Page 90 - November 2020
P. 90
November 2020 90
Litterateur
DESERT CANDLE
“Beep! Beep!” came the same two boys again, going the other way. She sat up,
startled. What if they hadn’t seen her? She might have been hit. One looked like
Wade’s friend from middle school.
“It’s gittin’late,” he said, “’Better git on home!”
He was right. The sky was getting dark. She wondered how far she had to go
to get
home. She didn’t get to see the house at the bottom of the rise. She would have to
come back another day. Was it an hour yet? Could she go back and sit in her and
Billy’s room?
Ashley shivered. It wasn’t cold; she just felt something strange. Did she
breathe something odd, sitting by those glow-in-the-dark green and purple flowers?
She got back on the crusty road and walked fast. She needed to get home to Mommy
and get her hand and knee cleaned up. Then suddenly, she heard something.
“KABOOM!”
A huge firecracker went off, way off down the road, the way the boys were
going. She could hardly see where she was going, except that she hurried toward the
light. Who was setting off fireworks? It wasn’t the Fourth of July yet! It wasn’t even
summer, even though it was hot already.
“KABOOM!” Again, it went off, and everything got light. A big stick of fire
with all kinds of colors in it went up into the night. It had red, yellow, orange, blue,
green, purple… green, purple…green, purple.
“KABOOM!”
It looked like and RV. Oh, no – like her RV, like where she had left Mommy and
Morgan. More explosions came. Ashley could see the rising fire, and she ran,yelling.
“Mommieeeeee!” “Mommieeeeee!”
* Caulanthus inflatus – desert candle – is a
member of mustard or brassicaceae
(cruciferae) family found in the Black Canyon
area north of Barstow, CA, and other parts of
the southwestern Mojave Desert.
