Desert Eyes
from the Sunset Documents
Roxy Sunset started awake, gasping for breath. She pointed her revolver into the night, but her hand was so unsteady she would have missed the only shot she had left. Her horse, tethered close, twitched an ear, but was otherwise unperturbed. It was cold in the desert night, but Roxy was sweating.
She struggled to hold her breath, listening, but it was impossible to hear anything beside her heartbeat drumming in her ears. She paused before putting the gun down, took a moment to gaze down its barrel, and cock and uncock the hammer.
The desert heard the click of the metal and watched the woman and the horse, curious for a beat before thinking of something else — about the breadth of the sky and the swath of starlight running through it. Soon the desert forgot all about Roxy Sunset and her gun.
Roxy tried to ease back into her bedroll. She caught the scent of lavender oil and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled, seizing her body with a shiver.
She rubbed the lavender oil into her hair, and then braided the blond strands into neat plaits. Roxy leaned in and kissed the top of her head. She smelled like lavender and sweat and dust.
She got up from the bed, and Roxy watched her naked hips sway as she walked to the window. Roxy rolled a cigarette and lit it. She took a drag, polishing her gun on the bright white sheets of the bed. The smoke curled in the morning sun, shafts of dust suspended in air, and Roxy couldn’t help but notice the curve of her breasts as she stood silhouetted.
“You look pretty in that light.”
“I do?”
“You do.”
She came back to the bed. Her eyes were bright and piercing, full of mischief and mirth. She took the cigarette from Roxy’s fingers, inhaled — exhaled, milky smoke curling from her nostrils.
“Goddammit, Cassie.” Roxy grabbed her hair, kissing her mouth. “You make me want to fuck you so bad.” Cassie giggled, the braid messy and undone.
The gun clattered to the floor. The desert peered into the window, its curiosity piqued by the sounds it heard coming from the bedroom of the adobe house. The desert knew nothing of shame or of passion, but as it watched the two women and listened to the springs of the bed beneath them creak, it suddenly understood what the wind meant when it said it missed the kiss of the shoreline.
Later that night, the desert watched Roxy as she sat alone on the porch, bouncing her leg nervously — her drink warm in her hand, her gun cold across her lap. A goat grazed on the patchy grass just beyond the perimeter of the porch lantern’s circle of light. Cicadas hummed in the hot, still darkness. Somewhere in the hills coyotes cried and cackled, but Roxy knew that if they came close to the herd, the big ugly mutt on the property would kill them.
The coyotes didn’t scare Roxy. She was looking for something else in the black desert abyss beyond the house.
“Come inside already.”
Roxy started, finger on the trigger. Cassie stood stiff in the door. The coyotes in the hills fell silent, the cicadas were still.
“Cassie, I told you to get on to bed without me.”
“Put the gun down.”
“Cassie you ain’t listening.”
“Put it down! I won’t have you pointing that goddamn thing at me on my goddamn property!”
Roxy lowered the revolver. “The safety’s on anyway.”
“You’ve got the devil in you.”
“Cassie, you don’t know what I’ve got in me.”
“You’re making me wish my husband would come back.”
“Cassie!” Roxy got to her feet, slamming her whiskey to the ground. The glass shattered on the porch and the lantern light flickered. Cassie sucked in a breath and withdrew into the darkness inside the house.
“I don’t want you in bed with me anyhow,” she said quietly.
In the sweeping, wild abyss beyond the porch, the desert watched Roxy sit back down, drop her head into her hands, and weep.
Roxy woke up crying. The sun was just beginning to rise, but the heat was already unrelenting. Roxy wept hot, angry, desperate tears. She rose to her knees and screamed into the blue sky. She screamed until her voice was raw and the horse bucked and pulled at his tether.
She lifted her revolver, pointed it into the distance, and cocked the hammer.
“Don’t think I don’t fucking know you’re out there!” she screamed, her voice barely holding. “I’m gonna kill you before you kill me!”
The desert could tell she didn’t mean it. The sand stirred around Roxy as she hastily broke camp and struggled to calm the horse long enough to mount. She kicked the horse into a desperate run, and the desert wondered when she might notice she’d forgotten her canteen and rucksack full of food. Then the desert watched a mouse kill and eat a scorpion, and decided to take a nap to pass the high heat of noon.
It had been noon when Roxy appeared at the ranch, ragged and worn, her horse’s ribs showing and his skin blistered from wearing the saddle for days without pause. Roxy had enough energy to knock on the door and then collapse at Cassie’s feet. Cassie had asked no questions.
She asked no questions when Roxy was slow to tell her her name, where’d she come from, and why she was trying to get to San Francisco.
“You hoping for gold up there?”
“Fuck that.”
“That’s where my husband is right now.”
“He’s gonna make you rich?”
Cassie shrugged. It was once of the two times she mentioned her husband. Roxy decided to stay.
Roxy watched Cassie rub the lavender oil into her hair every morning and braid it down her back. Then one day she asked Cassie if she could do it for her. Cassie stiffened, but said breathlessly, “Yes.” Roxy combed her fingers through the oiled strands and whispered in Cassie’s ear a thing that made the heat rise in Cassie’s body.
Then a virus spread throughout the herd, and the livestock wasted away as if they were made of sand. In silence, Roxy and Cassie dragged the fever ravished bodies far out into the desert, and burned them. They stank. The coyotes came closer in the night, spittle roped from their mouths, and the big ugly mutt would howl and snarl, lurking in the darkness just beyond the reach of the lantern light on the porch.
Roxy was increasingly uneasy. She sat and drank on the porch, her gun in her lap, all six slots in the chamber loaded.
Finally, Cassie said, “You can’t keep on this way. I won’t have it. You gotta either tell me what’s going on or you can’t stay here any longer.”
Roxy rotated the revolver’s chamber. She was drunk. She slurred, “Your husband’s gonna come find me?”
Cassie stood smoldering in the door.
Roxy conceded. “Well, what do you wanna know?”
“Start at the beginning.”
Roxy sighed, rubbed her eyes. “Well quit standing there. Sit down and roll us a cigarette.” Cassie complied, sitting on the steps of the porch. The big ugly mutt on the property appeared from the night, rubbing his head against Cassie’s legs. She scratched his ears.
“We killed them, you know, we killed them in cold blood.”
Cassie looked up for only a moment, cleared her throat, and whispered, “I know you got ghosts. I could tell. You brought ‘em with you.”
“You don’t understand, Cassie, we lined them up and shot them from behind. Like dogs. We were young, we were proud, we were angry. So angry.” Roxy rubbed her eyes again. She hadn’t slept in days, and she’d been drinking for longer. “It had to be done. They’d fucked up. They’d said too much to the wrong people. But we didn’t have to do it like that. We didn’t have to do them like that. We were just so angry.”
“That ain’t the beginning. Tell it from the beginning, Roxy.”
“Thieves, Cassie — horse thieves. They stole the horses and they killed all the men. They left the women and the children to die. Shooting them woulda been kinder. One of girls, she was just eight, Cassie — eight.”
“And then what happened?” She lit the cigarette.
“They called me to come and find the horses. And in the night, in soft voices, they asked me to help kill the folks who’d stolen them.”
“Why did they ask you that?”
“Reasons you’re better off not knowing. Trust me on this one, Cassie.”
Cassie passed the cigarette to her.
“But two of the boys fucked up, you see? Revenge gets confusing quickly. Lots of people get hurt who ain’t the folks you wanted to hurt.” Roxy watched the cigarette burn, ashed it at last, and took a drag. “They were rich little pieces of shit. Bored, you know. They stole the horses just because, and killed everyone for fun. Revenge gets confusing quickly when you forget why you’re shooting someone.”
“And who did you shoot?”
Roxy’s eyes burned with liquor and lack of sleep. Her body ached.
“They snitched. We killed them so they couldn’t snitch no more. Lined them up, the two of them, and I shot them in the back of the head.” Roxy took another drag, downed the rest of her drink. “You ever seen someone get shot in the head, Cassie? You ever seen that?”
Roxy rose uneasily to her feet, swinging and lumbering. She waved the gun in the air. She pressed the barrel to her own head. “You ever seen that, Cassie? Huh? Cassie? You ever seen that? Ever seen someone’s head get shot wide open?”
The big ugly mutt began snarling, hackles raised.
Roxy tripped, falling roughly to her knees, the gun clattering to the ground. She began sobbing, her face streaked and red, snot dangling from her mouth and nose.
“It all fell apart. And I ran. I ran far. Changed my name, changed my face, found you. I wanted this to be the end of my running, but Cassie, anger runs long and low and forever. The memory of vengeance is not a short one. They put a price on my head and I’m a dead woman walking, Cassie. I can’t believe I was so fucking stupid.”
She sat on her knees, her face in her hands. Cassie did not move to comfort her.
The cicadas hummed and chirped in the darkness. There was a breeze and it carried the smell of burning fur and flesh with it.
The desert, which had been watching a cat give birth to a litter of kittens in a hay pile, became suddenly interested in Roxy’s story. The desert, knowing nothing of love or of hate, always liked to hear people talk about love and hate and joy and anger. The desert knew the sands and the stars and the deadly heat of the sun at noon, but it did not know what vengeance was.
Or fear.
“I’ve gotten word. Everyone else is dead. I’m the last one standing. It’s only a matter of time. I don’t wanna die, Cassie, I don’t wanna die running like a coward. But what else do I deserve?”
Cassie waited until Roxy wore herself out, the lantern light flickering, the big ugly mutt finally settling to sleep at the bottom of the porch steps.
Then Cassie coaxed Roxy to come inside. Cassie removed Roxy’s clothes and helped ease her body into bed, drawing the covers. Cassie put the gun — retrieved from the porch — on the nightstand. Roxy pressed herself close to Cassie’s body, and never once let her go throughout the night.
The desert found water running in a cave deep underground. “What does it mean to die?” the desert asked the stream. It only babbled carelessly in response.
The sky was hot and Roxy had run her horse for days without stopping for rest or for water.
Her flight had been doomed from the beginning, and she had known it. Everything had quickly gone dark, although when she was honest with herself, Roxy knew she had hastened her twilight the day she and three men decided they’d deliver their own cruel justice. She’d written her suicide note in the sand.
The horse stopped abruptly, throwing Roxy. He reared against the bright blue sky, and Roxy watched with horror as the horse collapsed — his mouth foaming, his eyes wide, his body heaving and ragged. He struggled to stand again, but his limbs were brittle with exhaustion, and his entire body trembled. He eventually gave up. His breathing slowed and then finally stopped.
Roxy peered at the dead body. At the body that was once a horse but now was only a pile of flesh with the heat quickly running out of it. Then the fear was in her, choking her and turning her stomach, and she took off on foot despite the ache in her hips from hitting the ground when the now-dead horse was once alive, and had thrown her from the saddle.
She stumbled, she fell, she scrambled back to her feet. Her pace was slowing. She was beyond thirsty, beyond starving. Her vision blurred, her sanity was tenuous. She feebly recalled the twisted path that had brought her here — here, to her end, running like a dog, to die alone with no one knowing her name, no one to put her to rest, her troubled soul left to wander forever.
They had come together, plotting an elaborate and cunning revenge, but two of them proved to be no better than snakes. Roxy wasn’t the one who insisted they die, but she was the one who fired the gun, one shot each. They had all been so angry and so prideful, the hubris of youth brimming in them. She had believed they deserved to die, just as others had decided she deserved her shallow death.
The desert watched Roxy run, then watched her fumble, then watched her fall.
The sun was in Roxy’s eyes. She stared up at it. She stared at the desert all around her, and then the light fell and rose as if a million lifetimes had just passed before her. She breathed slowly, deeply, and with each breath the world expanded and contracted. Her vision was full of static and stars in the places where the sky had cracked open. She thought she smelled lavender, and she realized it was her shirt that was stained with the scent.
Cassie was lying with her head on Roxy’s chest, and Roxy brushed her fingers through her hair, releasing the smell of the lavender oil with each stroke. Roxy had quit drinking, and that had helped a little, although she still sat on the porch at night with her gun ready. Cassie had stopped asking her to come to bed with her.
But today was all right. It was hot and the sheets on the bed were cool. There was nothing else to do but lie in stillness, listening to each other breathe. Roxy touched Cassie’s skin, and marveled at its smoothness. She dozed.
Then there was a sound in the kitchen and the big ugly mutt began howling. Roxy clutched the revolver, and Cassie started awake. They both sat seized with fear — the sound of footsteps was unmistakable.
The desert watched Roxy lie in the sand, muttering low to herself. She was holding the gun, and waving it in circles in the air.
Cassie hissed, “You brought the devil here.”
“You invited me in.”
“I fell in love with you, Roxy.”
For a moment the world receded. Cassie’s eyes were wide — wet with tears unfallen — her lips were trembling, but her mouth was set.
“Cassie … I’m sorry.”
Cassie shook her head, blond strands falling loose from her braid.
The sky was spinning and her mouth was dry. “Let the desert take me,” Roxy muttered, “I’m tired of running.”
They held their breath. The footsteps quieted. They heard the big ugly mutt snarl, and then they heard a gunshot, and then the world fell silent.
“I’m gonna kill him,” Roxy said, and sprung from the bed.
The tears in Cassie’s eyes fell.
Roxy found the kitchen empty. “Come the fuck out of hiding, you bastard,” she cried. “Let’s get this over with.”
But the gunshots didn’t ring out in the kitchen — they rang out in the bedroom.
The desert heard her say, over and over again, “I’m tired of running.”
Cassie was shot four times.
There was one shot left in the chamber and it was enough to move Roxy to her feet. Wincing, crying out, she struggled to stand. The ground tilted up beneath her, and her legs were full of knots, but she remained standing, however unsteadily. Her head rang with pain. Through gritted teeth, she said, “You ain’t gonna take me like a dog.”
Cassie’s death was a clear message: Roxy was being pursued without mercy, justice, or sanctity. Roxy could not mourn. She had to run.
The desert watched Roxy begin to cry. The desert felt the reverberation of the gunshot, shaking grains of sand loose. It felt the trickle of hot blood. It felt the weight of Roxy’s body become lighter, it felt her soul escape one form and flow back into the energy of the world.
The desert waited, holding its breath. But no one else ever appeared.
The desert decided there were a lot of things it would never understand. It watched the body for a couple of days before it lost interest and decided to follow a bird. It asked the wind beneath the bird’s wings, “Where are you going?”
“To the coast,” said the wind, and the desert was wistful.
