The First Hot Day

The First Hot Day

I thought there was supposed to be more sand in a desert, not all this frying pan rock, Jonah thought. He might have mumbled some of it aloud, he was too tired, his brain too heated through, to be sure.

The sun was getting high up, burning even through his long duster. He kept the front open but the sweat dripped off of him without cooling. The jacket would stay on, though, simply because it was already there. He knew he should find shelter but everything seemed just flat. Which didn't help the broiling in his brain. He wasn't here to find shelter, though. Which confused him and that ground in his stomach like glass.

He sighed and squinted at the sun again. High up...shelter...how? He shambling on, staring at pebbles on the rock cooking his feet. His thoughts were dry leaves blown by a hot wind. It's okay...meant to be. S'what I'm here for...

“Excuse me, how are you feeling right about now?”

Jonah stopped and swayed a bit, still staring at the unmoving pebbles. Well...that...was just weird, he thought. “Do I have two voices in my head now?” He muttered that aloud, just to hear his voice, and to see if something in his head would answer.

Nothing. The pebbles hadn't wavered, though he was beginning to.

He was about to force another step when, “Oh, I'm sorry. Were you speaking to me?”

There was a long pause. Then, Joseph's brain, working like slowly simmering oatmeal, thought, Who is me.. Is me—me, or something else besides me?

“You shouldn't just stand there, you know. We've really got to get you out of the sun. I'd wager you can find a bit of shade if you just keep moving.”

That made sense. “'Bout time I made some sense,” he thought...or maybe he said it aloud...?

“That's the spirit!”

“Oh geez, now I'm cheering myself on!” Joshua knew he said that aloud because it was hard to say “cheering” with a woodenly-dry tongue.

“Is that what you are doing? I really can't tell. Is it working?”

Jonah spun loosely to the left and then the right. “Nooo! You're not me,” he accused the air.

“I don't think I need you to tell me that,” came the dry answer.

Jonah became an instant knot of tension, gripping his jacket with two hands as if to keep it from being ripped away. He slowly turned, eyes shifting near and around. Rock, stone, drifting sand, vulture, more rock... Jonah stood up and narrowed his eyes on the vulture. He had never seen one so up-close. It was looking at him; and really quite large.

He looked behind the bird perched on a rock. His eyes shifted side to side. Nothing but roasted rock and shimmering heat waves.

“Tad awkward, I know,” scraped out the bird, but the open-throated scream of Jonah drowned him out. The man was now four feet further away, rudely staring in silence and looking rather like an overwhelmed child hugging a far too-warm coat to him.

After a moment, “Thaaat's good. You are composing yourself. You are going to be fine.”

“Is...that...?” He managed to get out, as his eyes wildly shuffled right and left.

“Now, now. Just breathe. You can do it.”

This time, Jonah saw his beak move. “You're patronizing me,” the man huffed out.

“I was merely praising you for—all right, I was a bit patronizing, but you looked like you needed some steadying right then.

There was some silence then, during which the man began to feel faint between the heat and confusion. Finally, something had to be said into the dry air. “You're not really talking.”

“Is that a question, because it sounded like a statement.

Shuffling forward a couple of steps, “No...I mean...I mean...Are you...like...a mirage? Maybe you're in my head,” he finished hopefully.

“I didn't take you for a solipsist.”

“A wha...?.”

A talking vulture, of course, was monumental, but Jonah's mind could only take in small steps of an event at a time, so he was even more surprised by what the bird then did: it raised its folded wings in what could only be a shrug and it sighed. Then it shifted its perch a bit as if the rock was becoming too hot.

“It's time to find you some shade,” it slowly whispered out.

That would be nice, thought Jonah, though he also thought he might have said it aloud.

“Turn around. Go on, face the other way. Good. That's good. Now turn just a bit to the left. Your other left.... Therrrre you go. Now, start walking in that direction.”

“Uh, wait a minute.” This was important, but trying to think with thick oatmeal was very demanding. “How do I know you aren't trying to get me lost, because, well...you are a vulture.” He didn't dare turn to look at the creature, who might not be there this time.

There was another astonishing sigh from behind him. “Where are you right now?”

Jonah squinted and looked around. “Um. Uhhh... Don't know.”

“Then I certainly wouldn't have to work so hard to get you lost, would I? Now start walking.”

“Right.” Jonah began stumbling forward with as much energy as he could, which was not impressive.

He heard a scratch and a fluttering behind him and was aware of a shadow passing over him. He watched the vulture fly ahead. It has to be real...but maybe the talking was just a heat-dream? Thoughts came, then, some in his head, and some half spoken: Am I going to die? Am I dead already? He felt the heat stabbing into him. No...no. If I were dead, this would be Hell...and in Hell, no matter what they do to you, there are a lot things laughing at you. That's how you can tell, cuz' the laughing is worse than anything.

“Ahhh...!” He had slipped on a rolling rock which he recovered from only with a great deal of primal grunting. When he could push himself up from his knees and stand again, he looked up and around. “No. No one's laughing,” he whispered, gratefully, to the air.

“Over here,” came the bird's thin, rough voice. It popped up on a larger rock. “Come this way, down between these two ledges.”

A damned convenient imagination, Jonah thought as he stumbled toward the voice.

Jonah saw what it meant when he got there, though he found himself wishing the bird could point. He knew he would never have found it by himself. There was a downward slope between two large rock sections. It was a tight squeeze at first, until he could walk with his shoulders just touching the sides. As he went down and the rock walls rose over his head, the sun began to seem farther away. The cool relief was almost as good as water. He leaned his head against a cracked wall and felt weariness ready to crash over him.

The bird's voice came, sounding eerie but gentle in that narrow space. “Not just yet. A bit further and then you can rest.”

“Okay,” he breathed out. “Okay.” And he wearily pushed off the wall. The bird was right. In less than thirty feet it was as if the two walls had sucked in their breath, leaving a wider space of sand of about four feet. ...And...He could smell it. Moisture. He followed one blond-streaked wall down and there, captured in rock that had been scooped by time, was a thin, splash of water. He made small noises as he fell to his knees, then his stomach, and scraped himself forward beneath an overhang to sink his lips into a warm coolness. At first, he just took some into his mouth to soften his tongue and throat, and then he began to suck and swallow.

He drank until something conked him on the temple. He looked up into the vulture's disconcertingly thin and crimson, cross-eyed face an inch away. In a whispery voice it said, “That's enough for right now. You're going to be okay.”

Jonah looked back at the water, then slowly turned to that incongruous head.

“You're... actually... real...” There was the slightest cock of the head, and the bird seemed to grow a bit smaller. Jonah belatedly added, “Uh...thank you. You...saved me.”

The bird backed itself away and quietly intoned, “Why don't you try to sleep a bit. You'll feel better when it gets cooler.”

“Oh-kay,” Jonah breathed out and crawled to the sandy section. He took off his jacket and bundled it into a pillow. It was in his head to push the sand around a bit and make a comfortable spot but his arms lost their strength and he was asleep before his cheek touched the much-abused duster.

The vulture perched watch.

***

Jonah's eyes cracked opened enough to stare stupidly at what seemed to be a closeness, as if the earth had somehow risen up around him. It was awhile before he could make sense of why there was sand in his bed. When he had gotten his mind together, he pushed himself up, tasting grit. Water. He could not see the water in the dark but he remembered about where it was and warily crawled his way back to it, bumping his head once in feeling around for that scooped out rock until his fingers recognized it. Cautiously, using his fingers to guide his pursed lips and hoping there were no floating night creatures, he sought the dribble of water. It tasted minerally and wonderfully wet.

After several long slurps and pauses, he back-crawled to his sandy spot. It was noticeably cold. This was why he had a jacket; he had forgotten why he had worn it, why he had sweated in it during the day. The bonfire sear of that day came back to him and he breathed in quickly, then more slowly as his body again realized the cool of night.

He was alone.

The sounds surprised him: a bird trilling, some insect sounds. There were other sounds but he wasn't sure if they were bird or insect. He hadn't expected desert life to be so...alive. He felt betrayed by the desert as if it had somehow lied to him. The plaintiveness of the sounds isolated him, and made him feel more abandoned. A droop of tears too quickly filled his eyes and he had to squeezed them away. Then, with a quick inhale he looked up and around. “I laid down that way... which means I came in from that direction...then,” and he turned his head, “then I want to go out that way. Right?” Half expecting an answer, he found himself disquieted when the other half was silent. He missed hearing that impossible voice. He looked straight up into a glittering, black ribbon, a crack of sky in the dark so thick with stars and a bit of a moon that it actually seemed to give off some light to vaguely see by.

He silently, and shakily, sighed.

He made his decision and, as he too often did, began to follow through with it as if it had been someone else's idea, and he had to do what they said. He cautiously moved in what he felt was a forward direction.

The desert air was clear enough to see shadows in the dark. Some part of the moon touched the cliff sides, at least for while. Still, he kept his left hand on its rough side whenever possible and stumbled and moved between his hesitations. He didn't know where he was or where he was going; he didn't come into the desert to know anything. He came... he wasn't sure why. Why do you call plans a plan if they only become all muddled and impossible to hold on to?

A half sigh and half groan left his thin chest. He didn't know anything. His eyes again grew wet with tears, but his balled-up fists stopped them. “There you go, feeling sorry for yourself again.” They weren't his words but he had long since adopted them. He shook himself and tilted his head against the rock to view again the river of desert-cold night sky. It was irresistibly beautiful; and uncaring that he had come here to die.

His tight lips went slack. He remembered...that was the plan. Not much of one, he admitted. It was too simple, and he was working too hard. Something wasn't right. His hands pressed at his head as if to keep it from exploding. Then he gave up and scraped down the rough rock. If only that fever vision could come back and tell him what to do. Everything he had tried, turned out wrong. Why couldn't he just be right, for once!

“I think you are not looking well,” rasped a voice from a shadow.

Joseph automatically thrust his back into the rock, which hurt because of a small projection into his shoulder blade. He stared hard at the shadow until he realized it wasn't a shadow. The garish head at the top was the give-away.

“It appeared as if things were becoming a bit...um... melodramatic, and there's really no need for that.” The head moved towards him. “I take it, you are ready to move on. Good choice, moving at night.” The shadow belonging to the head had reached him and seemed to be carefully working its way past him. “Yes, you are going to be alright.” The bird was now past and heading in the direction Joseph had been. It stopped. The head curved around to look at him, catching a last bit of moonlight. The eyes where more like absences, Joseph thought. “You are, you know. Going to be alright. Just breathe and follow me.”

The head turned away, and the shadow moved on, difficult now to see. But Joseph could hear him walking among the pebbles, and once in awhile giving a faint hiss. He pushed himself up. He was, he found, breathing again. He wasn't sure about being alright, but the choices had, at least, narrowed down to something more concrete. He carefully followed the moving shadow so as to avoid stepping on that long tail.