By McKenna Casey
A man named Blue is walking across the desert. He’s still a boy really, or at least somewhere in between a man and a boy, but everyone has taken to calling him a man on account of his carrying a gun. It’s a revolver, real Wild Wild West, and it matches the rest of his getup. Ever since he’d broken the law, he’s taken to dressing like a cowboy, with the hat and the boots and everything. It seemed that cowboys used to break the law all the time but still got to be all smooth and cool in movies, so Blue went ahead and made himself an outlaw, too.
He’s in search of something, but he’s forgotten what. The desert can do that to a man, make him forget his job and family and even his own name. Blue has been in the desert for a long time, maybe. Or maybe not. He thinks, just keep walking, and you’ll find what you’re looking for. So he keeps walking. At some point in his journey, the mantra gets louder, and Blue realizes he’s started saying it out loud. This makes Blue frown. He knows that crazy people talk to themselves, and he’d rather not be crazy by the time he gets wherever he’s going. Also, it hurts his lips to talk, since they’re all cracked and dried by the sun, just like the ground beneath him. Blue knows he has a pretty face, and he’d like to still have it by the end of his journey, if he can.
There are no buildings here, only desert-things: rocks and sand and cacti and scraggly bushes low to the ground. But Blue is not lonely. He likes the quiet, doesn’t really mind the heat. Not much to eat or drink, but Blue didn’t need much of that anyway, not since he broke the law all those years back. It gets kind of boring, though, the same walking through the same desert day after same day.
On the fourth day – maybe – it rains. It comes out of nowhere. The sky just opens up and lets all its crying out. Blue gets drenched down to his very bones, but shelters his revolver so it doesn’t get all rusted up. He turns his face up to the thundering clouds and drinks. Takes his communion with all the angels weeping down on him. It is a kind of pilgrimage, this journey across the desert, Blue thinks. Whatever waits for him at the end of it must be holy, that much he’s sure of. What else would send a man into the desert with no one but himself to talk to?
The rain turns the whole world blue, and when the sun goes down, it all becomes a shade of violet that he’s never seen before. The storm soaks the earth well into the purple night, turning the dirt into wide swaths of mud. Blue sinks a bit with every step, until he’s taken so many steps that he’s buried up to the hips in mud, and no longer able to take any more. Blue holds his revolver above the clay, and wonders if this is the end of his trek. This didn’t happen in any of those cowboy movies he’s seen. It seems there’s not much that’s smooth and cool about being half-swallowed up by the hungry desert. Blue thinks that if this is the end, he ought to have some good last words. Not that there’s anybody there to hear them, but it’s the principle of the thing. But the only words that come to mind are these: just keep walking, and you’ll find what you’re looking for.
Blue has forgotten most other things, but he hasn’t forgotten that. His mantra, his prayer. He figures he better not decide to stop listening now, because it’s probably important. He throws the revolver gently to the safety of solid ground, then throws his hat after it. Blue grabs a scraggly bush, pulls. The bush pulls back, and Blue gets his hips free. He claws and shimmies and pulls. By the time he gets his feet out, it’s day again, and then rain has stopped. Blue lays on the ground beside his gun and his hat and stares up at the sky. He spits dirt out of his mouth and tries to wipe most of it off his pretty face. Then he gets up and keeps walking.
At the end of the fifth day (perhaps), with the sun at his height behind him, Blue sees the church. It’s a small little steeple, glowing white with sunset against the dark background of the desert. Beyond it, lights in the black, the lights of houses, flickering determinedly against the oncoming night. When he sees it, Blue’s memories start to rush back in like a rising tide. His job, his family, his own name. What he’s been searching for all these days in the desert. Blue breaks into a run.
When he gets to the church, there’s only one other person there. A man, or a boy really, or a boyish man, sitting in a pew. He’s wearing a bandana and singing a hymn softly to the altar. He, too, has broken the law. Blue sits beside him, taking off his hat because he was raised that way.
The man turns to look at him. He puts Blue’s pretty face into the cup of his upturned palms. They stare at each other, rememorizing familiarities they had forgotten, learning new ones. The man brushes a finger against Blue’s cracked lips. He looks like he wants to say something that both of them know not to say in a church, even when it’s empty, but instead he says,
“Did you walk all the way here?”
And Blue wants to not-say the same thing back, but smiles instead.
I love you, Blue thinks.
“I’d crawl to you,” Blue says.
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