Cleve

Most of what I write comes to me while I’m out walking or perhaps tinkering around the house. I never quite know what my mind might download; I have a talented friend who has published a pair of novels, and I’ve told her more than once that I am unable to write fiction. Therefore, what follows here must be true. If you happen to know them man I’m writing about, drop me a line! I’d love to hear the rest of the story...

Cleve stood upon the crumbling rock, eyes burning from the incessant desert sun. Ahead, only cactus and Devil’s Walking Stick, and the click-click of grayish-tan grasshoppers. The slightest of crooked smiles shown upon his parched lips, at the thought of that name, for surely there had been no grass here in a thousand summers. Away went the smirk, attention now focused on his right foot. Granny Phillips called that one “Little Piggy” but the pain from that toe was intense, the old boot worn through, that sock nearly gone. “My kingdom for a hat”, he thought, though there was no kingdom left, and he knew it. That sombrero back at the ranch was 3 sizes too small, but oh how he could use it now.

Without thinking, his reflexes placed his right hand to his canteen, though he knew that bent circle of tin held not even a swallow. Sulfur water, at that. To his breast pocket he reached for that half-stick of gum that Charlie gave him yesternoon. Melted into goo; useless.

After what he felt was too long, onward he stepped. The eyes said it was close, that mountain of his upbringing, but his mind knew better. He’d be lucky to get there tonight. He gave a silent prayer that the moon would be there to guide him. As a younger man he had slept upon that gravelly floor, under this same majestic sky. For all its beauty, he would live to regret it. Still today he could feel those ants crawling...and gnawing...upon his epidermis.

He wondered, indeed, he hoped to God, that the cabin was still there. He knew from the last letter, now unreadable in his back pocket, about the storm damage. Three trees, within an hour’s walk of that old place, and one of them happened to fall onto the roof. He laughed, but only for a moment. Would it provide any shelter at all? The fire, last fall, it didn’t reach that far, did it?

His heels were burning now, and that trick knee began to throb. Cleve gritted his teeth and turned to another day. Young Maggie was by his side, as he shifted that rusty Studebaker into second and rounded Garlick’s curve. She giggled as she slid closer to him, long locks blowing in the breeze and tickling his face. Up at the crest, he chocked the wheel with an old brick and the two walked the path to Lover’s Boulder. From her basket she pulled pan-fried chicken and her grandma’s pickled beets. She surprised him with a slice of cake that she’d made herself. “This must be what heaven looks like”, he thought. They took a walk, over to the canyon and back. He tossed in a dime and asked her to make a wish. He teased but she wouldn’t reveal what it was. Oh, her laugh. Oh, my.

On the ground, backs against the boulder, they sat with their legs straight out in front. She kicked off her shoes and wiggled her toes as she sang some silly old song. Slowly the stars woke up for the eve, and the sounds of the night enveloped them. A slight wind came in from the north, and she shuffled closer as it cooled them down. Off in the distance, over towards Perrytown, heat lightning flickered. A firefly happened along, and Cleve caught it in his hands. “They say he shines that light to summon his mate.” At once, he spread his arms, letting go the insect, and his right arm wrapping around her. “To you, I give no bug’s butt. I give you all the stars shining in the sky!” He couldn’t see her smile, but he felt it. She placed her head upon his shoulder. “Heaven, indeed” he thought.

“I’m not gonna make it. That knee...there’s just no way.” It was that devastating proclamation that startled him back to today’s reality. He must rest, but he simply cannot. Suddenly, a sound that stunned his very soul. To the west, a rifle shot. Frightened, he settled upon the ground. His right hand struck a prickly pear on the way down. He felt so simple-minded, worrying about some poor rancher miles away. Might be old Hennessy, that old fool. But, that sound.

They were rounding Hill 24. Bob Gunther told him to keep straight at what was left of the oak tree. Blue Eyes was with him; Big Tom Carver always called him “Sure Shot”. Just then, out of nowhere, came those two Germans. Nobody could have missed that shot, nobody. It was in that split second that Cleve realized Carver was being sarcastic. Blue Eyes lay dead, and he himself had a searing pain in his hip. He doesn’t remember how he got back to town, or who helped him up on the table in that shelled-out bank building, but he sure remembers Dick Weston and what he did with that Bowie knife. The bullet was gone but that watered-down Scotch whiskey did little to ease the pain.

He looked up on the scorching sun, which seemed to be staring him straight in the eye. There was no getting back up, he knew. He might die here like all the rest, like young Sonny, and old, gray-haired Tommy Tucker. He shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t have left the boys that way, back at the ranch, or last September, back at the Dry Gulch. The money that seemed so important was gone now. Gone just like dear, sweet Maggie. Gone like her laugh, her smile, her head upon his shoulder. And there, amid this hell on earth, he wept...