by Ben Adams
John adjusted the rearview mirror. The town had vanished from it, finally blown to dust. On the empty highway, he had also been enveloped by the desert, surrounded by dried grass and barbed wire fences.
He had been driving for about a half hour when he sensed it. Sagittarians nearby. It was faint, not as strong as it was in the trailer park, but he still felt it, felt them. He pulled onto the shoulder, got out of the Trans-Am, and walked down the road, trying to find them, like a human divining rod searching the desert for an underground spring.
John walked through the culvert, toward a fence and the field behind it. A slight breeze carrying the smell of sage and dead grass. The sensation increased every second, growing in John, like they were getting closer. John didn’t need to look for the Sagittarians. They were looking for him.
A fencepost had been uprooted and the barbed wire had been snipped and coiled. He stepped through the opening, then ran into the field. Brittle grasses snapped under his Chucks. Clumps of dry dirt broke and joined soil. John ran over yellow grass and rock to a spot far enough in the field that the road became a dark line against the golden ground. He sent his consciousness exploring, trying to find the Sagittarians that had caused his body to vibrate with awareness.
There were seventeen Sagittarians in the field. Their impression was different from Leadbelly’s and the Elvises’. They felt like warm, red swirls. They surrounded him, but remained distant. John sensed them moving in independent circles, like they were pacing. Or stalking. Then one crept toward him.
The sky was cloudless. The sun was setting behind John, but the field was still lit and false, silver pools shimmered on the ground. From one of these mirages, something emerged. It was a blob breaking heat waves, gradually shaping itself into something resembling a human. As it got closer, John distinguished features, long hair, a dress, hips, a distinctive saunter.
Rosa.
She floated toward him out of the desert, out of a dream. He ran toward her and when he reached her, they paused awkwardly for a moment. John smiled and reached out to her, but pulled his arms back. Rosa looked at him, raised her eyebrows expectantly.
He clutched her dress and pulled her in and kissed her. She put her arms around him, kissed him back. Then she just hugged him, resting her head on his shoulder. He moved his arms, wrapped them around Rosa’s waist, but they shook with excitement and he concentrated, stilling them. And gently held her.
She raised her head from his shoulder and smiled. Her smile filled John with a warmth and joy he’d never felt before, and he didn’t want to let go of her, a once-in-a-lifetime find.
“So, does this mean we’re boyfriend girlfriend?” he asked, looking into her deep brown eyes.
“That depends,” Rosa said, “how do you feel about dating an older woman?”
“How much older are we talking? not four hundred?”
“How old do you think I look?”
“Not a day over perfect.”
“You’re so cheesy,” she said. “I’m one hundred and sixty-three, if you must know.”
“So you’re a cougar?”
“I am not a cougar,” Rosa said.
“I don’t know…” John said, teasing. “You did seduce a younger man.”
She rolled her eyes.
“So, seriously. Are we boyfriend girlfriend, or what?”
“What do you want us to be?” Rosa rested her arms on his shoulders and smiled up at him.
“You can’t tell? I was practically all over you at lunch the other day.”
“John.” Rosa tilted her head. “I’m one hundred and sixty-three. Men have been hitting on me since the 1880’s. Trust me, you were not all over me.”
“That makes me feel better.” A small yucca plant, the sharp brown leaves at its base, grew a few feet away.
“John, look at me.” Rosa grabbed his head with both hands. “I came all the way out here to find you. You think I’d do that for someone I’d just slept with if there wasn’t something more?”
“So, you’ve been with other guys?”
“Oh my God, John. Are you listening to me?”
“How many are we talking here? five, ten, twenty.” John’s eyes widened. “More? More than twenty?”
“I’m trying to tell you I love you.”
John started laughing.
“You’re such a shit,” Rosa said, slapping his chest.
“I talked to Louisa,” John said. He didn’t want to bring it up, but there was something he needed to tell Rosa.
Rosa pulled away and turned her back to him. John put his hands in his hoodie pockets, stretching its front, making him slouch. He noticed Rosa was barefoot.
“You didn’t need to do it, you know…” he said, “use those pheromones on me. I mean, I know Louisa asked you to. How fucked up is that, my great-great-great-grandmother has to hook me up. Still, you didn’t need to do it.”
“I didn’t want to,” she said, biting her thumb. “I just wasn’t sure if you…”
“Hey.” John put his hand on her shoulder. “I wouldn’t change anything, being with you. You know, so much of my life hasn’t turned out the way I thought it would.”
“John.” Rosa spun. She folded her arms across her chest, put her weight on her right leg, raised one hip, the classic disgruntled girlfriend pose. “You’re only twenty-three.”
“Yeah, I know. Most people say that when they’re like, I don’t know, forty. But I’m saying it now. When I finished school, I thought I’d be designing crosswords for The Denver Post or something. When people asked me what I did, that’s what I told them, that I was a puzzle maker. Even when I was sneaking around photographing people doing it, I’d tell myself, ‘I’ll be a professional puzzle designer soon and none of this will matter. It’ll be a funny story for the talk shows.’”
“There are a lot of crossword designers on talk shows?” she asked.
“I was going to be the first. At least, that’s what I told myself. Now I don’t know. After everything that’s happened, what I’ve learned. I’m not who I thought I was. And who I am is not what everyone wants me to be.” John found the little box containing his hesitancies and misgivings. He added one more article to it before tucking it back in its nook.
“Who do you want to be?”
“All I know is when I look at you, you’re the only thing that makes sense. In a weird, drugging-me-to-sleep-with-you sort of way.” John moved to adjust his glasses, forgetting he’d left them in the trailer park. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, I love you. I fell in love with you the minute I saw you.”
She smiled and put her arms around his neck.
“Okay, you can stop talking now,” she said, kissing him.
“So,” John said, “does this make me your boyfriend?”
“Actually, I think you’re more than that.”
“Huh?”
Rosa beamed at him.
“Something’s different about you,” he said. John reached out with his consciousness and was suddenly aware of more Sagittarians, not just Rosa, and not just the sixteen watching them. He put his hand on her belly. It was like a lake, a calm surface with hyperactivity underneath. Life working.
“Holy shit! You’re pregnant!”
“Yeah.” Rosa smiled. Even though her belly was flat, she rubbed it like she was in her third trimester, cradling what was gestating inside.
“Is it mine?”
“Yeah, silly. Who else’s could they be?” Rosa said, nodding, her smile widening.
“I don’t know? What about Leadbelly. Surely you and he…”
“Eww. No. Gross.”
“Wait. Wait.” John fluttered his hands like he was trying to shoo away confusion. “Did you say ‘them’?” He put his hand on her stomach again and noticed something else. There wasn’t one child growing inside her, there were nine.
“Really, nine?”
“I know this is sudden,” Rosa said, “and overwhelming, but we won’t have to do this on our own. It’s r
eally common with us.”
“Nine kids? That’s a lot of diapers.”
“I know nine kids seems like a lot, but we can deal with it.”
“This is just…I didn’t expect this. I though we’d hang out, go to the Sizzler or something. Then have kids.”
“Actually,” Rosa said, stepping backward, “you know what? You don’t need to do anything. I’ll be with my people. We’ll raise them. I shouldn’t have expected you to…”
“I’m making Louisa baby-sit. That’s all I’m saying,” John said, laughing. Rosa laughed and John saw them chasing nine kids around the yard, teaching them to tie their shoes. He pictured her bringing their children a birthday cake with one candle that they collectively blew out. He imagined Rosa standing next to him in a football stadium, cheering when all nine of their children’s names were called and a procession of Abernathys collected their high school diplomas. He saw his children marrying, having nonuplets of their own, John and Rosa eventually being like Louisa, several ‘greats’ preceding their names. Holding Rosa, feeling their children squirming inside her, John knew that a lifetime of exhaustion and worry, laughter and delight, awaited him. There was just one thing he had to do first.
“So, you’re headed back to Denver?” she asked, looking at her bare feet.
“Just for a couple of days. I have to get my mom, grandma, and Roof. Louisa says she has a place for them in the trailer park. Then there’s my dad. I gotta take care of that.”
“You’re going to rescue him?”
“I have to. He’s my dad.” John shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ll come with you, help you find him.”
“Louisa’s already got people on that. You’ve got our kids to take care of.” John put his hand back on her belly, wrapped one arm around her, and kissed the side of her head. He lowered his voice. “Don’t worry, it’ll just be a couple of days. Then we can just be together.”
She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him.
“Hurry back to me.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
John put his forehead against Rosa’s and whispered, “I love you.”
Rosa leaned in, kissed him again, and whispered.
Rosa walked backward, her hand slipping from his. Her eyes glistened like she was verging on crying. She wiped her eyes then spun and ran into the desert. Louisa said Rosa had been waiting longer for them to be together than John had, for years, and now she’d have to wait a little longer. Watching her run away from him, John choked back his tears, and promised himself she’d never cry again.
He held onto her with his consciousness as she ran. She lifted her dress over her head and rolled it up. Holding the dress in her mouth, she transformed into a lynx and dashed toward the lingering Sagittarians. They circled around her several times and ran into the desert. Rosa turned her head toward John. She whimpered, then followed the Sagittarians into the desolation.
And she was gone.
The last light from the sun was vanishing. The sky, pink and violet. Twilight bloomed behind the Rockies. John followed this light to the road. He found the broken part of the fence and walked through, happy. He was going to be a father, Rosa a mother. And they’d do it together. He leapt over the culvert and skipped to the car.
John stood next to the Trans-Am and looked toward the blackening sky. Stars were beginning to pierce the twilight and the constellations’ formations were becoming distinguishable. To the south, where Louisa had showed him, John spotted Sagittarius glimmering against the black backdrop. He turned toward it, and felt connected to the cluster of stars where his ancestors originated. And, standing in the empty highway, he raised his hand and waved to the constellation, confident someone would wave back.
Here’s a very brief list of people who helped shape this book, making its publication possible. Kitty Honeycutt, Chad Douglas, Emily Alexander, Mark Gottlieb, Michael Neff, Alan Rinzler, Josh Mohr, Andrew Touhy, and the countless readers who provided invaluable feedback on this book, many of them I can’t even remember. Without their insight, this book would not be the loose collection of fart jokes that it is.
To all my friends who’ve had to listen to me talk about this book. Again, there are too many of you to list, but you know who you are.
To my supportive family, Larry, Donna, and Daniel Adams, Frank and Sharon Malvoso.
And especially, Shelby, for, to put it simply, everything.
