Page 87 - November 2020

November 2020 87
Litterateur

DESERT CANDLE

“No!” was the answer from Morgan

“When you come back,” Mommy promised, “Stay out for an hour.”

“A whole hour! What can I do?” She didn’t want to go outside.

“Play with your brother.” “Go!” the adults ordered.

Ashley was tired of having to leave and go nowhere, do nothing. She went
back to the room to get her purple purse and her secret Kleenex that was all folded
up around her five dollars from Uncle Joey with his phone number on a piece of
paper. Maybe she would run away this time. Maybe Uncle Joey could let her stay
with him. Anyway, it made her feel
safe to have her secret and the money nobody knew about.

She went out the door, down the steps with the fake-grass carpet and onto

the crunchy ground. There was a lot of crumbly rock out here on the Mojave. Most
of it was black and white, but it was mixed with sand and dirt of different colors.
Sometimes Ashley could find a piece of quartz, a kind of white, glassy rock, if she
looked for it. This time she was looking for her brother. It wasn’t hard to find him.
All the lots were flat. There were no trees and only a few of the lots had RVs or
vans or trailers on them. Billy was over by Joel’s dad’s RV with Joel and Wade.

“What’s up?” called Joel, but Ashley didn’t want to play with the boys.
“Nothin’” she answered, and kept walking. Billy and Joel and Wade had a can of
old oil, drained from Morgan’s car. They were pouring the oil on anthills and
putting them on fire with kitchen matches. It smelled smoky, like the big trucks out
on the highway, like trucks her real dad used to drive. The oil smell wasn’t as bad
as the burnt toilet cleanser smell in the RV when Mommy and Morgan were
working, but it smelled dirty and it made the air hotter. It was only March, not
summer, but it was a pretty hot afternoon.

“You sure you all right?” asked Joel. “Sure,” she told him and walked on.
She could hear the boys’ mom in the background, gripin’ to Wade and Joel’s dad,

“Cookin’ drugs and sendin’ the girl out to amuse herself all afternoon with no
young girls in the neighborhood,” and Joel’s dad answering, “At least she ain’t in
there breathin’ the stuff. One a them oughta get a job. It’s no way to live.”