Mindy McGinnis - In a Handful of Dust

Soft footsteps sounded in the sand and Lynn crouched beside Lucy, away from the tide.

“Have a seat,” Lucy said, gesturing to the sand.

Lynn shook her head. “I don’t feel like I ever get the sand off me, once I do.”

Lucy shrugged, watching the moon rise above the ocean to send a white path pointing toward her over the rippling water. “How can you not like it?”

Lynn sighed and sat down anyway, her face contorting with displeasure as her pants got wet. “I learned to hate it young, little one. When I was a kid I found a globe and showed it to Mother, thinking I’d found something that would save us yet, that we didn’t have to live the way we did. She told me it was all salt, and no relief in it—‘ Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink .’ I broke the damn thing and swore to never find comfort in anything too good to be true again.”

“But it is true, Lynn. And it’s different here. It’s good,” Lucy argued.

“You like it, that’s all I need to know to believe it’s a good thing.”

“Like it? Lynn, it’s more than liking it. You should come to the desal plant with me sometime. When Dan showed me how to monitor the salinity, I felt like… like I was doing something that mattered. He said they’ll teach me how to clean the membranes too, next time I come.”

“Which I imagine will be tomorrow,” Lynn said slyly.

Lucy went on, barely hearing Lynn. “Dan said he’ll have a spot for me to be there all regular like, with real duties and everything after Taylor’s baby comes. You should hear the sound the seawater makes when it’s pressured through the—”

“I prefer to hear rain fall on my own roof,” Lynn interrupted.

“But you can’t count on rain,” Lucy shot back. “The ocean is always there, and now we can take advantage of it.”

Lynn looked out over the undulating waves, her jaw tense. “I know that, but Mother didn’t. And I can’t help but think maybe if she had, her life would’ve been longer, and mine much different. That doesn’t make me like this damn sea any better.”

Lucy nodded, the image of her own dead mother never far from her mind. “I understand.”

“So how can you like it so much? “ Lynn asked. “After the desert and the mountains and the bigness of everything that frightened you? And now this—you a tiny speck on the edge of the sand, happy to sit by a Goliath?”

Lucy was quiet for a full minute, letting the tide touch her toes and recede while she thought. “You’re not the only one who can quote poetry, you know.

“Ralph Waldo Emerson,” Lynn said immediately. “I’m impressed.”

“Don’t be. It’s the one poem I read during the last blizzard.”

“It stuck with you though. The words meant for us can do that, stick to the crevices inside and come out when we least expect it. Why those words?”

Lucy dug deep to find her own words, new ones that tasted like hope and not the misery of the road. “The desert and the mountains and the plains all felt like they were in my way, stopping me from getting to somewhere I was supposed to be. But this is salvation. Every drop in that ocean can be made to save you or me, and every other soul in this town. I can only wish it were bigger.”

“I don’t think the ocean’s different from those things, little one. What’s different is you.”

“How do you mean?”

“When we left Ohio, you were scared as a rabbit, jumping at the shadows and hiding in my footsteps. We walked across the country and you changed into a woman who could walk up to a stranger on the beach with nothing more than her own name in her mouth, and you did it.”

“You were with me.”

“You walked ahead of me,” Lynn said. “That whole last stretch of beach you were the one in front. You wanted this place and this ocean, and you’ve made it your own.”

“But you can’t, is that what you’re going to say?” Lucy asked, a deep hole of fear she’d thought she’d left behind her opening inside her gut again.

“I can’t…” Lynn trailed off, her eyes on the watery horizon. “Lucy, I can’t see around me here, do you understand? To one side there’s water and to the other there’s buildings. I just… I feel like I can’t see everything like I did back home.”

“You never said so on the road.”

“I didn’t feel this way on the road,” Lynn countered. “Then we were always moving. If I didn’t like something it didn’t matter, ’cause it’d be different the next day.”

“What are you saying to me?”

Lynn was quiet, and Lucy counted seven revolutions of the tide before she spoke.

“I’m going home.”

Even though she’d been expecting it, Lucy cried out, burying her head into her hands and sinking her fingers into her own hair as if covering her ears could force the words out of her mind. “Don’t do that to me, Lynn. I can’t do it—I’m not like you!”

“Not like me?” Lynn asked, her hands probing into the mess of Lucy’s hair and finding her fingertips, pulling the girl’s face up to look into her own. “Now who would want to be that, anyway?”

“Me,” Lucy said desperately through her tears, “me, me, me.”

Lynn pulled Lucy to her, wrapping her arms around the girl who refused to be a woman. “Don’t you see it, little one? You’re where you belong now, next to the biggest thing in the world and loving every second of it. The people here are hopeful, with a spark of life about them, just like you. It’s not like the city behind us, where they were living off the dead. These people are alive for the love of it.”

“And you don’t like that? How can you not, Lynn?”

“Oh, I envy them, through and through, don’t get me wrong on that point. But I learned hard lessons long ago, and they’re so ingrained in me I can’t drop ’em now. Like it or not, I’ve picked up the knack of feeling responsible for others, and you don’t need me anymore. There are those back home who still might. Last time I saw Stebbs, his finger was none too steady on the trigger.”

“I do need you, I do,” Lucy cried, clinging to her. She buried her face into Lynn’s neck and made her confession. “I’m like my mother. I need other people, and you most of all.”

Lynn pushed Lucy’s face back from her own and looked at her in the moonlight. “You’re not me, child. You’re not me and you’re not your mother either. You’re Lucy, my little one, and that is no small thing.”

And Lucy cried as the tide came in, her salty tears making the ocean bigger.

Lynn waited until spring to go. It was close to a year since they’d left Ohio when Lynn stood on the outskirts of town, holding the reins of a horse that had been given to her by a rancher in thanks for having shot the mountain lion depleting his sheep. Her rifle was strapped to her back, a heavily penciled map in her pack, and enough bottles of fresh water to keep her on the road for a while before she would have to refill.

Lucy stood beside her with clear eyes but dried tear tracks on her face.

“You sure about this?” Lucy asked, even though every line of Lynn’s body ached with her need to go home.

“You know I am,” Lynn answered, giving Lucy a hug. “And don’t be so sad-faced about it. Dan planned a route for me that goes south before east. He said it’ll keep me as low as possible, so no worries on the nosebleeds.” She swung up into the saddle and cleared her throat. “I don’t know what else to say. I’m ready to go, but leaving you is tearing a Lucy-shaped hole in my heart. Don’t think anybody else can ever fill it.”