The blazing August sunlight scorched the dry and dusty New Mexico landscape and cast dancing mirages in the heat waves. A single hawk wheeled in the burning blue sky while smaller birds nested in the cool of cactus burrows as snakes lazed on the blistering terrain and the vegetation withered in the stagnant air that suspended the world in near silence except for the chirping of a pair of cicadas and the scampering of a lone jack rabbit. He sat and watched the rabbit meander around rocks and brush and explore the smallest niches of the earth, apparently unaware of the desert's pact to stillness in the heat of the solemn and expiring afternoon. He raised the pistol.
The hawk spiraled downwards. The shots broke the air one two three times. The predator took to the sky once more. The rabbit hung limply in curved talons. He did not turn his head to see it disappear over the cliffs behind him.
He remained in the lengthening shadow of the boulder as the sun inched slowly down into a bed of clouds over the mountains that rimmed the edges of the earth and painted the horizon a blood red that crept over the still unmoving world and touched his face. The brilliant blue above faded to indigo and then to midnight and then into the darkest black and tiny stars emerged from their slumber to watch with lonely and distant eyes over the chilled landscape. Dehydration overtook him and in the midst of feverish dreams she came to him. Her heard her horse approach but saw only her face as she lifted him in her arms and he felt her cool hands touch his face and they rode swiftly to the edge of the earth where the red sun met the cool blue of the river in her eyes and together they waded into those eyes and floated in the gentle current, needing nothing but each other until she began to weep and she swam to the other shore where the black Arabian waited patiently and as she rode into the red sun her tears became the river and he opened his mouth and drank the sweet and bitter taste of tears that stung his throat. The sun set and cast his world into blackness.
A scrawny red haired girl with green eyes and too many freckles was running away. She had her jeans and boots and hat, her water her gun her money and her horse and that was all she needed. She rode in the chill of the evening under the cover of darkness and did not watch as the lights of Carlsbad, New Mexico, became pinpricks and then were swallowed by the horizon. She did not stop to take a breath as the night enveloped her and the milky stars laid out a path above her while the cicadas and crickets and owls chirped their good mornings to each other and began the chorus of the desert coming to life. She would not have stopped. She would have ridden on forever until she reached the edge of that flat and far horizon where it seemed the stretch of the world simply ended. Then she saw the horse. Then she saw the man.
He did not know that the hands were not those hands and the horse was not the Arabian and the tears were not tears. He had surrendered to the night when she came along stooped down and poured water down his throat and put him onto her horse and led him out of the desert. It was in darkness that he remained until the warm yellow of afternoon sunlight filtered through white cotton curtains caressed his face and brought him back. The mother of five children that lived in the red adobe home he awoke in fed and clothed him and the father housed and cared for his horse in their small clean stable. Time passed and when he could walk again he looked after the children and when he could ride again he looked after their cattle and when it was time for him to leave he thanked and said goodbye to them and rode into another sunset.
But he did not forget those hands.
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This is a steal from my high-school self. Found an old assignment today and I just really like it. It's in the style of Cormac McCarthy, meaning run on sentences with little to no punctuation. I added a few commas for clarity's sake but that's probably even removing the style. This was a creative response to McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses.
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