Excerpt of Chapter 1
My Outlaw
I laid on my back in the grassy field somewhere in the woods near a cottage. The sky glistened bright blue, with only a few fluffy clouds hanging in the sky. They were the kind that kids sat in circles for, breaking their necks to look at and find shapes in, not the kind that doomed the earth for rainfall — at least that’s what I thought. My arm laid flat beside me, making acquaintance with all the ants and bugs that crawled through the dirt. I twirled my fingers through the thin green blades and stroked their soft surfaces. I hummed, head resting in the crook of my elbow, thinking of Lyle and wondering what he would find for me while he was away.
Today was my sixteenth birthday; it had been nearly five years since I traveled with Lyle. He rescued me from the dust only a few months after I turned eleven. Birthdays used to be an event with my family. My mother would always bake a cake — even if it was her own birthday. My dad and my brother Robert would go out hunting so that we could eat like kings. But in the years leading up to the storms, we couldn’t find very much. Everyone was hungry but no one was ever satiated. Cakes and kings’ meals weren’t comparable to the gifts my family would make though. I remembered the pair of shoes that Robert made me at his apprenticeship after he’d seen how worn mine were — the very same pair I had on when my parents sent me and Robert out running into the storm — the very same pair I used to kick through the outhouse door, so close to death. I tried not to think about it anymore.
Lyle was away scavenging for some sort of gift. He always knew when it was my birthday. He posed tall, proudly stating that the air smelled different that day, as if there was a spark in the air simply there to tell him what day it was. I had always told him that his presence in my life was gift enough, that I didn’t need anything fancy. But I knew he could feel the way my heart still ached when I remembered the days I sat around the chestnut table my daddy made, listening to his equally lovely and embarrassing rendition of “For She’s a Jolly-Good Fellow.” Every year since I met Lyle, my birthday had to be something special. The age of eleven gave me another chance at life. He’d always said that every year after needed to mean something. Today he’d told me to wait here in the clearing for his whistle. A smile spread across my cheeks as I thought of him, and I rolled over onto my stomach. I blushed thinking about him tiptoeing through the grass towards me, eager to reveal what the age of sixteen had brought.
—
When the dust had settled, I looked around at the dry cracked land and the bleached horizon; everything looked like sand. Dirt and dust scattered across the dry road like bread crumbs left on a tablecloth and remained suspended in the air, impossibly dancing in the winds. I traced my fingertips over my forearm between the thin blonde hairs, skin the same texture as the earth. Crusted. Flecks of dirt were nearly embedded in my skin at that point — a stranger might have thought they were freckles. I could have scrubbed myself five times and still found dirt in my hair and behind my ears. Each time I blinked my eyelashes ripped apart like stitches, peeling away from the thick coat of grime that made its home on my eyelids.
The world looked desolate, the horizon as plain as sliced bread. So much so that even the sky lacked its usual baby blue shade. It hung still in this dull brown color as if it were dust itself. I sat on a tree stump a few dozen feet off the road, still in sight of everything over the next five miles in every direction. I took off my shoes and stretched my toes out as wide as I could. The light breeze in the air swished around each tiny toe, wrapping a noose of wind on each. I hunched over and pulled my foot toward my face so that I could see the bare wrinkled bottom. I summoned all the moisture I could and spit. I rubbed the saliva between my toes to clear out some of the dust that had jammed itself between them. Then, I did the same thing with my other foot. I left my shoes off for a little while, wiggling my toes in the dry air. I sat there on nature’s bench, gazing through the bright sunny air at the long stretch of land. My eyes squinted: one hand above my brows to block the bright sun. The heat baked my hairline and settled on the top of my hand and my chin where my hand’s shadow couldn’t reach. The sun roasted my knuckles and the gaps between my fingers. I rested backward on the elbow of my other arm until my shoulder ached something awful.
I had marched alone: three weeks since I lost my parents to the dust; three days since I lost my brother Rob. We had stumbled for those long days with our backs to the large black wall of dirt and dust closing in on us until we were nearly swallowed whole. When we finally found the small thing — the fateful outhouse that saved me — Rob opened the door and threw me in. Before he could join me the wind slammed the door shut on his fingers so hard that streaks of blood stained the rotting wood. The wind pinned him to the door like a fly on tree sap. I listened to him cough and heave, drowning in sand. Then silence. The only sounds left were the whistling winds and scraping earth. When the winds subsided I called out for Rob. His light brown hair poked through the gaps in the panels. The smell of the dumping hole gagged me so fiercely that it nearly sent me into some sort of panic and made the heat stick to my skin even more — I know the feeling now as claustrophobia. Robert’s body blocked the door. I was stuck in that outhouse for an entire day under the blistering Oklahoma sun. I listened to the shuttering wood struggling not to give way to the wind. The angry heat that drove my panic had me sat back with my hands on the seat, kicking the door erratically. Each time my feet landed on the door it only revealed a peek at a time of the yellow haze that plagued the world just outside. After a dreadfully long time, it finally gave way, and I slipped through.
My skeleton-like arms pushed against the weight of his body; I couldn’t even look at him. I just walked. I staggered far enough away from the scene that his body against the door could be mistaken for a deformed, broken tree. I collapsed and gasped for air — air that wasn’t clogged by dead flies, feces and ammonia. My throat ached from coughing and gagging. I sobbed on my knees, forehead pressed to the ground as if in prayer. Had I cried any longer, a daisy would have sprouted from the dehydrated ground and soaked in enough tears to replenish the dead crops. I never once turned to look at my brother. I’d imagined him bloody from the door hitting him over and over again — his face covered in deep gashes. The thought was too much to bear. Still some days when I can’t quite shut off my mind, I see flashes of his body against that shit-brown wood covered in dirt that turned to some kind of mud after mixing with his thick red blood. It is then that I understand what people mean when they say the dead are not really gone.
I marched along the road like my parents had told me, continuing to follow the setting sun to the west — that’s what everyone did. I never stopped but to lie still on the ground, waiting for buzzards to peck away my skin. That third day I knew I was going to die. My mouth was parched except for the saliva that remained — the last bit of moisture which I’d spat out onto my toes for a moment of comfort over survival. A hollowness came over me. The world was still. Like I was. My skin was burnt and cracked, showing jaundice. Each and every one of my bones ached. The muscles collapsed around them. My stomach ate away pieces of me. Hunger and desperation sucked the life from my eyes and drained my soul. Death was upon me; the sun sang my name; the ground revealed a bed; the wind swept away fragments of my soul like dust; like the dust that ate us all away. Eventually.
First published through serialization in The Echo Newspaper, 2023:
https://wwcecho.news/capstone-corner/harley-woods-capstone-project
