Incandescent Fire.
Sun Worshipers.
Ground squirrels dart from hole to hole, shimmying lizards disappear into fissures, and the sun is high in the big sky. Dirt and rock crunch beneath the young man’s feet. He pushes back a strand of dull, boot-black hair with one hand, grips his purple leather-bound Bible—the one that belonged to his daddy—with the other. Up ahead, a girl is lounging on a rock, baking in the sun.
The young man stops walking. He watches her watch him.
She’s wearing a simple dress, something between a potato sack and a floral curtain, but it looks right on her. Easy in the breeze.
He dusts off his western-style brown blazer and adjusts his bolo tie. A moment later, he’s standing in front of the girl.
“Hello.” He’s not looking at her when he says it. He’s looking out across the dry, bronze rolling hills.
“Hello.” She’s looking at the young man’s face.
“What you doin’ out here?” he says.
“Sittin’ on a rock in the sun.”
The young man picks up a pebble, rolls it between his fingers, then throws it down into the ravine. Something stirs in a nearby patch of wild oat, but nothing emerges.
“What are you doin’?” The girl is picking at a scab on her knee, breaking up Pangea with the stubby nail of her index finger.
“Walkin’ in the sun, I guess. You know, you shouldn’t be out here.”
“Why not?”
“It’s dangerous.” The young man looks down the trail from where he came, then up the trail where he was headed before he stopped. “My daddy says the Devil walks this path. He says—”
“Why do you walk it? I mean, if it’s so dangerous?” Finished with dead skin, the girl plucks an orange poppy growing from between two stones, holds it up to her nose.
“Why do I walk it?” says the young man. “You asking why I’m not afraid of the Devil?”
“I guess so.”
“Because I’m a good man.”
The girl scoffs, plucks a petal from the poppy, lets it fall.
“What’s so humorous?”
The girl doesn’t respond, not at first. She lifts her head, watches a hawk circling above. “Good people die every day. Being good…that don’t mean much.”
The young man picks up another pebble and sails it down into the ravine. This time, a ground squirrel squeaks its displeasure and darts to the hillside, where it’s swallowed up by one of many holes.
“Sure. I’ll give you that—good people die every day. But not by the hand of the Devil.”
The girl shakes her head. “Are you kiddin’ me? What about people who kill children? What about kids who drown cats in bags—the hunter who shoots the mommy deer as she’s eating blackberries from the bramble?”
The young man laughs. “You tellin’ me hunters are the Devil?”
“I’m tellin’ you that good things are murdered every day. Call it the Devil—call it…I don’t know. Call it nature? It don’t matter. There’s no protection offered or granted for being a good man.”
The young man kneels, places his Bible on the dirt path, and ties his dusty black shoe. “God will protect me.”
“Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. Anyway, I don’t need protecting.”
“Why is that?”
The girl shrugs. She’s squinting, her face pointed toward the sky, watching the hawks again.
The young man lifts his Bible, stands, and then looks down the path. “Well, I should be off.”
The girl lifts a lazy hand to say goodbye, but her eyes are glued to the swimming hawks.
The young man walks down the road, singing a hymn1.
Oh Lord, my God
When I, in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made
Now I see the stars, and I hear the rolling thunder
Thy power throughout the universe displayed
When the young man is over the hill, the singing stops. The girl looks at her stubby nails. She’s so quiet, a lizard climbs onto her hand, lifts its body up and down as if it’s doing push-ups. She looks down at it and smiles; it dashes under a rock.
From over the hill, a moan, or a smothered shout—the girl looks up the path to where the young man had been only moments before. A bearded man strolls over the ridge; he’s sluggishly cordial. It’s hard to make out his features beneath the brim of his sun hat. He greets the girl with a lift of his walking stick, and when he passes the girl, he says, “Salutations.”
A hawk screeches.
“Hello,” says the girl, watching the man pass.
His stick is light brown in all but one spot. In that one spot, it’s dark brown, glistening in the sun, collecting dust in the drip.
Once the man is out of sight, the girl hops off the rock, stretches her legs, and then walks up the path in the direction the young man had gone.
Once over the hill, she sees his body, his blazer flapping open in the wind. Beside him, the purple Bible mimics the blazer, waving; Over here. Over here.
She walks over, slowly at first, then a little quicker. She looks behind her. Nobody. She looks up ahead. Nothing. She kneels, touches the young man’s belly: it’s not moving. He’s dead.
A fly crawls along his cheek and onto his nose—the girl shoos it away.
She touches the young man’s head, withdraws her hand, and looks at the blood. She presses the blood between her fingers. It’s as warm as the sun.
She looks in front of her again, then behind. Nothing. Nobody.
The girl wraps her lips around her finger at the knuckle, slides it out. Her finger is clean, glistening in the sun.
She looks down the path once more for good measure, then she eats.
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Fabulous! In the Allegheny mountains of Pennsylvania where I grew up there are places and creatures like this. The ancient and sentient forest tries them on like costumes. It’s got a bitter sense of humor. This story felt eerily like home.
I liked the story and I have to say the dialogue felt so authentic. Thank you for sharing.
I also have a personal question I wanted to ask, I left it inbox, when you have time please check it out.