The Dust Road

The boy watched the horizon, the flat plain that stretched out before him, brown and desolate. The sky above was bruised, a great dome of grey and purple, heavy with clouds that never seemed to break. The road beneath his boots was dirt, dry and cracked, with deep ruts carved into it by wagons long gone. He had been walking for hours, maybe days, it didn't matter. Time wasn't something you kept out here.

Behind him, the wind came low, moaning like a dying thing, swirling dust in slow spirals across the road. It got into his eyes, his mouth. The taste of it bitter and sharp, like old iron. But he didn't spit. He just kept walking, his head down, the battered hat on his head pulled low against the sunless sky.

In the distance, something moved. A figure, dark and far off, barely more than a shadow. The boy squinted, wiping his hand across his brow, though it did nothing to clear his vision. The figure moved slow, deliberate. Coming toward him, though he couldn't tell yet if it was man or animal or something worse.

He glanced at the rifle slung across his back. It was old, the wood splintered in places, the metal pitted with rust. He hadn't fired it in weeks. The ammunition was long gone. But it didn't matter. The weight of it was enough.

The road was empty except for him and whatever it was out there. No birds, no trees, no life. Just the dust and the wind and the vast, flat sky.

As he walked, his mind drifted to other things. His father. The small patch of land they had worked until it was dead, until the soil itself had given up. His father's hands were calloused and worn, fingers curled in on themselves like claws, as if they had been gripping the earth even after they had nothing left to hold onto. He remembered his father standing in the doorway of their shack, staring out at the same horizon the boy now faced, his shoulders hunched with a kind of defeat the boy hadn't yet known.

When his father had gone silent, when his eyes turned blank and empty as the land, the boy had left. There was nothing else to do. He had taken the rifle from over the hearth, kissed his mother on the forehead where she lay dying in the bed, and he had stepped out into the dust, the wind catching the door as it swung shut behind him. He had never looked back.

The shadow on the road was closer now. It had taken on shape, form. A man. Thin and bent, like a broken tree. The boy slowed, his hand resting on the rifle strap, his heart quickening. The man's gait was uneven, one leg dragging behind him as though it had forgotten how to walk. His head hung low, his face obscured by a wide-brimmed hat much like the boy's, and he held something in his hand. A stick, maybe, or a cane. Or something else entirely.

The boy stopped. Waited. The wind tugged at his clothes, pulling him forward, but he stood still, his eyes on the man. He could hear the sound of the man's feet scraping the road, the slow drag of his steps, like someone too tired to go on but too stubborn to fall.

When the man reached him, he lifted his head. His face was gaunt, hollow, eyes sunken deep into his skull like black pits. His lips cracked and dry, pulled back in something like a grin but without the warmth. He opened his mouth, as though he were going to speak, but the only sound that came out was a soft rasp, like wind through dead grass.

The boy said nothing. There was nothing to say. He looked at the man's hand. It wasn't a stick he held, but a bone, long and thin, the surface bleached white by the sun. The man held it out to the boy, offering it like a gift.

The boy didn't move.

For a moment, the two of them stood there, alone on the empty road, the dust swirling around their feet, the sky watching silently. Then, without a word, the man dropped the bone at the boy's feet and continued walking, his body swaying as he moved, the road swallowing him up as he disappeared into the distance.

The boy stared at the bone. It lay there in the dirt, pale and fragile, a remnant of something that had once lived but now was long dead.

He kicked it aside, adjusted his hat, and kept walking. There was still a long way to go, and the road wasn't done with him yet.