Sunburn

When I was twenty-one or twenty-two or so, I was driving on a road just by the border next to Chihuahua.

It was the peak of summer and I was coming back from a local town where I was picking up some medicine of some sort for your grandpa, some real specialized herbal stuff. Our neighbor, this uh, kindly old lady named Martha Wells, she told him just pop one of there’m leaves in his mouth and suck on it for a bit and he’d be young again. I don’t know what kind of bull she was on because by the time I got back, which was hardly on time, his cold had left him itself, probably with its tail between his legs. Your grandfather was a strong man, for a long, long while.

Anyhow, I was driving down this beaten path. There were no other cars in sight for about an hour and I was about to fall asleep at the wheel to be honest with you son, but I saw this interesting looking character on the side of the road.

The poor devil looked dirty and ragged, his face gaunt and his eyes sunken into a tanned leather. His clothes were caked in sand and dust, and he looked like he had just been through a sandstorm himself. He had his wrinkled thumb out, that old sign of the lost and lonely. I couldn’t bring myself to pass him by. If I didn’t pick him up, the next car to find him would be a black hearse and I didn’t want his blood on my hands. Besides, he looked like he needed a break.

I parked my Ford a little ahead of the fellow and stuck my hand out to wave. The man’s face looked relieved and his face relaxed. He ran up to my car at a slight jog but he stumbled and fell onto the sand. I got out to help him up and I nearly jumped back when I felt his arms. His shoulder blades protruded from his back like a pair of chicken wings, and his skin was rough like sandpaper.

“How long you’ve been out in the desert friend? No offense mister, but you as destitute as a dried-up well. Can’t be healthy for you no not at all.”

The poor devil looked up at me and grinned a sad grin. It faltered at the edges and you could see in his eyes he was tired.

“While mister. Long while. My car broke down about oh, thirty miles back. I been here since eight in the afternoon yesterday yes I was.”

“Well. You best come with me. Can’t leave you out here because I don’t think even the vultures would have you.”

The poor devil grinned again. I now noticed his teeth were perfect. Shining white like the sand. “Ha, ha.” I couldn’t help but feel disgusted by his laugh. He pronounced every word, like ha. Ha. That’s not how you’re supposed to laugh.The man had done nothing to me, not yet, but something was off about him. It wasn’t any kinda hate see, more like, hm. Remember last Thursday? When you me and Mommy went to go to the toy shop and we saw that toy dog without any ears? A dog should have ears. If it didn’t have ears, well. You know something happened to that dog. You said if it was born like that? Well. It can’t hear all the same.

Despite my feelings about his laugh, I put it aside. Everyone has their thing and it’s best not to ask. Kind folk don’t ask.

Me and the hitchhiker walked back to my car. We didn’t speak yet. Back then, I wasn’t very good with strangers. He got into the back seat and I sat in the driver’s and we set off.

“Where to mister? Hopefully a hospital. You have some nasty sunburns.” The poor devil shook his head. “No no, I don’t need nunna that sir though I appreciate the offer. I just need to get to the nearest town, so I can call a tow. Could ye do that for me?” “Sure thing.”

I started the car and we drove off. The man was quiet as a church mouse. Me, I wasn’t cousin with small talk, but I found it odd a man walking by himself for so long didn’t want to trade a few words. I tried my hand at it, seeing as I had a stranger in my car.

“What’s your name? Can’t keep calling you mister.”

The poor devil looked up, as if broken from a trance.

“My name’s Duncan.”

“Alright Duncan, I’m John.”

The ride continued. He didn’t say anything after that. I looked in the

internal mirror and I saw him looking at me. Not glaring or nothing, just looking. Like he was thinking real hard about somethin’.

Suddenly, he spoke up.

“Hey John. Could I have some water? I’m parched.”

He said it all stilted like and that kinda put me off, but I wasn’t about to refuse water for a man who looked like that. “Sure thing.” I reached into the glovebox from the driver’s seat, and unlatched it, and I saw him unclip his seatbelt. I thought he was just getting ready to grab it from my hand, but then he reached into his waistband and I knew his true intentions.

In his hand was a snub-nosed revolver. What’s a revolver? Well, it’s a gun. A gun is like… something you point at someone and they go to sleep forever. You can’t wake them up. Now, your dad didn’t wanna go to sleep just yet. I nearly jumped when I saw his iron, but I managed to stay still while steering with my left hand.

The stranger pointed that gun straight at my head from the driver’s seat. His face was no longer what I remembered from earlier. It was cold, and I no longer saw the desperate man from earlier.

“Do you have another gun in the car.”

He said it like a statement, no lilt at the end which you typically say when you’re asking a question.

“Yes sir. In the glovebox.” I did. The gun I had in there was a 1911, given to me by my uncle when I was eighteen. It was his during the war, n’ he wanted to make sure I was safe now that I was a man.

“Pull over. Don’t jerk around or nothing because I guarantee I’ll shoot you dead. I already kilt’ two getting here and I have no qualms about killing another.”

I obliged, and pulled over to the side.

“Get out of the car and give me the keys.”

The door opened, and I was out. I reached for the sky and the stranger got out too, the gun still pointed at me. I dropped the keys on the ground and he picked them up.

“I’m gonna grab your gun. Don’t run. I got good aim.”

I planted my feet right on the ground. I didn’t wanna die, no not at all. I had plenty to live for. A strange thought occurred to me. I had my dad’s stupid leaves in the car. Now, I didn’t believe a lick of what Mrs. Wells had said, but I worried for his health regardless. If he was sick and I didn’t come home, well. The worrying would make him sicker.

The stranger came back around holding my gun. He stuffed it into the back of his waistband and pointed the revolver back at me.

“Walk that way towards the hills till I tell you to stop. Don’t look back.”

I obliged once more, and I walked slowly to the hills. They were far, far away, and I figured we must’ve walked until the sun had nearly set. It peeked over those mounds, as if it was witnessing my execution. I thought it was an execution at least. I couldn’t stay silent. Funny, I guess. I didn’t wanna leave my last words unheard, even if they were heard by the man who was gonna shoot me.

“You don’t have to do this. I got a life, you know? Family at home. You could take my car, drop me off by the next town. Swear to God I won’t tell nobody.”

“Don’t mess around with me. That ain’t happening.”

We walked a little more and then he kneeled me down in the dirt. It was hot, and I could feel my skin starting to peel at the edges of my kneecaps.

“It had to be this way.”

I scoffed. He was gon’ kill me regardless, and I wasn’t about to go out spouting pleasantries at this poor devil.

“No, it ain’t. Why the hell you gotta take my car?”

I couldn’t see him, but I figured he was confused. No one had talked back yet, I bet. I spoke again.

“I coulda dropped you off for sure.”

“I don’t wanna go to the next town. I lied to you about the car.”

“So how’d you really get out here.”

I could hear his revolver cock, and I was sure he was fixing to kill me at that point. I shifted around to face him, and he stepped back, gun still pointed at my face.

“It don’t matter if you tell me now. You about to kill me anyways.”

His odd face turned away, and looked back.

“Alright then. If you really wanna know. No one ever asked before. I just ran out on a mental facility, up in Odessa. Took a bus down to Pecos and hopped cars till I was here. Fixing to cross the border into Mexico, but I ran out of gas a few miles back.”

“So, you crazy.”

His face didn’t shift, but his eyebrows furrowed.

“No one here crazy.”

“You think what you’re doin’ right now ain’t crazy? When was the last time you seen someone point a gun at another man like this.”

“Never.”

“Then what you’re doing is probably crazy.”

“Things aren’t crazy because no one does them.”

“No one does them because they’re crazy.”

“Just shut up.”

He raised the gun a little higher, right towards my forehead, and I panicked.

“Well hey hold on just one more minute.”

“What.”

“Killin’ people ain’t right.”

This seemed to get a laugh out of him. The edges of his mouth turned up, and he laughed like a normal man.

“Why is that?”

“Hell you mean why is that. You shoot me you take the sum total of everything I ever done. Everything I’m planning to do.”

“What do you plan to do? Go home? Work. Die anyways. It doesn’t matter.”

“It all matters. I got people at home, people I love.”

I saw his face darken. I had the notion that this man was alone.

“Do you have people you love?”

His face softened, and he looked away for a moment.

“I don’t love them, so they don’t love me back. They don’t talk to me either. I don’t know how to love them. I suppose that’s why no one stopped them when they took me away.”

Despite the iron in my face, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor devil. He definitely had something wrong with him. Maybe he just needed someone who got him. I could be that person, at least right now. Not only out of just empathy, but also because I didn’t wanna get shot.

“What do you mean you don’t know how to love them. I never met nobody who couldn’t love.”

“People used to tell me about it, when I was young and had friends. I never felt no butterflies in my belly or nothing. I used to wonder how the butterflies got in there. Maybe I was just butterfly proof.”

“Not loving ain’t a crime I suppose. How’d you get sent to that facility after all.”

I didn’t wonder how he got sent up there. After all, he is pointing a gun at me.

“I tried to love someone. Real, real hard. But I guess I didn’t do it right because they called the cops on me and I got sent to the looney-bin. They don’t do anyone right there. They hurt you a lot and then they say you’re better. That also never made sense to me.”

He paused.

“If I wasn’t crazy before, I sure was afterwards.”

I had an idea.

“Well, some advice from someone who loves.”

“What.”

“To love someone you need to value them. They ain’t no clothing-store mannequins. You need to feel happy when they’re there. Feel sad when they’re not. When they’re gone they’re gone, and they won’t come back, and they can’t make you happy no more. You can’t make them happy neither. That’s pretty much how to love, right down and simple.”

I looked him dead in the eyes, a little above the barrel of the gun.

“When you leave here–” I stopped to consider that I may not leave here myself. I gulped down my heart, which was already in my throat, and continued. “When you leave here today and go to Mexico or something or other, just try what I say. Maybe you’ll love after all.”

The sun was nearly set, and it was almost dark out. His face and body was shrouded in the shadow from the hills, and I could not make out his expression. He was silent, and then he spoke.

“Close your eyes. Put your thumbs in your ears and count down from a hundred.”

Well that was it. I was dead. It was a good try. I was close, for sure.

“Alright then.” My last words. I put everything else out of my head and focused on

counting. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much if I just counted like he said.

“A hundred.”

“Ninety-nine.”

“Ninety-eight.”

“Ninety-seven.”

By the time I got down to one my heart slowed down. I slowly opened my eyes to the

night, and I saw that the stranger was gone. I was alone in the middle of the Chihuahua. To tell you the truth, I nearly fell asleep right then and there on the now cold sand. I plopped my head down and looked up at the stars. You can’t see those no more. Luckily, my knees ached from all the kneeling I had done earlier, and the skin looked like it was shaved off with a cheese grater. It kept me awake. If I fell asleep right there I would freeze into a popsicle for the buzzards to feast upon in the morning. To this day I don’t know if the poor devil left me alive there as a mercy or as a punishment for wasting all his time.

I laid out my options. I could die in the desert. I could try to walk back to my car, but the stranger had surely taken it by now. I could also try and stay warm until daylight, but I was only wearing a hawaiian shirt I had gotten last year in a gift exchange and a pair of shorts.

I was about to pick the former, and I was about to make my peace with death once more, but all of a sudden I saw a silhouette. It was large and boxy, and was only illuminated by moonlight. I stood up from the ground and with what I had left of my voice, I yelled out,

“HEY! PLEASE! HELP ME!”

I thought maybe he didn’t speak English, so I yelled out in the only Spanish I knew.

“¡AYUDA!”

That got the figure’s attention. I saw it move down from the top of the hill and I could eventually see that it was a person on horseback. In my delusion I momentarily thought it was a cowboy perhaps, here to rescue me from a savage land like they did in those old movies I used to watch as a kid. As the figure grew closer I could feel my energy return to me as I knew survival was in reach.

The morbid idea occurred to me that this man could be someone just as bad as the stranger from earlier. I had heard stories about the cartel, trafficking drugs over the border with mules. My heart should’ve leapt up at this, but for some odd reason I couldn’t bring myself to fear him. Death had already met me at the door five minutes ago, and he was going to come in one way or another.

The man was nearly just three feet away from me now, and I could make out his face. He was definitely Mexican, and he had wrinkles on his face indicating he was elderly. That night, that man rescued me from almost certain death. It turned out his name was Eduardo, and he had been living in a dusty old cabin by himself in the desert. He brought me to his home and took me in for the night, fed me prickly cactus he had been farming and turned on the fire. He didn’t speak a lick of English, but I saw he knew I needed help.

He took me with his horse to the nearest town and got me help. He was a good man, going out of his way to help a straggler in the street. Over the next few years, I learned Spanish so I could talk to him. Apparently he was an illegal who lived out there in the Chihuahua in fear that he could be sent back to Mexico. I visited him until he passed a few years back, played board games and brought beers.

I still wonder what happened to that poor devil I found on the side of the road, so many summers ago. I would like to think he atoned for his actions, heeded my words. But probably not.