The Quartzite Dream

Sofia was ushered toward airport security and the Terminal C departures, with only the clothes on her back to her name.

Just moments earlier, she'd frozen on the United Airlines check-in prompt: “Number of bags?” Everything she owned was in those two bags.

“Ma’am, just enter two,” the agent said gently. “The tags will print.”

“Right, right,” she muttered.

At the counter, the clerk asked her to place the bags on the conveyor belt. Sofia lifted the first, fingers tight around the leather handle.

“Can I have that?” the clerk asked.

Sofia hesitated, then slowly uncurled her grip — releasing her last tether to a life that no longer existed.

***

I pulled Sofia’s forgotten dream from the vault. It was a puny thing… warped and withered. I broke the seal. The fragrance erupted from the package like a whiff of sawdust – nothing but the trimmings of a once beautiful thing, all the embroidery scraped from its bones, the bones rotted to dust.

All I could make out was the hint of lemon and burnt wood. I could almost smell plum blossoms – a mix of cotton, vanilla, and apple – like a hanging bouquet on the porch of a Southern home. A hint of something floral.

“Think Zach,” I thought, inhaling deeply and taking a finger to the dream and pressing a morsel to the tip of my tongue. Sweet like pie.

“What a strange little dream?”

This one had been buried so long, so deep, the system flagged it as expired. But something pulsed at its center and beckoned me… something… urgent… unfinished… sealed tight… yet uncontainable.

Instantly, on the essence of a dream deferred, my orders transported me to the concourse of Terminal C of the Newark Liberty International Airport.

I hated coming to places like this. The buzzing of the tiresome people was like the zzzzzZZZZ of a swarm of flies. Scarcely a single dream stirring in the lot of them. And, yet I could catch the faintest hint of dream dandruff hanging in the air all around.

***

Sofia’s legs were crossed, and she tapped her top leg into the air, looking at her iPhone then putting it down on the seat beside her.

A waiting place – designed for comfort – is the most uncomfortable place anywhere in the world. Hurried. Abrupt. No matter how one stirs or fidgets, they just can’t find a restful position or a peaceful moment.

Sofia thought, “the body knows when it is out of place—the body knows.”

Sofia remembered the Darién Gap when the canopy of jungle opened up from South America, a long concourse headed toward Texas – toward freedom. The coyotes guided them over the Hill of Death with rifles slung over their shoulders. Some had pet alligators with chokers and chain leashes. They walked fourteen hours a day and slept on mats under hastily strewn tent canopies, bugs buzzing around the trash and the rot of festering wounds.

She’d left just a note. A promise — to build a home for her mother Camila and her nephew Timmy. To build a new life. A true home. A safe home. A place that was stable and secure and sweet, with white fencing, bouquets of flowers on the stoop, a peach cobbler pie cooling on the windowsill.

She had left them. Left everything behind. All of her worldly belongings except for one backpack full of clothes to last the journey, and her official papers, which she guarded with her life. Some pills. A lighter. A comb. A cable for her iPhone and a plastic pouch. A travel size bar of Degree antiperspirant. And lip balm. Dermo-Suavina.

She had broken her promise. Now they were gone too.

***

This one wouldn’t die. Dreams are like fires. They take a lot to get burning. And most are smothered just as easily. But some flaunt gravity and level forests. Reshape landscapes. Some burn so hot their buried ashes refuse to be smothered.

I tracked her from Newark to Denver. I waited with her at Elway’s Taproom and Grill, the airport steakhouse. She sat alone, drinking a Rioja and picking at a Caesar Salad. I almost lost her on the journey into the Rockies, following her truck down Rt. 70 and Highway 91 past the Climax Mine. Then to the Sugar Loafin' Campground, where she killed the engine, took out a lawn chair and set it down, facing South. Then she pulled a big tumbler of water from a pouch in her backpack, set it next to her, put her arms up behind her head, and thought.

Sofia sorted through her backpack. She pulled out some lighter fluid. A click-lighter. And a newspaper article written in Spanish, tied together with ribbons. Something about power outages in a far-off village. She threw them next to a stone cairn and a fire pit and spit on the ground, taking her heel and crushing the spit into the dirt. Then closed her eyes for a long time. I waited until she seemed at ease.

I walked over as if I was lost and stopped in front of her. “Hey there, little lady,” I said. “Do you know where the dog park is located?” I whistled and said, “Here, Lizzie, here.” My diehard Scottish Terrier barreled out of the Jeep Cherokee I’d been driving and rushed over, leaping into Sofia’s lap in one motion.

“Ahh. Hi there little girl,” she said, rubbing behind Lizzie’s ears. “That’s a good puppy.” Lizzie barked and licked her face. “Awww Timmy, my little Timmy.”

“It’s Lizzie, little Lizzie. The hound from hell,” I said, laughing to add levity to a weird moment. But something had cracked through the surface.

She looked up at me with wide searching eyes. “Have we met before?”

“Well, little lady, I’d venture to say we have. But I’ll be damned if I can say where or when. Then again, maybe you just have a familiar look about you.”

“No. No. I’d remember,” Sofia said. The moment was gone. She pointed over to where the dog park was located.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” I said. “Now let me and the Old Lady handle some business down the way, and we’ll be passing back through before you know it.”

As I strolled off, I could hear the crackling of flames consuming the old newspaper clippings. The scent of pine sap and dry mountain air, laced with the sharp burn of lighter fluid.

***

The rolling blackouts had been bad enough. Days went by with no word. Then sometimes weeks. Finally, water grew scarce in the village. Without water, they could not stay. It was just a few months before the water treatment facility finally gave up the ghost. From that point, the village didn’t have long. Without water. Without sanitation. A settlement cannot survive.

Sofia had bought furniture for the house. Sent money. But it didn’t matter. Under the current administration there was no way to get them to America. And Sofia was stuck working and waiting. But they had little time. And that time ran out quickly as the water dried up in the rusting pipes of a dying land.

Her asylum hearing was three years away. Eventually she got a fake ID which cost almost six months of pay. A fake Real ID was hard to come by. And expensive. None of these new rules and hurdles were known when she came. Like so many changing things – these changes seemed to come at the worst time – as if their evil intent was specifically directed at Sofia – handcrafted to lay waste to her plans and smother her dream.

Camila had written letters for a while. But Sofia had to change apartments. Lost one job. Got another. Finally put some money together. It had already been a year and five months. No money saved. No home. No citizenship. Not even a green card. No progress.

And then Camila and Timmy were gone. The village abandoned. They could be anywhere. Dead or alive. And there was nothing she could do to help. If she had stayed. Maybe she could have done something. Or maybe she too would be in the same predicament. Maybe worse – she could be dead.

They could be in the mountains or by the beaches or in the country. They could be anywhere. With no money. No way to fend for themselves. All she could do was wait for a call when they found somewhere where they could get power, somewhere where the cell and cable towers still functioned. Who knows when that would be. If she would get their call.

Sofia had read about the American West. How hopeless pioneers with nothing but a dream had headed west. How they travelled to find a home in a part of the country that was rugged and untouched by all the corruption still leaking back from the British Empire.

Land grabs. Mining settlements. Wagon trains. Villages pulled together from grit and determination alone. A land that was pure. Untamed. Open. Free.

The flames danced and burned. They ate the blackout. They devoured the dreams of settling on the East Coast. They charred the hope of reunion. They belched and gorged on the dream that had carried Sofia here.

And dusk fell over the campgrounds.

***

I put on my headlamp as the sun fell behind the trees. Lizzie looked up at me, her wide eyes demanding an answer.

“I don’t know what to do with this one, my love,” I said.

Lizzie pawed at my pocket. I pulled out the package containing Sofia’s dream. It was pulsing again. Throbbing. Hot in my hand. But I couldn’t make anything out. Not the faintest whiff. Lizzie barked at me as I placed the satchel back in my pocket.

“What is it dearie? Ahh, the other pocket.”

I pulled out my shoulder satchel and removed my kettle pot, two cans of Mountain House Beef Stroganoff, and a small bottle of Johnnie Walker.

Lizzie barked with approval.

Before heading back to camp, I got down on my knees and sent a prayer back home. A firefly floated down from above, lilting down and landing on my shoulder. I cupped it in my hands and looked closely at the light. “Okay then, I thought. Okay. It’s a prowling dream then, is it.”

And I knew what I had to do.

***

Sofia stared into the flames. They spoke of unwritten futures.

“Hey there little lady. I told you I’d be back before long,” I said, as I tipped my black Stetson to Sofia and Lizzie darted over to heel at her side, whimpering for attention.

“So, you said,” Sofia remarked blankly, eyes glued on the flames.

I sat down on a log by the stone fire pit and pulled out the charged kettle pot.

“If you’d be so kind as to share some water, I’ll fix us some grub,” I said.

Sofia gave me a look that said she hadn’t even thought about eating, and she nodded, handing over her tumbler. I could see that she was someone who’d had experience in the presence of strangers and had already decided I was no threat.

I poured in the water and set the kettle to boil. I watched Sofia’s face while I stirred the packages of Stroganoff and got them ready.

The stars began to sing and dance over the mountains, looking down approvingly at this quiet place. They filled the clearing with common magic. The silver light of the moon stuck to the pines, adorning the tips of their needles with a ghostly glow. The quartz crystals in the mountain sand winked and glinted under the starlight, drawing and rearranging paths through the underbrush. The twilight seemed to be charting paths, in the heavens and below. Just pencil strokes. Erasing and rewriting them as the night sparkled.

It’s good,” Sofia said. “Like the camp food we had on our journey. When I came to this country.” She looked up at me. “I left everyone behind. Have you ever lost track of anyone?”

“Ahh, yes. I’d reckon by now I’ve lost count of how many.”

“How do you do it?”

“What’s that little lady?”

“How do you go on without them?” Without knowing where they are.”

I thought about the eons. The paths traveled. Angels banished from our realm. Those returned and unrecognizable. The events. The orders. The odd but veritable unfolding. The countless dreams of the living. Even the dreams of the dead. The immortal dreams. Dreams that arrived on the backs of gusts of war and utter devastation; dreams so bold they surpassed time and space and held the breath of creation in its iron lungs. I thought of Lizzie. My sweet wife. Who always chose to come and be by my side on these sojourns, assuming the most unassuming of forms. And our poor son John. Whose name meant God’s Grace. I looked in my satchel at the beating heart of this dream, that just would not quit. And I looked into the soft curves of Sofia’s face and brow.

“It’s hard to say, really,” I said, looking at her a long time. “What’s a body to do?” I picked up a stone from the cairn. It was a quartzite stone. “You see this?”

“What is it?” Sofia asked.

The fire sparkled on the surface of the stone. Bits of quartz caught fire and light and sparkled in crackling glory. “This is a quartzite stone. Rocky Mountain quartzite. Now, my son, Johnny, he lived with us in the hills when he was a boy. A place not much different than this. And he rummaged out on the cliffs looking for strange stones, almost every afternoon. He just loved searching for them. A rock like this? He would be in his glory. This rock starts out just sand. But then it is buried, over and over. The weight of the world crushing it. Needling it. It fractures. Then the friction of its hard and soft edges splits into heat. And layer by layer, it builds up edifices. Solid gems of silicate. Flat plains of smooth shimmering mica. What a find.”

“That’s a beautiful way to look at something so common,” Sofia said.

“Common?” I laughed. “Nothing could be more unique!” I tossed the rock. “Dreams are like that, you know – people too. Reshaped and rewritten. Countless times. But permanent. You hold them up to the flame a thousand times and you’ll see a thousand faces. A thousand stories.”

“Your son is very far away now?” Sofia asked.

“I’m afraid so little lady.”

“Will you see him again?”

“Most assuredly.”

“How do you know?”

“A long time ago someone came to me with a message. It was a strange message. The kind of message that you want to believe.”

I felt the heart of the dream beating faster.

“Go on?”

“Ever have one like that?”

“Oh yes,” Sofia said.

“But I couldn’t believe it. Because I wanted to so badly. What if it didn’t happen?”

“What happened?”

“I learned a lesson. When there is a doubt on your tongue. A fear in your heart. Never utter a word about it. That’s the secret.”

The dream began to beat stronger, like a heart.

“So, you just keep your doubts to yourself?”

“Not only that,” I said, as I finished the last helping of my supper. “You act as if.”

“You do what?”

“You have to act as if the thing already happened. And you can’t let anyone make you act any different, no matter how foolish you feel or how improbable it seems.”

I could feel the dream growing. Laying down foundations. The framing of rooms.

“You seem so familiar. It’s like I’ve known you for ages.”

“Well little lady, Lizzie and I just came for a little respite. It’s about time for us to be heading back.”

“You never said your name?”

“It’s Zachary.”

“And I’m…”

“Sofia. I know.” I looked down at her and tipped my Stetson. “Find your way home, little lady. It’s going to be a fine home. A fine, fine home.”

“Yes sir.”

Lizzie barked and came running back to the Jeep, sniffing around the lot for the perfect spot. Then she pointed.

“That’s the spot,” I asked.

Lizzie yelped.

And I buried Sofia’s dream at the edge of the clearing, on a ledge, overlooking a perfect meadow that spread out across a clear view of the infinite horizon of mountains and stars.

Plum blossoms adorned the posts of the porch.