I’ve never left the desert. The serpent, still near, now in the shape of a diamond-back rattler, curls over black, eroded stones. He no longer tempts me to make fresh bread out of rocks. Instead, he tells me a fortune can be had in petroleum, but I’m not the least bit moved. I know the limits of the land. The pumps go up and down; their taut, metallic hammering drives right through my skull.
The roughnecks, knocking off for the night, toss their hardhats into the air, scattering skinny hounds in the road. The fellows head for the one bar in town, a small Texas town that remains a town just because Bubba’s stays open. They laugh whenever they spot me. Goddamn nutcase. Sees stuff that ain’t even there. Thinks he’s friggin’ Christ, or something. Who knows, who knows? Rig broke, year or so ago. Conk on the noggin.
I’ve heard much worse. Believe me.
Later, when Bubba’s shut for the night, one wiry wildcatter stumbles to his trailer home, falls into bed next to a snoring woman. She wakes. They make love. I wait by their open window, tensed, poised to be useful if someone drunk or exhausted topples into a sinkhole here or burns himself in a gas-leak fire.
The couple coos. Their bodies cool. For a moment I’m only a jealous man.
Sensing my weakness, testing me, the snake hisses, “Take her. Just walk in and take her, man. Take it all. It’s yours for the asking.”
I love it all, it’s true, and love means grasping, want, desire. But the value of the desert is its poverty. That’s why I’ve stayed. And stayed.
Tonight, refinery flames outshine the moon, revealing lunar emptiness right at my own two feet. I’m reminded there’s nothing here to claim: worn-out odds and ends. Behind me, a collie circles, dragging a hurt hind leg. I’ve seen him before, begging by the bar, abandoned like all of Earth’s creatures, but he’s never looked so stark. Ribs, muddy paws. He whimpers, as quiet as the sighing through the trailer home window. Now he falters, breathes into the dirt. I kneel, inhale the dust from his fur. O how I miss you, I whisper, O how I miss you already, but I mustn’t sit with any single victim. Too many. Too many. Eventually, I’ll be forced to leave him to the diamonds, the hidden flowers that open their mouths in the night.
On evenings like this (but aren’t they all like this?), I tell myself again and again, a hammer in my head, I must live with myself, with only myself. I must learn to love what isn’t mine, since nothing is mine. Nothing has ever been mine.