Gardening in the Desert, The Art of Tiny Moments Part 2

[poetartist]

Part Two

He remembers the pouch somewhere in New Mexico. They’ve been riding and avoiding people non stop almost, so the days are made up of watching for pursuit and looking for water. Nights are split up with watches and tending saddle sores, which is the epitome of awfulness until they heal and get used to riding all day.

Dean doesn’t know about Jimmy, but he doesn’t sleep much, can’t, not with Elias there. It’s almost as bad as those first few weeks Sam was missing. Dean only slept a handful of hours each week and clutched his phone so hard it cracked the screen. He would have kept on like that, too, until John drugged his drink.

He keeps Elias in his sight at all times. The man notices, no way he wouldn’t, and goes on ignoring Dean like so much scenery. Elias doesn’t say a lot except for the occasional direction to set up camp or comment on their strange words and references. The Yoda quote Dean made to Jimmy when they were watering the horses got an epic eyebrow dance from Elias and muttering about an asylum.

“How did you end up here?” Jimmy asks one day. They’re watering the horses from a well at an abandoned homestead.

The house is abandoned. Shredded curtains sway in the windows and the door hangs ajar. The barn has been pried apart by wind. Dean poked around what was left, but there’s no sign of what happened to the people that had lived there, just their dust covered belongings and birds nesting in the rafters.

“My brother, Sam,” Dean says. He faces away, scanning the hills. Elias is somewhere behind them masking their trail. “I made a deal to get him back. He… Something happened to him. He disappeared.”

“Is that how you know about demons?”

“No, I knew about them before. That’s why Sam left. He needed to live and… Well, shit happened.”

Jimmy is quiet for a while. The sun is too bright, it white washes everything and makes his eyes burn.

“I made the deal for my sister,” Jimmy says. “She left, too, but it was kind of my fault. We fought a lot, I said some things. She left the night she was supposed to graduate from high school and never came back.”

“Sam disappeared from college. I went to visit and figured out something took him. Didn’t know if he was dead or alive.”

Jimmy nods. He has his hat tipped back and a ring of smeared dirt on his forehead.

“I quit college when I heard she’d gone down to Mexico, got involved with some dangerous people. I spent a year down there looking and getting shot at before I- before the deal.”

Dean swallows. His chest feels like it’s collapsing in on itself.

“I just wanted us to be a family again.”

Jimmy says it soft, like it’s not meant for Dean’s ears.

Dean sees movement and watches Elias come over the hills. He rides at a trot, shoulders relaxed. Elias gives a short wave; everything is good.

There’s a strong sense of deja vu as they cut through Texas and head into New Mexico. The land is wilder and more lush, but he knows they passed over where I-40 will be.

It’s his watch that night and Dean finds the pouch in his jacket pocket. He hasn’t checked it at all since the jail, but it matches the one in his dream to the last stitch. It’s soft leather with a pattern of small beads, shells and bone making a man shape with a guy with feathers on his head playing a flute. Dean vaguely recognizes it from stuff sold in tourist traps all along the southwest, but can’t remember the name.

Inside are ten seeds, each one different and he can’t put names to those either. One might be wheat or grass. One is hard and round. Another is teeny tiny and green. Dean holds them cupped in his palm and pushes them around with his finger.

Dean pokes at them for a few more minutes and puts them back in the pouch. It’s sad, he thinks, that this isn’t even the weirdest thing to happen to him in the past month.

The beads are smooth under his fingers and he traces the pattern until his eyes start to grow heavy. The wind whips through the brush, threading through his hair like a mother’s fingers.

He doesn’t know he’s gone to sleep until the shouting wakes him up. He jerks upright, seed pouch still in hand, and can’t move for a minute. It’s like every Western he’s ever seen as Indians on horseback come out of the dark like ghosts, their arrows notched and spears in hand. It’s only a couple of seconds, Dean will think later, but they feel much longer until he finally goes for his gun.

“Wake up, wake up!” he brings his gun up as painted men converge on them.

War whoops fill the air; they sound alien in the dark. Dean grabs Jimmy by the arm and hauls him out of his blanket. Jimmy grabs his rifle from the ground and Dean levels his gun at an oncoming brave, finger resting on the trigger.

It’s a human, he thinks and hesitates. For all the monsters he’s killed he’s never killed a human.

An arrow goes zinging by his head and Dean can’t afford to think after that. It’s almost another hunt, one that’s going sideways. Dean keeps Jimmy at his back and Elias on his right. They fire at the Indians but miss more than they hit. The flashes light up the night and smoke hangs like mist. Dean sees one brave cut loose the horses and take off with them. He registers Jimmy’s lack of shoes when they hit the dirt to crawl to cover near what Elias called a buffalo wallow; it’s a glorified depression in the dirt, barely big enough for one of them.

War whoops sound from all sides and Dean realizes, fuck, this is it.

Elias curses and bangs his sharp elbows into Dean’s ribs. He’s out of bullets, so is Dean. The rest of Jimmy’s ammo is with his saddle.

“Close your eyes!” Elias yells.

Dean turns to him, the question on his tongue, when the world ignites.

At first it’s like a flash bomb; all white light that devours the darkness into bright oblivion. He hears a high pitched scream like an eagle, before the world dissolves to complete darkness. Then there is pain.

Oh God, the pain.

Hands grab him and pull him up. He stumbles and thinks Jimmy tells him to run. There is fear and adrenaline and his face is melting off, fucking fuck, oh God, please, make it stop. He steps into open air and falls, rolling ass over tea kettle until he hits bottom. Dean bites at his lips to keep the screams inside but it’s so hard, God, so hard, it hurts and he can smell his burnt flesh like roasting pork.

“Come on, come on, we gotta go,” Jimmy says.

Dean latches onto Jimmy’s hand and gets up. Then he doubles over and retches. He feels it splatter his boots.

“He just lit up,” Jimmy whispers and nudge-pulls Dean after him. Jimmy’s breath comes short and fast, voice edging on hysterical. “Just lit up like a Roman candle. What the hell is he?”

There’s a dull thud to their left and Jimmy pushes him on.

“They’re coming,” he says. “I don’t- Just keep going. Keep going, keep running, I’ll hold them off.”

Dean reaches out for Jimmy. That tone- no, he’s heard that tone before, he’s spoken that tone when things got bad and he didn’t think he’d get out but if Sammy did it would be okay. Jimmy pushes him away.

“Go,” the kid says, like he’s some fucking hero.

It’s the final shove that does it. Dean loses his footing and falls backwards into water. It’s deep and swift. His head goes under for a moment and panic rabbits around in his chest, and he kicks and flails until he breaches the surface.

“Jimmy!”

No one answers. The current drags him along, away from the gunfire and wild cries. Water fills his ears with a steady rushing and swallows every bit of his world in cold, wet darkness.

#

Bobby listened to Sam’s rambling story in silence, passing him another beer when his ran dry and finishing up the chile rellano. Dean followed suit, only speaking up to nudge Sam back on track when he went off on a tangent. Sam kept his eyes trained on the tabletop, one long finger tracing the wood grains and scratch marks worn smooth over time. Dean kept his knee pressed into Sam’s. Sam would press back, take a breath, and continue.

When he finished Dean took a long swig of his beer and gave Bobby a steady look.

“Sammy can’t cook worth shit, but he excels at making pie out of air. Puts Betty Crocker and Paula Deen all to shame.”

Dean’s tone was light and Sammy relaxed a fraction next to him, but Dean’s face was firm.

Don’t mess with what’s mine, his look said. I’ll stand between him and you.

Bobby finished his own beer and grunted.

“Don’t go spreadin’ that around up here unless you wanna back it up with some blue ribbons. The little old ladies get vicious.”

Sam let out a breath and honest to God giggled before he got a handle on it. Dean nodded and knee bumped Sam. Sam looked over and grinned so wide and clear, a look of grateful innocence Dean hadn’t seen in years.

Sam went to lay down a while later. He still needed rest to rebuild his strength, so Dean helped Bobby with the dishes.

“You talked to John yet?” Bobby handed Dean a plate to dry.

“No,” Dean said, and carefully ignored all the implications surrounding that.

“Can’t hold out on him much longer.”

“Sam needs time to get his bearings back.”

Dean wasn’t gonna hold out on John forever, only as long as Sam needed. Dean wanted to have his illusions back that Dad and Sam would set aside their differences and get along, and hell, right now Sam probably would. He wasn’t so full of the abrasive anger and sadness he’d held onto before he left.

But John was… He was John. He had his ways and he was set in them, and after the fight-

“You boys are welcome to stay, long as you need.”

Dean stilled and turned to Bobby. Bobby nodded at him.

“You boys are family. I might need a bit to get used to the whole “demi-god” business,” Bobby made a face and Dean could hear the finger quotes. “But so long as he doesn’t bring the house down around my ears or transmogrify anything irreplaceable I can deal with that.”

Dean swallowed around the rough knot in his throat.

“Thanks, Bobby.”

Bobby rolled his eyes.

“You wanna thank me proper you can start by putting the dishes away in the right cabinets, idgit. The cups go there, not the plates.”

#

He wakes up to the sun bleeding through his skin and black all around. He can’t open his eyes and he’s half in the river. With a groan he rolls onto his stomach, or tries at least. He’s like a turtle on its back with no leverage. His legs are numb; he doesn’t know if he even has feet. He makes it over after a struggle, fingers digging into sand and raking over rocks. He drags himself up the bank and onto dry dirt.

The sound of his breathing is ragged against the still air. Birds chirp overhead. The river flows behind him.

He collapses, spent, out of the water and on a prickly bed of dead grass. He gasps for air, arms shaking so hard he can’t make a fist anymore and something slips from his fingers.

He drifts in and out for a while. The birds keep singing, the river keeps flowing, and if he doesn’t think too hard the pain in his head fades to a lowly hum.

After a while he feels a soft touch on his hands that moves up his arms. It’s not the wind and it’s not a person, or even an animal. He’s almost positive, anyway. He twitches, but the motivation to move is just not there. The sensation spreads all over him and then sinks into his skin, gentle and slow.

The pain in his bones doesn’t go away but it becomes less, like aloe vera on a bad sunburn. He flexes his fingers, digs them into dirt, and the pain dips down to almost manageable. A sigh steals out between his lips. He digs down farther, an inch at a time. Something shudders pleasure-like under his skin, a burst of endorphins, and the burning ache in his bones siphons out through his fingers. His body goes lax. He sleeps.

He doesn’t really dream. He sees a swirl of colors that pour over him, different hues of green and brown and blue. He feels the brush of wheat heads against his hands and warm grass tickles his feet. The whisper of leaves brush over his face and below his feet he feels a steady heartbeat that his own mirrors.

He wakes again when the air is cool and crickets are singing in the grass. There is someone else there.

“Who are you?” he asks.

There is the soft shuffle of feet in sand. He backs into a tree, head swiveling from one side to another as he gets a fix on where they’re at. The feet stop and a man speaks. The language flows like water but it passes over him, the words slippery.

“I don- I don’t understand, dude.”

The man speaks again and he concentrates on the tone. It’s reassuring, gentle.

The man moves closer and he lets him. Something in the voice says I’m here to help.

Fingers touch his foot first. He keeps still, so the man comes closer and touches his shoulder. Something is pressed into his hand and he clutches at it, a pouch of some kind. Relief he can’t remember the root of surges through him and he curls around it. A hand squeezes his shoulder. He relaxes and clings to the pouch while the man settles beside him and spreads a cool mixture around his eyes.

“Oh wow,” he murmurs. “Thank you.”

Whatever it is penetrates his skin and soothes the layers of damage. Then a cloth is wrapped around his head and it helps, helps him remember he can’t open his eyes so they skin doesn’t pull. But it’s bad, too, because without the pain his mind starts wandering. He thinks about the river and why he got there, and he doesn’t know. He can’t remember what got him into the water, can’t remember where he is.

He can’t remember who he is.

Inside, a gulf opens and it’s a chasm so deep and dark he feels he’ll go crazy standing at the edge of it. He reaches out and a hand finds his. He holds on with all his strength and the man starts talking. He could be listing different deaths the man could visit on him, but that’s stupid; the man just took care of his burns. The man’s voice anchors him against the chasm. He teeters, but the man keeps talking well into the night.

He sleeps.

#

Dean watched a coyote in the twilight. It was a scrawny thing, all legs and raggedy fur that blended in with the sand and scrub. It ghosted through the underbrush and sniffed around small trails left by mouse, lizard and desert toad. The coyote paused when it came into the open and dark eyes found his.

“You know what the difference between humans and gods is?”

Dean turned and guitar man was there sitting next to him. Guitar man was puffing on a pipe this time and the smoke curled out of his mouth. Sage and tobacco washed over Dean’s senses, made him heady and light.

“No,” Dean said and looked back at the coyote. It was still there, head cocked and ears twitching as it watched them back. It was a young one, Dean realized, still growing and learning. It took a few tentative steps forward and sat on its haunches.

“There isn’t one,” guitar man says. “We all come from the same place, we’re grown from the same seed. The choices we make and how we let our roots grow are what make us one or the other.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Dean snorted. “If that’s true then there’d be a ton of gods running around instead of a ton of humans.”

“You’d think so,” guitar man nodded. “Most people fail to realize their potential even when it’s pole dancing naked in front of ‘em.”

The coyote let loose a yawn that showed all its teeth and a red tongue. It scratched its ears and yipped.

“So humans are just blind, then?”

Dean itched at the bridge of his nose and looked up as a star shot across the sky, the fiery tail leaving a streak across the horizon.

“They look outside for their answers and only take in what they want to see.”

“So what makes a god?”

The coyote let loose a long howl. It seeped into the fabric of the desert wind, a mournful sound with a hint of hope hanging at the end, waiting for a reply.

Guitar man took in a long puff and breathed out a cloud of smoke. The smoke twisted in the air and turned to thick tendrils. They wrapped around Dean’s hands, winding up his arms before they turned to solid root. They sank into his skin, burrowing down, white shoots threading through his veins and soaking up his blood.

“That is the question, isn’t it? When you have an answer let me know.”




#

He wakes with the sense of having dreamed, but the last slippery images fall through like sand through cupped fingers. The tighter he tries to hold on the quicker they leave, until he only has the faint impression of smoke and emptiness.

The man is still there. He talks as he removes the bandages to apply more cooling paste. The man helps him drink from a water skin, stopping when he wants to take in too much too fast and chokes. When his head is wrapped again the man helps him up.

The man puts a blanket around him and continues to speak in his calming way. He holds out a hand, catches the man’s arms on the second swipe.

“Please. I don’t- Thank you, but I don’t know what happens now. I don’t know what to do.”

His voice cracks like glass under pressure and he hates it. He might even cry if his eyes weren’t burned shut, but the sentiment comes out clear. The man takes his hand and puts it on his chest. He feels leather and beads and under that a heartbeat.

“Hania,” the man says. The man takes his hand and taps it against his chest a couple of times. “Hania,” he repeats.

“Hania.”

It sounds wrong and a little twangy coming out of his mouth. Hania makes a pleased noise.

“Hania.”

It’s not much, but it’s something. He holds onto that.

Hania wraps an arm around him and they walk.

He loses track of time. The going is slow because he has no shoes and the soles of his feet are tender. Hania is patient and leads him on the easiest paths. Leaving the river is hard; he can feel how dry it is in the air, how the plants are rough and the dirt crumbles. Every now and then Hania stops to give him sips of water and it keeps him going. They come up on an open space of dirt and brittle grass when he hears a horse snort and paw at the ground.

Hania speaks again and helps him to sit. Hania pats his shoulder and the message is clear, sit and stay. Hania walks to the horse and moves things around.

He concentrates on the warmth of the sun that is turning from pleasant to hot and the way the wind cuts through it with sharp edges.

Hania comes back for him and helps him up. The horse noses at his shoulder. He reaches out and Hania guides his hand to the horse’s neck. He strokes the warm skin and shuffles close.

It takes a worrying amount of time for Hania to help him onto the horse. There is a boulder but his balance is shot all to hell and he keeps wobbling. The sun is higher in the sky when he is settled on the horse, bareback. He grips the mane and hunches down. The world tilts around him as Hania leads the horse away; bones shift under its skin and it rocks him until he learns to go with it, swaying in time with hoof falls and counting breaths to take the edge off of fuck I’m gonna fall.

They make camp that night and Hania presses jerky and water into his hands. He eats everything he’s given, aware of the hunger that claws and gnaws at his insides for the first time since he woke up.

The next morning they travel again, Hania leading the horse at a fast walk. This goes on for two days until he hears sounds of other people. He sits up a little higher, head bent forward. Hania calls out and someone answers. Then there are people all around, touching him, talking, asking questions, and tugging on his legs and fingers.

Several hands grab at him and pull him from the horse. Panic shocks through him and he pushes them away, his breath harsh and fast. He trips and lands in the dirt. He covers his head and curls around his middle when someone kicks at him, but that’s all there is. Then Hania is there talking to him, helps him sit up, stand.

The other people back away but don’t leave. He can hear them just a few feet away keeping pace as Hania leads him away and into a building that is cool and smells of corn and smoke.

A woman with a sharp voice approaches. She doesn’t touch him but she sounds irritated. Hania answers back. One of them grabs his hand and holds it out. The woman says something low, then grunts. Hania leads him a few more steps and helps him sit on a blanket near the wall. He leans back against it, soaking up the cool, and can’t help but feel swallowed in uncertainty and isolation as foreign words are exchanged above him.

He clings to the pouch as hard as he can.

Hania says something and a bowl of corn mush comes a few minutes later. He eats with his fingers. It tastes different, not sweet enough or something, but it’s good. He cleans the bowl and drinks the water passed to him. He doesn’t want to but he falls asleep sitting up. He barely registers Hania guiding him to lay down or the blanket pulled over him.

#

Sam found him on the porch later that night. Bobby was asleep in front of the TV, chin to chest, snoring through the baseball highlights they’d been watching. Sam passed him a plate with a slice of blueberry pie and sat next to him on the swing. Dean grunted in appreciation and ate a bite. That turned into a groan as the flaky crust gave way to the swooping sweetness across his tongue.

“Awesome, dude,” Dean said through the food and gave Sam a wide smile, juice seeping over his teeth and turning his tongue purple. Sam rolled his eyes, mouth pursed against a smile he couldn’t really stop.

“You are so gross, man.”

“You know you love it. But you should think about expanding your menu. You don’t want me to be hyped up on sugar all the time.”

“No, I remember Tuscon. We don’t need a repeat.”

Dean grinned; he’d learned how to rewire a candy dispenser outside the hotel room so it gave up the Kit Kats and Mars Bars for free when he kicked the side. Best breakfast, brunch and afternoon snacks ever.

“You could practice whipping up the perfect cheeseburger and, I dunno, non gas inducing onions since you have a beef with my digestion tract.”

“How about I focus on disguising tofu so it’ll actually do you some good?”

Dean choked on a giant blueberry. He leveled his fork at Sam.

“Do it and I will not be held responsible for my actions. Remember the Nair?”

“Remember trickster?” Sam grinned wide and pointed his thumb back at himself.

Dean scowled.

“The universe is fucking unfair.”

Sam mock frowned and patted Dean’s shoulder.

“I’ll be sure to lodge a formal complaint.”

“Yeah, you do that, baldy.”

#

The woman is Sunki and she doesn’t like him at all.

She grumbles and snaps at him when he talks, when he’s quiet, when he moves and when he stays still. She doesn’t touch him except to poke at him with a bristly broom when she needs to get at something.

Hania leaves him in her house and goes away for hours at a time. He comes back now and then and speaks, but the language means nothing, foreign and unhelpful.

So he sings.

The lyrics come unbidden and once the first is out the rest follow like they were just waiting for an excuse. He sings songs about highways to hell and smoke on water; he sings about wayward sons and wheels in the sky. The words twine together over his tongue until they melt together and he can’t tell where one song ends and another starts.

He doesn’t know who he is or what happened to him, but he knows his music. It’s one thing he can latch onto, and does with a desperation that gets under his skin.

Sunki hates it. Her grumblings turn into snapping and then into harder jabs with her broom.

He should shut his mouth and keep his head down. He should, but he just can’t. Not even when Sunki has bedded down and he knows he should stop, but no matter how quiet he sings it’s not quiet enough. Sunki hits him over the head with the broom twice.

He switches to humming and watches the lyrics form in his mind. It’s the best he can do until he wears himself out, because if he doesn’t then the questions will replace the lyrics.

At least the stories in the lyrics have beginnings and ends.

He doesn’t have either.

#

“Why is the sky like this?” Dean asked. The tree is somewhere behind him over the sandy-scrubby hills and beyond the dry creek where the ground was cracked down deep.

The sky is bleeding black, purple and red into each other against the white stars that constantly circle them in perpetual night. If he stopped and stared up he got dizzy with the motion. It felt like the sky was trying to draw him upwards in some kind of vortex, like a horror movie he saw once, only it didn’t feel scary.

It felt almost peaceful.

Guitar man chewed on a stalk of wheat, or maybe barley. They all kind of looked the same after a while when you were passing them by at seventy mph.

“The sky is the sky,” Guitar man shrugged.

“It’s fucking trippy.”

“Yours is worse. It moves too slow.”

The coyote was still there, just ahead, watching. Dean had walked away from the tree some time ago to see how close he could get to the raggedy little thing. It toyed with him for a while, leading him out farther and farther, yipping and playing chicken while it stayed always just out of reach.

It cocked its head at them while it sat on a large boulder that kinda-sorta looked like a person.

A lot of the rocks kinda-sorta looked like people. Sam had mentioned them in his ramblings. It was more than a little disconcerting and he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d be joining them whenever guitar man got tired of their confusing talks.

“At least mine makes sense.”

Shadowlands then. Well, that was just fantastic. How long had it been on earth? It seemed like just a couple of hours here at most, so maybe close to days? Weeks?

God, Sammy.

The desert was dry and desolate, but not physically uncomfortable. There was a mild wind sometimes. It carried a faint scent of something almost familiar he couldn’t put his finger on. He didn’t feel cold or hot, he didn’t thirst or hunger, which was pretty damn awesome considering there was nothing to help any of that.

The coyote yipped, drawing Dean’s attention back. It scratched its ear then caught sight of its tail and circled for a minute, getting no closer to catching it.

Dean huffed a laugh and shook his head. The coyote stopped after a minute and sneezed, then scratched its ear, pretending it hadn’t just made a clown of itself.

Guitar man snorted. He stood with his shoulders slouched and his head tipped back. He had his thumbs tucked into the belt loops of jeans that had seen better days.

“Do you have an answer to my question?”

“About gods and people?”

Guitar man hummed in the affirmative.

Dean shrugged. “You said it had to do with choice. Sam said that, too. He chose to let Coyote remake him when he was dying. He wanted to live. Except most people would make that choice when it faced them, but none of them became gods. Or godlings, whatever.”

“Sam did make that choice, but saying yes didn’t make him a god. It didn’t make him a god even because a god put the offer on the table.”

“Then what did?”

Guitar man’s mouth twitched upward as the coyote yipped again, bidding them to follow.

“Sam made a promise during his godmaking. He doesn’t remember it right now. He won’t, not until his body and his soul and his purpose all find the same page. Come on, I think he wants to show us something.”

Guitar man strode ahead and Dean followed.

Part Three