I smooth my husband’s jacket out over the back of the kitchen chair, gripping it as if to steady myself and pressing my nails into the gold letters that spell Red Leaper U.S. Border Patrol. Out in the front yard, the wind kicks red sand up into the palo verde bushes.

“Good morning,” Red booms in his preacher voice from the hallway behind me. “What are you doing, honey?”

My shoulders stiffen before his hands even reach me.

“Pass me my jacket,” he says.

I push my fingers deeper into the green fabric and trace the stitched letters again.

“What are you doing?” Red repeats. “Laying hands on my jacket? Trying to curse me?”

“Laying on hands is for healing,” I tell him, lifting my fingers and sticking them into my apron pocket.

Red rests his right hand heavy on the base of my neck and grabs the jacket. He smells of mint toothpaste, Old Spice and hair gel. I breathe deeply and search for something more. I found a bottle in his truck the other day, an almost empty liter of mezcal with a pale worm at the bottom. In the glove box, beside the mezcal, there lay a silver bracelet and pink hair-clip. I didn’t ask him about them. He would have told me some illegal alien left them, told me he forgot to throw them away.

“Marisa, honey.” Red guides his arms into the stiff sleeves of his jacket. “You worry yourself too much.”

Under my bare feet the linoleum feels gritty. It’s time to mop again, fourth time in one week. At night the sand slips inside and settles itself into the seams of my furniture and the eyes of my child. I pull out a bag of yesterday’s biscuits from the cabinet, set them beside Red’s thermos and busy myself with the dishes from last night’s dinner. Red grabs the thermos.

“Thanks,” he says and walks towards the door, leaving the biscuits on the counter. He turns his pickup around in the dirt yard and maneuvers out between the prickly amargosa bush and the rusting Oldsmobile.

A few months back, he brought that car out here and fixed it up pretty good, taught me to drive stick shift in the evenings after work. We bounced the old boat over the sand hills until the sun got too low and the coyotes came out. I set the last dish in the rack and open the bag of biscuits, but they feel dry and I’m not hungry.

I wish we still had Happy and Joe to give scraps to. One of our dogs got killed by javelinas and Red shot the other one to save him from the same fate. We brought those dogs with us all the way from West Virginia, but Red said a gun is better protection than a dog any day. He took me out into the dry creek bed and taught me to shoot the .22 he keeps in the hall closet. For a moment things felt like they did when we were younger and first got together, before we left Render; before the His Beautiful Blood Holiness Church told us they didn’t want Red to be their preacher anymore and we moved halfway across the United States.

Red held his hand over mine and gripped the gun just like when he was twenty-three and he’d traced my fingers along the pages of Job and Exodus. But we’re older now, Red’s almost thirty-five, and he acts different. When I try to kiss him he ducks his head away. On the front stoop, transplanted prickly pear clippings and night-blooming cereus sit in cut-open milk jugs. I grab my watering can from behind the rocking chair and fill it at the side of the house. Our first few months out here the pansies and mums I’d so carefully planted all shriveled to a crisp. I found a desert plant book in a shop in Dorado and now I grow what I can, stubborn desert shrubs with strange thorny names. Out here the landscape is made new each day. The same grains of sand that were in our front yard yesterday have blown halfway to the Pacific Ocean by the time I wake up the next morning.

At the end of our driveway, fat red buds nest among the crucifixion thorns of the amargosa. And just past the bush a chaos of footprints spills across the shifting dust of the road. The footprints run all together, one over another like a cattle trail. We live out here for just this reason. Red’s boss used the house for a hunting cabin of sorts but then he started to find evidence of the aliens staying here. They came across the border in droves and holed up before making the last trek to Dorado.

Red’s boss lets us stay here for practically no rent, just to keep the illegals off his land. Only they don’t stay off. At night their footsteps surround the house. Most of the time they’re out in fields beyond the mesquites but sometimes they come right up in the yard and their voices get trapped inside my head. The whirring and clicking of tongues like the sinners of Babel after God came upon them. Red sleeps with his .45 on the bedside table.

---

In his bedroom Huck lies on his back and stares at the ceiling where a water leak made a tree pattern. Huck’s six years old, but he’s special. Lissencephaly is the medical term, but Red says the meek shall inherit the earth. I flip the switch, toggle it up and down a few times, but the light won’t come on.

“Hey buddy,” I call to him, “hang on a second.”

In the kitchen, the clock on the coffee maker doesn’t glow and the overhead light won’t turn on. Red must have forgot to pay the bill. We don’t get mail out here so he pays the bills when he goes through town. I cross the room, pick the phone up and listen to the steady rhythm of the dial tone before deciding not to call. Red hates for me to phone him at work, says it’s embarrassing and everybody else’s wife seems to get along fine without calling in grocery lists every day. Our stove runs off propane and we’ve got a bunch of candles and one of those old-timey lamps in the closet somewhere. Red can pay up tomorrow.

Huck rolls onto his side, face pushed against the wooden rails of his crib. I lift him up, kiss his cheek and carry him to the changing table. His body feels so fragile, like the delicate shells the cicadas leave behind. He blinks. I trace his lips with my finger. Huck rarely smiles.

“The amargosa’s going to bloom real soon,” I whisper, “today maybe.”

We spend the morning at the kitchen table. Huck strapped into his highchair with a plastic bib around his neck and me guiding spoons of applesauce into his mouth. With the electricity out and all, an easy dinner will have to do, cornbread and beans and wieners, maybe. I wonder if our money has run low. Red never talks about money but he works long hours and we hardly spend anything living out here.

---

Huck coos when I hold him up close to the amargosa bush. The tiny fists of red petals shake in the wind and amid the roots two big ants struggle to carry the body of a third. Huck and I sit and watch the funeral procession play out across the miniature sand dunes. I know the other ants will probably just eat the dead body, but I like to pretend they are carrying him back home. The roots and piles of sand are tall as mountains to these ants. It’s funny to think that they see mountains in all this vast, flat land. Sometimes I think I see mountains too.

In the evenings I stand on the porch and watch for Red’s truck coming home. I stare until I cannot see anymore and sometimes, if I watch the horizon long enough, by a trick of light or dust in my eyes, mountains appear. When the sun scorches our arms pink, I carry Huck inside, lay him down in his crib and curl myself up on the couch. I should sweep and mop the floor, should go look for that oil lamp. But I don’t like the way the wind rakes the branches across the tin roof and taps at the windows. I plug my ears, close my eyes. Back in Render there was no such thing as alone. Back there, there were just over a thousand of us, crammed into less than one square mile of streets in the deep the valley between Bethlehem Mountain and Palmer’s Knob. Red and I lived close enough to walk to the gas station or grocery store and I knew everyone I passed on the way to and from.

Out the western windows, the sun sets, melting down between the cottonwoods and mesquites. Red has not come home. Huck sits in his highchair and watches me cook beans and wieners. By May the sun never sets before seven thirty, and Red’s always home by six. I light candles in the windows and call the office in Dorado. Agent Baker says Red left work early, took off sometime around four. I hang the phone up and press my forehead against the wall. My mind goes to the mezcal, the silver bracelet and pretty hair clip.

I push the vague thread of thoughts away, tell myself he left early to go get groceries and pay the overdue bill, then the truck broke down and he’s out there working on it, on his way home soon. But my body feels heavy and weightless at the same time, the way it did those first few days after Huck was diagnosed. This is when I wish I smoked cigarettes. I’ve never liked the smell of them on Red’s breath but now I wish he’d left a pack laying around so I could do like the worried wife in movies always does and light one after another. Huck’s not sleepy but I put him down in his crib and go back to the phone.

“I’d like to make a collect call,” I tell the operator, and then I count out the digits for Red’s brother Billy’s phone. The voice that answers is Billy’s wife Elena’s. I say my full name and after a pause the operator tells me to repeat it. Before I can even finish saying “Marisa” again, Elena hangs up.

I hold the phone in my sweaty hand, stare down at it and think things that Jesus will have to forgive me for. I guess I knew Elena didn’t like me, but she kept it civil when we lived in the same town, lived in the same house a few summers back when Red was out of work. She’s always thought of herself as better than us, her and her family with their thoroughbreds and British dogs. Far as I can tell, all she likes to do is ride those spotted horses and give Billy hell. I feel sorry for him.

During those months when we were living with them, out there on Staudinger Farm, I saw their bedroom, saw the two little twin beds pushed far apart, one against each wall. I hang the phone up and head to the hall closet to get the .22 out to keep me company. When I tiptoe past his room, Huck is still thrashing back and forth across his bed. He likes to sleep with a nightlight on, but tonight that can’t be helped.

---

Sunlight knifes its way under my eyelids and I jerk awake— on the living room couch—my fingers clenching the stock of the .22. My thoughts fuzz out and then focus: Red. I scramble up off the couch and stumble to the window but the truck’s not there.

“Mmm-mmm.” Huck whimpers in his room.

I head to kitchen, wondering who to call first, the border patrol office or the police. My finger hovers over the numbers. There is no dial tone. Just empty air and my own heartbeat. I drop the phone and step back as if it bit me. Billy, I think, I need Billy. Why didn’t I call again last night? Why didn’t I keep calling back until that bitch let me talk?

“Mmmaa-mmmaa,” Huck cries. Out the window, the Oldsmobile shines in the sun. Already the day is hot, the sky blinding blue and the metal car door burning to the touch. I duck into the seat, fit the key into the ignition and turn it. The car coughs and whines, trying faintly to turn over. I jerk the key out, hold my breath, cross my fingers and push it into the ignition again. This time the motor makes no noise at all, just the mechanical click of the key turning. A wave of fear leaps up from my stomach, swells my tongue and wets my eyes.

I take a deep breath, lean my seat back and push my sweaty bangs off my forehead. I picture the cool green creek at my grandpapa’s farm and the well-house where you could lift the cedar bucket, bring the cold metal ladle to your lips and drink long swallows with your toes spread out across the slippery rock floor. When the white-hot sunlight sears my skin, I blink my eyes open. My mind skips to Red and I don’t even know what lies to tell myself about him now. I should have seen the serpent in his eyes, should have seen it in the way he lifted that gun, in the way he led us out of town without so much as a goodbye.

---

I set Huck’s breakfast out carefully, red plastic bowl of applesauce and bananas, rubber-tipped spoon and blue sippy cup. As long as I focus on the details I can make it through this day. Tomorrow something will change. Red will come back. Or he won’t and his boss will notice he’s not at work and will come to check.

“Just today,” I say to Huck, spooning mashed banana into his slobbery little mouth. He bobs his head.

“Just today,” I say. “Tomorrow….tomorrow the amargosa will bloom.”

I point out the window and Huck squirms around as if he understands. And maybe he does. The doctor we took him to in Charleston said it’s good to engage Huck, but after running through our list of songs and patty-cake games my mind just goes blank. Mostly it doesn’t seem to bother Huck, he’s an old soul and he understands me. Sometimes the silence out here gets so loud though, I wish like hell he could talk. Now I don’t even have the radio to listen to.

The Gospel Hour out of Odessa usually comes on at noon. It’s especially for housewives, runs from twelve to two. They’ve got good songs on there, spirited enough to make you want to get up and mop the floor. Huck and I stay at the table long after he’s finished eating. He smears the applesauce across his cheeks and into his hair. Across the kitchen wall, the shadow of a mesquite branch dances. My eyes follow the line out to the tree and beyond into the endless landscape.

“What do we do, Huck?” My throat swells, barely able to open enough for words to pass through.

Huck blinks and nods and throws his wet spoon. On the wall above the stove, stripes of sunlight move and change color. Must be past two. Gospel Hour would be over. On a normal day I’d turn the radio off and run a bucket full of suds, mop the kitchen floor, pull potatoes out of the bin and chicken breasts out of the freezer.

A jackrabbit leaps in the bushes out front, then freezes. A vulture hangs motionless amongst the puffs of clouds. On the horizon, just where the brown sand meets the brilliant blue, something moves, a flicker of a coyote or a dog or an illegal. A stab of terror, stronger than the coating of fear, jabs up in my stomach and moves me to the window. I stand on tiptoe as if that will help me see, but the more my eyes focus on the moving dot the more it disappears. I look back to the road and wait to see that puff of dust that means wheels rolling towards me. Back home the blacktop turns every twenty feet and you never know what might be around the bend but out here the roads go so straight there’s no hidden hope.

---

Our bedroom closet is a jigsaw puzzle of cardboard boxes and suitcases. I pull open five containers before finding the oil lamp. On my way out, I pass the bedside table and stop. Red’s .45 is gone and his wedding ring sits in its place. My throat constricts. I turn on my heel, cross the room and jerk the top bureau drawer open. My eyes search for the gold gleam of Red’s granddaddy’s pocket watch but I find only a nest of handkerchiefs with a little coil of money inside. Three fifty-dollar bills curled in a circle like a snake. I let myself go, dropping down onto the floor. Above my head, the bureau drawer forms a roof. I press my hands together and trace the inside of the ring. Red and Marisa 2007.

“Father God, in the name of Jesus, Father God, take pity on this sinner…” I try to concentrate but my mind keeps bouncing, keeps mixing up images of silver bracelets and pink hair clips and the twenty-five miles of sand and chaparral that separate me from civilization.

“Father God, I ask that you forgive me my sins and offenses, for you, oh Father God, are absolutely holy, just and righteous…” The words won’t come out right. When I hear them in my head, I hear them in Red’s voice and it mocks me. All the supplications and psalms that I know, Red taught me every last one.

---

On the third day a river forms. It spreads out from the Deepfreeze and into the hall. I pull up the lid and glance at the mound of surplus of meat Red insisted we buy last week, then snap the freezer closed. Out the front window the amargosa bush shakes in the wind, its blood blossoms spread wide open. I carry Huck outside and the bush trembles with the fluttering motion of hundreds of tiny brown moths. Ignoring the growing heat, they hover and descend among the clusters of red petals and yellow stamens.

Huck and I sit down in the buckbrush and watch the quivering amargosa while the sun burns strong and stretches shadows across the sand. I squint my eyes until the horizon ripples and I imagine miracles. I imagine my legs like a giant’s, long enough to carry me across the map in two big leaps, across the sand and wheat fields, over the hills and back to the mountains.

All through the afternoon, Huck and I cook. He sits on the kitchen floor with two stuffed bears for company while I fry pork chops, chicken breasts, and ribs. As I lift the last burger out of the pan the sun dips behind the amargosa. A rush of deep orange through tangled blossoms. Huck busies himself devouring his teddy bear.

“You hungry, buddy?” I ask him, pointing to the stack of meat.

Huck can’t eat meat though. He can’t chew good enough. The kitchen grows thick with shadows. I pull the glass dome off the hurricane lamp, twist the wick up and oily smoke curls into the darkening air. There’s not a whole lot of fuel in it, but it’ll do for a while.

“Well, we won’t starve,” I say to Huck.

The lamp in the windowsill turns the glass into a funhouse mirror, reflecting and distorting my sunburnt face. Over the regular pattern of night noises, the rhythm of crickets and katydids, comes the soft yet undeniable sound of footsteps and the whimper-cry of a baby. I reach for the lamp, ready to extinguish it. But the silence of the house has grown so heavy that these strange human rustlings don’t scare me like they once did.

A knock sounds out against the front door. There’s a pause and then the sound comes again over the background of shuffling feet and whispering voices. I gather Huck and his bear into my arms and cross the room.

On the porch, a man stares up at me with sharp diamond eyes, his right hand raised, ready for another knock. Behind him crowd five others. An older woman, a teenage boy, two men and a mother with a baby tied to her back. They look worn out and used up, like they’ve become a part of the desert, shifting sand people. Across their faces, fear darts like a bird in a house. The man says something and his words come out all jumbled up and unintelligible. I squeeze Huck.
The man’s words mean nothing to me and he has not taken a step back, in fact he leans his stocky body forward into the frame of the door, nearly touching my elbow. Below his cotton t-shirt, tucked into the waistband of his pants, I see a form like the curve of a pistol butt. Panic buzzes, a steady current all across my skin, and I reach for the door, ready to slam it closed and run for the .22, but the man says the words again and this time he raises his right hand in a drinking motion and lifts an empty milk jug up towards my face.

“Oh… water,” I say, “you all need water.” I turn fast towards the kitchen, leaving the door open. The man enters with me and my stomach flips.

The others follow, each carrying an empty milk jug. In the kitchen the smell of the meat hits me full in the face. If they need water they are probably starving too. Red has told me how they lose their way sometimes, wander for days with no food or water. I set Huck in his highchair and point to the kitchen sink. The teenage boy fills his jug halfway and then steps aside and empties it down his throat in vicious audible gulps. The baby begins to fuss and the mother passes her jug to the older woman and shifts the child from her back to her chest. No one breathes a word but their eyes jump to the plate of meat on the counter.

“Do you all wanna eat?” I point to the platter. The man who knocked looks up at me and mumbles more foreign words. I pull a stack of plates down out of the cupboard and set them beside the food.

“Go on,” I say, “eat.”

And the Mexicans eat, right there at my kitchen table, off the plates Red’s mama gave us at our wedding, the ones that have our names painted in with the flower designs. The mother shifts her baby from her chest to her back again, tightening the blanket in a knot between her breasts. I wonder if I could carry Huck that way. He’s bigger but he doesn’t weigh much.

While the Mexicans eat, I go to the hall closet. I leave the .22 there, propped up beside the vacuum, and pull a bed sheet out, tear it with my teeth. I hold the larger half up to my body and drape it around my shoulder. I can’t let the only humans I’ve seen in three days go and leave me alone again. If we move at night the sun won’t hurt Huck. The more of us there are the less the coyotes and javelinas will bother us. We can’t walk twenty-five miles in one night but there must be shade somewhere that we can wait the day out in.

My kitchen rings loud with the clang of forks and strange voices. I fill a gallon jug for myself, wrap the rest of the meat in tinfoil and put it in a grocery bag. When the headman stands the others rise with him. The mother is last in line. She smiles at me and I hold up the ripped sheet, point to Huck and then to myself. She wrinkles up her nose with laughter but helps me all the same, bending me over and setting Huck on my back. His knobby knees fit on either side of my spine, curled up just like when I carried him inside me.

The mother pulls the sheet tight across my chest and laughs once more then waves goodbye. I shake my head and glance at the kitchen table, filled with scattered dishes. I wonder if Red will recant and come looking for us. A part of me itches to leave his three fifty dollar bills there on the table. But I’m not stupid, we’ll need food and bus tickets.

Outside the sky shines full of pinprick stars. As the milk jug pulls at my fingers and the weight of Huck presses down on my shoulder blades, I remember the ants under the amargosa, struggling across the sand. The Mexicans form a line and I step in place at the end after the mother, who looks over her shoulder and wrinkles her forehead at me. She says something to the woman in front of her and they send the message up the line. When the man in front hears, he puts his hand up to halt us. His words come out jumbled but his intention rings clear. He’s a short man, comes only to my nose, but he moves strong and angry like some enraged animal, all muscle and shout.

Inside my ribs, my heart leaps, but I do not step back. I will not stay out here alone. In the moonlight the man’s teeth flash as he bellows and points towards the house. I look away, across the yard to the amargosa, filled now with more moths. They swarm so thick the blossoms are invisible. I see only the movement of hundreds of tiny wings. The man’s breath blows hot on my neck and he sounds like he’s speaking in tongues the way they did at the revivals back in West Virginia. I pretend it’s the Lord’s words he burbles and not the Devil’s. He kicks sand at me, spits at my feet, but turns then and marches back to the front of the line. The mother glances at me. We move forward. My feet fit into the tracks of the six who walk before me, and I follow them closely through the dark as my eyes trace their soft shapes against all that desert and all that sky.