Albuquerque Crusade

Desert Isolation Write Conscious Challenge

It was dead. Another skeletal ornament on the desert floor. Slamming down the hood with contempt, I heaved myself up onto the makeshift seat and looked out onto the vastness. Low clouds smeared the sky a rich and thick purple, as a few dying rays from the long red dusk leaked out from the horizon. A tall thin figure in the distance, unmoved by the bloody backdrop, was the only indicator that Mars was not a three-hour drive from Albuquerque. Although the temperature would have convinced me otherwise. Despite the rusty tint, the far-off planet is freezing, as are deserts at night. Earlier, sitting on the car like this would have fried my flesh. It would have sizzled like the eggs Sal cooked on it here all those years ago. He called me Bacon after that trip and even though the pink faded fast, the name stuck. Remembering to wrap up warm, like he showed me, I settled down for the night inside the busted car, in the shadow of a hefty rock. In fact the sleeping bag was his. It wasn’t the same one he gave me when I foolishly thought it would be a sweltering night and left mine at home. But his name was written in faded ink along the hem by my shoulder, looking over me like a guardian angel, as my brother, my friend, and my teacher of sleeping, eating, and even drinking, because apparently cactus water kills.

A howling coyote roused me a few hours later. My solitary companion had stayed stoic. Wandering out over the dry and dusty desert, my error became apparent. It was a cactus. It had no flower, just needles. Pressing the point pricked my finger, shedding a single tear. And the wind went silent. The clouds had gone, swallowed up by the stars. They didn’t twinkle. They hung there, hinting at ancient tales of betrayal and buried treasure, revealing nought. Rustling in a bush by my foot told me it was time to return to the car. The celestial aside, the sky was empty. You could see the curvature of the earth. Knowing all of that is up there, it either crushes you or it infatuates you. Sal once said every time he looked up he had a small urge to bite into the cream of the galaxy. Although he was actually talking about the paintings at home. When we were children, Lucy used to balance us on her knee while she painted these huge landscapes. Despite their scale, they were incredibly faithful to detail. She would include the faintest hoof prints of a horse reduced to a black speck on the yellow. But my favorite was a very small one. It was when us two first came to her. There was paint all over our shirts. You could hardly tell that my shirt had been white and Sal’s had been black. They were the same color. But it was the best because of the way she captured the watery blue of my eyes and the pink tongue too big for my mouth. Sal had a full mop of blond hair, so we must have both been really young; I vividly remember him having black hair on his fifth birthday. He showed me a den in the woods and then did his famous disappearing act. A minute later, while I was floundering about in the glade, he sprung off a rock and wrestled me to the ground. But Lucy was a real artist. We weren’t. Once we even went to her to settle an argument we were having about color. Back then he was crazy about a girl in New York. She was pregnant, from before they met, and apparently had flowing black hair and blazing eyes, emerald green. He even bought two rings with a small emerald on each. I was never sure if she even existed. He kept one and now I have the other. Anyway, he would apparently write her these long love letters, oozing with hyperboles, detailing every minute aspect of her like she was the Colosseum in Rome. But emerald was too common of a word for Sal. Every past lover would have told her used it. He wanted to stand out. Her eyes were aquamarine. I said they were hardly the same thing. So that’s why we asked her.

Lucy was also why I was here. She was the one who told us about the so-called treasure in the desert. And swiftly wished she hadn’t because Sal got obsessed with it. The story went that there was some sequined dancer who had been piling up debts in every hotel she had been in and was barred from every other establishment with an ounce of respect to its name. Loose women weren’t liked, but they were lusted after in the bedroom. Lucy never told us these parts, but Sal did some digging. There was one scorching summer where he spent every day in the dusty library, unearthing anything and everything he could. He said this girl was an atrocious singer and got the name the Garbling Guinea Fowl. But she must have been pretty shrewd because when the bailiffs came knocking she showered them with rhinestones from her window. They quickly cottoned on, but it stalled them long enough for her to escape. She made a detour to the desert to bury a box of her finest jewels and was then seen heading to her sister in the next town over, but she never made it. The sister didn’t report the disappearance for months, afraid she would somehow be complicit in the trickery. Sal believed the treasure was out there, still. I believe Sal is too.

Gunshots punctured the pretty picture. Darting out of the car, taking only my water, I dived behind the rock. There was the slightest ditch underneath. Squeezing into the cleft, scraping my bare knees on the gravel, an engine spluttered to a halt. Car doors clicked open and close and open. Rummaging. Stealing. Oddly, there were no voices, just the crunch of heavy boots on the ground. Then someone spat and the car started up again. Low and shallow breathing, waiting for the whirring noise to die out. Venturing out of my hiding place, there was a sloshing noise. Was that water? Swivelling, I never found out.

My head was swimming, but that was the only thing. Everything else had been tied down. Two teens with masks over their faces were fiddling with thick knots around my legs. The chair itself was a faded plastic thing like you’d see in an abandoned garden. It was next to a makeshift table— a rogue surfboard balancing on some rocks. A small crowd of people were huddling around a fire, embers floating up to the ether. At least I hadn’t been out long. Unless it had already been a day. Inhuman screeching propelled the group into a frenzy. Even the two diligently lazing at my feet joined the others. It was an eclectic bunch, dressed in an assortment of stuff, because clothes wasn’t the right word. Some wore ripped shirts, some wore rags of a thickly woven fabric, some were naked. There was a girl in front of them who seemed to be leading it all. Her hardly adult hips gyrated hypnotically and the only thing preserving her dignity was a flattened tire tube. She took a puff from a pipe being passed around the group; brown smoke swam off into the desert, chasing the shifting sands.

Behind the carnival was a fire pit, with something roasting there, next to a tent made of a dead cow. There was also something which at some point had had four wheels. It was now mottled with blue specks. The left headlight was punched out and every other window was smashed in. From within emerged a tall, dark-haired man, with sunken eyes. Bobbing, trancelike, he was nonetheless different from the rest. He was fully clothed for starters, although it didn’t look as though he had changed in years. A shrill blast on a flute snapped heads. Gliding through like a duck on the water, he parted the crowd. He clambered up onto the rock, magicking a stick from the darkness. Flourishing it, he motioned towards me. We have a visitor! Eighty beady eyes turned and fixed on me, not with malice, nor interest, just a vacant gaze, hanging there, like the stars in the sky. Then as soon as he started talking, the eyes retreated to the rock of their world. Tonight under the hallowed stars we have been given sign of an offering. An offering which rivals the richest treasures of the forty thieves. We must only wait another year; we are so close. When the sun shines green on an aquamarine sea, the treasure you will see— that is what was revealed to me.

As he continued his tales, I started rocking gently, side to side. Whilst on the verge of toppling, he pointed at me with his gnarly stick. He leapt off the rock and a space opened in the crowd below. Leaning over me, leering, he flashed his teeth. Half were gold and half were yellow. Coarse bits of sand were nestled in his wiry beard. Reeking of sex and petrol, it was hard to breathe in front of him. I’d rather have choked on my tongue. Listen, don’t ruin what you have here— that’s my advice. Spitting into my eye, he demanded to see my possessions, promptly displayed to him on a sheet of corroded metal. Picking up a few things, he mumbled to himself. Interesting. Fasten him up— doubly tight. So, what brings you here? I am lost. I don't believe you are lost, but I believe something else is. I am lost, though. What is it you’re looking for? Nothing. Don’t lie, where is your map? Tell me where your map is. I don't have a map. Oh is that so? I seem to remember someone very similar to you believing the same. But he, he had a map. He just needed his— his mind opening. He cackled and a bellow echoed out from the crowd. Striking his stick down on the ground, cleaving a pebble in two, they fell silent. He went on. Tell me, what are you here for? Anything shiny? He pronounced this last word monosyllabically. Dropping his dusty hand onto my shoulder, with the other he grabbed my shirt and pulled me in. He dug his fingers underneath my shoulder blade. Squirming I replied clearly. No. I was lost. I am out here. I want to go home. I have no idea who you are or what you are doing. But let me go. And why should we do that? You are a threat. It would be a shame to let you run loose and jabber about us where we shouldn't be jabbered about. Don’t you think? The crowd took three hundred steps back, leaving me there, alone, with this man who wouldn't have been out of place in a pirate novel.

Nothing was further away at that moment than my bed than Lucy’s paintings, than those moments with Sal out in the desert or the woods or wherever his wildness led us. I would have traded my life to have him by my side through this. He always knew what to do. I hoped I would too. Looking him dead in the eye, ignoring his stench, I challenged him. So what do you want from me? To kill me? Then you will never find the treasure you think I have. This shocked him and he staggered back. Oh no, no, no! We don't want to harm a hair on your head. Well, I certainly don't. You know what— I’ll let you go. But we'll play a little game. I will let you walk back. I will even be as generous to give you back your water bottle. I will only fill it halfway, though, because I can't be having people thinking I have a soft side. Oh and one last thing. Beckoning over a girl from the firepit, he took a poker off of her. The end was white. Sizzling ensued. Like bacon, he smiled.

After hours of staggering through the soothing desert night sweetly kissing the searing pain on my left leg, my bottle had run dry. Collapsing onto the asphalt, my sweat wrung out by the glaring sun, the only living thing for miles mocked me. Dazzling green, emerald almost, the poisoned chalice loomed over me. I resisted. Sal had saved my life again.

George Elbert Burr Road to Paradise Valley, Arizona, c. 1926