“Just There” by Dusty Harms

“What is it, what am I looking for?”

“It’s just there,” the man waved his dry, cracked, and calloused hand toward the west.

Junie looked in the direction he waved. She squinted her eyes believing she could narrow in on it…whatever it was. She had a heart condition, or so she was told at a young age. Her mama always said, “Now Junie, don’t go getting all ‘scited; just you take care child,” and so she did. She never let herself get too excited over anything. As she squinted her eyes and stretched her neck hoping to see, she felt her heart rate picking up, so she stopped, straightened her posture, took a deep breath in and a slow exhale out.

“Right, it’s over there.” She squinted more softly.

 “You know it is.” The man said, sounding harsh. “We traveled all this way. Through the dust, the storms, the unwelcoming towns, over the damn mountains, with things breakin’ and a whole lot of beggin.’ But it’s there, you’ll see.”

He kicked the tire on the pickup truck. The rusted-out wheel wells and the heavily pregnant truck bed was filled with the things that couldn’t be left behind covered in a blue tarp and bright orange straps. The engine was always overheating and so they frequently stopped to let the truck sit on the side of the road with the heater running until the engine was cooled enough that they could continue.

Junie sat down on the warm concrete and stretched her legs into the grass that grew along the edge of the road. She leaned back on to the truck door panel. The metal felt cool as her sweaty back rested upon it. She pressed further onto the panel with all her weight and shook her head side to side. The weight of the moment paralyzed everything. She heard off in the distance the man saying something, but the muted sounds were unrecognizable.

“Hey!” She heard the hoarse man’s voice sharply say. “You alright kid, you ain’t having one of those…”

“No…no I’m fine,” Junie said. She was young with a face that looked like it had never known hardship. Her hazel eyes often had a fierceness to them, and the man never held her gaze for very long as it was intimidating to him. She looked at his wrinkled tan face with gray stubble glistening from sweat. She took a deep breath in. She could smell rain; the way earth carried it in the breeze. She whispered the word Petrichor. Junie learned that word from a nature documentary about water and thought it was the fanciest word she had ever heard.

“Smell that?”

He took a long whistling breath in through his nostrils, then looked down at her. “You know I can’t smell anything,” he scuffed.

“Wish you could,” Junie said.

“Well…you could describe it.”

“I can’t describe the way the earth smells.”

“Like shit?” He said mischievously.

“No…not like shit.” She giggled and picked up a fistful of dirt and let it fall through her fingers.

“Oh…well, that’s the last thing I ever smelled.”  

“It isn’t, is it?” she asked.

“No, of course not.”

“What was it then?”

“It was her perfume…what was it called…” he trailed off.

“Horizons,” she said looking up at him. He leaned onto the side of the truck and stared up to the sky.

“Just before they lowered her down, I took one final smell of her in.”

“Ya,” she whispered.

Junie looked out over the vacant lot they were parked next to. It had been left uncared for and was grown thick with tall grass, clover, and sunflowers. There was a giant cottonwood tree toward one edge of the property and an irrigation ditch running along next to it. Birds chirped away, almost louder than all the cars passing them by on the highway. 

The man’s hand slapped against the truck’s body. “Let’s get a cold drink, gas station’s not far.” She pushed her body up, dusted off her pants and shook the door handle just enough that it released the latch, and she climbed into her seat. They drove a few miles until they came upon a gas station. The man hopped out.

“Just stay here a minute,” he said, and she watched in the side mirror as he went to the truck bed and rustled around under the tarp where the boxes of things were. She knew what he was doing, though he tried to be discreet. She watched his clenched fist come close to his face and slowly open. The glinting in the mirror of a small chain suggested another necklace. He brought it closer to his face and looked at it for the longest minute. He looked toward the truck cab and Junie quickly turned her face toward her own window. A few seconds later she looked back into the mirror and caught him giving a kiss to the necklace he held in the palm of his hand. Then he walked back towards the cab.

“What do you want, a cola and some chips?”

“Yes please,” she solemnly answered.

He avoided eye contact with her, nodded his head and walked toward the store.

It always took a while before he returned, and he always looked more tired than before he went in. Junie never went with him; he never wanted her to see how it was done. How he could put a price on a memory.

He walked up to her side of the truck and handed her an ice-cold cola. He smiled, “They had your favorite kind.”

Junie watched as he made his way around the front of the truck then to his side. He put the plastic bag onto the seat through the open window and then jiggled his own door handle until the latch gave in and the door opened.

“Got some chips too,” he said and put the key in the ignition. He started the engine up and hot air pushed through the vents. Junie reached forward and turned the knob for the heater to the off position. He put the truck in drive and turned the wheel as far as it would turn. The truck groaned and creaked as they slowly inched forward.

“Buckle up,” he said, and they simultaneously reached across their shoulders, pulled the seat belts across their chests, and clicked the buckles at the same time. He snorted softly and she warily smiled at him.

“You don’t look so good,” he said to her.

“I’m fine,” Junie breathed out heavily.

“Well maybe we ought to…” he started but she quickly interrupted.

She asked, “What am I supposed to see?”

As they pulled onto the highway, the setting sun’s glare through the dirty windshield made them both squint their eyes.

“It’s not really a thing.” His voice was hoarser, but his face had become softer.

“Then what?”

"It's a figure of speech. 'It's just there, on the horizon.'"

“What is?”

“Something better…maybe.” He looked over to her and raised his eyebrows and nodded in the direction they were headed. Her forehead wrinkled in annoyance, and she pressed herself into the back of her seat. He sighed and looked at her affectionately.

 “Just there, on the horizon.” he said softly and waved his dry, cracked, and calloused hand above the steering wheel towards the setting sun.

About Dusty Harms
She/Her/Hers

Dusty Harms was born in Colorado and has always had a passion for writing creative stories. As a student at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, where she graduated with a B.A. in Kinesiology and Exercise Science, she worked as a writing tutor for Kilohana, the on campus writing center as well as took on research and grant writing while also working as a lead student laboratory technician at the Laboratory for Exercise Sciences. She also took as many creative writing courses as were offered. After graduating from university, Dusty became a journalist writing and shooting photography for an independent alternative women’s sports journal based on O’ahu. After the birth of her daughter in 2011 she returned to Colorado and has continued to write creative stories while also building high performance homes in Fort Collins and along the Front Range.