Mindy McGinnis - In a Handful of Dust

She crawled the last few feet to the pavement, her cracked and dry skin absorbing the heat of the road the desert night had stolen from her body while she slept. The warmth invigorated Lucy, bringing her to her feet and reminding her there were worse things than pain. If there was a trail of red blood behind her on the road from her dragging foot, it meant she still had blood to shed, and her veins weren’t rotting under the sun, noticed by no one. If she was going to die, she would do it where someone would see, and the trail of blood behind her would show how damn hard she’d tried to make it.

“Like Lynn would,” she said to herself through shredded lips as the road pulled the blisters on her naked foot open. “Like Lynn.”

She’d anchored her mind so deeply onto the idea of Lynn that when she came upon the actual woman, she thought she was a mirage and nearly walked past her. Lynn sat sprawled in the barest shade offered by an electric tower, the black lines of its shadow zigzagging across her legs, her pack and half-full bottles scattered at her feet. Her eyes flickered when Lucy shuffled past, but there was no disbelief in them once she’d focused.

“Hey there, little one,” she said, her voice dry and shaky.

Lucy fell to her knees in the dust. “I didn’t think you were real,” she said, touching Lynn’s face.

“I’m real enough,” Lynn said, breath hitching in her chest as she pulled herself to her feet.

“Drink,” Lucy said quickly, twisting a cap off one bottle and offering it to Lynn before gulping it herself.

“You drink.”

Water spilled down Lucy’s neck and chest as she gulped, sweeping through the dirt that covered her like a shroud.

Lynn gently pulled the bottle away from her, finally taking a drink herself. “You’ll make yourself sick,” she warned.

The water pooled into her tightly clenched stomach, forcing it open and bringing on a gag reflex that Lucy struggled against futilely. The water came back up, as warm coming out as it had been going in.

“Uh-huh,” Lynn said as she watched Lucy retch.

“Sorry,” Lucy said, spitting out the last gritty mouthful. “I wasted your water.”

Lynn pulled up the edge of Lucy’s shirt and cleaned the girl’s face as best she could. “Don’t know that it matters much now,” she said.

The finality of her tone brought a swift despair that overwhelmed Lucy, causing her now-empty stomach to convulse again. “So now what?”

Lynn held out her hand to help Lucy to her feet, the long, tanned fingers casting dark shadows in the dust below them.

“We keep walking.”

The simple act of walking had never been more impossible, and Lucy missed Spatter with her heart and her feet as they struggled westward. Mister had fared better than his companion, and Lynn had done what Lucy could not, letting him go once they had reached safety. She’d left his bridle and saddle piled next to the canyon, a useless mound of leather with no mount.

With Lynn at her side and what little provisions had remained in her pack, hope had bloomed in Lucy like the desert flowers around them, subsisting on nothing more than heat and dust. But the flowers had hidden wells of moisture Lucy did not, and days later her energy was flagging to the extent that she no longer lifted her injured foot at all, allowing it to drag.

Lynn had given her a sock and replaced her boot over her own naked foot without complaint, even though Lucy saw the glistening smear of burst blisters when she slipped it off later that evening. The river had swept Lynn from Mister’s back, but she’d managed to hold on to his reins and her pack. What little food was left tasted like the rain that had nearly drowned them both.

They traveled at night and sought shade in the day, waking and moving with the patchy shade the power lines offered as the sun made its arc. Lynn spoke little and Lucy kept her own mouth shut as well, pooling the energy inside of her for the next step, and then the one after. The road stretched forever, marching toward a goal that seemed unreachable. But Lucy’s newfound will to live and Lynn’s refusal to die kept them both moving. The red rim of the sun greeted them and brought an end to the night’s travels, and the women curled beneath an electrical tower, this one no different from the day before except for the fact that it was farther west.

Lucy woke to the familiar pain of hunger and cracked lips.

Lynn did not wake at all.

Lucy was screaming, but it did no good. Lynn would not answer. Her throat burned as she screamed Lynn’s name over and over, sweat sprouting across her brow with the effort. She yanked Lynn into a sitting position and her head tipped backward, the deep circles underneath Lynn’s eyes no lighter for being under the sun’s glare. But she did blink, the tiny fraction of movement sending Lucy into a relief so great it felt as if her heart had fallen into her remaining boot.

She held the other woman’s face in her hands. “Lynn, come on now. Don’t do this.”

“‘Here is no water but only rock,’” Lynn choked out. “‘Rock and no water and the sandy road.’”

“Lynn!” Lucy shrieked into her face. “You’re not making any sense.”

Lynn’s eyelids fluttered, and the tiniest of smiles snuck into her words. “T. S. Eliot often doesn’t,” she muttered, and then fell still. Her mouth was open, and her swollen tongue remained out, the cracked lips refusing to close back over it.

Lucy let go of her, and Lynn’s head slumped to the side again. Frantic, Lucy ripped at the pack and pulled out the bottle of water they’d pooled together from what remained. Only two inches were left. The rays of the midday sun bounced off it, sending tiny gorgeous rainbows across Lynn’s gray face.

She dropped to her knees beside Lynn, jamming her fingers deep into the hair at her temples and jerking her head backward so fiercely they both went over into the dirt.

“Open your eyes,” she screamed at her. “Look at me when you’re telling me you’re leaving me alone.” Lucy peeled Lynn’s eyelids open and her pupils dilated in the sun.

“Can’t close ’em again…,” Lynn said. “Too dry.”

Lucy realized there was no reflection on Lynn’s eyes of the tower above, no answering glint from the burning sun. Tears poured from her own eyes as she realized how far gone Lynn was, and she tore the cap from the bottle, pried Lynn’s teeth apart, and dumped water down her throat.

Lynn gagged and convulsed against the force, but Lucy jammed her jaws together and pinched her nose, not pulling her hand away until she saw Lynn swallow. She curled the other woman’s hand around the bottle.

“You’re not dying without me dying too,” Lucy said sternly. “This is one decision you don’t get to make alone.”

The barest suggestion of a smile stretched Lynn’s flaccid lips. “It is what it is,” she said.

And the sun moved across the sky.

Lucy dismissed the flash of light on the horizon as nothing more than a spasm of her dying brain. All her senses felt sharpened as she struggled on, distinctly feeling each contour of the road beneath her, the sound of her frayed and bloodied jean leg dragging against it. Taste alone was elusive, her own tongue now swollen to the point that the idea of fitting food into the increasingly small area of her mouth was ludicrous. Her saliva was gone; her eyes felt like apples left to wither on the tree.

The flash came again, this time bearing with it the faintest hum that in her delirium Lucy mistook for an insect. She waved her hands around her head to fend it off, and the movement sent her to the ground, tearing a hole in her jeans at the knee. The knobby white skin of her kneecap poked through and she stared at it, amazed at how easily her dry skin had peeled away from the lower layers, how slowly her thick blood rose to the surface.