Jack stood by the back fence posts and stared off into the distance. Beyond the endless horizon, he wished in his gut to see a sign of humanity somewhere out there that he had missed. Something that he could point to, grab Laura by the hand, and start running toward. Some beacon of freedom. He thought of different prisoners in history, because that is how he viewed himself now.
A captive.
A hostage.
The only difference was that he was bound in by infinite space. Pinned down by an ever-expanding universe.
He envied the traditional prisoner to the degree that they could see their walls. To see the cinder block, the razor wire. At least then you could focus your mind. You would know where freedom was, just on the other side. But where was freedom out here? One step out changed nothing.
One of Jack’s favorite stories was about a man who managed to escape the frozen prison camps of Siberia and walk thousands of miles to freedom in India. The narrator had trekked through mountains and deserts, snow and heat, all in the quest to be a free man. It was an inspirational story that every office jockey dreamed of having the cojones to attempt. The fact that the story was a fake had crushed his inner adventurer. Of course it was a fake, Jack thought as he scanned the rock sea in front of him; no one could survive this.
The horse snorted and woke Jack out of his daydream. He looked over at the mare, who stared back at him.
“What are you looking at?”
The mare just stared back, passive eyes boring a hole through Jack’s head. He walked over to the horse but did not touch it.
“I bet you’d like to get out of here too, huh. Penned up in this forsaken place. What kind of life is that for you?”
With a constant flick of the tail, the beast swatted the flies off its back, and seemed to enjoy the conversation it was having with the man.
“I bet you’d like to run free, just get out of here and run.”
The mare stamped its hoof, and then again. It kept stamping and now started to jump around the pen as if something Jack had said spooked the life out of it. Its neighing and clopping building louder and louder as the horse worked itself into hysteria. Jack stumbled back, wondering what he did to cause the animal to freak out.
He turned around, ready to start yelling for Boots, when he saw them.
He was wide awake.
This was no hallucination
They were real.
Like a low, pitch-black fog, a stream of shadows rushed north across the desert at the base of the western mountains. Its origin stretched south beyond imagination. A raging river of wind and dust moving faster and faster like a midnight freight train. The horse went crazy, stomping, jumping, snorting.
“Boots!” Jack screamed. He screamed again as sand started blowing across his face, the clear air moving with the black rip current, a sandstorm building. The old man came running around the house. He went straight to the pen and calmed the horse, leading it into the little shed and shutting the door. The wind intensified, blowing harder and obscuring the blue sky above.
“Get inside, Jack! Move it!”
Jack ran to the front of the trailer and through the front door. Laura was standing in the kitchen, a look of worry across her face as the wind increased in intensity outside.
“Where’s Boots?”
“He was right behind me!”
Jack ran to the bedroom and looked out the window onto the back. He could see the horse shed through the blowing dust. The horse tucked away from the wind but probably going spastic locked away. He could see the mountains, with a black band of swirling shadow at the base. It was pulsing, moving faster and faster, whipped into frenzy. All this he saw, his eyes wide open, his head clear.
Out by a fence post, Boots stood erect in the wind, staring at the mountains. He seemed unaffected by the haboob brewing around him. His beard flapping in the wind, filling with dust. Jack pounded on the glass, but the old man didn’t turn. Laura came up behind Jack and looked out the window too.
“What’s he doing out there?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“We need to go get him.”
“We need to stay in.”
“Is he crazy?”
“I don’t know.”
They watched as Boots raised his hand toward the west and started shaking his fist. His mouth was moving as if he was yelling at the wind. Scolding it, chastising an unruly class of hellions. He screamed and bellowed, but the sound of his voice barely penetrated the glass.
The black clouds slowed and the winds began to ease. They began to huddle at the base of the mountains, where their stillness caused them to disperse into nothingness. The blowing sand settling back to the ground and the blue sky reappearing overhead. Boots lowered his hand and turned. He walked back to the shed, opened the door, and led the mare out to its pen. He patted its neck, and then spanked its back end. The horse trotted out, shaking off its fears in the gravel and dust. Boots walked up to the trailer and noticed the couple staring at him through the window before they could duck out of sight.
———
“What was that all about?” Laura whispered to Jack, trying her best to understand what she thought she saw.
“I have no idea.”
“Did you see what he did?”
“What do you think he did?”
“Stopped the storm . . . he stopped . . .”
“No, he didn’t.”
“But, Jack, he—”
“He didn’t.”
They heard him come in the front door, his boots clicking on the floor in the hall.
“You all can come out now. Storm’s done.”
They walked out of the bedroom cautiously, not able to hide their perplexed state of fear before the old man.
“Winds whip up pretty quick out here. No big deal.”
“What were you doing out there, Boots?” Jack asked, point-blank.
“Having a bit of fun, I guess.”
Laura looked at Boots, trying to figure out this puzzle of a man.
“Yeah, nothing like a good storm to wake you up.”
“So you went out and yelled at the wind?”
“Haha . . . good a time as any to get some things off the mind.”
Laura looked at Jack and back to Boots, her tension and confusion easing every minute. She couldn’t explain what she thought she saw happen, but Boots’s personality warmed her every time he started talking. No, she thought. He wasn’t crazy. Maybe eccentric, odd, but not crazy.
“You yelled at the storm, and it stopped?” Jack asked.
“Now that don’t make much sense, does it, Jack?”