“The Revelation Road”

Short Story

He walked away over the yellowed sand that made my feet into piles of interactive dune. They turned back to look at these crested craters to see how they became one with the hollows that they seemed to rise over. In only hours they were as eternal as the huge mass of sand that they were laid on top of. Bought and sold until they were used up.

But then he forwarded into the West where the setting sun was winking as it set. He had to make the road lay my head before my time to sleep had come. He had slept in the curl that gave the shade in the late afternoon. And he drank dry the last swallow of his canteen. It was a hard thing to be just a step ahead of the only traveler that everyone knew too well, too closely, and too clearly.

His white hair was baking under his cowboy hat, the hat was picked up earlier today when he decided to walk from a village that did not have a name on the map. The few residents spoke Navajo and Espanol in even quantities as if they were the same. They looked at him as a rube, hunting for something but not knowing what it was. Most of them sat in the dusty square that housed the three open placita galleria shops. There was one parking lot whose only feature was a scrawl on the wall that said: “We Believe.”

After he had spent most of my bills for the backpack, some batteries for his flashlight- where he got the flashlight he did not remember - and a few things to keep him in victuals, he asked for the shortest distance to the main highway. An old man in a huipil laughed. “You running from someone?”

He just nodded.

The old man the point this way knowing that it was the shortest but not the best paved. About 10 miles the pavement turned to dirt, and then the dirt became sand. But with his compass, he kept on the line hoping that there would be space and freedom, and above all the revelation road.

He walked. And then the yellowed sand became black as if it were cast from a volcano with specks of clear vitreous luster that loomed into snowflakes of hard magma.

But in the distance along the curve of igneous rock came a smooth curve which perhaps you meant that a road had been built.

And with that, he started to run because it was getting towards night from twilight, and he did not know if he slept or whether he would wake up. He knew he had to keep going there was too much past in his past.

Everywhere around him was all black as if the igneous rock poured forth a volcanic glass that stuck to everything, whether above or below.

And slowly he came to the bottom of a hill, that led towards many more before the swooping sigil that may have contained a distant road. But he saw no headlights so he did not help for a ride that would take him out of this darkening land.

His pace grew upward as the hill became strenuous to climb and almost insurmountable to track. But then he hit rubble which had an amorphous smoothness. Though some were formed naturally most were formed to connect one group of people to another. He hated the endpoints because they only led to trouble.

He may have found the highway. He had the beat of the blood as he sniffed out the yellow line.

He was begotten from the dead.

-

And then he stood upon the pavement, the pavement had begun from the dirt behind. And he stood there as if the Alpha and the Omega at the beginning of a road and at the end of it.

But there was no town for miles nor any church to send tidings to, because he was alone, and he did not have any sense of where the next motel was or even a person to beg a night from. He tried to pull out the scrap of a map and shine the last batteries that worked in his flashlight. There were no lights even here.

When the white light of the flashlight hit the white page of the map he thought he knew where he was and that there was a place to stay up ahead outside of a tunnel that he had to go through. It was the only black dot for 100 miles. He nodded to himself and put himself together and strode forward hoping that the door would be open.

He came to the tunnel and with hesitation walked his way forward looking back and seeing the outdoors as being white and a planet shined as if it were fire in the darkness. All of this was contained in the sharp tunnel which was covered in blackness. And he walked into the blackness hoping that he could stumble its way along the mile to the other side.

Then he must have dreamt because he saw a bridge that resembled Philadelphia many days ago. He shook himself and found he was on the pavement having slept. He got up and continued to walk keeping his right hand on the wall because now there was no light and only the heat from the wind ahead of him. Every few steps he thought to take out some tender and light a fire but each time he worried that the fire would consume everything in its path. Thus, he stayed cold and dark through his trial in the tunnel.

But then a light became visible. He did not know whether it was the headlight of a truck or something else. And still, he went forward as if his legs were under someone else’s command.

He took down the cowboy hat wrapped his hand over his head like a crown and then put back on the hat. He shook his head and wondered what the reason was he did this, but he did not know.

Then he came to be outer tunnel and was blistered with lights from a small hotel with a gas station.

He read the sign: “Revelation” and so he came to rest as if in Truth or Consequences. But that was the next state over.

Then he stumbled up to the black door and opened it without any hesitation once he shined the flashlight on the door. A man in a dark black jacket looked at him from the counter and said “We have been waiting for you.”

He mumbled something but his mouth was dry.

“It’s all right we are not going anyplace.”

Finally, he said: “Where am I?”

“In the place where people who do not know what they want, eventually find.”

-

In the day the was only the desert because the light is only there for those who look for Nothing and find it from out of the tunnel on a map.