Sublime Messages

One, A

Had the sun beat down any harder, it'd have surely burnt a hole right there in the dusty expanse of trailers and ramshackle shotgun houses that Ruby knew as her small world. She was used to such heat, living within several miles of Death Valley proper, far away enough from the tourists yet close enough to suffer from the lack of rainfall. Though she had just turned fourteen, she hardly remembered life beyond this small unincorporated bit of land off Old Portal Road, somewhere just west of Lone Rock, a bike ride away from the small town. But she didn't really care much about her own myopic understanding of what lay beyond, mostly because she believed she'd found the only thing in the world that mattered, and that thing was Damien.

Mama had told her not to hang around him, that Damien was too old to be hanging around a fourteen-year-old, that he hadn't any "redeeming qualities," that Damien's daddy had been a degenerate and a drunk (nevermind that Ruby had no idea what "degenerate" meant and never thought to ask) and his son was sure to be just like him.

But Ruby wasn't known for listening to her Mama. She wasn't like Whit, who maintained a fierce loyalty to their mother even though she didn't seem to care much about him.

"Go on, then," Ruby ordered the hovering boy. "You're like a fly on shit. Damien won't come around with you there."

Though he was a mere three years his sister's junior, Whit acted (according to Ruby) like a child. He was fair-skinned and freckled, and a crop of soft brownish-black curls grew up off his head in a veritable bush. Any observer could've guessed the source of his rail-thin limbs was malnourishment, and they would've been correct.

"I said go on!" The girl stopped still and spun on her brother. "Get!"

Whit snuffled. "But where should I go? Mama told you to—"

"She told me to take care of you, and that's what I'm doing. If you're in the house, ain't nothing going to happen to you."

"Ruby, I don't want to be alone!"

"I don't care! Just read that library book Damien got you. Or watch TV. I won't even tell."

Her attempt at persuasion had little effect; Whit might've been young and small, but he wasn't quite as hopeless as his physique hinted. "You're gonna go smoke with him."

Ruby's wheedling grin immediately drooped corners. Her hands went to her hips. "And what if I do?"

"I'll tell Mama."

The girl sucked in her lips, pinched her eyes. "Whitteman Beau Rouge! You little—"

"No-aaah! Leggo! Rubeeeee!"

She'd pulled the curl lock, a particular form of torture she'd invented just for Whit. (Well, except she hadn't really; she'd seen their Mama do it many a time when she was in one of her moods, so Ruby felt a special sense of superiority when she used it.) The curl lock was quite simple in design and produced immediate results: all Ruby had to do was grab hold of Whit's hair, get a good firm handful of those curls, and yank him about wherever she wanted him to go.

Dragging the boy through the labyrinth of trailers and sparser homes, past two chained and barking pitbulls, past the remains of an old bristlecone pine nobody had felt inclined to remove, Ruby headed back to their dusty, paint-peeling two-bed one-bath. An old man sitting on a folding lawn chair, one of those old woven ones with strips of brown and green, yelled "You get him, girl! You show that scoundrel!" before falling into a fit of coughs and nearly tumbling from his seat. Dust puffed up in little clouds around the siblings' obstinate feet, and when they reached their dilapidated porch, steps creaking something awful as Ruby forced her brother up them, the girl finally released her brother, shoving him toward the screen door.