Hunting on the River of Sand

"A dry run. That's good, that'll work," Liam said, his head turning as the car passed it.

Jocelin had seen it, a ribbon of silt on the land. She looked ahead for a place to pull over.

"There we go," she said, pointing to a wide spot. Liam slowed the car, and parked.

He flicked his cigarette out the window, and turned the key. With the radio off, the silence of the area sprang forward. Liam sighed, and got out of the car, pulling the trunk level as he went. Jocelin sat for a minute, feeling the car shift slightly as he pulled equipment from the back. She looked down at the clutter of stuff at her feet. Sunglass cases, books, empty cigarette packs, empty cans. Choosing a book about Tibet, she opened the door and got out into the sunshine. Once she was outside, she realized the place wasn't really silent at all. The wind talked over the corn fields, and robins sang from the scattered pines.

Liam was filling a spray bottle with water. She leaned her hip on the side of the car, and watched him go over the collecting equipment.

"So what are we looking for again?" she asked.

"Listera cordata. Or, if you like, whorled twayblade."

"Both of those names are hard to remember, you realize," she said, smiling.

"Yeah, probably. Once you see one though, you'll remember it. The petals are funny looking, swirly. It's got a funky color to it, too."

"A pretty one, then?"

"Well, I think so. You might like it."

Orchids weren't all pretty, she was learning. They had found some that she wouldn't have even registered as flowers, if he hadn't pointed them out. Little, greenish things that stayed underneath the pines. But some were gorgeous. Purple, blue, white, orange, and in every shape she could think of. Liam liked them all, however. He dragged her along on these outings as much as he could. She usually came along, happy to help him lug pots of flowers back to the car. The only things she really didn't like about these trips was the local color, and the rearrangement of the collection back at home when they got one they wanted.

Liam hoisted his backpack over his shoulder, and slammed the trunk shut. He lit another cigarette, and looked out over the corn fields that seemed to be all the rage around here. The tobacco smoke made an ugly halo around his head.

"Let's roll, baby," he said, smiling.

"Let's," she said, pushing herself off the car, and started walking towards the bridge.

The dry run was dry as it could be. A beautiful bed of white sand ran along the bottom, but she knew all it would take to turn it to water was one good storm. In the meantime, it was a strip of desert in the Midwestern farmland, a pretty abberation. He jumped off the bank, and started off to the north. She kept on the road, and stopped in the middle of the bridge.

"Liam!" she yelled.

"Yeah!" he called back, already sounding distracted. He was on the hunt.

"I'm gonna stay on the bridge here and read. Do you mind?"

"Naw, honey. Knock yourself out. I'm not gonna go far, just up and around the bend here, then back to you. If I see anything, I'll probably want to go about the same distance in the other direction later."

"Okay. I'll be here."

Jocelin sat, and opened her book. Dry facts about the invasion of Tibet stared back at her, daring her to remember anything she read. She closed the book, and sat it aside. Rustling around in her pockets, she found a pack of cigarettes with a lighter in it, and lit up. She was sitting over the world's longest sandtray, after all. Might as well have one.

Watching Liam trace back and forth along the banks, pawing through debris and lifting leaves, she wished she had something in her life she was so passionate about. She had interests, of course. Rug hooking, Irish literature, fashion design. But nothing quite as intense as Liam's love of botany. He read books about it, posted on internet message boards about it, obsessed over his collection of flowers and vines, spent obscene amounts of money on lights and pots and seeds. The only thing he wasn't doing about it was going to school for it. He had a serious case of irresponsible, and school didn't suit him. He talked about it, but she wondered if he would ever really do anything but talk.

The cigarette was done for. She let it drop, and watched its short, end over end flight to the sand below. Early autumn wind would soon shift the creek bed over it. She put her arms on the guardrail, and propped her chin on her forearms, watching Liam examine the base of a tree that grew along the dry run. He was puffing a cigarette of his own, the clouds dissipating quickly behind him. Everything was sunshine and birdsong. No interrupting cars passed, no mean looking natives walked up and wondered aloud what the hell they were doing. She watched him.

She must have fallen asleep, because now it was dusk. Dusk was what they wanted to name their first daughter, if they had one. A name from each side of the family, then Dusk, a hippy throwback. Liam liked names like that. Liam liked names. Liam was in the dry run, picking through the debris for Listera cordata, whorled twayblade, a little orchid. The sand shifted, and she knew it would turn into a river soon. She saw him, walking down back towards her, and a wall of dust, a sandstorm, came down the run towards them both. She tried to tell him to run, but he just smiled and stopped to light a cigarette, a yellow wall of hell rushing towards his back. Her throat was dry, full of sand. She called out one last time, but all that came from her mouth was the sand, a cloud of dust. He kept trying to light the cigarette, and the wall swallowed him, and he was gone. Vanished into a river of sand.

A car passed, and Jocelin snapped to. Her forearm had a spot of drool on it, and she felt groggy. She looked out, and saw Liam coming back from around the bend up ahead. A dream, then. She looked to her left, and saw the car twinkling in the sunshine, sliding towards the flat horizon. She felt sweaty.

Jocelin stood up, and popped her knees. She had to pee, and hoped Liam wouldn't want to take a look at the other side of the bridge. She waved to him, and he waved back.

Coming closer, she could see that he wasn't carrying a plant in one of his pots. He had taken a shot, and missed it. Last good day of the season to collect, too. She hoped he wasn't too disappointed. He could be moody as hell when he wanted, and it annoyed the hell out of her. She didn't like his transference.

As he came up to the bridge, she tired to tell how he was feeling by the set of his mouth. He held it naturally, lips slightly parted. His nose looked a little red, from the sun. He was white as they came, and burned easily.

"Didn't find anything?" she asked.

"Nope, nothin'. Might be too dry here, but I figured since they like slopes I might as well try. Saw a Platanthera nivera 'round the bend up there, but we already have one."

"Which one?"

"The little white ones that come in bunches, got one back outside of Moline about a month back."

"Oh... I liked that one."

"Yeah, me too," he smiled. So, not too disappointed. She was glad.

He was under her now, and turned around. "Check it out," he said, bemused. He bent over, and she could see a nice rip in the crotch of his jeans.

"Ha-ha! What the hell happened?"

"Tore it trying to jump up outta the creek here. Think you could patch it later? I'm, ah, feelin' the breeze, if you know what I mean."

She chuckled. "Yeah, I'll try to get it tonight. Gonna hit the other side? I want to take a piss."

"Ladylike, honey. Nice," he laughed.

"Hey man, you don't mince words in a situation like this," she said. She squirmed around for emphasis, and made a face.

He laughed again, and then coughed. Too many cigarettes. "Lets blow this motherfucker," he said, clumsily climbing the bank.

Jocelin got up, and walked over to him. She put her arm around his waist, and tried to make him trip as they went along. "Love you, sugar."

"You too, Jocey."

On the trip back, the weather took a turn. What had once been a blameless blue sky became a slab of lead. A membrane of rain connected the horizon to the heavens up ahead. The sun was lost.

"Rain," she said.

"Ayuh," he grunted, fiddling with the radio's controls.

It was light at first, and he put the wipers to their slowest setting. The day took on that blue grey cast, and people on the road started turning on their lights. As they went along, the rain came down harder and harder, until it was a downpour of water from the sky. He slowed down, and shifted himself up in the seat, intent on the road ahead of him.

Night came, and they reached the city, a mass of sodium pressure light and concrete. They passed a couple of accidents, and wondered to each other if everyone was alright. They got off the freeway, and into their neighborhood. Familiar shops slid past the windows, and Liam relaxed. He asked her to light him a cigarette, and she did, handing it over to him. He cracked the window, and shifted his knee to the right, to keep it out of the rain. Now the moon was lost, not that it would've made much of a difference in all the lights.

They stopped at a left turn, their apartment full of flowers a few blocks down the road. He stared out at the red light. A car was stopped ahead of them.

"I wonder if I'll ever get one."

"The orchid? Yeah, we'll get one next season. Don't worry."

He made a wordless sound of agreement, and they turned onto their street.

Weeks later, Liam was ran over in a grocery store parking lot. Jocelin was closing the passenger door, and looked up just in time to see him light a cigarette. And then, magically, a Chrysler was tossing him down the lane, like a kid kicking a ball. She watched his upper body hit the side of a pickup truck, and he did a boneless flip into the open bed, landing next to bags of potting soil and a pile of shovels. It was as if some deity had decided to uproot him and throw him into some processed dirt, like a wild flower in a collection.

There was no orchid, and now there was no Liam.

After the winter passed, just as Jocelin was almost ready to move back to Boston, she decided to go back to the dry run. She wanted to find the whorled twayblade, and put it in the collection before she gave the whole thing to a local university. She drove out into the Illinois countryside, half remembering where the dead creek was. When she finally found it, she had to take a break at the pull over, to smoke a cigarette and to cry. He had been dead for months now, but everything in Chicago left her thinking of him. She had to go, had to leave.

Eventually, she got out into it, and walked to the dry run, loaded under a backpack of collecting equipment. She had been looking at pictures of it in Liam's books, and knew where it was found, dry slopes, underneath pines. The ground here was sandy, and there were enough pine trees to support parasitic orchids. She thought there was a good chance she could find it, if she just looked hard enough.

Jocelin searched for hours, up and down the run. She figured she had looked over a good two miles of the run, passing puddles, going into people's property. The birds kept her company, and she saw a snake go under a rock once. Insects hummed.

No sandstorms happened, no yellow columns of dust came roaring down the run. She looked, no longer thinking about Liam. She turned debris, and looked under each pine. Hours and hours, along the ribbon of sand. She looked everywhere, but Listera cordata was nowhere to be found.

Night fell, and she hunted, groping along the dry run, blind. The nighttime birds came out and called to her, and she kept looking.