Red Lightning

by Laura Pritchett

  The yellow swings on the playground have ceased to move. They just hang there, useless, and I say, “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. A tent. A car. I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’m not really in a place where I can . . . I dunno, uh, think ahead. I don’t have a phone, I don’t have money to make a call, I have absolutely nothing, Libby. Nothing.” I squint at her, and then my eyes go back to the swings. “No-thing, nothing, n-othing, not-a-thing.” I singsong it to myself, a little hum, a little prayer, a little accusation to the universe. “Not-a-thing-at-all.”

  Libby clenches her jaw, meaning she’s hardening up and done with the tears. “I can’t just—Tess. How high are you? How sick are you?” When she gets no answer, she adds, “I don’t know if I want Amber to see you. Or you her. Or if I do, I’d like to prepare her, you know?” She stands and reaches her hand out to pull me up. “Although I don’t know how to do that, prepare her to see you.”

  I ignore her hand and stand up on my own, my knees aching with the effort of it. I scratch my arm, look at a yellow sweatshirt that has been abandoned by the chain-link fence. Wonder if it would fit me. Listen to some teacher inside clapping and guiding kids with the wheels on the bus go round and round, and their little voices chiming in. “I’ll give them this much,” I say, nodding in their direction. “Their voices actually sound like blooms, yellow flowers, dancing in the air.”

  She shakes her head no, sweeping my comment away. “How did you get here, anyway? You walked here from the highway? The gas station? Isn’t that the Greyhound bus stop?”

  “Indeed it is, and yes. I had the distinct pleasure of walking down the highway and through Mainstreet-NoWhere-Colorado with exactly one grocery, one post office, one closed-up movie theatre, one church, one shitty city park, and one brick library, all the exact fucking same. This place is so poor, so dried up. I knew I’d eventually find you here. Boneknowledge.”

  Libby runs her hand over her eyes, rubs her forehead. “Oh, Tess. That’s too long of a walk. You must have been walking for hours. You don’t have a backpack? Luggage?”

  “Got not a single thing.” I don’t tell her about my feet, which are bleeding inside my shoes, don’t tell her about the inside of my throat, which is a desert, don’t tell her about the inside of my stomach, a roiling burnache, and not my chest, which is a universe of spiraling stars.

  “You sound crazy.” She tilts her head at me, considering this fact, and when I don’t answer, she says, “Okay. I’m going to at least get you some food and water and a shower. I’m going to take you home. Just so you know, I’m married.” She clears her throat to get my attention, and so I look up. “I got married to Ed.”

  “He still a hippie beekeeper? Still drive that orange VW bus around?”

  “Yup.”

  “Those cute little John Lennon glasses. I always figured he smoked a lot of pot.”

  “As it turns out, no.”

  “He’s older than you.”

  “We stayed friends for a few years until it became obvious. And by then, age didn’t matter. He’s been an excellent father to Amber. He’s a good human being.”

  “Deepgood? Heartsweeper?”

  “Yeah.” She smiles a little at that. “I can see you’re still inventing words.”

  “You got other kids?”

  She hesitates. “Nope. Amber has been enough.” She starts walking to her pickup, waves to me with her arm. “Well, come on, then. Crazy or not, I need to get you somewhere.”

  I follow her. “Libby? We know how to reboot a computer. But is there a way to reboot a person? To start again?”

  She shakes her head. “Cut it out, Tess. That’s enough. I can’t ever figure out if you’re being earnest or a jackass. And neither can you. You have the capacity for the first, but you always fall into the second. I can’t deal with that right now. I have to get to work. I can’t take the day off, not this late. People depend on me. Even if I haven’t seen my own sister for ten years. We have to figure something out.” But then she stops, turns to look at me, still unbelieving. “Please don’t talk to me on the way. Just sit there, quiet. Just let me drive and get over the surprise of this. I just can’t believe it. I just can’t—”

  “I can be quiet. Quiet like you would not believe.” I sound confident, but when I breathe out, there’s the vibration of all the fear I’ve been housing. My ribcage moans in response, sore with the effort of this big of an exhale, of the travel and coughing, of the effort of having to house my messy heart. I want to buckle over with the heavypain of it. But at the exact same time, I know the vibration is also from lightrelief, because what if going home was a gal’s lastditch effort? And if it didn’t work, if she got shunned, she’d have to play the hand she’s been carrying around in her back pocket as a last-resort option? And she can see that now she’s at least got a bit of time before she uses that final tool in her extremely limited toolbox? I want to buckle under the relief of that, too.

  I don’t buckle. Instead I follow her like an obedient dog and climb in an old black Ford truck that has schoolbooks and a jump rope on the floor, a stack of mail on the dash, a cow’s yellow eartag. Thank god. Thank some god for my sister, who seems to be willing to keep her heart open for at least a moment despite all the very good reasons not to, proving, I suppose, that we humans are kinder and more generous than whatever god struck us into life.

  Chapter Three

  The grasses in the fields run in waves alongside the truck, breathing and moving together, a symphony, a cadence, a yellowdance. Like an ocean, and here we are, its pirates. That same wind makes my hair shift across my face, soft on my swollen jaw. We pass a group of heat-worn horses, standing exhausted. We pass round hay bales, an abandoned pickup truck, hot pastures that stretch on into the horizon. There’s a bailer in another field, boxing up pastureland, and antelope in the far distance stand paused and surprised by life. It all looks exactly the same. Exactly like it did ten years ago when I first drove away, next to fields exactly like this, with my hair whipping around my face. I wonder what it is I’ve come back to be forgiven for. Perhaps knowing what I was about to do—and doing it anyway.

  I sat in the passenger seat while a man drove me off, and I knew exactly what I was doing:

  —I was climbing in a truck and leaving my squawking red-faced infant

  —with my sister, an unattractive loser version of myself living in a shithole house in the middle of NoWhere, Colorado,

  —with our mother, mean and abusive (from being abused herself, but still),

  —and I was confining them to the very life that I was hightailing it out of there to escape,

  —and I didn’t feel any emotion whatsoever for any of them,

  —the place where emotions reside being long ago wiped nearly clean,

  —though one sliver of emotion remained, a sliver as thin as the smallest fingernail moon, and it was telling me that the best way to love was to leave.

  I look over at Libby, who is crying silently as she drives, and then look back the other way to the earth. Fields, sky, a line of cottonwoods, the outline of mountains in the distance, blurred by haze. We turn a corner, and a few of the cows gathered around a stock tank raise their heads to me in a gesture of cow-interest. I stare back. Perhaps one sort of love does not block another; love is a capacity that grows by use, and I’ll start with the cows. I’ve always admired them, their stupid calmness, how that calmness is so solid that one is convinced of the absence of an inner life. Plus the way they lick out their noses with their tongues.

  I sigh and look back at my sister. Bless me for being like you, god. Bless me for being either insane or unjust or cruel. Bless me for creating suffering and then turning away from it, for pretending that I wasn’t leaving a swath of pain raging like a fire in my wake.

  *

  “Those are Amber’s 4-H heifers.” Libby blinkers, and we slow. The cattle are standing in the V of the corner between the county road and a long dirt driveway, flicking their tails against the flies, c
hewing their cud. A cluster of cottonwood trees blocks what must be her home up ahead. “Usually we sell them, but this year we won’t. We’ll breed and milk them. We make cheese.” She slows again for the potholes and washboard of a driveway, and my ribs ache. I push the last of the offered granola bar into my mouth, chewing on one side, the bloody tissues mixing in, then slosh my mouth with warm water from an aluminum water bottle. My body jolts with the bumps, too weak to brace against the onslaught of the earth, and all I can think is, This should feel familiar, Tess, because all those you have transported around have felt this way.

  Libby pulls into the center of the gravel circle that is surrounded by various buildings. She puts the truck into park, pushes the truck door open, swings herself out, is soon outside my side, waiting. I sit. Bedazzled. Unable to move. In front of me is a curved home, an oval of sorts, glistening blue and green bottles. I blink, squeeze my eyes shut, try again. Here is The Lord of the Rings. No, The Hobbit. What kinda pot did that guy give me on the bus? I close my eyes, open one and then the other, trying to see it all again.

  Libby opens the truck’s door for me. “It’s called an Earthship.”

  “This is where you live?” I hear myself murmur, “Well, I’ll be. Holyshit.” I sit, taking in the arches and swoops, although it’s the textures of this home that keep stopping my eyes up. Rough adobe. Glass. Smooth. Glinting. My eyes are complaining: they’re too scratchy, too tired, and yet they’re looping all over the place, following the swoops and glints and colors. “I’ve seen these down by Taos. I just never expected one here. There are tires in there, right? I mean, your house is made out of tires? And bottles? And aluminum cans? Looks like something a wizard would live in.”

  “Or us.” Libby stands at the truck’s door, holding out her hand so as to help me out.

  “And it works on its own, right? Like, it doesn’t need the rest of humanity—”

  “It has its own water catchment, generates its own electricity, yes. Off the grid.”

  My eyes follow the facts, which is how one thing leads to another: the curves of the Earthship lead to prayer-flags, and those lead to an adobe chickenhouse with more prayer-flags, which take me over to a stack of beehives. Then a small corral, then donkeys, which start braying as soon as I turn to look at them, and they’re loud enough to crack my head in two. I circle round, looking at the whole sweetstrange homestead.

  “I turned out to be a hippie.” Libby laughs, and my head jerks toward her in surprise. Her laugh means something. It means she has let go of the anger and the nervousness and the stress for just a moment, and it is thus an act of generosity, and it feels like another punch, her laugh being one that reminds me of all the young versions of us, playing at a home near here but the very opposite of this—unbeautiful inside and out—the memory flooding into me now of her laugh back then, our laughs being generated from barn cats or the burn barrel or by running through the purple-blooming alfalfa fields with kites. Back when we had laughs worth letting out of our bodies, back when laughter was possible in the unbeautiful. “Laughter is carbonated prayer,” I say. “I heard that once. This house is like carbonated building materials. This place is like a crazyass womb.”

  Libby gives me a look of tender confusion. “You and your . . . observations. I like it here, too.” She looks around the place herself and then out at the dry grassland fields that run in every direction. “And there’s Ed—which is good, because, really, I have to get to work. I want to see you, Tess. But there are people who need me. Literally and immediately.”

  A question comes flying out of me that surprises the both of us. “But do you love him, Libby? Do you have that emotion?” But what I’m wanting to ask, or, rather, confirm, is that it’s not true, is it? Love? That in truth they die a little to each other each day, right? She loses more of herself to the mundane stupidity of cow-life, yes? That secretly, her life is empty and boring and cardboard-like, yes? Even in a magical place like this?

  I glance from the dancing prayer-flags to her eyes, and it’s the way the skin around them crinkles that tells me the most. That’s where the changes of the last ten years have found themselves. What they show me is that she has an ownership of herself. “Yes, I do love him, Tess.” She says this as we watch Ed, who is registering surprise as he recognizes me and as he walks up to us: pause, go, pause, head-duck, go. He’s in jeans and a stained white T-shirt, sandcolored curly hair and little glasses, taking off work gloves, wiping his forehead with his forearm. “I love him,” she says again, quickly, before he arrives. “I love it when he holds me in his arms and reads to me at night. I love the way his front teeth overlap just the tiniest bit, I love the curve of his smile. I love when he gets indignant. I love when he leans over Amber’s homework to help her. I love when he’s tired and he gets his feet under him anyway. He’s the most mindful person I’ve ever met. Do we annoy each other? Yes. Is it sometimes hard? Yes. But Tess, he is the opposite of what we knew, he is a gift of grace.” She looks at her watch and says, “Don’t tell him any of that, though. Right now we’re in a fight about when to extract the honey. And I gotta get to work. That’s the reality. So I’d just like to know, are you planning on leaving? As in, if I go to work, will I see you again?”

  I falter. “Yes. You’ll see me when you’re off work. If you allow it.”

  All this gets voiced in a fast moment, and then Ed is there in front of me. We take each other in. He looks stricken, but all I can think as I drift my gaze across him is some people don’t age, and Ed is clearly one of them. He looks exactly like he did ten years ago, that light curly hair and calmsleepy eyes, and yes, the left side of his smile has the slightest tip curve upward, but his smile is one of confusion, not joy, and it disappears when he turns in my direction. Behind him appears a dark mutt that darts up to me and lets out one single bark.

  “Quiet, Ringo.” Libby reaches down and scratches the dog’s ear.

  “But Ringo was the name of the dog you had before.”

  “All dogs around here are named Ringo.”

  “That’s not very inventive.”

  “Tess?” Ed’s eyes dart from me to Libby and back at me. Then, bless him, he walks closer, holds out his hand, then backs up at the smell, puts his hand in his jean pocket, tries to recover, puts his hand back out for me to shake. Which I do. “Tess. It is you. I guess I . . . didn’t . . . recognize—” There’s a long pause, and then he says, “Well, last time I saw you, you were running those ilegales. You were in a bit of trouble, as I remember it.” Sincerequiet voice. I glance at Libby. That’s why she loves him. He’s a man. Gentle but can stand under pressure and hold his ground.

  I look right back at him. He has changed too. Not in looks but in solidness. He’s not mousy like I remember. “No one says ilegales, Ed. It’s smugglingwetbacks. All one word. You should know that.” It comes out bitchier than intended, so I try for something more tender. “The last time I saw you, you were holding baby Amber. I see she’s grown up now.” And then, because his eyebrows shoot up, I add, “I saw her from a distance. Just a distance.”

  He takes off his glasses with one hand, rubs his eyebrows together with the other. “Well, you’re not looking so good, frankly. Which makes me want to ask, what’s changed for you?”

  It’s the hesitation that gives me away—the surprise of that question being asked so soon. I can’t even get my brain to focus on one of the answers I had ready.

  Tess only needs to recover from all those empty universe spaces,

  from the pot,

  from lack of sleep,

  from wheels on the bus going round and round.

  The question of death.

  The inevitability of human oblivion.

  How can most everyone ignore that

  fact except Tess?

  To walk so close to death but

  move through life as if that’s not true?

  Tess doesn’t get it.

  Why it doesn’t crack everyone in two.

  I glance a
t the sky, back at him. “Wait, what? What did you just ask me? Am I still smuggling wetbacks? Is that what you want to know?”

  But his face has already turned hard. “Libby, I don’t want her here. She doesn’t deserve it.”

  I throw my arms out, wide, like I am embracing the air, to stall for time. “Or are you really asking me something else? Are you really wondering if life on the margins has a sharper pain, if I’ve suffered enough yet?”

  He leans forward, and his voice is low. “What I want to know, Tess, is what danger are you bringing to our home? And I want to know it now.”

  “I’m trying to be honest of late. You want to know what I’ve been up to? Here’s a quick summary.” I am talking fast, before he can get another word in. I had this practiced on the bus. The words are stuck in my throat and garble around for a moment but then start to leak out. “Yes, I was a part-time levantona. It was lucrative, me being a female driver and all. But I stayed on the outskirts, Ed. That was true, even back then. I was always on the periphery. Never that much in the know. Which gang was which gang, so on, so forth. I purposefully stayed away from all that. I just did the driving within Colorado. Or nearby. I had a gun, I could use it, I’m tough enough. But I only did small and safe groups. Kind of like . . . well, kind of like staying with pot and not going to meth. I stuck with the safe transports, ones that had been weeded through by my friend Slade. Whatever route I was told. So my knowledge of the whole shebang is surprisingly limited. But I recently decided to do just one more trip . . . for the money . . . because somehow it always goes. I needed cash to start fresh. Because I was hungry. Not as in, man, I need a snack. But as in, I’m going to die if I don’t get some food—”