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A Queer Normality

by Dillon Mullenix

July 2011

Benny got his door open and then walked around the beat-up van to the sliding door he’d salvaged before they left Mississippi, from a pick-a-part up the street from his work at the slaughterhouse. The sliding door was a different color from the rest of the van. He’d gotten into an accident, not paying attention and pulling out in front of a pickup, when it was raining. Smashed the passenger side and that sliding door, the insurance company wanted to total it, but Benny had a friend who was a mechanic help him out. Now the blue van had a white door and ran with a sputter and crank under the hood. Sounded like an old boat he had when he was a kid and used to go fishing a lot more than he did now.

When Benny got to the white door he opened it with a clang and invited his family out into the sun. They were parked in the side lot of a fast food joint. The four kids piled out and went about stretching and yawning and making all the sounds and motions of kids who have been in the car too long with each other. Benny’s wife, their mother, was already out, standing under a light post trying to roll a cigarette. A look of desperation was on her face. Marlene, that was her name, looked like she was about to cry. Then she did, dropping the tobacco and small rolling paper to the ground. “I can’t do it,” she bawled.

“Come here honey, I’ll do it,” Benny said, walking towards his sobbing wife.

“I never had to smoke these fucking things until you lost your job,” she hissed at him.

“I didn’t mean to lose my job baby, sorry, you know, everybody…”

“I don’t want to hear about everybody, I want you to find some fucking work so we don’t starve and I don’t have to smoke these damned filter-less cigarettes that I have to make myself.”

“We’re going to California, baby, I don’t know what else to do, we’re getting there. I know it’s been a long trip and things been hard ‘long the way, with money and all, and the kids, but we’re doing it alright, right? My uncle says he’s got some work for me out there…”

“That’s what you said last time, that you had work, but that turned out to be bullshit too, you always got bullshit for me Benny, never anything solid either, diarrhea bullshit is what you got. You’d better get something going, or I’m gonna take your kids and leave your sorry ass. My momma told me I never should have fucked around with a broke ass piece of shit like you.”

Benny looked at her and then looked at the kids. They were staring. Marlene had been sort of quiet, and he wasn’t yelling, but Benny still wondered if they had heard what she said, did they believe it? Maybe he was a piece of shit good for nothing father. Benny didn’t feel like he was, but Marlene sure said it often enough to make him wonder about it and question his own mind.

The kids knew they were arguing. It wasn’t the first time it’d happened since they left home. But it was the first time Marlene was hushed about it. Somehow she had it under control. She always tried to be in control, for the sake of the kids, but her temper got the best of her most times and she went about spouting hate like a geyser. They didn’t like to hear their mother talk like that to their papa. They knew he was doing his best. They’d seen the news on FOX, heard about how the economy was and how there wasn’t any jobs for people like their dad, who’d they heard called blue collar by the TV.

“Y’all hungry?” Benny asked them.

In unison they said yes, and he smiled and walked over to his kids. He’d rolled a cigarette for Marlene and she was busy smoking it, huffing it down like vapors in a bag. She looked up when they all went inside and resented that they’d left her out there, alone. She looked around. The city was built in a red canyon. It was a shitty place to have a town. The name of the town was Moab. Marlene had seen it on the map of Utah. It was close to a National Park called Arches, which she didn’t know anything about it. Probably fucking stupid, she thought, and took a big drag on her smoke. Her thin fingers twisted the cigarette around, as she wondered how on earth Benny could roll such a nice cigarette; he was such a slouch at everything else – couldn’t hold down a job. He wasn’t even a man.

Some boys got out of a white truck. There were three of them. They were young and handsome, and they looked like they had been on the road for some time. Their clothes were filthy, two of them weren’t wearing shirts, despite the fact that it was lightly raining and cloudy. Marlene had on her rain slicker, and she pulled it tighter around herself as she smoked and eyed the men moving. It made her tremble a little, to watch them, to think about the tingling between her thighs. Benny was nothing now, “but these boys” – she almost drooled.

The one with his shirt on was tall and went inside the fast food restaurant where Benny and the kids were. The two other shirtless guys wandered over to a table of rocks at the prehistoric stone store next door. The store sold stuff like that Marlene didn’t believe in. She thought all the dinosaur fossils were fake.

“Nothing could be that old,” she told her kids at a visit to The Mississippi Museum of Natural Science once.

Fossils and science didn’t mean a damn thing to Marlene, and she was a little scared about going west, scared that her kids would be corrupted by liberals and atheists. In her church group she heard a lot about the west, things she didn’t like. But maybe she could find a little place to hid out from it all, something far away from all the degradation and blasphemy – she fantasized about a private school for the kids and a house somewhere in the country where Benny could work, and she could find a quilting group, or found one, and have a lot of quality friends who drank strawberry daiquiris in the summer and smoked long thin cigarettes, and wore big floppy hats and white cotton dresses to church on Sundays.

A flash of lightning clapped her back down to earth. The desert was all around her, the megalith hillsides and talus slopes, all rolling downward and into a sand basin, being devoured by an archaic time she didn’t understand. It depressed her. Marlene stomped out her cigarette and went inside, after giving the shirtless boys at the tables, peering at the primordial stones, one last lustful look.

Inside, Benny and the kids were looking over the menu, and she could hear Benny talking to the man behind the register. “How much is it if I don’t get a drink and, or cheese and…I don’t need French-fries, just the sandwich, one patty please…”

“What are you doing Benny?” she asked in his ear.

“Ordering some food. What do you want, honey?”

“Is it expensive?” she whispered.

“It isn’t cheap, but I’m making it work.”

“You never make it work.” Marlene was hissing at him again, quietly, but everyone could see it. Her eyes cut into Benny like a razor knife.

The tall man from the truck with his shirt on was behind them in line. He was looking at Marlene with almost pure disgust. His name was Dave. There was no hiding what was going on, and she knew it, it didn’t matter that she tried to remain silent in her judgments, it was obvious. Her corporeal self spoke volumes of her intent.

Marlene turned her head away from Dave, her body like a potato blocking the view. Dave turned his attention to the girl in line. She seemed to be the eldest of their kids, but she was obviously very young still. She was tall and had thin muscles that ran long across her body. Blonde locks fell from her lovely featured face. Her chin jutted out like her father’s, but it was a womanly jut, and one that Dave found very appealing. He looked at her intently until she turned around and he smiled at her. The girl smiled and then turned away, back to the side of her father.

Benny noticed it, noticed the young man behind him looking at his 16 year old daughter. He didn’t like it, it was the only thing that really pissed him off. That boy shouldn’t be looking at her, he thought, I know what he’s thinking, what he wants, especially one like him that’s got a beard already and a beer gut. Benny gave Dave a stern look.

Dave could see Benny was mad. He was skinny though, and had purple varicose veins in his legs that stuck out, his muscles were old and his skin sagged a little for the damage time had done. Dave felt sorry for Benny in a way, he didn’t know him, but he felt sorry for him. A working man down on his luck. Dave’s dad was blue collar, and out of work, and many of his friends and heroes were out of work too. The world was killing a lot of people quicker than it had to, and it made him sad, and it complicated things. Dave couldn’t be mad at a man so far down on his luck, so he turned his face down to his dirty shoes and soiled jeans, and thought about what he would do next.

When the order was ready the cashier called Benny’s number and the family got their food and went and sat down at a booth. Everybody was happy with what they got except Marlene, who thought it was a personal attack on her that someone would fuck up her order. Marlene didn’t know why the men and woman behind the counter would want to sabotage her meal like that, but they had, and she was absolutely sure they had done it on purpose.

“These fucking people,” she squealed to herself, though it was audible to everyone.

Marlene aimed herself towards the bank of registers at the back of the building.

“Do you intend to kill me, putting mayonnaise on my sandwich,” she shrieked, storming the cashiers post. The poor man looked on in horror, and just before she reached him, retreated for the back room, yelling, “Manager, manager, manager…”

Marlene hissed and steamed and paced around and threw her sandwich on the counter. The manager arrived and looked at her, at the sandwich on the counter, then put on a smile and said, “How may I help you, ma’am?”

“One of your fucking employees tried to kill me by putting mayonnaise on my sandwich.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t intentional.”

“Of course it was, I asked specifically for no mayonnaise.”

“Well I apologize, let me get you another sandwich. What kind was it and how would you like it exactly.”

Marlene told her, not catching the inflection in the manager’s tone.

The manager took the old sandwich to the back where a Mexican man was preparing a similar meal. She spoke to him briefly and then he looked at a ticket, Marlene, and then at the sandwich, shaking his head. He took off the top piece of bread and threw it into the trash and then got another from a bag. Put what Marlene wanted on it and slapped it back onto what was left of the original sandwich. It got sent back out with the manager, who gave it to Marlene and watched as she opened it and peered in, critically.

“They didn’t spit in it did they?”

“No,” said the manager.

“Good.”

Marlene got some ketchup packets, too much for one use, put the extra in her pocket, and sat down with her family, who was already half done eating, except for Benny who had barely touched his food.

“It’s a good thing you never order much, Benny. I won’t tolerate wastefulness,” Marlene told him when she sat down.

He just sipped his coffee, looked out windows and thought about things that a man who doesn’t often dream thinks about.

“How’s the food,” Marlene asked her kids.

They looked at her. “Fine,” her eldest son said.

“It’s so good,” the littlest one grinned.

Everyone else nodded in agreement.

The kids had been eating canned black beans and corn for the last few months, maybe a salad sometimes, and a couple bits of fruit and tortillas a few other times, but mostly beans and corn, cooked on the old Coleman Benny had in the blue and white van in the parking lot. They never mentioned how much they hated it to him, didn’t say anything to their mom either, but for different reasons. They knew mom loved them, but not like dad loved them. Dad would work to bone for them, skin his body for nickels to buy them dinner, eat dirt so that they could have scraps, and drink nothing so they could have water. That was something the kids could never say about their mom. She had birthed them, but was that enough? She had worried about them, but had that helped?

Marlene tried to care for them, but somehow that was not a thing any of them wanted. Marlene knew this, sometimes, when she thought real hard and there wasn’t anyone around to argue with, but most of the time she just tried to go about life like it was alright, like it wasn’t her fault – and for her it was easy, there was always somebody to blame, like Benny, but he wasn’t the only thing she blamed… there was always something, someone, justification enough so that she didn’t have to worry about her part in it all.

The eldest daughter, her name was Chelsea, looked at the healthy young man that’d been behind her in line. She wondered what his name was. He was just getting his to-go bag from the cashier. He was cute to her standards. She’d been feeling like doing more than kissing boys for a while and this one looked about right. Under his shirt she could see muscles and he carried himself with that kind of pride that makes you think his confidence could change the world. His hair was messy and brown, his beard was road haggard, and he was worn, but he had those beautiful eyes that just cried out to her, like mating calls in the jungle. He went outside with his food, didn’t even look at her, and she felt rejected. Why hadn’t he liked her more? Why hadn’t he given her one last glance?

Chelsea was beginning to learn that life was full of questions.

Dave met up with his friends in the store across the road where they sold petrified dinosaur bones and told them about the girl he’d seen inside. How beautiful she was, and about how she hadn’t looked at him much in line. “Gotta lose this gut,” he said, holding onto his little beer belly. They laughed and then got into the truck and drove off towards Arches National Park.

The guys had set up a renegade campsite there, far away from where they thought anyone would find them. The camp was pitched on some rock slab far off the trails so they could spend the night under the stars, isolated and undisturbed, with a couple extra bucks in their pockets that they didn’t have to spend on permitted camping. When they got to the entrance gates Dave flashed the day-pass receipt, which was stapled to the area map, and was waved through by an attendant wearing a forest green uniform. She smiled at them. They waved and smiled back.

“Where do you guys want to sleep tonight?” Benny asked his kids after they finished up their meal and were busying themselves cleaning the table off and putting the trash in cans near the glass door.

“Not in the van,” said Chelsea, watching the white truck disappear into the rain and fog and oil-slicked red mountains.

“Yeah I don’t want to sleep in there again,” the others chimed in.

“What do you want to do honey?” Benny asked Marlene.

“I don’t know, I don’t want to spend a lot of money.”

“We could camp somewhere,” said Benny.

“Where?”

“How ‘bout Arches, we’ve never been there and I’ve wanted to go there since the 70s.”

“Why?”

“I read about it in some book once.”

“What book? You don’t read Benny.”

“I used to.”

“When?”

“When I was in college, you know, before we met and had kids and…”

“Before you had responsibilities, I guess.”

“Yeah, well, sort of… I mean, I like to read, I still do sometimes…”

“Is that why you got fired, Benny?”

“Jesus, Marlene, ain’t nothin’ makes…”

“Don’t you dare take the Lords name in vain, you son of a bitch!”

“Can you guys please not fight right now, mom?” said Chelsea.

Marlene slapped her across the face, “Don’t you ever think you can tell me what to do missy, I brought you into this world and I sure as shit can take you back out, like that,” and she snapped her fingers.

“I hate you,” Chelsea yelled, and ran out of the restaurant and into the misty night. The sun was sinking into the red rocks of the canyons and valleys and magnificent arches and caverns and sand and mesas and towers and pillars that all seemed to stretch on forever, just out of reach. She kept running, running like there was something that was going to kill her, but she was running for her freedom, running to get away. Everyone came out after her, but Chelsea was fast and she was running towards her new life like some people ran to cross the Berlin Wall. People die trying to get free.

Chelsea was lucky her mom couldn’t shoot her with her eyes, because she was trying to. Benny gave her a little chase, but he didn’t try too hard, in a way he wanted her to get away, wanted her to be better than he was. This time was her chance to escape.

In her white tank-top and little pink shorts Chelsea made her way through the closing desert light. It was an amazing sunset. The blues and purples mixing with that glare of mist the sky was showering down in its shadows. The clouds were above her and that crisp wonderful air and smell of the desert was all inside her as she heaved one heavy breath after another into her rapidly moving lungs. Lightning struck sideways across the horizon.

Was there nothing anyone could do? She thought, cringing not to cry. Bearing teeth and gritting jaw, can’t even scream out a release, Chelsea was so tightly wound up inside, it burned in her stomach, made her bend over and gag, and dig her fingernails into her palms, which were knotted into basalt fists. The first words of liberation came through her clinched teeth.

“Don’t you fucking hit me, you always hit me – like you hit dad when you get real mad, and he holds your arms and you go fucking nuts because you are powerless. He just looks at you writhe, and he cries while you scream out your wild abuses at him, and if we ever say anything we get it too, all that madness. I thought all families were like this and then we went to school and met people and met their parents, like Wendy’s mom, she is so nice, always cooks for us and makes us tea and talks about fun stuff like movies and boys and celebrities and just simple stuff that makes me smile and forget all about the tireless dysfunction that is my home, that is created by the people that are supposed to be loving me, providing for me… something, they’re supposed to do something other than fight, right? What did I do?” Tears began to fall as she opened up before the Great Desert.

A little voice told she hadn’t done a thing wrong, but she ignored it.

Things seemed quiet after running almost an hour. Chelsea slowed down and gradually became less irate in the process. Her mind cleared and took hold of her. She had ascended a large hill and was now on some asphalt road, trotting along, looking at everything. There were a few signs that spoke of the geology in Arches. They told of how everything was made. Of how the rocks came to be, the rolling ones, and the tall ones, and the balancing ones, and the angled ones, and the ones that looked like petrified sand, but weren’t really. The signs told her about trailside plants and animals, the arches, and about the Indians that used to live here and drew pictures of what they hunted all over the rocks. These things around her were old, older than anything she had ever been forced to endure. The antiquity mesmerized her. These podiums of information were usually marked by a cairn of sorts and she looked for them as she made her way by foot through the park, trying all the time to forget her loathsome mother, her wimp father.

Marlene said something hateful to Benny in the car when they left after Chelsea, and since then everything had remained quiet, except occasionally when Benny or Marlene hollered out the window for Chelsea and slowed the van down to listen for a reply, but there never was a reply, just the howl of the desert and shriek of predatory birds. It was a very slow progress they were making. They couldn’t chase her directly because she’d gone up some hill where there was no road access. Marlene blamed Benny for that.

“That’s you in her,” she told him.

Benny thought about how much he wanted to drink some whisky.

“Pull over,” she demanded.

He did.

Marlene looked at the hills and then rummaged through her purse for the pouch of tobacco and papers. “Roll me a cigarette,” she demanded, handing the pouch to Benny, who took it and went about the motions with both hands. In college he could have rolled a cigarette with one hand, but that was a long time ago now.

“Here,” he said when he was finished. He handed it to her and then went to start the motor again. It roared like a constipated gorilla when he did, and then choked itself, found a ledge, leaped off, rolled over, and then spurted itself into a lurching first gear that Benny could hardly control.

Marlene started to get that look of desperation on her face again. It was starting to get dark. Chelsea had been gone over an hour now. Marlene thought about how her daughter had looked flying up that hill. “That girl is Hell on wheels,” she’d said, before slapping Benny’s arm in the parking lot, prior to Benny chasing after her.

“Aren’t you going to get after her,” she said.

He gave her a good head start.

“She’s too fast,” he said when he came back without her.

Marlene hated Benny more than ever now, blaming him for everything that happened. Everything was his fault. Her kids hating her was his fault, but they’d learn to understand her, Marlene thought, they were just too young – she hadn’t known anything as a kid either, her parents had told her so. That little brat on the copper mountain is all she fretted about, though, and she wrung her hands and chain smoked cigarettes Benny rolled for her.

He rolled the cigarettes in spite of his rising anger. He hated Marlene, but he could never stand-up to her, and now the anger over all those years of subjugation was beginning to rise. Benny felt like he wanted to raze the world to the ground, if only to silence his neurotic wife.

It was near dark, all the light had faded off into that little slit at the end of the world, and Chelsea was pondering all she had read on those placards along the road. Many cars had driven past her, some of the people in them had looked at her hard because they didn’t understand what a petit girl like that was doing without a raincoat out in this weather, but they drove on and no one stopped. At first she was worried that the people driving up were her parents. She didn’t want to go aback with them. She knew her mother was probably blaming Benny for all that happened. It wasn’t his fault. It made her feel bad to know that he had to put up with her when she didn’t.

Chelsea stopped worrying about the cars when she remembered how loud their van was, how easy it was to spot. After that she walked a little easier and carried herself a little higher. But it was getting a chilly. The temperature in the desert could plummet at night, even in the dead of summer. Two days ago it snowed in northern Utah. It frightened her some to think about. The run had made her sweat and the rain only made her damper. She was starting to shake and her lips were cold to the touch.

“I hope I don’t get hypothermia,” she said to the desert.

She put her hands together and clasped them up into her chest. She hunched over a little into the breeze and quickened her walk. She had seen a person do that somewhere and was pretty sure it was a survival technique.

There were campsites everywhere, but she didn’t trust them. They were easy to find, right on the road. Maybe there was someone not so close to the road she could hide out with, she hoped.

Hours passed quickly as she walked. The moon crept into the sky and stayed there. All the light moved away, and night resumed that kind of peaceful madness it is so famous for. A queer normality. It scared her to be out there all alone.

“I think I’m lost.”

Her feet rumbled over the ground. All her articulate movement was diminished, raw motor skills were all that was left and the fuel was low in her machine. At some point going forward would no longer be a viable option, and she would have to lie down, and pray that death didn’t take her in the night like he had to so many children in southern Sudan. She’d read about the Lost Boys in school, about how they died along the refugee trails from starvation or were cut apart in their villages by groups of savage Arab bandits.

“The world is a very harsh place for children,” Chelsea explained to the darkness’ daunting dunes. It was cold and still that night. The animals were out and she could hear them screaming, and thought they were chasing her down, wanting to feast upon her. She almost wished they would.

“Just get it over with,” she said.

Nothing answered her calls but the screech of the wilderness. Chelsea started to run. There was nowhere to run to. She had lost sight of the warm camp lights long ago, deciding to wonder off into the darkness unaided instead, in search of people she wasn’t sure were there.

“Damn this place,” she said, looking to further substitute her loneliness with a voice.

“Why did I ever run away?”

“Because you hate your life.”

“I don’t hate it. I just hate the way it has to be sometimes.”

Chelsea shivered as she walked through the lonely scarlet desert.

“Doesn’t mean you just get to run away from it all the time you know.”

“I know. But what am I supposed to do? Where do I go when I can’t take it anymore?”

“Go for a run.”

“Look where that’s got me.”

“Don’t run away, just run, it’ll help.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“Who am I talking to anyway, I’m alone out here?”

“I’m Chelsea, who are you?”

“I’m Chelsea, too, where did you come from?”

“I was always here. I live here inside of you.”

“You do, you can’t.”

“I do, I am you.”

“But we seem so different, I like you, but you scare me, I don’t talk to myself.”

“You’ve just never taken the time to do so. You just have to listen, I always talk to you, but it’s hard to get your attention.”

“I’m so busy, you know, with my family and school, and now we don’t even have a place to live…” Chelsea started to get stressed out and hyperventilate like her mother. She fell to her knees and began to sob. “Why does life have to be so hard for us, we didn’t do anything wrong…”

“It isn’t about you.”

“It is about me, I feel this way, I have to deal with all this shit, I’m only 16. What do you expect from a little girl like me?”

“Who are you asking?”

“Who am I asking?” Chelsea stood back up, “I’m asking the fucking universe, I’m asking anyone who will listen. I’m asking you!”

“It won’t always be that bad.”

“It seems like forever, like this God forsaken night, it’ll never end.”

“It will, don’t worry.”

“In death, it’ll end in death.”

“All things do child, don’t worry.”

“But I don’t want this night to end in darkness, for me to die out here in this desert with the howling creatures that’ll tear me apart and devour my body, I want one more sunrise.”

She began to run towards that ever fading hue in the distance, that place that may not even exist. Her feet moved easily over the uneven ground. They seemed to intuit the next ridge or bolder, they knew just where to step, like a blind man in a familiar room that he has seen many times with his fingers. And just like a blind man in a familiar room, where something alien is placed, Chelsea tripped, unexpectedly. What she stumbled over was soft, and she fell over it into sand. Instinctively she stuck her arms out and one of her wrists was jammed into the ground. Sharp pain shook her small body. Something on the ground stood up and grunted loudly. She held her wrist in horror and leapt to her feet, the pain subsiding. Her heart beat quicker. Other creatures moved on the ground and began to make low noises like bears.

“Don’t kill me,” she begged the darkness. “I don’t mean to bother you, just let me go. Please, I just want to be free, I’m so alone out here in the darkness, chasing nothing, please help me, don’t kill me, let me go on.”

An omnipresent force moved her and her body shivered with anxious energy.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” the voice in the darkness said, before rising from the ground in the form of steep mountain. “Who are you?” it said to her in a soft and assured voice.

“I’m Chelsea.”

The mountainous form advanced upon her.

“Are you a Park Ranger?” it said.

“No,” she blurted out, stunned, “I’m not from here.”

“Oh, I’m Dave,” said the tall mountain. “What are you doing out here in the desert, alone?”

“What are those things moving on the ground?” she said pointing at the ground excitedly.

“They’re my friends, Jake and Thomas. You kind of disturbed them, but don’t worry they sleep pretty heavy.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to stumble into your camp, or over you, but I’m lost.”

“How’d you get lost?”

“I ran away from my parents.”

A flashlight came on and shined on her. She shielded her eyes from the glare, and then it dropped down over her body to the ground.

“You’re the girl from Wendy’s,” the voice said.

The beam of light then moved up and around so that it shined on Dave’s face. Chelsea recognized him. He smiled at her. Dave set the flashlight down upright so that they shared in its illuminating flood. Chelsea smiled at him. She really is pretty, he thought.

“You hungry or anything, you look cold, want a jacket?” Dave asked.

“Sure,” she said, and he gave her one. Then he got down by some coals that were still hot in the fire pit and blew on them, added a little kindling, and blew some more. Soon flames leapt from the hearth and bigger logs could be added. Dave got some coffee out of his rucksack and a little kettle for boiling the water.

“I hope cowboy coffee is okay with you,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“You make the coffee just pouring the grounds into it without a filter, they settle before you drink it, buts it’s not as ‘clean’ you know.”

“I can handle it,’ she said, smiling again.

Dave made the coffee and asked about her life and she told him bits and pieces of it, but didn’t whine or complain. Life was life and that’s all it was. She endured well enough. The coffee was good and he poured her some and she drank it in little soft sips that made her purse her lips and suck loudly. It was cute and he watched her.

“What are you looking at,” she said. They were standing.

“You.”

“Why?”

“You’re cute.”

“Cute like a little girl, or do you mean attractive?”

“I mean attractive.”

“I think you’re cute too then.”

She leaned into kiss him, but Dave drew away, “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Trying to kiss you, I thought…”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said, and sat down on the ground, pulling her down with him by the hands. “Look at the stars, aren’t they beautiful.”

Chelsea looked at them. They were beautiful, the stars, but she’d seen pretty stars before. She used to look at them when she was alone at home, she’d go out into the yard and lay there in the grass, listening to things change and the sky would sail over her for hours. She wondered by Dave didn’t want to kiss her, why he just laid there like a dead-thing. Wasn’t she pretty enough? Maybe he could tell that she was only 16, but what did he care. Chelsea wanted to kiss him like she had seen people kiss in movies and on TV. How her mom used to kiss Benny when they were in love still and he had a job and the house and the nice diesel truck, and the yard where she watched stars sail, before all this shit happened. She wanted to feel his body against her.

“Chelsea, what are you doing out here?”

She felt interrupted, but she answered, “My dad got fired and we had to move.”

“No, I mean why are you out here, in the desert, alone? This isn’t a safe place.”

“You saying you ain’t safe for me to be ‘round?”

“No, Chelsea. Quit avoiding my question, why are you running away?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Alright.”

“Can I sit next to you?” she asked him, after the hour long minutes passed.

Dave invited her to with his hand. She slid in next to him. His body warmth made her feel good. It had been a long time since she felt safe. Strange that it was with someone she didn’t know.

When the sun first began to show its dark blue hue they were still awake, her head on his chest, and the only sound they heard was the blue and white van moving through the still desert morning. At first she didn’t acknowledge it. She didn’t want it to be real. Fleeing crossed her mind, but she looked at the endless plain and decided escape could wait. It was time to go back, for at least a while, until she could really get away and stay away. Leave her past in the past. Chelsea longed for that day to come, it hadn’t yet, but it would.

“That’s them,” she said, getting up quickly and looking around. “I have to go.”

“Who?” asked Dave.

“My parents.”

Dave just looked at her calmly. Pulled a cigarette out his pack and lit it, didn’t say anything.

“I got to go,” she said.

“I know.”

“You were really nice…”

“Don’t mention it.”

“You think I’ll ever see you again.”

He sat there by the fire smoking.

She listened to her heart-beat for a moment and then said, “No, I guess not, huh.” She bent down to him and kissed his cheek. “Thanks,” she said.

He pointed out a little game trail that led to the road.

“Bye,” she said and waved back at him after she’d gone a ways up the trail.

Dave stood there and watched her go.

“Adios,” he said. Then he waved, turned around to his fire and stoked it. Made some more hot water for more coffee, and waited for the sun to truly show itself and light up this great red rock valley. There was something to be seen in the early desert heat and he was going to see what that was, even if he had to sit like a stone statue for the next few hours, until all the dark blue was out of the sky and all that was left was the memory of what once was.

The blue and white van, beaten to shit and cranking and jolting and loudly announcing itself came thundering down the road faster than Chelsea thought it could without being in fourth gear, which is obviously wasn’t. When she stepped out onto the road in front of it, it lurched to a stop. Marlene got out first, tears running down her face. After her anger had subsided yesterday she’d grown terribly frightened, stayed up most of the night crying and thinking the worst, and refusing to call off the search until morning. Benny got out next. He looked tired.

“Where did you go?” Marlene asked. “Are you okay?”

“I had to get away.”

Her mother was hugging her, but Chelsea kept her hands at her sides. Benny looked at her, sighed, and got back into the truck. He would talk to Chelsea later, when her mother wasn’t around so spoil it.

“Why won’t you hug me?” Marlene asked Chelsea.

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I just can’t, okay. I don’t want to.”

“You don’t know what you want you’re just a child.”

“I do know what I want, and it isn’t you. Just leave me alone, please.”

Marlene pushed Chelsea away from her, “You’re just like your daddy, good for nothing. I’ve been looking for you all night long, thought you were dead, and that’s all you got to say to me? I should have left you out here, little unappreciative bitch.”

The words just poured out. Chelsea fought tears.

“Get in the fucking van before I give you something to cry about. Tighten up that lip, missy. I devoted my life to protecting you, and providing for you, and this is how you repay me? By running away? By saying you don’t love me?” She went on.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Shut up!”

Benny looked at them from the van. He didn’t feel like a man anymore. His wife was doing something so disgusting, and he didn’t know what to do about it. His daughter was different, he knew that. She wouldn’t let Marlene do this to her forever. Chelsea was stronger than that. Maybe she would cut the cord soon. He wished she had just kept running last night, hadn’t stopped. Why did she stop? He wondered, probably knew she couldn’t escape, probably got cold and crazy in the desert. It happens all the time. Benny had been lost once in the desert. There was some weird shit out there. Perhaps all the unexplainable things live out there. Benny didn’t know. He was glad she was alive, but living wasn’t much around here, he knew that. He’d been told by people smarter than him to endure and wait, but he didn’t think that was much of a strategy anymore. He wished he knew what to do. Cursed himself because he didn’t. Benny wished he was better able, but he wasn’t. He knew that, too. It made him sick in the head.

They all got back into the van, Chelsea a little reluctantly. It was early morning and Benny thought he could make California by the next morning if he stomped on it. Maybe that would quell some of the strife that was plaguing his family. Then again maybe it wouldn’t, maybe he should just shoot his wife. Maybe they’d all be better off dead. There was a part of him that really believed that. Suddenly, Benny was very depressed. He wanted to do something.

Under the seat there was a bottle of whisky and Benny took it out. It was almost a full pint. Earlier he had taken a few sips from it when Marlene wasn’t looking. Benny hated her and dwelled on that for a while before he uncapped the whisky. The smell filled the van.

“Excuse me, Benny,” his menacing wife started to say.

“Shut up,” he told her, “I had enough listening to you. All I do is listen to you bark at everyone all the time. How do you think we feel – Oh, wait, that’s right, you don’t give two-shits, no wonder we all hate you!”

Marlene watched him in amazement, speechless. Benny hadn’t talked to her like that, ever. Something inside of him snapped. He was a broken vessel now.

Benny finished the bottle, tossed the empty bottle onto her lap, and called her a bitch, winced from the heat of the liquor and then burped. His body got warm.

She screamed something at him he didn’t listen to.

He took a cigarette he had rolled for her and lit it with her orange lighter.

“What the fuck are you doing drinking and driving?” Marlene shouted, when she found her voice. She was fully perturbed and on the verge of total breakdown.

“Fuck you,” he said, feeling braver every minute.

“Who do you think you are Benny?”

“I’m their father,” he pointed at the kids in the back. They all looked terrified. “And I’m your husband, you cunt – why have I taken it so long, I don’t deserve this shit, maybe I deserve it because I put up with it, but why do I even do that? There is no sense in it, I fucking hate you. Hated you since that miscarriage made you all bitter and angry and everything fell apart, and I didn’t know what to do, and then I lost my job because I didn’t know what to do, and they needed an excuse to fire anyone they could, it isn’t like the old days Marlene, when things were easy, no things are fucking hard, and you just make them harder being pessimistic all the time…”

“Pessimistic?...”

“Shut the fuck up, you’re not going to interrupt me now, not after all these years, no you’re gonna listen to me vent and ridicule you like you ridicule me. I’m no animal you can beat forever, Marlene. Eventually I strike back. Chelsea you should have run forever,” he said turning to the girl, “you should have never given up and kept running and trying and gotten the fuck away from all this, but now it’s too late, you’re in it for good, you’re here with us now, and now is all that matters, Marlene knows that well, don’t you Marlene?”

At that moment it was obvious that the quilt had come apart. It was all undone.

Benny turned the van hard onto the gravel and then over some rocks. There was a view point coming up, said to be very scenic on the maps, and it over looked a fault line 1,200 feet down, and a valley of arches and stone pillars and beautiful mountain-chains of rust.

“Dad, please don’t…we love you…”

“Fuck you Benny…”

“I’m doing the best I can…”

“I hate you…”

“Sorry…”

“There isn’t much time…”

Dave and the boys in the white truck left the park some hours later. They had heard sirens in the morning and didn’t want to get caught up in a roadblock or something, if there was one. They preferred to wait it out. Let the storm pass. They sat by the embers and drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and talked about things young men on road trips talk about. The pirate camping in the park overnight had been a real thrill. They really liked it. They were all recalcitrant youth anyway, and stealing from the government made them smile devious grins adolescents wear so well.

When they finally decided to make the descent out of the park they were surprised to see yellow tape and a lot of people working on an old burnt out van with a white sliding door. A coroner’s vehicle was there, looking over paperwork and loading in the last mangled and charred body. The body was slender and long, but too small to be an adult. The body was covered in white linens. Dave remembered how the whole family had looked, alive, in the Wendy’s the day before. It seemed so desperately long ago and faint, like it had all happened in a morning’s fog.

“What wreckage,” Thomas said. “I can’t believe that happened.”

“I know,” said Jake.

They all watched without blinking. Only Thomas occasionally took his eyes from the horror to correct his path down the asphalt. Dave was in disbelief. Maybe last night didn’t happen, he hoped. Maybe they weren’t real. He started to cry, silently, shading his face so the others wouldn’t see his tears.

Thomas crept out past the police and firemen when he reached the base of the hill. The uniforms were milling about, talking, some of them were laughing, while others looked glum. For them it was all routine, another queer normality.

The smell of the charred van and its cooked occupants came in through the open windows. Dave gagged.

“Pull over,” he said, “I have to vomit.”

Dillon Mullenix lives and writes in the high desert. He has been published in Seahorse Rodeo Folk Review, PenSpark, Haggard & Halloo, Autumn Letters, and in four anthologies. As a Gemini he likes to argue with himself.

http://mllnx.blogspot.com/