Burning Alone, Together

By Bess Blackburn

People out there speak of mental calculations, and those people will never drive the Mojave alone.

A crisp night, like any other, a starry sky, and my safe strip of highway laid out before me as one of the few signs of civilization in the desert. Groups of Joshua trees, huddling, whispering together, whiz past my windshield. They need each other, like some do, to make this place home. A dusty, barren home with unforgiving guardians and strict curfews. Home is a hard title to earn. Only a few hours of driving left now.

There’s a flash, a dash, on the road, and I screech the car to a halt before colliding with the opposing set of headlights before me. Headlights that are really more like powerful pinpricks against my floodlights. Pinpricks that become the eyes of… a great wolf, obsidian in color, ten feet away, maybe less. A wolf locked in a level stare-down with the front of my Toyota Camry, well, before flicking its attention up to me. Its eyes daunting and pleading and beckoning me to Wait. Observe. Those people out there wouldn’t know what to do. Those people aren’t me.

Putting the car into park, I gingerly step out. The door is my shield, the part below the glass covering from my waist to my ankles, and that will have to be enough for now. I should stay put, but Oh, how that gaze beckons, still. Those people will never get to experience this.

I creep around my shield, a gesture of goodwill I believe is universal. I brace for impact, brace for something. For something I am correct to expect. When I approach the wolf, there begins a glow. Not all over. Not all at once. Like lava cracking through its fur, one drop first on its hind leg, then its flank, then the back of its ear. A fearsome transformation, like viscous fire pushing through a cage, simultaneously dripping down the metal bars and destroying them. Is this wolf, this creature, bleeding? Should I get closer? For a moment I believe its body will shatter into a million pieces. A glass pot on the stove. Oh, the result is worse.

Lava consumes it. It consumes the watcher to watch it. Now, now, the creature glows all over. Bubbling heat, spurting charred pieces of fur at me. Its body is bright white, painfully white, white hot. It radiates. We’ve reached the boiling point of blood. And so the yelping begins, the creature’s own vocal cords last to understand the spectacle of flames happening before it, inside of it, around it. I have to help. I have to help it, despite what those people might say. Those people will never meet a fallen star.

I brush away the ashen bits that have made it to me and reach out, tensing in anticipation, waiting to see my hands boil up and pustules explode as they get closer to the fire. But they don’t explode. There’s a soft warmth over my fingertips, a gentle breath upon my hands, and I never knew lava could be so delicate. Then I scold myself for my moment of small wonder, as the creature has not stopped crying out in pain. I avoid its eyes, surely offended and anguished and demeaning all at once. I’m sorry. Rather than look and feel that guilt, I place my arm on its side and start to nudge it to my car.

The creature lets me load it in my backseat, front paws up, scrambling hind legs too, fiery head bumping up against the fabric ceiling, the overhead lighting. It can’t be comfortable back there, but that’s got to be the least of its worries, right? As we drive to something, anything, it almost sounds as if three, then five, then a whole wolf pack is trapped in my car, yet there remains only one pair of eyes in the rearview mirror. Soon, yelps turn into shrieks,,s turn into howls, turn into a cacophony that blinds all my senses. Thank god it’s night, thank god it’s the desert, thank god we’re the only two beings crazy enough to be out here alone, together, because I can barely stay on the road, much less drive straight ahead. My nerves scream with sensation, but I know what to do. I aim for the gas station, my faithful oasis, not five miles ahead, turning the drive into some kind of dance. A little to the right. A lot to the left. A lot back to the right, the double yellow doesn’t exist anymore, and all I’m certain of is avoid the sand.

My station greets me as I pull in, but something is amiss. Shuttered, rusty, and bone-dry, this place is a mere shell of how I remember it last. Now it is just three gas pumps strung together in a last-ditch effort to save the souls, or perhaps cars, of those who pass by. Drooping nozzles, now decaying. Screens and card machines that wouldn’t take your money if you begged. The convenience store, once my savior, is decrepit, sandy streaks across its windows. I shudder to see a cardboard cutout, some cartoon cowboy with a speech bubble of the best gas prices, sloped against the front doors in some creased quest for escape. His weight won’t be enough to push those rusty doors open, but he can’t grasp that. My head throbs. It’s quite funny what a few weeks can do to a place here. Quite funny. Or, it doesn’t make sense, but—that’s what those people would think.

Those people would be afraid of what has happened here, and those people would never understand the desert, right?

Getting out of the car before I reach the pumps, I’d stop to thank something that I didn’t crash into one of the station’s pillars, but there isn’t room in my brain amidst the howling to string together a prayer. Instead, I nudge the creature out of my car and hunt for a bucket, some water. As I search, my vision does the same dance as my car, this time off the road, with every blink. It’s a futile attempt I make to find those bins of complementary soapy water, some squeegees to wring out onto the fireball. I peek over my shoulder every so often to see if the creature is following me. It flickers in a haze through my tired eyes, leaping forward and then backward an equal distance as I dare to watch it. The flames it emits lick my silver car door, yet I don’t notice any scorch marks. Or, does the creature flicker? No, no, the snatches of clarity I get tell me that its body has stayed stock still, melting paws planted. I feel its eyes. That howl. That howl that must be tearing its throat apart is not directed up at the sky, but right at me, unblinking, unwavering. What now? So impatient. Reluctantly, I press on.

Inch by inch, I discover new ways to examine the few thousand square feet around me, peering and squinting from every angle. That cartoon cutout, trapped in the store, is the closest I come to finding another person, though I stay far away from him. Whatever. He’s not important. Minutes or hours—however long it takes—pass, and it is still night, air growing thicker all the while. I reach for the handle of the last pump to steady myself, but the plastic has grown soft, smearing in my hand like dirt. There’s rot on the grip, the metal tip. There’s rot on the wind.

I grasp at my neck, the dip of my collarbone, half expecting it to peel off in strips or mush in my clutch. Thank god, it doesn’t. Nor does the shirt on my back, nor my jeans. However, each breath I take begins to develop into something more, the feeling of mold crawling in through my nostrils, the worst sort of fuzz. It’s too much. This is all too much. Ears to eyes to esophagus, it’s too much.

The concrete beneath my feet begins to give way, sending me scrambling out from under the canopy. I take some care now not to bump into the pillars, lest they soften at my touch, drip down and bury me. When I make it back to the asphalt, I am hunched over and gulping for air, feeling my throat. I want out now. The desert wants me out now. The shutting down of my senses emboldens me to flee, but there is still one thing that asks me to stay. With what is left of my strength, I twist my neck to look back to the beast, the cause, my problem to be dealt with. Its gaze is lit anew, questioning me with a head tilt. The stream of yelps it’s been emitting, the closest thing to water I suppose I’ll find, slows to a trickle. God, what a pitiful figure I must make, panting and prancing, fighting for my life on the road. Even crazier than a burning beast, I suppose, because it shuts up and starts to approach me for the first time. Those people would be afraid. And so am I.

As my hearing returns, no longer drowned with sound, my vision sharpens as well. The beast jolts its head sharply to the side with every step forward, eyes squinting, jaw set, embers bursting out every which way. On its fourth or fifth step towards me, I could swear a whimper escapes, but it shakes its muzzle, and the noise is gone. Only when it is close enough for me to reach out and touch it does it stop. That familiar white hot heat is there as I tremble before it, but it stays still. Instead, I sense my throat return to its normal level of parched. What a relief to feel the fuzz cracking and splitting as I cough it out.

The realization hits me all at once. Dry. It needs something dry. As I stop shaking, a new sort of search begins, a plentiful one. A laughable one. There is more than one way to snuff out a flame, and we find ourselves in the land of sand. I burst up, away from the creature, the wolf, my friend, and its eyes widen in alarm. Tell me. I can walk straight again, so I put my arms against its side, guiding it to a sandy bank as far away from the station as I can muster. When I have found it a suitable place, I crouch down and pat the ground in front. The wolf listens, letting me coax its paws into the gritty pieces, one at a time. Lift, release, repeat. It lies down for me, slowly, adjusting this way and that until it is comfortable.

Scooping my hands into the dust, I lift, release, repeat, watching the sand overtake its tail, each claw, every morsel of flame it spills onto. The world is quiet now, except for the soft crunch and turn of my feet, the rush of the desert earth as it works its magic. The fire is definitely shrinking now, the look of lava giving way. As the wolf disappears beneath the sand, I make sure to push some aside for its eyes before I cover it completely. Fire burns just at the tips of its ears now, like lit matchsticks, and I know my work here is done. I dust my hands off on my pants and make my way back to my car.

Stuffy air greets me as I sit back behind that same wheel, like countless times before. How I wish there were scorch marks on my door, my fabric ceiling. But I place my foot on the gas. Only a few hours left on the road.

The wolf watches me with embered eyes as I drive away, the LEDs of mankind retreating from a smothered piece of sun.

Bess Blackburn is a writer and performer studying at Barnard College.