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Silenced Horizons

Life on the Margins

By d’Jurnet Tarryall Productions

The Street

Fear and Loathing Easter Morning

Easter morning, around 11, sun is already beating down on the desert.

Driving through the Mohave Desert, a desolate 2 lane highway - signs of wear and tear,

Reality slipping away - Twilight Zone territory.

An empty barren landscape; scrub brush and cactus dot the pale sand - nothing seems to move.

Episode unfolds-

An abandoned car sits skewed on the sandy shoulder.

Looks like a car wreck; no skid marks, no signs of an antagonist.

Silence.

Toyota Prius hybrid: Rear bumper hanging on for dear life,

front-driver side; a flat tire anchoring the destitute vehicle to the desert,

a shattered headlamp dangling by a few wires, looking for a way forward.

No traffic in either direction. I slowly come to a stop.

Driver’s window rolled down - a young desperate black woman lifts her head.

I ask if she needs help. A meek “Yes”.

Pulled onto a sandbank in front of the Prius.

Request she step out of the car to change the tire and make repairs.

The car jack finds it footing beneath the frame, front end slowly reaches toward the scorching sun -then,

from the backseat, another woman stirs - groggy, disoriented:

Alarmed, I step back. “Everyone out of the car!”

The scene as it unfolded:

An unrelenting sun, an endless desert.

Exchanged small talk: myself- on my way home.

Their story; left LA early in the morning - some lady hit their car.

Didn’t want to know the particulars.

There’s a precipitation of fear and loathing, something about LA.

Underneath their silence, an air of desperation is drifting through the desert,

The Big Bang - dry dust particles scatter - starting over in a new galaxy.

Tire changed, ducted taped the rear fender and headlamp, provisions for additional water supplied.

Sun peaking - A parched and forbidding landscape;

Weary, overheated, thirsty -

Their car battery is dead, needs a jump, ignition catches

We swap farewells.

In defiance of the human condition, I drifted toward my car. Halfway - I turned and declared:

“Some people do care.”

The Interview

Mid-morning,- can’t remember, was it a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday? An encounter with a woman who seemed to be living on the street—destitute yet carrying herself with a silent resolve to prepare herself for a morning appointment. Crouched in the corner between two buildings off Main Street she pulled a wig from her backpack, adjusted it with care, and placed it on her head. Afterward, she pulled out what looked like a résumé.

Once she’d placed her belongings by the wall, she set off toward what I guessed was her final destination—perhaps an interview. Not wanting to seem as though I was appropriating the moment, I asked if I might take one last photo. She exhaled with a weary huff, stood for the shot, and with the air of someone inconvenienced and uninterested as to why, I snapped the photo.

Without a word, she turned and walked away.*

The Iraqi Veteran

“J” served two tours in Iraq and was later discharged as a Sergeant. His confidence radiated from a blend of self-pride and intellect.

Throughout the early autumn months of September and October, I returned twice a week to a hiking trail and met “J” who had made a home for himself in a battered car; camped in a dirt lot, its hood hung open, and personal belongings strewn like fragments of another life. At first he was cautious, words measured. Over several weeks we grew comfortable with each other, and he was more at ease to speak about his two tours in Iraq and not adjusting very well after returning home. His thoughts wandered, inventive and philosophical, yet jagged- ideas that drifted and were unanchored.

The third week of October brought a winter storm warning which was about to roll across the high country. I couldn’t shake the thought of him being unprepared. The next morning, I gathered the winter gear I’d set aside to sell, loaded it into my car, and drove down-valley hoping he’d take it. I imagined that after I handed over the bundle, we might stop for groceries — enough to see him through the first snow.

When I arrived, “J” and his car , were AWOL.

Last Chance Texaco - A Story

Each Saturday Maggie sits on a shaded wooden bench and waits, and waits. - the day churns from morning to noon, then noon into a long stretch of afternoon. She is unencumbered by boredom, waiting for a bus that will never show.

The tumbleweed connection ended long ago, when the rain stopped, the Farm Bureau closed its doors, the oil wells dried up, and stores shuttered. The aging gas station carries on by keeping at it, a last chance Texaco for travelers who vanish into the high-altitude desert.

At twilight, soft hues silhouette the barren mountains and stir life in the arid grasslands. Nature’s western ode at dusk is a beguiling token for Maggie to return to Mrs. Starky’s for a warm dinner. Few words will be shared. It’s the same routine each Saturday; dirty dishes are cleaned and afterward they take their places to watch reruns of I Love Lucy. The familiar is comforting and provides them with a sense of security.

In bed, overtired from the long day, Maggie stares at the ceiling and struggles to drift off. Like children who count sheep to surrender to a night’s sleep, she counts the days until next Saturday - for a bus that never comes, at the last chance Texaco.

Shedding Conventions

Good humored, a slug of a tired and beaten man, Mark didn’t hesitate to speak to me. He was making his way up the road, stopping often and exhaling stale breath that stained the pure mountain air.

Tellingly, we walked side by side as he struggled to his home after an afternoon drinking beer. His eyes pierced the chill in the autumn air with a look “I against - the They”, a longing to live on [his] own terms. So bug off if I didn’t approve.

He might have been a forlorn homeless person somewhere, where people just let people live. But he wanted me to know he was someplace, a place he called home for 18 years.

A missing middle tooth at the bottom of his teeth gaped on an aging hermit who spent time living amongst the rest of us and came up empty handed. Now weathered at 64, his hands were worn and leathered, as was his skin that paled with purple dotted scabs. His sorry condition, I imagine, most likely resulted from laboring at something other than drinking cheap beer in the afternoon.

He didn’t hesitate to tell me with a shit-faced grin that a few women took him to the cleaners. He has little to show for other than a 47-year-old son living in Plano Texas, doing something that he couldn’t remember, an engineer? It didn’t matter though. His telling displayed a sense of a proud father whom he had fathered, and his son, he told me, was well established.

Mark came from a small front range ranch town, with nothing to speak of - somewhere in northeastern Colorado. Once of age, he joined the Navy. Stationed at Corpus Christi, he caught a glimpse of what could be on the gulf coast.

After the service he moved up along the shoreline to Louisiana and worked in the oil industry. After toiling what I gathered on the platforms, he was inclined to seek prospects of a better life inland. He left the coast for Joplin, Missouri, but shortly moved to western Colorado with nothing to share except an emptiness of the plains.

His brother had planned to build a home somewhere on the western slope, but for some reason they didn’t get around to it. This appeared not to matter. In hindsight though, time in the Navy didn’t provide much, but he’d been around some because of it.

He refused my offer for a lift. A block on, he would be home. Another beer, another autumn, and then another cold snowy winter in M, Colorado.

“Thoughts are Broken” “Don’t Care”

On a crisp early spring Sunday morning, I set out from Santa Fe and drove west on US-84 toward the Colorado border. A few hours in, half-spaced out and humming along a well-maintained two-lane highway, I sped past two men leaning against a weathered, worn out building. A photo op caught my eye, so at the first turnoff I swung a quick U-turn and pulled up alongside the building. I grabbed my camera, jumped out, and offered a morning greeting.

Neither man bothered to look up. The one without the Budweiser spoke curtly, clearly in pain and not wanting to be bothered. His sidekick, contentedly sipping his beer, said little until he volunteered to pose for a picture. Behind him, a rabbit’s grin — painted on the wall — summed up Sunday brunch beneath the warm bluebird sky.

I dropped a $20, thanked them for their time, and rolled northwest toward the Colorado state line.

Wanting to Believe

Where might they find social and economic justice? “It is not just impersonal and social forces, but human selfishness and cruelty that are responsible for human misery”

Alan Brinkley on The Great Depression.

Looking for Hope.

Empathy

Where is the social and economic justice? “It is not just impersonal and social forces, but human selfishness and cruelty that are responsible for human misery” Alan Brinkley, The Great Depression

Footnotes

This is an ongoing series that captures the marginalized in the Untied States. They are desperate, resilient, and persevere miraculously despite the odds. They would like to be included in a subsection of the “Big Beautiful Bill”