The Desert

On the walk back to the car I found a coyote carcass. It was humming, vibrating rather. I thought it was the hum of phone but it was a parade of flies hovering above the dead animal and landing in a fantastic frenzy. I bent down and inspected it closer, noticed marches of ants were also carrying away pieces of the pie. The smell isn’t too bad. I still open another bottle of suds. It was probably hit by a car.

I keep walking and find myself under a two hundred foot cactus. The thing stretches upwards until my neck cracks itself in observation. I see something moving back and forth at the very top. The cactus has limbs and hands of its own and I hand it the bottle. It acts like it’s going to take a swig and I tell it to just hold it for me. A couple steps back I can see the overall length of the cactus, a height which appeared measurable at first but now seems to extend into the clouds.

A bird of some kind is perched at the very top of the cactus. I know this because a dot appears in the sky and rapidly grows as it falls. An egg reveals itself to be an egg within a close proximity as it falls but quickly becomes a shattered egg in the dirt. Shells with splattered mucus crack the sands smile, embryonic fluid coats my shoes. I look up again and the bird flies off the tip of the cactus, slowly hovers down and in a minute lands next to the base of the cactus. It’s a vulture, my eyes presume, and it stalks around, ugly, paper skin and devilish eyes. It finds the egg, smells the egg, smells what was or what could have been. It seems to notice me for the first time. I apologize for the tragedy and the vulture shakes its head and says ‘that’s life.’ It flies away. A mass of sulking leather. I didn’t even notice the cowboy hat it had on.

The cactus takes a swig of the bottle even though I told it not to. I would punch it but it’s a damn cactus, so I just give it a measly finger. I decide to kick it, give it a nice good sock in the stem. My keys fall out of my pocket, but it wasn’t that important to pick them up.

Someone yells. I spin around, no one around. Just the dirt and the road. Someone shouts YO MAN. I look around. I look at the cactus. It gives me a smile like it was the one who said it. But that’s absurd. Cacti don’t talk. But yet again I hear another echo, another verbal call rain down upon me. I look up at the top of the cactus. I see something waving back and forth.

                “Yo, man. Brother, you got another bottle I can crack?” It’s a man on the very top of the cactus. His voice is far but loud, and it pierces through the thin air.

                My neck cracks again as it bends backward in response.

“Why, sure.” I yell.

                “Hold on a second while I climb down.”

                I nod my head and say OK, neither of which he could possibly notice. A heavy rope falls from the sky, curling around the air and lands in the sand with a thud. It lands on the cracked egg shells and the fluid and I kick sand over it to conceal the tragedy.

                The man is twenty feet above me. It took him twenty minutes to get this close because he was suspended so close to the cactus that he had to take his time to keep from being pricked. The closer he became the more audible his exclamations were.

                I backed up and his feet touched the ground. It was a black man with rich Hershey skin and a pink cowboy outfit on. He had black dots on his cheeks and around his eyes, and some red dots, which I assume were from the descent. A black cowboy hat was perched on his head, and a red bandana was wrapped around his neck.

                “Yo, man, can a black cowboy get something to drink?”

                I look around for the bottle. The cactus is holding it again.

                “He has it,” I point at the cactus and the black cowboy steals it from him. Its hollow.

                “Damn thing is empty!” He throws it into the road and it shatters.

                I look him up and down and he does the same.

                “You know,” I say, “Ive never seen a black cowboy.”

                “You know,” he says, “Ive never seen a white guy walk around here by himself in the desert.”

                “My car is around here somewhere.”

                “You got any more drink in that somewhere car?”

                I think for a second. “Why, sure I do.”

                “Let’s go for a walk.”

                “Sure.”

                We walk up the road a bit. I look behind me at the great cactus sticking straight up outta the ground. I regard the black cowboy.

                “So whats your name, partner?”

                “Jim.”

                “That’s funny,” I laugh, “My name is Jim, too.”

                “Well there can’t be two Jims.”

                “You can be Jimbo.”

                “Sure.”

                “Now, Jimbo,” I say, “I have to ask, what the hell were you doing up in that cactus?”

                Jimbo looks at me and his eyes darken, his nostrils flare. “What?”

                “The cactus you climbed down from?”

                “Man, that’s a water-tower. I work up there.”

                “Water tower?” I look back and sure enough there is a water tower instead of an endless cactus.

                Jimbo says, “Are you high or something?”

                I don’t remember. “I don’t remember.”

                Jimbo takes off his hat and wipes his brow. “Hot out here, s**t.”

                I look at Jimbo and notice his hair-fro. It’s a cactus.

                We walk for a couple miles without saying anything. Finally the car materializes in the sand. Jimbo sighs for a whole half minute and then says again how thirsty he is. I walk over to the door and finger my pocket for the keys and remember they are on the ground next to the cactus. Jimbo is on the other side of the car peering in at the case of beer on the back seat.

                “Oh s**t.” I exclaim. “I left the keys on the ground next to the cactus.”

                “B***h, there was no cactus!" In his frustration Jimbo breaks the window and grabs the case of beer and twists the cap off and sucks down a whole bottle in one swallow.

                “Ah, man. I don’t wanna walk all the way back. Can’t you just hotwire the car?”

                “Hotwire?”

                “Yeah.” I said.

                “You think I know how to hotwire a car just because I’m black?”

                “Yes, uhmm, I mean, no.”

                “Well, I do know how. But not because of the stereotype.”

                “Sure.”

                Jimbo unlocks the doors through the broken window and then gets in to hotwire the jalopy.

                It takes about seventeen minutes, including three beer breaks. We get in the car. Jimbo is driving, I don’t know why.

                I say, “Hey, let’s go back to the cactus so I can get the keys.”

                “There was no damn cactus, fool!”

                “The water tower.”

                Jimbo sighs his frustration. “Fine. Make me drive all the way back--”

                In ten minutes we arrive at the water tower. I get out of the car to get the keys and I find them at the base of the tower, covered in sand. I pick them up, wipe the sand off.

                Jimbo speeds off in the car. Not because he’s black, but because he really needed to be somewhere, I guess.

                I turn around and the water tower is gone. The cactus is in its place.

                Another egg falls, but this time I catch it.

    It’s a blue egg. Warm veins pulse around it. The vulture lands next to me. It says thanks for catching the egg.

“It’s no problem.”

It picks up the egg and starts to walk off.

I tell it that my car was stolen.

It shrugs its wings and says, That’s life. It flies back to the top of the cactus.

I didn’t even notice the cowboy hat on my head.