Odd Sticks

𝟙: 𝔻𝕦𝕤𝕥

 The sun's nothing but a round red ball just now. Bright crimson, belly down, just touching the tops of the mountains way off in the distance. Dust rises between here and there, that dry Texas dust that sticks to just about everything. Saddlebags, tin plates, hats, you name it. Hell, there's even dust between your toes at the end of the day. You know how it is.

They're five, hat-cocked, gun-loaded, britches-buckled, cattle-swiping sons of bitches. Riding low in the saddle, hips rippling, easy-like, they've got that brow-beaten hardness about them, all corners and edges, like Colorado flint, ready to cut at the slightest pressure of your fingers. They're five, riding on west. Five sets of shoulders, five pairs of eyes, five stained Stetsons. Six horses.

They're tired. The horses are tired. You can tell by those staggers every so often, those dry coats, those dull eyes. It's a long way to Mexico from the west of Texas, and there ain't much water on the way.

You can tell Cal's mad. It shows in the slant of his shoulders, all rigid-like, and the way he's gripping the very reins of his horse, like he wants to strangle someone with them. There's a stripe of damp down his back where his shirt's sticking to his skin; his hair's clinging to the back of his neck in sweat-soaked curls. The sun's dropping lower in the sky, and he's watching it go, squinting into the glare of the last reluctant stripes of sun, his dark brows drawn up tight together.

"Where we stoppin', Cal?" Reno is all elbows, seems like. You'd never think it to look at him, but he's sharper with his long rifle than prob'ly Pawnee Bill. He's mad too. They're all mad. You can tell Reno by his hands. Reno never stops moving. Always fiddling. But tonight he's got one hand on the reins and one hand on his gun. He's stroking that thing's trigger like a cat, like he'd pay a man to give him something to shoot at.

"Let's go on a piece longer," says Cal, after a while. "We'll stop at sundown." After that, things are quiet again. There's no sound but the stamp of hooves on the hard-packed earth, and the occasional far-off call of a verdin. Quiet's good. It means there's no one following.

The smell of woodsmoke floats up on the night air, and suddenly they've all drawn up short, standing still, holding their breaths in. Only Reno is quivering with pent-up excitement. Cal watches him narrowly. And then he's off, wheeling his horse, spurring it on, they're running for it, galloping through scrub brush and over tumbled sandstone, and it's really life itself, to watch those dark figures suspended in motion, almost still against the red sky. Horses foaming, gasping for air, sweat pouring down their great rippling sides, their riders rising in the stirrups to coax them on, hats pulled down tight against the wind of their passage. And then they're gone, they've flashed out of vision, and it's like watching a nighthawk wheel and dart out of sight.

The sky is all streaks of crimson and mauve, now, mesas standing out against it like square black shoulders poking up from the horizon. There's a scent of sweet dust blowing on the hot breeze; it smells like Texas, all cloudy marijuana smoke and chewing tobacco stuck to your boot-heels. You can tell they're all taking it in, nostrils gone wide to suck up that sticky scent--it's home. You can talk all you want about the smell of lilacs in the spring or the sticky spray of salt on the shoreline or that hot, velvety scent when you're dragging your lips down a woman's belly--but desert smell's got 'em all beat.

The horses are dragging their feet, now, and Cal reins in in the big blue shadow of a crumbling red hoodoo, rocks stretching like big fingers into the sky.

"We pitch here. Nash, get a fire started." Saddle leather creaks as they dismount, bridle bits and buckles jingle as they unsaddle and rub down their horses.

Nash is a brown-eyed bust-up, chaps almost worn through on the inside of his thighs, he's all stone and harsh red Arizona clay, with a temper like a stuck trigger--combustible. He's got dirty jeans and crooked teeth, he's got hash in his saddlebag and heroin in his pocket; hair running down the middle of his chest like a line of coke, a stripe of dark against sun-burnt skin. But hell, man. What you do with your rustling money is your own business.

Nash gathers dry mesquite branches and dead clumps of sage, stacks them in his own peculiar fashion. He's got a way of doing it that stops the fire from smoking so much--an old Comanche trick, he says. God knows how and where he learned it, but it works all right.

Sparks fly, then yellow flames start to lick the dry timber, and Nash rocks back on his heels, grinning a little. Jethro's finished with his horse, and he goes over to squat by the fire, holding out his gnarled brown hands to the flames. You could almost think his hands were tree roots, being held out to feed the fire.

Jethro's goin' on fifty, and he's got seams in his face that tell strange stories; grime's ingrained in the creases of his neck and the palms of his hands from years on the trail. He's mighty fond of working his jaw, but tonight he's quiet. It would be wrong to tell those old jokes and yarns tonight. He knows how to play the harmonica like no one else, though, and somehow he does something to that battered strip of tin that makes it wail with this mournful kinda howl that sends shudders from the base of your neck all the way down to your sweaty heels in the base of your boots. He'll take it out once they've had something to eat, just watch.

Once the sun goes down on the desert, everything goes all purple and grey. The sky's the color of an overripe plum all ready to bust; there's just a stripe of red along the horizon where the sun's not quite gone. There's a big yellow moon rising off to the east, and before long there'll prob'ly be coyotes giving it the what for. Twilight's draping her gauzy veil around the world's shoulders; the heat's beginning to seep from the air, slowly, slowly. Around midnight it'll get cold, but for now the dusk is still clinging close and damp and hot.

The fire is going good now, and they're all five sprawling around it, knees bent, boots propped up heel-to-toe, bringing out their pipes and their chaws and their saddle-bag beans and jerky. It's a lonesome kind of night. Everyone's feeling raw inside. They're all thinking about the same thing, only they'll never talk about it. Part of life, you could say. People drift into your life, tangle themselves up in your heartstrings, and then they drift out, and life moves on, slow and muddy and inevitable as the Rio Grande.

Tony's taken it the hardest. His face has been pinched all day, eyes squinting hard, creases spreading out from their corners like cracks in the parched desert earth. He looks sick. Angry. He's staring off into the distance, now, looking for someone who's not gonna ride in anytime soon. What do you say to someone who loses his best friend? There's nothing to be said. All you can do is be. And you can be right alongside him while he's being. And then after a while your pain sorta melts together and you can look forward again. But for now–

Well, that highway moon is calling

like some lover from some other land

Before the dust can settle,

I'll kick it up and tear it down again.

It's the gypsy in me.

𓆣

I'm back, and not dead after all.  Let me know what you guys think of this--it's definitely rough, and not really a subject material I've worked with before, but I felt like I needed to publish something.  Honestly, I don't know where this story is going.  But I'm having fun with it, so that's what's important.  Love to you all xoxo