Jeff Jackson - Mira Corpora

The guard and the boy stand in the parking lot, under the trebly shadow of the flickering cantina sign, and watch the others depart. A warm breeze blows across the grease-stained expanse of gravel, inflating the skaters’ loose shirts and whipping their long hair. They crouch behind the overflowing dumpsters and return cradling a rumpled paper-bag package so obviously illegal it resembles a decoy or prop. Several skaters pull on their birdlike masks with feathers and sequins. Blundell rolls down the window of his sedan and winks at his friend. Whatever that means. As the guard watches the taillights seep into the darkness, he feels unaccountably giddy. The stars overhead seem scrambled into new constellations, suggesting a fresh zodiac. Casper Major, Galactica Minor, Vulcan Borealis. He idly wonders if he has just witnessed the last annoyingly cryptic gesture Blundell will ever make.

“So,” the boy asks, “where are we going?”

The guard remembers the red haze in the fields behind them. It’s the answer that’s been awaiting him. They set off together into the scrub brush, stepping gingerly across the uneven terrain, navigating a makeshift path through the skeletal bushes, the midget cacti, the thorns and burrs that tug at their pant legs. “We’ll get the key from my cousin,” the guard says. “He’s repairing one of the derricks tonight.” It might even be true. The itchy rhythm of cicadas sharpening their forelegs meshes with the propulsive whine of the oil rigs. It beckons them forward like a siren’s song. “This isn’t like me,” the guard says, as much to hear the words aloud as for the boy’s benefit. “I mean, I don’t usually help strangers.” The boy nods. He nervously plucks the pilings off his green sweater. Neither of them mentions Blundell or the skaters.

They step over a collapsed chain-link fence that marks some forgotten border. The flotsam of abandoned industrial equipment blankets the ground. Lengths of cast-off pipe, rusted lug bolts, tangled wires. The moon has been abducted behind a bank of grubby clouds and the entire landscape feels like it’s been stripped to its shadows, chewed clean by the darkness. The boy scuffs his shoes against a shard of crushed boulder and struggles to keep his balance. The guard grabs hold of his hand — to steady him on his feet, of course — but then becomes self-conscious and drops it. The boy stares back at him with red eyes. The bleary crimson glare has hijacked the blackness of his pupils, giving him the endearing look of a creature not quite human. “I’ve never been anywhere like this,” he says. The unmissable undercurrent of naiveté strikes the guard as almost heartbreaking.

They are getting closer. The guard can’t help feeling like he’s traversing some extraterrestrial terrain. The red sun lies ahead and tiny figures scurry beneath the silhouetted steel structures. The night has been something of a puzzle but its overall contours are starting to materialize in the guard’s mind. He’s picking up pieces on the fly, amazed at how easily seemingly random events slot into their proper places, suggesting a previously unknown pattern he simply has to follow to its logical conclusion. Ahead of them a stand of tall bushes rises from the otherwise arid landscape. Nobody can see them here. The guard squats at the mouth of the grove and waits for the next move to solidify in his mind. He sifts chunks of crystallized sand through his fingers.

The boy clubs him in the head with a rusted pipe. The guard flops to the ground clutching the back of his skull. His bloody lips contort but no cries come out. He spasms like a piece of film caught in the frame, an out-of-focus image that finally dissolves into stillness. The boy stares at the unconscious body. Smeared face-down in the dirt, it no longer seems so menacing. The boy’s cheeks are tear-scorched and his entire being vibrates on some previously unknown frequency. He seems unsure what business comes next. Eventually he bends over the guard’s softly panting form and removes his leather wallet. He sweeps his index finger along the inner rim of the billfold but doesn’t bother to note the denominations or count the credit cards.

The boy shambles into the grove of bushes with the stunted steps of a sleepwalker. Short breaths wheeze in his chest. He realizes his hand still clutches the lead pipe and he lets it drop. A dark sticky substance coats his palms and he decides to assume it’s the residue of rust. He wipes the salty sting from his eyes and pushes through the brambles. He stumbles upon a startling sight: A small stretch of oasis in the midst of all this desolation. He stands frozen on the edge of a patchy field. There is something tantalizingly unreal about this serene vista. Maybe it’s a trick of the three-quarters moonlight, but the world around him appears unnaturally shallow, no more than a stretched piece of canvas. A reassuring thought, mostly. A lone orange tree stands framed in the middle of the field. A breeze tickles the undersides of the leaves and orbs of fruit can be seen glistening on the branches. They are ripe for the taking. But the boy has the uneasy sensation that if he reaches out to grab one, his hand will stab straight through the page.