cut, the only kind he wore. Flakes of dried blood scattered around his paper-bag-brown hiking boots. A few minutes more and the sun was peeking over the hillside. He knew where the sun rose, but the problem now was where to point his feet. The wrong direction and he would be turned into hot afternoon sun baked bones. The plant life around him was few and far between in the valley he was in. A good look from the top of a nearby butte may give him some indication of where he could go. He shifted his shoulders around working the tight soreness out of them. A quick joint popping of his fingers and he was ready to go. He turned west toward the nearest butte and heard the sand and rocks shift under his weight. Ten minutes of walking and he was already sweating. He reached a hand to his hair and was almost burned because of it. That's what happened when you had hair the color of oblivion. Hair that absorbed every wavelength of color. Too much energy trapped on his head. He paused in his rock crunching and took the Royal blue t-shirt with the gold Nike swoosh on the front from his body leaving an egg colored tank on. No point in trying to make a homemade turban look aesthetically pleasing, he thought as he wrapped the shirt across his forehead and tied the sleeves together in the back. It held and he felt the temperature drop a degree, it was good enough. His skin began to warm as the sun behind him rose higher into the bright cloudless sky and he swore he felt his melanin count increase by the second.

Thoughts of a cheap air conditioned hotel room with Patsy Cline pumping from a nearby clock-radio and a still sleeping naked blond beneath a light yellow-flowered print top sheet filled the spaces between his steps. He shook his head. Memories were dangerous. The butte rose like a giant and he wondered where the line between butte and mountain ran. He guessed it was like the same line between here and hell, somewhat in the same vicinity but worlds apart. There was a dull aching in his head, okay for now, but soon it would be something he couldn't ignore. Soon his body would run dry screaming out for a little H2O and there would be nothing to help fill the spaces between his cells. Can't think about that now, he thought, only deal with the present. It was his motto, his prayer, his savior, it was the 99 cent cheeseburger when all you had was a dollar for lunch. As the grade steepened his breathing became labored. He cursed Effie who had lured him at the age of eight behind the far fence of his daddy's farm to light up. Just one drag, don't inhale. Coughing, the coughing was terrible, but he had managed to breathe in that cancerous smoke. Held it in long enough to feel it burn his insides. He imagined his throat, his lungs, his stomach, his intestines, everything was charred. Through all the heavy breathing, his lungs pumping as hard as they could, he still wished for that cigarette. Wished for the smoke that would cruise the insides of his body stifling the panic that was on the edge of his peripheral vision.

He couldn't panic, panic meant that it was hopeless and hopeless couldn't be an outcome for this situation. The rocks around his feet grew in size from golf balls and basketballs to VW Beetles and SUV's. Small insects flew around him as he passed yard after yard. They seemed to stare at him not used to so strange a creature being in their territory. They could keep their territory as far as he was concerned. Keep it and thrive as long as his ass is gone. A tune floated into his head as a large beetle flew past his ear. So familiar yet hard to place. The tune repeated itself over and over in his head. What was it? Something from long ago. But what were the words? Who was the singer? He pressed on up the butte or was it a mountain...details. An old song or a new song. For some reason he couldn't think of anything but the tune. Was it happening already, dehydration dementia? Had he been here that long? No, it wasn't dehydration. His lips held their moisture for now. With one last grunt of effort he hauled his 200 pound body atop the last large bolder. The view was beautiful and discouraging. Not a town in site. No roads leading in any direction. Just the rolling hills leading into mountains on one side and rolling hills leading into more rolling hills on the other. Mountains or hills, Pepsi or Coke, paper or plastic, he might as well flip a coin at this point. He searched his pockets. He searched his empty pockets and cursed the gods for not letting him off the responsibility hook. There was always the possibility that both ways led to his one way ticket off this earth. Something in the back of his mind nagged at him. Something in the back of his mind pulled his ear and pinched his skin. Damn survival instincts kicked in.

The top of the butte or mountain he was sitting on was getting hotter. The huge basketball in the sky had risen some more. Time to choose. The master of his own destiny. Maybe he was a little dehydrated. The tune floated into the spaces between his thoughts from the dense tissue of his muscles as his feet tapped along with the beat. He started to hum it, and the tune reached out from his thoughts and flew on the hot wind that was blowing around his head. He felt his feet take on a life of their own. They stomped louder and louder so they soon drowned his humming. Annoyed that his feet would try to compete with his humming he opened up his mouth and throat and let the tune cascade out like a waterfall. There were no words to his song and if there were they were words only his ancestors would understand. Was it his song or his ancestors? He couldn't remember. His feet sounded like drums. His feet and him were one but at the same time they weren't. His feet picked him up and carried him down the face of the butte-mountain. His feet marched him in tune, in time, in space with the song. Heat rose off the invisible trail in front of him as if the world were catching fire. Did he care if it did? No. There was nothing else in the world now. The last man left alive on a planet that was taken back by the insects and the animals, the rightful owners.

Between his notes he saw his blond woman tangled, sleeping in the sheets of that cheap air conditioned hotel room. Saw that the roots of her naturally coal black hair were growing out. He saw brown skin twitch as she dreamed and he hoped it was a good one. He hoped she'd forgive him. Hoped that she would always have good dreams. He shook himself from his wandering mind and blasted vibrations that shook the cloudless sky. A wind picked up sending his turban billowing out behind him like sails of a ship. His journey would be a good one like a bowl of warm fry bread waiting for butter and jam, it would be a steady one like the river that ran through his backyard, it would be a long one like the suffering of a people long since silenced. The sun took the shadows from the earth.