Love of the Dead

Joseph swept the parking lot with long methodical strokes. He looked at his watch 2:30am--two and a half more hours remained on his shift. He leaned against the broom, and looked out into the night. On either side of the small cinder block convenience store was scrub desert; low creosote bushes, tall green tumbleweeds and trash. As a young boy Joseph had explored many a desert such as this.A breeze laden with the smell of cow manure blew from the north. There was a dairy up the road...
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Joseph swept the parking lot with long methodical strokes. He looked at his watch 2:30am--two and a half more hours remained on his shift. He leaned against the broom, and looked out into the night. On either side of the small cinder block convenience store was scrub desert; low creosote bushes, tall green tumbleweeds and trash. As a young boy Joseph had explored many a desert such as this.A breeze laden with the smell of cow manure blew from the north. There was a dairy up the road and the smell was not altogether unpleasant to Joseph. He shook a cigarette from his pack, he continued to watch the desert as he put a flame to the tip of his cigarette. He inhaled deeply, exhaled a thick cloud of smoke, and began to push the broom again.The night had been nearly void of any human contact. A single patron had bought a six-pack of beer. The man had an angry bitterness in his eyes that had unnerved Joseph. The transaction had been completely silent. That had been sometime before midnight. It was lonely on the crossroads between the two cities. While most slept, he swept the parking lot, shinned windows, straightened stock, took inventory and balanced cash sheets. Everything and anything to keep his hands and mind busy.The store was located just off I-10 on the edge of the Texas and New Mexico border. To the south was El Paso, Texas, a border town, the locals of mixed blood and creed. To the north was Las Cruces, a town that had been founded on the graves of an unlucky priest and his entourage of five seminal students. The fifth student survived and had planted them all in the earth, and constructed make shift crosses; a city had sprung up there.The valley had always been a favored spot for massacres and ambushes by the aboriginal Apache tribes. Now it was farmed for onions, cabbages and cotton. Even in this new age it was not unknown for a field worker to plow up the skeletal remains of some ancient person. The bones often bleached incredibly white due to some peculiar chemical process of the soil. The whole valley was a crossroad where three states met, two countries joined, and sometimes the dimensions of life and death combined into unlikely configurations.The moon was in a sickle shape; the stars had the clarity and precision of a planetarium. If the old wives tale were true and a person would be granted a wish for spotting a falling star, Joseph would be rich, smarter and have looks to die for. But he had stopped gathering wishes after the second night when he had tallied more than three dozen.His cigarette was gone now. He lit another from the stub and leaned on his broom as he wistfully eyed the highway. He thought sometimes that he would start down that road to California, hitchhike and take odd jobs along the way, but not tonight, not really any night, because there was Todd, and because there was Sandra.The desert wavered with another gust of manure wind, and then another smell that overpowered the smell of cows. This new scent was of rancid decay. Not given to irrational fear--although he did sense eyes--he pushed the broom again in hopes he would shake off the paranoia that had come so quickly. Fear was a real part of his job and it came in many forms. Often, in dark reveries, he imagined being robbed at gunpoint or being shot for less than a hundred dollars. Or perhaps even beaten senseless for the thrill of it by some drunken kids. The fear could come from anywhere, tonight it came from the desert when it had opened its hungry eyes, and like some lonely voyeur, it held its breath and watched.He heard something from out in the bushes and weeds, and could not convince himself that he had not. It was the sound of something young, something in pain, something that, like him, knew fear. He walked to the edge of the lot."Who''s there?"The sound, if it had ever been, was gone now. No reply came. He wished a feeling of stupidity would wash over him, but it wouldn''t come. Something was out there. He could feel eyes on him, eyes low to the ground. He watched on the swaying weeds as he walked toward the store. The florescent bulbs glared with a shadowless light. He would go inside and wait for Larry to make his rounds.Larry, a Texas state deputy, kindly and a little punch-happy from his boxing days, stopped by every night to get a free coffee refill and make sure everything was okay. Joseph looked at his watch, 2:45am. Larry would be here in just under half an hour. Joseph set the broom outside the door and went into the building and poured himself a cup of coffee, added some whiskey from a flask he kept under the counter. He went to the window and looked out as he drank.The large windows induced the sensation of nakedness. The Rolling Stone played on a radio, static cut in from time to time. Something came out of the desert. A shadow that cast a shadow from the orange lights of the parking lot--a blur--his eyes refused to focus on this thing. It moved swiftly and within seconds it was at the door.A young woman dressed in a loosely woven shawl stood in front of the glass doors and stared into the store. Her thick black hair was powdered with gray ash, her skin a pale white. She opened the door. The wind came in a gust and immediately knocked down a cardboard novelty display."Hi," he said.She didn''t speak, instead she met his eyes and turned her head to the side. Her lips were painted red. Her eyes ringed with smudges of black too perfectly blended to be makeup. Her age was difficult to determine. She might have been fifteen; she might have been thirty. Her hair was tied back to make the most of her widows peak. Her forehead was shaped like the top of an ashen heart, a gray smudge the size of a dime was just under the point--it almost looked like a fingerprint. Her face was vaguely Asian; she looked as if she had just been startled out of a dream.