Of Sand and Cactus

This story by first-time Demensions author Jayne Kaszynski is our "pick" of the issue for July. The circular storytelling and desert images are excellently woven to tell the story of a woman that is not a woman, a baby that is not a baby ... and both may be the same enticing mirage for man who may be father and husband to both.

The painting of mother and child is by Demensions contributing author Eula Thompson, whose other art work this month can be seen with Edward F. Stack's Of Honor and Courage.

     A mother bends over her child in the moonlight, whispering. She is small, and beautiful, with skin the color of sand and hair the silvery-green color of sage. As she whispers she dips her fingers into a small pot made from a hollow stone, mixing the contents. Then she leans over, scoops up a handful of fine sand, and adds it to the mixture. The baby gurgles and laughs and the mother laughs as well, sometimes. Then sometimes she is serious, almost, one might say, frantic. She whispers, "My child, my child, be still and remember, be still and hear, hear me, let me tell you this, listen- I am telling you this (as I have and will) so you will not forget (which you have and will and won't and remain to see). Desert time moves in circles, sideways and sideways and sideways until it winds down and it's going up so you're never walking a straight line, you're just moving and maybe going forward or backward or slanting in some way you never thought possible. That's why sometimes I see mesquite grow backward or streams lick their water back up out of the ground and disappear past some horizon where it's dark and some angry brother of mine spills rain down-except it goes up, now.
     "So, you see, due to this time that does not walk as others expect it to, I'm never quite sure of when I saw him. Maybe it was last year, maybe it was a hundred years ago, ten minutes ago, two days from now or further. Maybe it's in a time that hasn't been recognized as time yet or maybe time moved somewhere and his car didn't break down, it just kept going and I, I and the moon, were the only ones that witnessed what we watched. But I get ahead of myself, as you will say, or behind or inside. He came walking under a moon that I couldn't hide from so I hid under it, my skin silvery like the sage leaves that curled around my calves, my belly. Was I a child then? Was I an old woman? Was I none of these things? Seeing as I never am, I will hazard a good guess that I wasn't. But he came walking under a moon that lit him like a strange beast. I thought him misshapen, but it was really only the instrument (guitar it is called?) slung over his back like a strange baby."

     A mile away a car shudders to a stop along the side of a road.
     Darius was almost there. He could taste the hamburger that was waiting for him in Durango. He could feel the soft pillow and crisp sheets of a hotel. Then he noticed the steam leaking from the sides of his hood. He pulled over and got out, stretching his legs before trying to open the hood. It burnt his fingers.
     "Damn! You stupid hunk of metal!" He kicked a tire and cursed again-soft leather boots do not shield one's toes well from hard tires.
     "Sonofa-!" I'm being a moron, he thought, catching himself. Of course the hood is hot-it's had hot steam inside it for how long how? He didn't know. Still cursing, although quietly now, he dug out an old shirt from his bag in the back of the truck. He wrapped it around his fingers and opened the hood, stepping back quickly so he didn't burn his face or hands in the steam that poured up into the dark sky, blotting out the stars for a moment. The bright moonlight almost made it glow-a pillar of steam. When it finally cleared he stepped forward and peered into the depths of his engine.
     He couldn't see anything. He needed a flashlight, cursing his own stupidity once again. Moonlight, however bright it was, was not bright enough to light the black recesses of an old pickup truck engine. He rummaged through the glovebox until he found an old flashlight that barely worked. A quick look at the engine started him cursing again. Broken fan belt. Water mixed with antifreeze bubbled out of his radiator. The belt was nowhere in sight. It had probably broken and dropped off miles back and he just hadn't noticed it because he was going downhill. He wasn't going anywhere tonight. He was lucky he'd noticed it before he did some serious damage.
     Darius sat down in his seat for a moment and stretched his legs out in front of him. The last of the steam had disappeared, and the night was quiet. To the left, the full moon seemed to balance on top of one of the peaks of the mountains he had just crossed. The San Juans, and behind them, the Sangre de Cristos. It had been a long, long day. With a sigh, he stood up again and gathered what he needed for a midnight desert walk. He filled his hip flask with water from the gallon container in his car, grabbed his jacket and, at the last minute, slung his guitar over his back. He didn't like leaving it in his car-the passenger side door didn't lock. The last sign he'd seen had said fifteen miles to Durango. Fifteen miles didn't seem like too much of a walk.

     The mother is almost finished with her mixture. She cocks her head to the side and sniffs the air. There is a man upwind. She does not hurry. She dips her fingers into the pot and they come up covered in paint the color of red desert sand. She leans forward and begins a spiral on the baby's left hand.
     She whispers. "I am telling you, my child, telling you how this comes to be or came to be or has or will-I was standing near the sage-or perhaps in the middle of the road-or maybe both at once, when he walked by, not even seeing me as many people do. Or don't, as the case may prove to be if it was given the time except for time wraps around backwards so here I am, before he walks up to me except it's after he's walked up to me when we are already touching under a cool rain of moonlight. But again, time had moved me to move forward where I have yet to be so that now I am already remembering him when it actually hasn't even happened yet, or maybe is happening if I step to the right place in the spiral and draw my breath in so I can smell him, like burnt mesquite musk exhaled into my ears as he runs fingers across his strings, or runs fingers across me. Let me tell you about me, let me tell you that I am shorter than some and taller than others. I have eyes that watch you like stars, like obsidian shards, like cactus petals. Or maybe my skin is like cactus petals, but the color of sand. Dark sand, red sand, sand sand. My hair is like the sage that wraps and curls around my belly and my calves as I watch him walk nearer before we are sitting together and he reaches out to kiss my fingertips like midnight moths of pale pink but that is, of course, before I was waiting for him at the crossroads. So I am with him as he strums his strings and sings and stares into a night that is me, or conversely, maybe it is myself. All I know is that he looks at me and asks me my name. But ah, oh me, I have no name.
     "No name?
     "No, no name. Just the moon that sings with coyotes and the din of rushing stars across my nose that twitches and scents rabbits sleeping and leaping across rocks and warm dreams and my name? Oh yes, my name is Darius.
     "But no, that's my name.
     "My name?
     "No, not your name, my name.
     "Oh yes, of course, because I have not met you yet I am still waiting by the road. You are strange, strange, but beautiful, I think he will say. You have hair like … Like sage, I tell him. Told him. Will tell him. Have told him time and time again before he kisses my fingertips (like a pale pink moth) and then my lips which warm and warn me that I am insubstantial, nothing but a desert dream, nothing but a rock that has been watching suns set and rise for a million millenias and he is but a passing (see, he has already passed!) human with a round box of strings that formed me from sagebrush and malachite and dropped me into his time for a small time, that is, just enough time for me to kiss him deeper that deep-or did he kiss me? That part is unclear now, like the night I was waiting for him but he didn't come before he did come and after because then my belly was bigger and bigger until, eight and a half months before I met him I had you and you were with me when we met him do you remember?"
     She pauses in her telling; she has finished the spiral and it is perfect. For a moment she is silent as she begins a spiral on the child's other hand. Then she begins to sing a song-or rather, she sings the chorus of a song over and over. It is all she remembers.
     "I'm being followed by a moon shadow, moon shadow, moon shadow. Leapin' and hoppin' on a moon shadow, moon shadow, moon shadow..."

     It was a good night, at least, for walking. Darius was chilled-his thin corduroy jacket was not a match for a desert night-but the walking kept him warm enough. He walked quietly, looking more closely at the tumbleweeds and desert plants he'd been flying by at 65 miles per hour for most of his trip. Off in the distance, coyotes howled and the moon sank down a little behind the mountain top. He ate a granola bar he had stuck in his jacket a couple of days ago and forgotten about and the rumblings of his stomach stopped.
     On the other hand, fifteen miles was taking a longer time to walk than he expected. Maybe whoever measured the miles for those road signs measured it as the crow flies, he thought grimly. Below him, he could see the lights of Durango twinkling happily out of reach. The mountain road curved away beneath him. It looked longer than fifteen miles, but at least it was downhill.
     After a while he began to get hungry again, and his feet hurt and his legs ached. The lights of Durango seemed the same distance away that they had been an hour ago. Or two. How long had he been walking? He looked down at his watch but it wasn't there.
     He cursed, under his breath this time. He'd probably left it at Heather's house in St. Louis. The watch didn't have any significant value but it did mean he'd have to buy another. And that just wasn't really acceptable at this point in his life. He still had a couple of days until he pulled into 'Frisco and then he had to find a job. Altogether, it was just a bit longer than his wallet would sustain him for. And that wasn't taking into account lost watches and broken fan belts.
     Darius stopped for a moment and took a deep breath. He let it out again, slowly, and stared up at the moon. It was perched on the peak of the mountain. Hadn't it been sinking behind it last time he looked? He rubbed his eyes and sat down on a rock on the side of the road. After a moment of resting, he picked up his guitar and began strumming it softly.
     "Cause I'm being followed by a moon shadow, moon shadow, moon shadow..."
     The words of the song flowed off his lips and disappeared into the nighttime darkness. A small wind picked up and teased the ends of his hair so that they tickled his neck and swirled around his shoulders. He stopped singing. He had the funniest feeling of déjà vu. He could swear, for a second, that he'd been here before. And there was something else, too that he wasn't remembering.
     But in a second that had passed and with a shake of his head and a few gulps of water from the hip flask in his back pocket, he was on his way again. Now, however, he was enjoying his walk, watching the way the breeze sent weeds rolling slowly by, and the how the moon made the rocks shine. Ahead, by the side of the road, a huge, white rock glimmered-or was it a rock? He stretched his legs, walking faster. This place reminded him of something, what he couldn't say.

     The mother is almost finished, she has just a little ways to go on the last spiral on her daughter's belly. If one watches closely, one will see how she seems to flicker now and then. Or sometimes her hand will suddenly snap back to where she was a second ago, or forwards to a second after, as if someone was rewinding or fast-forwarding a video tape in short spurts. She had been still for a long time. Now she leaned over and spoke faster and more urgently to her child.
     "This all has happened, or is happening, of course, before you had been conceived but after you had been born. That is what I mean to tell you, you see, as I run and dance and trip on this spiral to try and keep up with where you are standing still and letting this all revolve around you, growing older as I grow younger and disappear into the beginning of me that doesn't exist because it's actually after the end, is that you are part this and that, part is and isn't, have and haven't, yes my darling dear grown woman/small babe/endless child this is yours, this tripping, wild spiral dance that shelters us and lays us bare to eternity. I can't hold on much longer. He is kissing me before the pale moths land on your cheek when you were conceived after you were born when you grow into an old woman and decompose into something that reminds you of me-whom you have already forgot which pains me and joys me as I forget and remember and create and am there watching. I am writing this on your belly, I am writing this on your heart, in a spiral that will disappear as his truck breaks down on the bend nearby and he is walking toward me but this time I am already gone, waiting where sage curls around my belly, thighs, calves and watch him watched will watch him pick up his and my and our daughter who will have a name though I have none and will have none and disappears into the night and I disappear into the spiral, into the turning and the being and the moment moths kiss my fingers under his guitar strings, dreaming and being immense, never ending, into a dark night lit by a moon the size of time itself and also bigger and also smaller and also dark and I am always here and there and have been and will be, my daughter."

     As he gets closer, Darius sees that it's a child.
     "Holy Mary, mother of God" He breathes out, slowly. Then, "Damn, I can't believe it."
     He steps off the side of the road and all of a sudden he feels it again. Déjà vu, but deeper than before. He feels, for a moment, something like lips. Or remembers a woman with strange hair, a woman who holds him like the earth or curls around him like a smoke. He feels the way her skin is smooth and nearly glows in the moonlight, the way her eyes tilt up and are strange but he cannot stop-cannot stop what? He pauses for a moment, uncertain. The memories, like smoke, dissipate into the night. In front of him, the baby's gurgle brings him out of his reverie and he kneels down to pick it up. It is a naked baby girl. She has strange drawings, spirals, on her hands and belly but she seems none the worse for wear. She coos when he picks her up and wraps his jacket around her, holding her small body to his chest. Why would anyone leave such a perfect baby in the middle of the desert, in the middle of the night? No cars had passed him, so she must have been laying here for hours. He couldn't fathom it. She should be cold, crying, maybe dead. The coyotes were howling again in the mountains behind him. He opens the jacket and looks at her, examining her body for any sort of abuse or mistreatment, but there is none. Just the strange drawings.
     He suddenly realizes that his eyes are filling with tears. He shifts the baby to one arm so he can wipe them away. The child laughs and waves her arm up at him and then he laughs too. He doesn't know why, but suddenly it is a good time for laughing.
     Until he realizes that he seems to like this child, this baby he has only just found a few minutes ago, more than he should. He knows that when he gets to town he will have to talk to police, to turn the child over to some sort of social services. Suddenly, irrationally, he doesn't want to. He wants to keep this child forever, watch her grow up into a woman. He knows that she will be smart and beautiful. He wants to see her take her first steps, he wants to read her stories at night, and sing songs to her. He wants to protect her from anyone who would leave her on the side of a mountain desert road in the middle of the night.
     He is silent and still for a moment. The girl looks up at him. He almost smiles. He doesn't have to figure anything out, he supposes, until he gets to the town. But he is already rearranging how much money he may spend so that he can buy her clothes and trying to imagine how he may persuade the town to let him keep her.

     The mother, transparent as wind swept up in a momentary breeze, watches him in her time-not time. From the corner of her eyes she sees him as he walks up to her and strums his guitar and touches her but not this time-now he is walking up to her, not her, but her child. He is laying aside his instrument, wrapping her in his jacket, and then picking her and his guitar up and walking away down the road. She watches them both for a second, longing, and then the spiral turns and she cannot hold onto time-place anymore.

     The coyotes howl from the top of the San Juans, where they can see everything. They sing a song about fathers and lovers and changeling children. The moon sinks low behind the mountains, and Darius walks into the dawn with his daughter.

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