Humor

Parched.

It was all about.

The water even...dry and dusty. Not really putrid. If you let it sit in the bottle, sand would fall to the bottom of the cut up plastic shell you use to scoop it up from the earth, and then, from the heat of the sun, it was so warm against the back of your throat you felt as if you'd need to chase it with some of the bottom sand, just to cool it off (your throat, that is).

Yeah, it was hot. And dusty.

The ground was cracked and craggled like an old woman's face, barren from years of depravation, and it too full of dust; gaping wounds in the mantle would remind you of the old gal's screams and laments as she cursed another day with that puckered, toothless grin.

Only the ground didn't smile. It just sat there, agape. Like a dead man's mouth.

Even the flies crawled through the cuts, looking for that drop of center-seeking dew.

Nodda.

"The rains will come again one day, old boy," the old man on the front porch said.

He leaned back on his wooden chair 'gainst the wooden shuts on the wood-framed store and spat his 'backer cross the dusty lot.

He took a swig off his RC.

"They always come back. Earth deems it that way. Even God wouldn't deprive a dying man a drink, no matter his fate after the fact."

Leyton just huffed.

Kicked the ground with his boot just to watch the tiny dust devils leap from the sandstone lot.

Then he huffed again.

"Reckon so, you ol' coot. But I'll tell ya...Ain't n'er seen it dis dry."

"Dry as an old man's dreams. Rain's ey'll come though. 'Ey always do," the old man snickered.

"Reckon I'll get back to the farm, old man. Cow's ey'll need feedin'," countered Leyton, exasperated and labored.

"You do 'at boy. Feed 'em good. See you round tomorrow," old man bit another chomp of his moon pie and spat dry graham cracker dust mixed with Penn's Thins tobacco juice across the decayed wooden porch right as he spoke.

"Feed 'em good boy. See 'at t'ey git plenty water too," he laughed long and hard.

"Yeah old man. Check! See you tomorrow you old coot. Don't choke on 'at moon pie uh yorn," and with that, Leyton began the long walk down the dusty road that laid out before him like all the rest of his born days stretching to that event horizon where for brief instant, those alley lines, left and right will meet before parting again to infinity.

And on his walk to that long, dusty home, it began...to rain!

Life sustaining rain.

And, just like the road...

on it goes.