‘Desert Dust’
Photographer Richard Hanus
Desert Dust
Our old man howls out pains of misery to Neil Young, while the radio jitters in agony. My sister looks to me with an outstretched hand: we’re lost on the road. When I think back to my earliest memories, that one sticks. I’m seven, my parents just got divorced, and my dad decided it was time to take a trip. There wasn’t much of a plan, but I think that was the point. We were meant to get away from the chaos, not dwell on the means of getting there.
Pop’s truck was on its wit’s end, I liked to call it scamper. The sides were chipped and the panels got so bumpy, that my stubs I had for fingers would get scrapes each time I ran them alongside it. When my dad got the junker seven years ago it was a nice tan color, but now the poor thing has turned a pale hue. It looked like a dust bunny. I like it better that way, but don’t tell my dad I said that. Anyways, it was the type of car that just did what it was supposed to do, and that’s all we needed. When dad put the key in, it took four turns to start, and when he started it, the engine rumbled and spurted out a weeze. The piece of crap was tired, but at least it always woke!
My nose crinkles, the car smells soured, must be the harsh musk of the desert. Some sweat pins my brows and I feel wet with odor: this place is a bitch. But I like it. It’s weird, I’ve lived in Nevada my whole life, but never experienced the real desert till now. It’s much different than I thought, but then again pretty much like all the westerns: flat, barren, and wild. My sister looks back at me and I pretend I don’t see her. I face back to the small square I look out of, the backseat window. It’s like a port hull to a ship, out into a sea of dirt.
Old sagebrush, spare budlings, and wilted tumbleweeds dance. There’s so much old debris left behind on the side of the road. All waiting to be picked up, but constantly driven past. A box of Marlboro lights sparkles red, and I’m reminded of mom. Back in the old house that square was constantly living on the side table next to the couch. Just sitting there, it’s smoke would stink up the place. In the family room, my sister and I would be watching old cartoons when a whiff of fumes would punch us straight in the noggin. “MOM!! Why can’t you just buy a lighter already?!” She didn’t care. Every day it was the same story, she’d light a ciggy on the oven spark and run across the kitchen to do the deed outside. We’d tell her to stop, but after a while it just got futile. She was a broken record with those sorts of things. I don’t know why, but she couldn’t just get a lighter.
We’re five hours in, my butt hurts, and I want out. Is it too early to ask to stop and pee? I panic and look to the left. A sign shines bright, Tioga Pass to Yosemite: CLOSED. It blares in our faces. Fuck. Dad halts, stops for a second and gets out of the car. He pounds his beat up Merrells on the curb, then shrieks when he smashes his big toe. We look at each other. Inside the car is quiet. My sister’s eyes water and I bite my lip. Dad gets back in and no one peeps. We’d spent half a day heading towards something not there.
I find myself in the back and watching from behind often. I like it because no one notices me. I could be perfectly present and not there all at once. My dad turns the wheel, while my sister traces doodles on her knees. She gives me a look when dad says something questionable. Which is a lot. Me on the other hand, I look into other cars with other people to imagine other scenarios instead. Like what’s her deal? Are they dating, lovers, in a fight, or happy in love? I wonder what others would think when they looked into our beat-up mobile, but then again, I don’t think they’d think much. We looked odd.
Dad’s dingy red and gray flip phone blinks with no bars, there’s nothing to look up. Dad huffs like a tailpipe. He reaches into the glove compartment and pulls out a massive map. It’s bigger than my arms can stretch, and more colorful than the pages I doodle at school. He calls it an atlas. When he puts it up I can’t see his face, just the airy top of his head. I perch on my knees trying to read the thing, but all the squiggles and dots just confuse me more, so I leave it to him and my sister to figure the mess out. They turn the pages on their bellies and shake the thing trying to get answers. Where are we going now?! The whole thing started off hopeful, we had big ideas of places we’d go. An entire National Park of promises. Within a few minutes, dad sighs a long sigh, a sigh that fills the air of the car and crushes any hopes we had before. He throws the map down and we move.
Back to the endless array of black and yellow lines that are not so black and yellow anymore, my mind wanders off to old images. My mother with her head out the window and a smile seared across her two cheeks. Her skin bathed in the blistering sun and her torso half out of the car. It felt weird now without her here. I mean she had her problems, but god she always knew how to be in a moment. So hopelessly, irrevocably in one. I envied the way she could live so seamlessly, I found it hard, especially when I was aware of how little I did it. Seeing her sit beside my dad felt forever pinned in my memory, but now my sister sat there, and I was left alone in the back, and mom wasn’t here at all. I love my sister, but she wasn’t the same.
An hour past the sign, I find out where we’re heading: a gas station! And not just any gas station, no this was the only one around for miles apparently and it had a bathroom. To say I’m excited would be an understatement, I’ve had to waz since we got on the road this morning at 6 am! My sister turns the dial up 5 notches. I guess I was talking out loud again. I do that a lot.
A Neil Young CD burns on the radio, nothing else has been playing. It’s been the same three songs circling over and over again: “Heart of Gold”, “Down by the River”, and “Old Man”. When it’s time for Harvest Moon to play, dad goes to skip it, but can’t. That song hurts the worst. It’s the song he and mom fell in love to, the one he can’t stop humming. He gets teary-eyed every time the second line is mentioned I wanna see you dance again. It was a lively sort of song when he belted it to mom in our living room, but now it was quite dead on the other end. He sings it so raspy, he starts hiccuping and his throat melts. Me and my sister sit there wishing it’d just end. But all we can do is watch. I glare into the rearview.
My dad’s eyes rest heavy and he looks like he’s missed a couple days of sleep. He has a little scruff below his mouth and some scraggly hairs. I’m not gonna be the one to tell him. Behind his seat I see not one single headlight in the whole trail of black behind us. It hits me. This was our first time without mom, it’d be just the three of us from now on. I was excited or at least I think I was, but looking back now, scared is what I mostly felt. Mom was the one to plan things, and have it all figured out. She was the holder downer, the one who tucked us in at night and kept all our stuff neat and tidy. My dad was just there. He counted on her a bit too much and we all knew that. I think this trip was his way of proving something to us, or maybe just himself.
It wasn’t really working.
Scamper screeches to a halt and we jump out. The gas station! I race to the restroom while dad talks to the cashier. “Any places to stay around here? We sort of don’t know where we’re heading.” It sounded so funny when you heard it aloud. A dad and his two girls lost in the desert, not sure where they’re going or what they’re doing in the slightest. We put all our pennies on a pass being open, so much so that its closure set us off on a wild goose chase. It’s silly. The cashier doesn’t laugh though, instead he tells us about a campsite a ways down the road. “You should get there by sunset.”We grab a handful of candies and thank the man.
Back in the pickup, we tunnel down a dirt road, flop back and forth on shitty rocky slabs, and get out right as the purple touches the mountain. We made it! It's just a crappy plot of land labeled site 26, but it's lovely to our sunburnt sad eyes. Dad gets the tent out of the trunk and plops it right on the desert floor. A wave of dust forms and settles just as easy. We take out the poles, the wind starts blowing on my jacket and flaps on the bones of my back. Desert dust chips at my shoulders. The breeze blows nasty, gets up my nose, and tickles it in a harsh way. We form the poles, the gust picks up the tent bag, my dad runs after it. We put the poles in the sleeves and make a tent. Finally. The desert’s a lot colder than I’d imagined it’d be. I feel goosebumps running up and down my chicken bone legs. I guess there’s a lot I didn’t know about the desert. I hear a splat. The triangular mound sucks in, the poles screech, invert, break, and the whole thing tears apart before our very eyes. We stand there, and cave. Our mouths invite flies to plop onboard and stay. Dad scoffs off into the desert. He gets a reasonable distance away to yell. It lasts a good seven seconds and I think he feels better.
My old man was a pessimist before he met my mom. Glass half empty, and something’s got to give sort of guy. But, she got him to see the world with more color. She pointed out silver linings and made him hopeful for better days. Got his eyes to form little raisins and his cheeks to show their hidden dimples. I hadn’t seen the raisins in quite some time now. Back to black and white I guess. Everything that should make you slightly bitter, made him absolutely pissed off his meds. Yeah, my sister and I were butthurt and bummed standing over our broken to bits tent, but dad was out here screaming his ass off to the mountains as if it’d fix our problems. He was going through life like a teenage boy after his first heartbreak.
The sun falls behind the peaks, my dad stops yelling, and we snatch up our stuff to go. I don’t know the speed limit out on these dusty roads, but I know we weren’t going it. It took us 79 minutes when it should’ve taken 90 to get to a dingy motel that shouldn't even flatter itself with that sort of title. Dad gets us a room with a full and a makeshift cot. He lets me and my sister take the full. I hop in bed, my bones feel achy from wasting away in the car all day. I share the sheets with my sister and curl up alongside her neck. It’s far past both our bedtimes, 12 and 7 are not the same, and today was long. I think all of us could do with some rest, but the crickets burn at my eardrums and I’m no longer sleepy. The noises don't let up. “Ba da de da da da doo”. That’s not a cricket. I look over to see my dad in the dim light moving his cheeks around. He hums the old tunes he used to sing to my mom.They feel so desperate when he does it, so longing and wanting to be met with something more. He repeats the melody over and over again.The moment he stops, I fall asleep fast.
It’s the opposite of full that becomes filling.
When my eyes break open in the morning light, I catch sight of my dad eating away now at a book: Loving What Is. Ever since the divorce, he won’t shut up about it. I guess it’s something about taking life for what it is, accepting what’s thrown at us, yada yada yada. I think he could learn a bit from it, but god he’s getting so preachy about it. I think we all want to love what is, take life just as it’s given. But crap, that’s much easier said than done. How do you love that your wife left you, that you’re alone and have to take care of two girls on your own? How do you love all the things you never thought would happen, and never wanted to? How do you accept all that you lose along the way? I’m not sure. Byron Katie has figured it out apparently, but I don’t think anyone else really has.
I sit back on my pillow and think. Images of broken bottles scour my brain and screams from the house. Like river teeth they sink in with no bite. I have tiny blips. The phone ringing, my dad packing his bags, my mom slurring her words and us pretending not to hear. My parents had fought before, but this one was longer than usual, someone should’ve let up by now. The door slams and it’s just the three of us.
The moment my sister wakes, my dad has us get a move on, she doesn’t even get a second to breathe. But he seems to have a plan today, like he woke up and felt the sun shining out his ass. We don’t question anything, just get our scant belongings, and shut the door. Time to bolt. I feel bad no one tidied up the place, but there’s no time to dwell on the shit we’re leaving. Bye. On the way out dad sees a banner that reads “free continental breakfast”, he looks in the window to see a spare muffin and some wilted grapes. “This ain't a breakfast on any continent”. He gives us a look and we giggle. It’s the first time in a while he’s cracked a joke. I see a glow in his eyes and the faint protruding of a dimple. Suddenly the car feels full off three people. He presses on the pedal and we’re on the run again!
Ever since the divorce, dad’s been real quiet. I know he misses when they were together, but I’m not sure they were ever good for each other. Looking back, I think it was the idea of married parents that made me happy. But, I never saw them actually happy. There was always something wrong. The dishes, the bills, the house. Things were perpetually dirty, the laundry didn’t do itself, the money had to get made, and us girls needed to be taken care of. My mom drank too much, my dad worked too much, they weren’t much of a team. I think it was me and my sister keeping them together all those years.
The sun bleaches the car’s insides and my dad livens up a bit. He’s not so quiet today, instead, he tells us stories. He talks of old girls he dated, just two to be exact before he married my mom. And he doesn’t tell them sappy, but more light-hearted and silly. Kate was crazy, she seemed more interested in cats than my dad. And the other girl was just some stupid romance he got himself into on prom night. I ask about mom because he seems in a good mood to talk about her. He was. “It’s funny because the other two felt so plain. The type of love that gets the job done , but has nothing more to it, no spark or zip of excitement. Nothing to tell your friends about, or dwell about, or lay awake dreaming of.” My mom and dad met at the ski resort. I’ve heard the story six or so times, but still ask to hear it when given the chance. I say I want to get the details down, but really I just want to hear it all over again. Dad and mom worked at the shack on the bottom of the mountain and would close together sometimes. It sounded like they were the type of opposites to just sort of click. My mom was a partier, and my dad was a recluse, the kid in the corner. He lived through others, and she made him feel that feeling he never quite got. One time he gave her a ride home and she kissed him on the mouth goodbye. It stunted him. A crush formed and he’d goof around with her in the back when orders were slow. They were always slow. It sounded nice. I wonder what changed along the way.
It’s weird, but my parent’s divorce didn’t hit me one bit. Everyone around me made me feel like I should be crying my eyes out. That I should be freaked, pissed, sad, hurting, and hiding under my covers. But I really was alright. We both were. Yeah, our parent’s divorce was shitty. It was carried out awfully and too dramatically. But I’m not hurt by it. They’d been together nine whole years, they were bound to change and fall out of love. I mean, isn’t that just life? I think it was beautiful that they had something for as long as they did. But to stay in something longer than it’s time, that's just not good for anyone really.
My sister puts her head out the window and lets her chocolate locks whip around in the wind. She has brown eyes and brown hair just like me, but only her and mom have hair that curls when the temperature outside is just right. She bangs her barely-there vans on the dashboard and sand wrangles out. My sister doesn’t give two shits, she’s funny like that, so unapologetically her own. My dad peers over and admires her brown hair in the wind.
The sun barks and soaks cracks on my face. The road is a pinstripe to what seems like straight over the mountain, and our car just nods along. I could see my dad holding onto something dwindling, but he was on the verge of letting go. He bites his lip. I look to the right. Way out in the middle of nowhere there's a pile of boulders bigger than our bodies. Hundreds of rocks toppling to the fluff balls we call clouds. My dad slams the breaks, and we all fall forward. He gets out and starts walking up them. We’d been driving aimlessly for six and a half hours and there he was jumping rock to rock, up this hill. Me and my sister give a quick glance at each other and dart. We leap after him, our breaths panting and squealing. What takes him one step, takes us two, easily three. Our clothes get soggy with sweat and we start dragging our tennies. He stops. We catch up. I pant. I think. I open my eyes. I look up to find us at the top of the valley, above everything, where you can see the road that never ends, and the expanse of desert floor running wildly beneath you.
Ellen-Anna Lombardo is a recent graduate from the University of Nevada, Reno, with a major in English and a minor in Journalism. She enjoys primarily writing creative nonfiction as well as short stories. Her work explores her childhood conflicts through the lens of her older self. In this way, her writing is a reflection of her past coinciding with her present. Ellen recently received the J. Lee Taylor Creative Writing Award for her work and is eager to create more, with the goal of having people feel seen by her work.
Richard Hanus had four kids but now just three. Zen and Love.
