A Desert Dream

In a lonely farmland in the mid-west, there was a man, lying in bed.  His eyes closed as slumber was casting over him, producing peaceful, bucolic images in his mind and smooth melodic notes through his ears.  In a moment, he was to sleep.

A fairy was flying through the woods of the man’s pastoral world.  She was on a mission.  From the edge of the woods, she saw it: the house was devoid of light.  Devoid of everything, really, except the man with his dreams.  If there was any light at all, it came from the stars that shined upon the roof of the house on this moonless night.

At the window, the fairy watched the man sleeping.  One quick flick of her wand and the fairy was able to teleport herself into the man’s room.  In a moment’s time, the fairy, her wings flapping quietly, floated by the man’s ear and whispered, “How do you know when you’ve met one of the greatest men of all time?”

In his dream, there was a boy, traversing a desert in the southwest.  Thirsty.  He was thirsty and tired.  His feet hurt from walking far too many miles.  His steps, he could imagine, would out-number the many stars in the sky – the stars that were out-shone by the desert sun, the invisible stars; there were many of them.  He dropped to his knees and began to cry.  That’s when he saw the feet of an old man.

The old man offered the boy a canteen of water.  When the boy finished drinking the water in it, the canteen refilled.  The water burned in his throat like the fire of a dying phoenix.  That’s because the water was actually liquor.

The boy coughed and the old man clapped his hand on the boy’s back.  “It is better than nothing, boy,” he chuckled.  “Come, follow me.”

The trailer in the desert belonged to the old man.  It was his home.  When the young boy entered the trailer after the old man, he looked around at his belongings with interest.  A shot gun, a small fridge, newspaper clippings and a portable radio.  Those were the things that stood out to the young boy. 

The boy walked toward the shot gun and the old man placed it on the boy’s shoulders. The familiar weight of the gun curled his young lips.  Yes, the boy had spent many years with a shot gun.  Black clumps in the blue of the sky fell to the ground – thud – to the sound of the echoing crack.  Shells tapped his shoes and fell to the ground also.

Back in the sun and the sand, the old man and the boy walked.  They saw the traces of a snake, gone hiding from the imperious sun.  The boy drank and burned from the canteen, and the old man wiped the sweat from his wrinkled face, holding the boy by the shoulder.  Their shadows on the sand resembled the future.  Their feet dragged in sync.

The man awoke from his dream, and saw the sky still dark through the blinds.  He could just make out the small, glowing wings flying in the distance.  He said, “You look at yourself and you know.”

He curled himself under the covers and slipped his hand under his pillows.  His fingers caressed the softened edges of a photograph. They sent a flow of comfort throughout his body from the fingertips.  He closed his eyes and dreamed again, as if for confirmation of something that didn’t need confirming.