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It was so hot. A drop of sweat trickled down the inside of my arm with uncomfortable distinctness, but the air was getting colder. I didn’t know if I should take off my jacket.
I looked down at the patch on the right side of my chest. It was bright yellow, rectangular, and just above one of the grey-green pockets. ‘HOFMAN’ it read in block letters... ‘Hofman’…
I’d blocked out the time when my dad gave that coat to me. His name was Hofman too. It was both of our names on that patch. I wondered what he would think of me now… What would he call me? I was currently wandering with a strange man and an infant in the middle of Nevada. The sound of him saying about ten different awful words ran through my mind all at once. Maybe he’d be proud of me, though, for toughing it out. For going days without food. That was a possibility.
I grabbed my own wrist. I felt the bones dig into my palm. I felt the sweat, and then I covered the patch with my hand. Things so commonplace can become debilitating at a stray thought.
And there was Dennis, plodding along in front of me as I followed like cattle.
After a while, walking becomes mindless-- as automatic and labored as your own heart pumping or breathing through your mouth. We just kept walking.
Dennis was taller than me. His hair was darker and shorter than mine. His face and hands always got a bit red, and at the moment, they were only getting redder (it really was getting colder). He carried one of those massive backpacks. In the six months I’d known him, I’d never seen him without it. Watching him heave it onto himself always amused me. He wasn’t very skinny, but underneath that mountain of supplies and an oversized coat he looked like a stick. I never told him that, though.
I tugged at my collar.
Dennis’s backpack was always unzipped a bit. Jude sat in there. She was about a year old. I never kept track too closely. Maybe Dennis did, but he probably didn’t. She was so small, and she watched me through the gap in the zipper. She was just learning to walk, but she only walked when we were resting. She didn’t talk much either.
I don’t remember enough about the babies in my life growing up to tell, but she seemed quiet. It was probably because Dennis and I were quiet. It made me nervous that we weren’t doing enough for her, but she still tried to imitate our names. So, I guess that was a good sign.
It had become all-consuming-- wondering when the next time to feed her would be, and wondering if she would wake us up that night.
Dennis needed sleep. I told him that about a million times. It was a good thing Dennis got most of his pacing out during the day, or else the nights would have been even more miserable. He tended to toss in his sleep, if he slept at all, so Jude was always on my side. I had to keep him from hogging the coats when we used them as blankets, and sometimes I could feel his breath on my neck. Backpacks don’t make very good pillows.
I never moved in my sleep, though. I got comfortable, and I stuck to it. Sometimes, though, I couldn’t sleep either.
There was one time I knew for sure that Dennis was sleeping, while I was wide awake. He was snoring, and his nose was touching the back of my head. I could feel the whole deafening process rattling through my skull. He never snores. I didn’t move.
The wind was starting to pick up. It had been there all day, but occasionally it hit you in the face like a leaf blower. It would usually calm down after a good few minutes, but what felt like a good few minutes kept passing, and it wasn’t stopping.
The ground was covered in a blanket of churning dust. Dry streams writhed in and out of each other. My only goal was to wade through it. It should have been easy, just walking, but it felt like the wind was trying to carry my feet from under me. It was important to keep your jeans over your boots, so the dirt couldn’t get in as easily.
The wind was getting louder and stronger. It carried the dust until it pelted my thighs and stomach. Dennis could feel it too-- the sharp pains where his jeans were torn. He turned back to me. His brows were furrowed. He said something about the weather. I could hear Jude crying from behind him.
And that was the beginning of a dust storm.
It went dark very quickly and very suddenly.
At first, it took everything I had to not fall on my knees. It’s like being a wedge stuck in a splitting piece of wood. It’s like every sound you could ever imagine rushing around you, scratching into your ears. I started choking as I pressed my t-shirt to my mouth. My lips were always cracked anyway, and the white cotton came back with traces of blood.
I closed my eyes until I could only see the world around me in brief flashes and slits.
I should’ve wrapped my shirt around my head earlier. That was our routine whenever this happened. I guess my mind had been wandering. I was too busy thinking about Dennis’s snoring.
I grabbed onto him as we helped each other take our backpacks and coats off. There was a searing minute as I was shirtless. The fabric lifted over my head, suffocating me as I coughed. You have to tie the sleeves back and around your forehead to keep it secure, then the world becomes more muffled and dark than it already is.
Jude was transferred from the backpack full of holes to the inside of my coat. She was still crying, but we were all covered.
We kept walking.
You never knew how long it would take for a storm to subside. All you could do was make it out on the other end, and we were starving.
Specks of sand had lodged themselves in the corners of my throat. They burned and prodded until I tried to hack them out. I thought maybe one of my lungs would come up out of my mouth and hang out, or maybe they would just give out on me entirely, like a sick horse on its last legs being forced to run. I needed water. I was so hungry. Maybe my stomach would come up too, but I couldn’t let that happen. Jude was sitting right up against it, along with her head against my ribs.
How much weight had I lost? To this day, I don’t know.
I grabbed Dennis by the shoulder. It was solid and bony underneath the backpack strap. He was covering his ears with his hands on top of the make-shift headwrap. That was par for the course for him. Even when things weren’t loud, he was always covering his ears. I pulled one of his arms down.
“I NEED WATER,” I shouted.
He pulled down the shirt from his nose. I distinctly remember how his nose looked for some reason. It wasn’t particularly strange, but I stared at it a lot.
“I CAN’T HEAR YOU,” he said. His voice was hoarse.
I pulled down my own mask. “WATER,” I shouted again.
Dennis grabbed the canteen from inside his coat. It was old and metal. The paint had been chipped relentlessly from years of use. He unscrewed the cap.
He put his hand on my neck. I didn’t know why he did that.
He put the canteen to my mouth. The rough edge of his sleeve brushed against my jaw. His thumb sat in the crook below my ear. A clear sense of dread rushed down my spine. I didn’t know why he was doing this. The lukewarm water was welcome, and then he pulled it away. It made me start coughing again.
“ARE YOU OKAY?”
Dennis started coughing a bit too. He didn’t seem to think anything had just happened. Maybe nothing did happen, but I still had one free arm. He could have just given the canteen to me.
“DID-- DID I DO SOMETHING?”
I shook my head and covered my face. The skin between my nose and lips was starting to feel raw. The fog of my breath made my nose run, and I couldn’t resist wiping it. I needed to re-adjust Jude’s position. She kept squirming. I wondered if she was as warm as I was. She wouldn’t stop crying, but there was nothing I could do.
The weight of Dennis’s hand still stuck to me like a cold phantom pain... Why was I still thinking about it?
And then there was a tingling sensation in my stomach along with the pangs of hunger. It came up into my chest and shoulders. It was one of those delirious feelings that made my breathing uneasy and my mouth start contorting to suppress a smile. I was so hungry.
I thought about my dad again. I almost laughed out loud into the screaming storm. What was I even doing this for? Why didn’t I stay back home? I asked myself that question a lot. It was like they were still alive, waiting for me to walk back up that inexplicably long driveway like I’d always waited for them.
If only the wind could’ve buried me where I stood.
I’d heard of being buried alive in scary stories my brother used to tell. It didn’t seem too different from where I was now. I could be buried in a wooden box, unable to see my own feet, with nothing but the lighter in my grey-green coat pocket to illuminate my hands. I wouldn’t be able to see the patch on my chest. I could scream and yell at the top of my lungs and no one would hear me. I would run out of breath until I blacked out for the last time.
But then, I wouldn’t have a kid to take care of, and I couldn’t feel Dennis’s breath when I drifted off. I thought about that a lot. I wasn’t stuck in a box, even if my name was Gary Hofman.
I decided to grab Dennis’s hand amidst the stinging storm. Luckily, he didn’t pay any mind.