No antelope or bison waved to Mercy from the roadside as the last Gable bounced in the passenger seat of the salvage truck. Mercy’s chauffer made no attempt to dull any of his passenger’s isolation. The driver sidestepped each of Mercy’s attempts at conversation. He paid her not attention at all, and Mercy hoped that she had not turned invisible. She thought the layers of sunscreen she had needed to apply to protect herself from the passenger window’s sun would have made her easily visible no matter if her skin turned transparent. She hoped that the bouncing truck merely required every ounce of the driver’s concentration. She hoped the driver thought of her as a little something more than another chunk of salvage.
“How much further are you going?”
“Must be hard finding a place to dump it,” and Mercy could not prevent a little scorn from floating on her words, “being that the landscape already looks so crowded.”
The horizon outside the windshield stretched flat for as far as Mary's scanning eyes could see, unmarred by hill or knoll. The country miles were predominately rural, and Mercy had expected to see more color in country environment. Yet the fields to either side of the truck replaced the greens of corn and the gold of wheat with miles of furrowed, dark fields scarred with the tracks of implements and blemished by pools of festering water. She had anticipated viewing trees with relish. Only the ones that met her gaze disappointed, seeming little more than gnarled knots of wood, leafless victims of some insect blight or drought. None of the tree skeletons that passed the window offered hope for shade.
Mercy snickered. “I suppose it’s the sunshine that grows so much dust.”
The structures passing along her window fluttered her heart no more than the landscape. Mercy needed little imagination to dream the fall of weather-beaten barns whose foundations crumbled. On a few occasions, a handful of clapboard, single-story houses clumped closely enough together to warrant a stenciled sign claiming a single crossroad constituted a village. Rusting lawnmowers and stranded snowmobiles littered such homes’ front yards, refrigerators and water heaters spilling from open garage doors. Tired dogs winced in the dust and pined for their owners to exit the anonymity of their trailers long enough to unravel their knotted chain, or to refill the stagnated water of their bowls. Gutted cars listed on concrete blocks, and though Mercy lacked the knowledge to name the parts dropped throughout the yard, she recognized how such components provided lawn ornaments as graceful as the wooden cut-outs of urinating boys and smoking cowboys.
“You must have great job security.” Mercy sighed.
Again, the driver only grunted and kept his attention on the white line dividing the highway.
She saw rare glimpses of people. A gaggle of boys crudely licked their smiles when they caught her considering them as the truck rolled through their township. A young girl with braided hair the color of dust pumped her arm at the driver, hoping for the attention of a horn blast. The driver ignored her. A boy threw rocks at the truck, frustrated that his bicycle's broken chain forced him to push his transport to whatever yard of broken motorcycles and four-wheelers from which he had come. Men lounged upon a porch smoking cigarettes and watching a burn barrel’s flames.
For all she knew, those people may have spoken a foreign tongue. They might as well have descended from flying saucers. Yet she felt empathy towards those faces outside her window. She felt a pang that was more than simple pity. Like her, such faces seemed relics left behind in a world that knew such little glimmer. Like her, they were people of the d ust, and Mercy wondered where their bones might one day rest, if there might not exist lines of dump trucks to carry their remains to whatever pile might accept them.
“How much further do we have to go?” Gazing out of the window tired Mercy.