Free excerpt from To and Fro Upon the Earth: A Novel

The bus bounced and banged along the freeway. The eight passengers were dispersed like shy children on the first day of school. Periodically, a particularly alarming bang! shook the vehicle. I hadn’t been on a bus for over a decade, but I remembered that it was a social convention to ignore both the noises and the other passengers.

I stared out the window at a world that was familiar in some ways, but foreign in others. Sand, dirt, and scrub brushes spread out on either side of the freeway. A dirt access lane raced along behind a short fence. A perpendicular road appeared and flashed by. Arrow-straight, it cut through the brown-yellow land as if cut with a laser, until it reached the vanishing point. The dust and dirt on it belied its lack of traffic.

Ahead, a collection of buildings caught my eye. As we drew close, I saw it was a tiny community: about ten clapboard houses and a few rusted mobile homes. Old cars were parked nearby. Some were heaps of rust, with missing tires and hoods raised. There was no activity. Was it abandoned, like the road? As we passed, I spotted three small figures running around in a dirt backyard. I guess it was inhabited, despite its condition.

It wasn’t a town or even a village. It wasn’t a temporary camp for road or railroad workers. It had been there a long time. Did it have a name? Were the people outcasts? Maybe they just preferred a small one-horse community to gleaming skyscrapers or manicured housing tracts.

A few miles down the road was another. This was even smaller—just three or four obviously abandoned structures. The desert scrub had obliterated any sign of yards, roads, or landscaping. Smashed windows and open doors gazed like dead eye sockets, passing judgment on speeding vehicles. Graffiti covered every external wall. The last building had a caved roof. Who had lived or worked there last? I wondered how long it took for natural creation to reclaim the human-made.

A column of black smoke caught my attention ahead. I thought it was on the freeway, but as we approached, I could see it was off to the side, near two small buildings. Soon I spotted small flames around the base of the thick column that billowed straight up into the sky. A bonfire. It was strange to think that, out here, far away from population centers or even farmland, people lived, worked, loved, hated, and died.

As we drew closer, I saw a figure, outlined by the fire, standing with hands on hips. Unmoving, the person appeared as if toasted black. How could one stand so close without cowering?

I craned my neck to watch the watcher as we passed. Just before the window frame blocked my view, the figure appeared to drop its arms and walk straight into the fire.

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