SandScript 2023 [Digital Exclusive]

ack and stared over the old man for some time. Seventy years of life had done its work on
him—chipped away at his sanity until it had been ground to dust and cast into the wind. Larry
slid the BB gun out from under the old man’s arms and stuffed it through his rolled up sleeping
bag. Then he took off the bird whistle and hung it around the old man’s neck.
Larry made his way out of the city through the labyrinth of byways he knew by heart, and
when he reached the open desert, he paused beneath the shade of a towering cottonwood.
He rested and ate the sandwich and watched the sun dip below the horizon. The heat of the
day fell away as if it had been sucked back into the earth itself.
When the air had cooled enough, he took up the rifle and used the barrel as a makeshift
pickaxe breaking away the hardpan floor until he’d dug a big enough hole. Then he grasped
the barrel in both hands and heaved the gun into a thicket of mesquites. He unrolled his
sleeping bag and gently removed the limp body of the wren and placed it in the hole and
covered it over. He squatted over the grave for a long moment before rocking back on his
heels and hugging his knees, unsure of what to do next. Finally, he lay down on the sleeping
bag and watched the stars come out. A pack of coyotes yipped and howled in the distance,
and he did not feel afraid.
§
That night he dreamed he was above the city looking down over the lights, the wren
soaring beside him. He was weightless hovering in the air, his body asleep somewhere in
the desertscapes below. In the morning he awoke to the sound of wind gusting through the
branches above him. A haze of cottony seeds poured down like a warm snow storm all around
him, and it dawned on him that the body of the wren would be slowly taken up by the roots of
the tree and one day strewn across the desert in the form of seeds.
In the last few miles up the long dirt road, a ragged coydog began trailing him. It was limping
and covered in mange and the boy guessed it must have come off a nearby res. He coaxed
it to him with the remains of the jerky, its hunger overpowering its caution, but it would only
come within a few yards, taking the dried meat from off the ground and then bolting back into
the brush. Before long he had nothing left, and it disappeared back to wherever it had come.
Larry finally looked up at the steel arc that read Coronado Boy’s Ranch. Several sparrows
hopped along the sign. Mr. Dawson, the lead ranch hand, was kneeling at the long iron bar
that served as a gate. He was turning a hefty wrench on the bolted hinges. Behind him in the
distance the other boys were bucking hay bales onto the flatbed and taking turns driving.
Mr. Dawson looked up at the boy from under his sweat stained cowboy hat. Larry held his
head high, no longer ashamed of the belt marks on his neck. The man eyed the boy for a long
moment, and then looked passed him down the road.
“Good to see ya, Larry. Who’s your friend?” He motioned with his chin to where the coydog was panting
and holding up its lame paw. Larry looked over his shoulder at the dog and then back at Mr. Dawson.
“Can he come too?” Larry asked.
Mr. Dawson smiled. He set down his wrench, wiped his oily hands on his jeans, and swung the gate open.
“Yeah Larry, he can come too.”
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