Sagebrush Nightmare

She crept slowly across the ground, praying not to be discovered.

The grass in the yard was tall enough to hide all but her billowy skirts.

He slept soundly, but she was still afraid because he usually woke up when she left. But on this early morning, he was so drunk escape seemed possible. She continued to crawl on her belly until she reached the verge of the yard. Beyond the uncut grass was the prairie, the desert sand, and, further on, the shelter of sage. When her fingers reached the sandy edge of the desert, she looked back. A clumsy shadow moved behind the dingy glass of a cracked window. 

She sprang to her feet and raced blindly toward the vast sea of sagebrush, the river, and the hills.

Exhausted, she finally reached the sheltering sage and flopped onto the warm ground. She raised her head to give thanks when she saw his dirty boots. She felt his hot breath as he leaned far down and stared blankly at her.

“Bitch.”

It was the last sound she heard. The pistol shot that ended her life was lost across the desert expanse. He buried her in the warm sand and then staggered home to fall asleep on the broken steps of their empty house.

When he woke, he called her name.

***

Morning comes hard to the dry land. The sun burns away the cold and bakes the ground into a hard fact of life no plow can dent.

The house had risen quickly on a hill above the sage prairie and a long way from the river. He built it alone many years before his young wife disappeared. One day she was there; the next she was gone--and he was alone again. He came home one early morning, he said and found nothing in the house to indicate anything was wrong. Except she wasn’t there.

Then he waited all day.

At dusk, coyotes began to range cautiously back and forth in the low sagebrush drawn in by the sour scent hanging in the air of something.

As the sun sank toward the dry horizon, he saddled his one good horse and rode at a brisk walk away from the house toward the river while the nervous coyotes in the sagebrush continued to sniff the parched prairie wind air. The man knew why they were there but did nothing to discourage them.

He stared at his cramped right hand and wondered in a whisper:

Can the desert sand scrub away the stain?

Will the river be deep enough to wash him clean?

At the river, a long, flat, slow-moving stretch of water blocked his path. He twisted in the saddle to look back over his shoulder but saw nothing except the rose and lavender glow of the far hillsides blooming in the setting sun.

He could not wait to cross. The river was up, and the only ford would be lost in shadow when night fell. Across the river, the faraway sky had become a deep, dark blue, and the sage and sand gave way to the green foothills one day’s (or two nights’) ride away.

There was no sound but the river’s soft rush.

He spurred his reluctant horse into the river. The current rose immediately to his knees and water filled his boots. The horse stumbled once at midstream, then scrambled up the far-side bank. He did not pause to rest his horse but continued a half mile beyond the river. When they crested a low hill, he dismounted on the far side, left the horse to graze, and crept back to peer over the flat crest.

He spotted riders, on the far bank. They had found his tracks and stopped. The sun was nearly gone, and the river was treacherous at night. They weren’t even certain she was dead. She may have run away, and he may have gone after her.

The leader dismounted and knelt to examine the horse’s tracks. when he saw the tracks disappear into the river, he shook his head and remounted. The leader said something to the other riders, and they rode slowly back the way they’d come.

Still, on his belly, the man watched the men ride away. When the riders were out of sight, he put his forehead on the ground. The day’s heat, which had soaked into the sand, seared his forehead and seeped into his brain. The bunch grass brushed his cheek and prickled his ears.

He felt himself tremble. He rose to his knees and discovered his fists were filled with sand and bunch grass. He raised his voice to the sky in a long wail that even the retreating horsemen must have heard.

He sat back on his heels and rubbed the sand and bunch grass into his eyes. He fell onto his right side and sobbed silently while night settled slowly onto the prairie.

Soon, it was fully dark.

A short distance away, his horse raised his head and peered back in the direction of the river, then toward the distant foothills. The moment passed and the horse began to nibble again on the sparse prairie grass.

***

The cold night was deeper than any he remembered. An icy wind blew down from the distant mountains, and the old man slept without rest.

An hour after dawn she returned from the desert, as always, barefoot, and young and beautiful, her arms full of spring flowers. She touched his shoulder and shook him gently. The sleep drained slowly from his mind as his eyes focused on his young wife. Finally, in a voice raspy with sleep and age and regret, he called her name.

He closed his eyes for the last time. She smiled and danced on bare feet back into the desert toward the sage sea and the river.

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