Tag: Thinking West

“I know exactly what will interest you,” Mr. Grimble said to the young couple browsing his wares to furnish their new home. He led them to his furniture aisle, briefly glancing out his shop window at the men hanging a sign on the store across the street.

“We’re not looking for anything too fancy,” the young woman said as they passed the china sets and rare coins.

Mr. Grimble turned from the window back to his customers before he could read the sign. “I don’t consider my items fancy, per se,” he said. “I prefer to think of them as special. Each of my wares is completely unique, with its own special history and meaning. You want your home to be special, don’t you?”

“Well, yes, of course,” the young woman said.

“Then this is the thing for you,” Mr. Grimble said, stopping in front of an antique European office chair. “These were manufactured during the height of the post World War I industrial boom. Very popular amongst businessmen. They oversaw many great operations while lounging in these chairs. This particular piece I know was owned by a Belgian clock factory owner. Most were destroyed in bombings and fires over the next few decades, but the clock maker loved his chair so much he had it sent overseas to keep it safe.” Mr. Grimble walked around the antique admiringly. “This isn’t just an office chair, it’s a throne.”

The young couple seemed unimpressed. They looked at the price tag and shook their heads.

“I’m not sure it’s really us, you know,” the young woman said.

“Of course,” Mr. Grimble said. “Let me show you some other items I know would be perfect for you.”

The young man looked around the shop and said, “Um, I don’t think you have what we’re looking for. Thanks.”

Mr. Grimble thanked the young couple for visiting and smiled as they walked out. After they were gone he sighed and sunk into the clock maker’s chair. He tightened his grip on armrests and looked back out the window. The sign across the street was up now. It read, Coming Soon. Francesca’s Trivialities. Mr. Grimble wondered what the hell a triviality shop was.

–

For days Mr. Grimble watched from his counter as customer after customer exited the triviality shop with useless crap and smiles on their faces. They left with cheap Chinese toys, common thrift store clothing, and mediocre knick-knacks. And barely a soul had bothered to pop inside his curiosity shop, let alone buy anything. So when he heard the bell attached to his door jingle, he greeted the schoolteacher over-excitedly.

She was looking for anything related to astronomy, as she was an amateur enthusiast. Mr. Grimble’s heart leapt. For some time he had been trying to unload a vintage 50’s telescope, used by the team that discovered the first binary pulsar.

“Oh my, how interesting,” the schoolteacher said. She asked many questions about the piece, growing more excited as he told its history.

This is how it’s done, Mr. Grimble thought to himself. You don’t just heap a bunch of garbage on as many customers as you can. You find the right item for the right person and that’s the sale that counts.

“And what is its magnification?” The schoolteacher asked.

“It had a magnification of 150X,” Mr. Grimble said. “Not as powerful as others at the time, but ideal for minimizing brightness glares.”

“What do you mean had?” the schoolteacher asked.

“Well, the telescope is no longer functional. Its worth comes strictly from its historical value,” Mr. Grimble told her.

The schoolteacher’s face soured. “Ah, I see.”

She quickly browsed the rest of the shop, finding nothing to her liking. Mr. Grimble returned to his counter and watched the schoolteacher cross the street to the triviality shop. After much longer than she had spent in his store, the schoolteacher reappeared with two large bags looking very satisfied. Mr. Grimble wondered what on earth she found over there instead of here. He spent the rest of the day watching the store across the street, gripping his hands together tightly, until a lanky woman with a bandana tied over her hair flipped the open sign to closed.

–

In the back office, Mr. Grimble poured over his record books. It was clear sales had flatlined since the opening of the triviality shop. Curiosities could not compete with trivialities, it seemed. Mr. Grimble scratched his head aggressively, unsure what he should do.

The front door bells jingled and a woman’s voice called out, “Hello! Hello!”

Mr. Grimble returned to the display floor to find the lanky woman with the bandana checking out his selection of mirrors.

Mr. Grimble tightened his fists. “Can I help you?”

“Oh, hi, yes, are you Mr. Grimble?” she asked. “I’m Francesca, from across the street. I just wanted to come by and say hello and introduce myself.” She extended her hand to Mr. Grimble, who reciprocated with one stiff shake. “I’ve wanted to stop by and see your store for a long time,” Francesca continued, “but I’ve just been so busy with the opening and all. You know how it is.”

“Sure,” Mr. Grimble said.

“So, wow, you got a lot of neat stuff here,” Francesca said, strolling through the aisles.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” Mr. Grimble asked.

“Oh, I’m never looking for anything in particular,” she said and picked up a porcelain dove off a shelf. “Hey, I like this.”

“That’s not right for you,” Mr. Grimble said. “Its part of the Kaolin Collection. You’re not a collector, are you?”

“No. I’ve never heard of Kaolin,” Francesca said.

“Well, it belongs in a collection,” Mr. Grimble said, clenching and unclenching his fists.

“Oh, OK,” Francesca set the dove back on the shelf.

Mr. Grimble relaxed his hands and took a deep breath. “Here, I have the perfect thing for you,” he said and ushered her to a display of wall mounts. In between a taxidermied antelope head and a framed ticket to the Brisbane World’s Fair hung an eighteenth century battle axe. Its handle short and engraved with a spiral pattern, the head almost as long as the handle, the back of the head bore a faded crest.

“My god, you can’t be serious?” Francesca gawked.

“It’s Spanish. Made sometime around 1780. A common weapon of the royal army. The stamp on the hilt suggests it was owned by a sergeant. It was recovered from a sunken ship off the coast of Florida. I have the papers to prove its authenticity.”

“Mr. Grimble,” Francesca said, shrugging her arms. “What would I possibly do with a battle axe?”

Mr. Grimble grabbed the axe with both hands and removed it from its display hook. He held it upright in front of him, admiring it, then offered it to Francesca.

“Hold it,” he said.

“No, really,” Francesca waved her hands at the piece.

“Please,” Mr. Grimble said and stepped closer to her. “See how it feels.”

“Well,” Francesca said, tapping a finger to her chin. “I never have held an antique Spanish weapon before, and who knows if I’ll get another chance.”

She took the axe from him.

“Wow, its heavy,” she said, awkwardly handling axe, holding the blade as far from herself as possible. “Is this thing sharp?”

“I keep all my wares in pristine condition.”

“Uh-huh,” Francesca said. “You know, I think I’ll pass on the battle axe.” She handed it back to Mr. Grimble. “But I’ll take that dove, though.”

“Yes, of course,” Mr. Grimble said.

Francesca walked back down the aisle to grab the porcelain dove.

Mr. Grimble tightened his grip on the axe.

(Fiction and Photography by Wesley Martin)

The tow truck’s wheels wobbled through the rows of old cars and scrap. Calvin had considered getting one of the new hover models, but that was before the spaceport had come in. A year ago this lot covered nearly half-a-mile with rows stacked three cars high. Back then, Calvin’s Salvage was booming and his destiny was certain. Now, destiny dwindled with his lot.

Calvin wound the wobbly truck out the back of the lot into his acreage where he and the kids had built a tree fort in the big spruce. Charles and Antoine liked to play knights, and sometimes Calvin played the giant attacking the castle. No games now. The kids had left with their mother to stay with her parents. If the spaceport kept snatching up all the property, there would never be another game played in that spruce.

Ida had pleaded for Calvin to sell the lot and come with her and the kids. Even through all their long arguments, Calvin had believed things would turn around; that the spaceport couldn’t conquer the whole town, that Calvin’s Salvage would survive.

It took months—all the way to the first launch—for Calvin to see that Ida was right.

The wobbly wheels halted on the hill at the edge of Calvin’s property, right outside the spaceport’s safety radius, meaning Calvin was not legally obligated to sell. At one point Calvin had considered this a blessing. Now it was a cruel joke.

From his hill he could see the spaceport, about the size of a dime if he held one up at arm’s length. Even from this distance he could tell that the shuttle was in place at the departure dock.

Closer by, Calvin saw the brick factory that had kept the town’s economy running for so many years and also the drive-in theater which had reliably entertained the town for almost as long. Both had the misfortune of being located directly in the safety radius and were forced to sell early. Perhaps they were the blessed ones: they never had false hope. One by one the town was bought out by the spaceport. Calvin himself had been offered a generous sum, but this lot was his destiny. He built a family and a home here. No sum would have been large enough to outbid destiny.

The shuttle’s engines churned fire and Calvin felt his destiny soaring off this planet along with the shuttle. He shielded his eyes, watching the unimaginably sophisticated metal tube rise farther into the atmosphere. The shuttle flew high and his heart sank so low.

Calvin sighed and rested his head on the steering wheel, then an enormous explosion a thousand feet in the air sent him clambering to the floor of the truck. After a second, he uncovered his head to see a fireball, much larger than a dime, hurling pieces of the sophisticated metal tube in all directions. Chunks of mangled flaming wreckage rained down for miles around.

(Fiction and Photography by Wesley Martin)

It smelled of moisture when he awoke: a moisture he had not smelled since he moved to the dry, searing west. The lengthy downpour coated and seeped into every permeable surface, creating an aura fueled by the extracted dust seeping out of every dried up, seemingly hollow crevice—a stagnant, murky smell which co-mingled with the fresh scents bursting off the rain drops as they shattered like small shards of fine glass upon the inflexibly crisp landscape that is what he now called home.

His senses had to isolate the intoxicating scent of fresh rain, a type of rain that sought to sanitize every depraved act committed upon the land and the energetic chaos carried by those calling it home. What did a soaking rain offer his new home? What did the entwining smells of dusty, aging wood and bitter, dry weeds offer? Weeds that were furiously growing out of the myriad of cracks throughout the pressed pavement parking lots along the small town’s one-street business district. What mischievous deeds were being cleansed by the lengthy rain and pushed out of their cozy, arid homes?

Looking back at the events that transpired, he pinpointed it was 1986 when the inevitable move to the west began its path. He was twenty-six years old and had just relocated to the top of the social hierarchy in his profession, a profession he found satisfied his complex thought process. A thought process that engrossed every ounce of his being, so much so he had no choice but to adhere to the inherent process occurring within him—which meant his profession was of the utmost importance. But his profession was gone and, since the move to his new home, he couldn’t shake the continual movie reel using his mind’s eye, his dreams as its projector.

It was one of those chance events that flew in, slapped him in the face, shit on his head, kicked his legs from underneath him, and slammed him flat on his ass, gasping for air—leaving him wondering in that split second if he had forgotten how to breath.

(Fiction and Photography by Fawn Hon-Hinton)

It isn’t sunset; not yet.

The sky colors with the haze of the in-between: clouds smeared across the horizon and ringed with gold by the late-afternoon sun. The blue begins to pale. Birds chatter in the tall elm trees and soar in circles around their nests. Bugs flock to stagnant pools of rainwater and flit around weeds grown taller than the fences which surround them. A fox crosses the crumbling asphalt laced with stubborn greenery and disappears.

One day the Earth remembered how to breathe and the world went still.

What’s left are ruins: homes abandoned in the wake of a cataclysm, levelled or standing, water-logged or charred to husks. When Earth decided it was time for the end, she spared almost no one. Humanity tamed the land, mastered disease, and conquered uncertainty. But in the end its undoing was the one thing it never managed to reign in: the unrelenting ferocity of natural disaster.

These days there’s a quiet that doesn’t disappear.

Merril watches a flock of blackbirds take to the sky, punctuating the silence with an avian ballet. It’s the same every summer: each night, as the sun begins to slip away, the sweeping murmurations twist and twirl among the clouds in perfect synchronicity. She watches until the birds disappear and the crickets sing, then locks herself inside the old one-bedroom house at the end of Glorieta Circle.

She is fifty-two years old. Thirty years have passed since an F5 tornado levelled her hometown. Eight years have passed since she buried her husband under a sprawling oak tree in Oklahoma. It’s been fourteen months since she last saw another human being.

The little hole-in-the-ground Texan town she’s haunted for eight months broadcasts its seclusion in semi-collapsed buildings overrun by Virginia creeper and trumpet vines, fountain grass and thistle. There’s a stream not far from her home with water clean enough to drink and enough game lurking in the shadows to eat well a few times each week. It isn’t pretty, but it’s a living.

When food gets scarce she hunts with her husband’s old rifle, picking rabbits and coyote off with a hand steadied by years of practice. Most days she favors traps. Most days the roar of the rifle sounds displaced and irreverent: a reminder that although she survives, she is not home.

In an abandoned Texan suburb thirty years after the end, she’s certain humanity was never home.

(Fiction and Photography by Kayleen Burdine)

I could tell it hurt. This time was different. He winced when I said it and in that moment the words solidified for me and I chewed it up with green chili and warm pizza dough and swallowed.

“You’ll be back,” he mumbled with confidence. He spoke into a brown ale that was our favorite. It was hardly ever available anymore at a local pub where we’d met.

“Let’s talk about something else. How did the interview go?” I asked over my pizza and my eyes turned downward.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Did you get it or not?” I pleaded, but I didn’t know for what.

He didn’t engage.

“Six years.” He shook his head.

“I’d change it if I could,” I said.

“Me too.”

A New Mexico Spring has a wind that makes bodies ache; it swirls out the dead from the ground and they wander around barren fields with cow shit patties from the beginning of creation or the great divide. It’s calming, sometimes, to hear it howling outside of a studio apartment where his checkered vans with drawings on the yellowed parts lie next to the mattress on the floor. Watching the dust collect on his skin and form greasy clumps and kissing tumbleweeds floating on his cracked lips. The harshness of it all becomes bearable. Almost. Until you forget about the layer of your skin that’s rubbed raw from going outside, and you nurse it on his couch. And the way the callous on his thumb forms to the guitar in the corner that hasn’t left its case in months you’ve stopped counting. And the time he used paintbrushes to leave a mark. And then, the tattoo gun.  Comfort collects on his white walls and I can’t remember what water tastes like in the air. You forget that the wind’s not so bad.

“You’ll be back,” he said again. “Everyone always come back.”

We parted at the stoplight. I didn’t kiss him. I didn’t want him to be right again.

I felt the sting of dirt on my bare legs underneath my skirt. I faced the sun. I would miss its dry heat for the last time.

(Fiction and Photography by Jade Smith)

“Thirst, probably.” He reported as if he’d swallowed something too large and it had stuck in his throat. The news had come as a sand-sting to the town; it covered the small wagon-wheel in dusty rumors. I’d come as an outsider with a Corolla and a funny accent.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” He continued.

I didn’t know if it was irony, but I had a suspicion it remained sore for this man. A bleeding puss pocket—ready to burst at the moment he touched bourbon to his lips. Something he held onto and let fester; he picked at it and over time the skin remained damp and soft. As the Deputy Chief of a small border-town that had 17,000 residents he felt a sense of personal responsibility, I imagined. He was a pudgy man with bug eyes that were yellowed and looked like the cracked earth he stood on now. He’d taken me out to the pasture where they’d found her.

“She was headed for the Terry farm I’ll bet,” he said. “Dairy farmers and the like, I imagine looking for a husband or brother.”

“What was her name?” I questioned, scribbling in a notebook as he kicked a tumbleweed out of our walkway.

“Don’t know. Undocumented.”

“She was traveling then?”

“Suppose you could say that. No one knew her.”

 

She didn’t know how hard the wind could make her ache, as if it were peeling layers of her away. Little by little she forgot herself among the dirt. She forgot why she’d come. And how could it have hurt so badly for her to be here now. Water. She needed that, she knew. Dust and sand covered the backs of women that had come before her—a list of names the desert had crossed out. Arizona, she thought. That’s what she could remember. She said it out loud, focusing on the syllables. Why was land so cruel?  It erased the name her mother gave her. She huddled down in the heat, covering her face from the journey. She thought of home.

 

“There’s a playa, just north of here,” the Chief said. “She had maybe two miles.”

I wrote “Dead woman” in the perfectly aligned columns I’d taken from an air-conditioned trailer. I’d been counting bodies for two years and every trip never got any easier. I scribbled “Nameless” in the margins. The Chief climbed into his four-by-four Dodge pickup and cranked up the AC, removing his sweat-rimmed hat and throwing it on the dash. I walked around the truck to the passenger side and noticed a bumper-sticker that read “Pray for Rain” in blue and white lettering.

“The farmers sure could use it.” I hopped in the truck, moving my thumb in a hitch-hiking motion toward the back of the truck. “The rain.” Trying my best to sound local in sympathy.

“Not for the farmers anymore.” He looked ahead and drove over the large holes in the pasture.

I looked at him, puzzled. The wind had picked back up and the sand hit the glass of the truck and made a scraping sound.  We were headed back to town to get a burger and something to wash the afternoon down. He pointed to my notebook in my lap.

“Rain keeps the body-count down.”

(Fiction and Photography by Jade Smith)

There was nothing beautiful about a New Mexican spring.

For every flower and warm, sunny afternoon there were six or seven lung-fuls of dust and needle-like torrents of sand blasted at her face at thirty (sometimes forty or, God forbid, even fifty) miles per hour. There was no beauty in a sky painted brown, a moon painted sickly yellow, in stars obscured by not-really-clouds. There was no pleasure in the dust devils flying down her street like phantoms for days on end, carrying stray trash and elm seeds. Spring was a season to be spent inside, more-so even than winter, hiding from the groaning voices hidden in every gust. She had laughed the first time she drove past that sign in-between towns that read “Gusty Winds May Exist.” Now she resented it.

There was something especially infuriating about being trapped inside an empty house by a force as seemingly innocuous as wind. The windows of their old house rattled in their frames and the draft pressed loose doors open like it was welcoming itself in, enjoy your stay, no that’s alright, I’ll take the couch. She was tired of dusting the windowsills. She had been through a three-pack of cheap feather duster replacements in the last month alone. The dirt was invading like a disease, lining the windows and the thresholds, sprinkled across her kitchen floor where in the winter there’d been only the slightest hint of damp and chill.

He returned on the windiest day of the year–the windiest day of her life–scaring her half to death when the screen-door suddenly flew back and banged against the side of the house and he all but tumbled in, bags in hand, hair tousled into the sort of disarray that up until that moment she had only ever associated with sleep and sex. Still in the midst of a fit of stir-craziness her hair was bound to the top of her head carelessly, not even brushed, and the clothes she wore were the sort she felt comfortable putting at the mercy of bleach stains. They stared at one another, momentarily mute. She was a mess. The city was a mess. He was a mess.

He was home.

“Beautiful as ever,” he said, face threatening to split with the size of his grin—with pleasure at how much planning it must have taken for him to arrive in this way, like any other storm, sudden and powerful. But not filthy, like spring. Not infuriating. His arrival was like the gentle whisper of rain she’d been anticipating for days, the thirty-percent chance promise she’d spotted on the weather channel two days ago that’d grown to sixty-five yesterday and ninety today.

She threw the feather duster at him. He looked at her in mock-offense, followed by real offense when they both became aware of the imprint of dust the filthy thing had left on his shirt. She laughed, the screen door rattled like it was trying to escape its frame, and in two quick strides she was in his arms. For a moment she took him in (her summer, at last) and when she opened her eyes, just over his shoulder, she could see the clouds—real, heavy, gray ones—creeping in on the horizon.

(Fiction and Photography by Kayleen Burdine)