After driving for a long while, the car engine gave out. Steam hissed from the hood. His father beat his fists against the hot metal. He gulped down the last of their water, told the boy to take whatever he could carry, and they set off on foot.
“That was when we met you all. My father went back for our camper, somehow got it fixed, and brought it here.”
“Did you see a body?” we asked.
“No,” he said. “I only saw the blood.”
That was how we knew. We talked among ourselves. We held counsel and decided what steps we needed to take when it came to the knowledge we’d gained, this strange boy we’d inherited. Our scripture taught us to care for others and ourselves, but it also taught us to make sacrifices in order to fulfill the plan He had in store for us. Many of us argued over the proper solution.
Hand the boy over to the authorities, some felt.
Leave him to fend for himself. We could travel farther east into the desert. Get lost and prepare for the final days, still others said.
We prayed.
Finally, the solution presented itself.
We had very little. It was easy for us to pack up and leave. We were, after all, not tied to material things. We needed none of that. We gathered at the center of the wide clearing, followed the lead car out. We were a caravan of God-fearing souls lost in the dry wilderness. All we were looking for was hope, a home, a place where we could hang our hats, put our Bibles down, and rest. Finally, to rest.
We imagined lakes. Jagged granite peaks. Waterfalls cascading down boulders and rocks. The sound of the water, that beautiful and gloriously rich sound. We smelled pine-scented air. We heard owls and hawks screeching in the sky. There would be wide fields of wildflowers all around us. We wanted to live again. We wanted to breathe clean, cool air. We didn’t want our lungs to feel scalded by the hot desert wind that bit and begged and took so much.
Out. Somewhere far. Miles from the main highway that led us out of the state. We found a desolate road. We followed the main car leading the caravan — that car where we knew the boy rode.
There was nothing out there. No buildings or houses. No sign of anyone anywhere.
He looked confused. He must have been sleeping, because when he was ordered out of the car, he rubbed his eyes. He bit his lip and wiggled a finger through the hole in his shirt. “Are we there?” He glanced around.
“Yes,” one of us said.
He looked around again. “Where?”
One of us, an old man with a long beard and glassy eyes, said, “See that ridge? It’s there. Just past it. On the other side.” He held something in his hand. Some of us couldn’t see, though. It looked like a green duffel bag. The old man picked this up, and he led the child up a thin path, cutting through wild sagebrush and thorny cactus up and over the ridge.
We waited.
We prayed.
The Holy Spirit entered some of us. We spoke in tongues.
Ashohala. Ere al om tah collah.
The sun had set by the time he returned. The green duffel bag was gone. He held a long wooden club. The end looked as though it had been dipped in red paint, the color thick and dark, menacing. We pretended not to know what it was.
“I suppose we should get going now,” the old man said.
It was taken care of. We must push on.
Somewhere out there was our rightful home.
The place promised to those like us.
About the Contributors
Chris J. Bahnsen is known as a “zebra” by his Chicano uncles, in that he is half Mexican and half white, and thus walks the strange and sometimes precarious edge between cultures. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Smithsonian’s Air & Space, Hobart, River Teeth, and Hippocampus. He is an assistant editor with Narrative magazine, living biresidentially in Southern California and Northwest Ohio.
Eric Beetner has been called “the twenty-first century’s answer to Jim Thompson.” He has written more than twenty novels, including All the Way Down, Rumrunners, and The Devil Doesn’t Want Me. When not spending the weekend vacationing in Palm Springs with his family, he cohosts the podcast Writer Types and the Noir at the Bar reading series. For more information, visit ericbeetner.com.
Rob Bowman moved to the desert several years ago from Denver, his longtime home and setting for his upcoming detective novel. His fiction has appeared in the Coachella Review and the Donnybrook Writing Academy. Additional credits include Modern in Denver, Book and Film Globe, and others. He cohosts the film and pop culture podcast Reel Disagreement. When not immersed in these things, he is with his wife Mindy and their sons, Jetson and Rocket.
Michael Craft is the author of seventeen novels, four of which have been honored as finalists for Lambda Literary Awards. His 2019 mystery, ChoirMaster, won a Gold IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award. In 2017, Craft’s professional papers were acquired by the Special Collections & University Archives at the University of California, Riverside. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles, and lives in Rancho Mirage, California, near Palm Springs.
Barbara DeMarco-Barrett spends time in the desert whenever she can. She hosts Writers on Writing on KUCI-FM, and her book Pen on Fire was a Los Angeles Times best seller. Her short story “Crazy for You” was published in USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series. She has also published in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Inlandia, Shotgun Honey, Partners in Crime, and Paradigm Shifts.
Alex Espinoza is the author of Still Water Saints, The Five Acts of Diego León, and Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime. He’s written for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times Magazine, VQR, LitHub, and NPR’s All Things Considered. The recipient of fellowships from the NEA and MacDowell as well as an American Book Award, he lives in Los Angeles and is the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside.
Janet Fitch is the best-selling author of White Oleander, Paint It Black, The Revolution of Marina M., and Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, an epic of the Russian Revolution. Her short stories and essays have appeared in a variety of publications. Two of her novels and her story “The Method,” from Los Angeles Noir, have been made into feature films. The Palm Canyon mobile home in “Sunrise” belonged to her grandmother.
