EC Writing Club!

My MS Word expired and I have no word count! :eek: I hope I didn't go over the limit. This is less "Wild West" and more "early 1800's westward migration" but I actually really like it.

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Incredulous laughter rumbled from under Pa's beard at the front of the wagon, jarring me back to our ever bumpy drudgery. He had quite the sense of timing. Just a second before, Orpheus had finally bested the trying crevices of the earth and emerged in Hades with his mortality intact. The gall, the grandeur of his feats! And all for his only and dearest love, Eurydice. The muse-blessed traveler had all hope on his side thanks to this pivotal moment.

I highly doubt my pa appreciated the romance, however. For all the love and gallantry he showed in daily chores I could almost have sworn Ma was a hired hand. Nor did he have any way of knowing what part of the book I was reading.

He must have been chuckling at something else entirely. It was likely prairie dogs chasing each other around, or a joke scribbled on a sign beside the "road" of twin wheel ruts. It could have even been remembering my little brother some months ago, when he called out to us and swung from the old tree down into the lake wearing his Sunday best. Those clothes were still damp by the time he needed them again, and the welt on his backside looked like an accurate elevation map of Turkey before they were done with him. But some time later, he did finally admit it was a fantastic leap.

He called out to me in his grizzled way, "Elijah! Your book will still be there for you if you let it alone. Won't you put it down a spell and take a gander at the landscape?"

I sighed under my breath. "Yes, sir," I said, dutifully as a soldier to his sergeant. Philistine. Pa was a hard working man; he helped build the schoolhouse which later proved my window to the world. But he was too old to share in its intangible panorama. The faraway lands I visited in books were wasteful gibberish to him.

There was no choice but to shield myself from the blinding sun beyond the front of the Conestoga canopy. Though when my eyes adjusted, I took the name of the Lord in vain.

"Well, he did have something to do with it." Pa said this so matter-of-factly, like it didn't plant a dizzying awe of the world in him. The colors! The life! The scale! What any could assume was the whole of the Rocky range lay ahead of us, bathed in all the majesty of creation. But I knew what we saw now, in all its inestimable hugeness, was hardly even a footnote were one to draw out the entire region. My breath had taken flight. I knew for a fact that Mount Olympus was an unreachable height from back home in Missouri. But if needed to house an eternally-discerning pantheon in its absence, his and my mind found harmony: this land would do.

 

Dust. It’s such a strange and pesky concept. Millions of little particles come together to form one giant nuisance. Not that it’s a foreign concept to me. I grew up with fourteen brothers and sisters, all of which survived. It’s the kind of blessing that makes you realize that God’s no more mature than a child setting an egg on a fat man’s chair when he’s not looking. God is in it more for the pranks than the power.
Guess I can kind of respect that. When I joined the monastery at seventeen, I didn’t know what to think. It was free room and board, and I didn’t have to deal with women. Not that I’m looking for men. That’s something I always hear whispered behind my back. Wish I could avoid a woman without looking for a man. I guess that might be why I joined the monastery. People at the monastery know when to shut their trap.
My horse’s hooves kicked up a little more dust each time its clumsy foot hit the waterless earth. Underneath the loose earth was an ancient layer of dirt hardened by the years of abuse from animals just like us. My teeth were coated in in dust. My feet were coated in dust. Everything on that road was somehow overtaken by the Earth too weak to stick.
A man had died one town over. He needed a blessing from some poor monk. I didn’t like doing blessings, there was always too much crying and too much traveling. He was apparently once a sheriff. Probably not a very good one though, seeing how I never heard of him. Had to tip my hat to him though, he lived right on the outskirts of town. Any man who keeps me from wandering into the marketplace is a friend of mine. A modest shadow was growing from the dancing heated air, with a little more texture than the buildings looming in the distance. I rightfully assumed that it was my destination. My grip loosened on the reigns of my horse as she wandered into shady sanctuary cast by the house itself. The bottom of my boots scratched against the splintering wood on their porch, and if I had been a bigger man, my feet would have fallen through right to the sand. My knuckles rapped at the equally rough door and it was a miracle the skin on my knuckles wasn’t broken.
After some shuffling that was amplified by the quiet desert, the door flung open, revealing a pudgy woman with obsidian hair tamed into a long braid. Her dry, yellow tinted eyes glanced up at me, only for them to return to her feet sticking out from her skirt.
“He’s in here,” she muttered. As she walked, her body bobbed from left to right like a rickety wagon.
There wasn’t a whole lot in the house. Hell, there was barely furniture. All the pots, pans, and knick knacks were laid across the floor like a merchant. Not that there was much to lay. The man was stiffly on top of the bed with his minor stench increasing as it baked in the heat.
“Just say what you need. Nothing more,” said his wife. Not one tear was in her lemon eyes. She shut the door behind her.
Part of me always wondered about them, the people that departed. I always wondered how they got to this point. A lot of times, their families were very telling. A happy family would echo with devastation, while a broken family only lamented their burdens. But it was always just speculation, never answers. That’s how I liked it.
I got down on one knee and whispered into his ear. My breath raised dust from the hole as it got caught and reflected into the sky’s overbearing rays. My bible was placed firmly on the ground as it blended in with the rest of the junk littering the ground.
“If nobody takes pity on you, will god?” I uttered into his lifeless body.
The overwhelming silence informed me that he probably didn’t. I sure as hell didn’t. Pity and death is for fools. Truth is, we aren’t looking for an afterlife. All we want are those few moments of orgasm before our hearts stop beating.
Looking at his wife, and looking at his home, the only answer I know is that he failed. He was just dust.