finds a windbreak behind it. She curls on the grassy floor of the dry- wash streambed, feeling the stab of cactus spines embedded in her cheeks and arm. She can feel the sand trickling into the gap of her collar and down her back. After a time she rubs crusty tears from her eyes and can see again. She pulls off the gauze mask and sits up, coughing and wheezing. All about her dust covers the grass and stones. She struggles to her feet, cradling her arm close to her side. Her elbow is swollen and shot with hot pain.
Not far away a coyote stands motionless. She stares numb and confused in its direction for several moments before she notices it, still as the landscape, the gray of its fur contrasting with the dust- covered boulders and stones.
She stares at it and takes a step forward. The coyote drops its head and backs away, keeping its eyes on her, until after a few feet it turns away and trots down the middle of the gulch floor.
She follows the coyote's prints in the dust. The gulch is a dozen feet deep, with sides of steep, corrugated dirt. At its lip are hard- packed overhangs, pocked with the mud cones of Cliff Swallow nests.
She comes upon two illegals in white cowboy hats, carrying bolsas, their faces covered by bandannas. Only their eyes and black hair are visible in the wedge of skin above their noses and below their foreheads.
Ruby pulls her gauze mask over her nose to hide her face. She stands coughing as they near. Her heart beats so hard she feels faint.
The illegals look like sand people. One of them has a bandage on his hand, brown blotches on the gauze, the stain of blood seep. They nod at her and pause.
She nods back and takes to coughing again.
One of the illegals removes his hat and holds it in both hands. Está enferma? he asks.
Sí. Mi boca está lleno de arena.
Lo siento. Puedo ayudar?
No, gracias. Estoy bien.
The man nods. Bueno. He looks behind him, in the direction she's headed. The one who has not spoken, who has the bandage soaked with blood and coated with dust on his hand, removes his hat and slaps it against his leg, brushing free a plume. A rifle hangs from his shoulder.
Ruby moves away. Vaya con dios, she says.
Dondé está su casa? asks the one with the rifle.
She keeps walking. She listens for their movements. She tenses to run even as she yet steps carefully through the sand and cactus. Her heart in her throat, she struggles to suppress her cough and to breathe, to be able to hear any sound of movement behind her.
Ruby moves toward town slowly. She feels snowflakes in her eyelashes like the smallest of blessings. A glorious hush falls upon the world. With the dust storm behind her and the snow squall upon her, she has no sense of east or west, past or present.
She thinks of the warmth and comfort she could find if she reaches the vet's office where her mother works, if she reaches someone to take her fever, to hold her up. To keep her from falling. To keep her safe. To return her to her baby girl, to squire them both away from Lord God and all his righteous rants and ravings.
She's faint and weak and begins to doubt her eyes. The falling snow looks red, soft crystals floating down like bloodstained feathers. She knows she's close to town but suddenly a quartet of horses appears galloping, snorting and shaking their heads.
One is a palomino, a pale golden blur in the blizzard of red snowflakes. The others are chestnut and roan, shaggy manes and arched tails. Their eyes are bright and wild as they gallop past. One of the roans, a stallion, slows and whinnies, tossing his head up and down.
Ruby remains still, frightened by the power and excitement of the horses. They canter around her for a moment, this quiet girl eerily motionless in the middle of a desert field, a girl out of place. It's like something out of Lives of the Saints, a miraculous girl there to tame the wild heart of the horses, only it is the animals who seem puzzled by her presence, who gallop over the hill to flee from this curious pilgrim of the cactus and prairie grass.
At Pueblo Boulevard, the hiss of tires on snow- wet asphalt. A siren Dopplers in the distance. It sounds like Lila crying, trapped in a wooden box with Lord God, watching out the windows as the world becomes swallowed by dust. A car's deep bass speakers throb. Ruby limps through the weedy parking lot of an abandoned Circuit City next to a defunct Blockbuster Video. The haggard facade of a beauty shop tagged with gang graffiti. Smashed windows of a camera shop next door. Shattered glass and fast- food paper bags litter the asphalt.
Ruby crosses the wide boulevard, forced to hurry on her sprained and swollen ankle through the honking traffic. The vet's office is a few miles farther. She reaches the median and waits for the walk signal. Cold spray from the passing cars' tires wets her cheeks. She slips her gauze mask over her mouth once again and stares stoically at the signal of an amber hand. Cars honk.
Mosca and George Armstrong Crowfoot sit in a line of cars at the red light and see Ruby trying to cross, standing in the median, covered with red dust. It's freezing cold and the jacket she wears is thin. Mosca rolls down his window and tells her, Get inside, honey pie. Get warmed up. No sense being out in the cold like that.
She shakes her head and won't look at them directly.
Come on, sweetheart! Where you headed? We take you wherever you want to go. You're going to catch your death out there.
Ruby hunches her shoulders and stares at the traffic signal.
Come on, chica! Get in here and we warm you up! We won't bite. Promise. 'Less you want us to.
Crowfoot feels sorry for her and watches as she hurries through the traffic, darting behind their pickup, to the other side of the intersection, caught by a green light halfway through, running with a hitch in her step in the pink snow.
Cars honk behind the pickup until it roars away. Finally the light changes and Ruby crosses the second lane of traffic. She limps down the sidewalk beside a snow- covered golf course. A Christmas stillness envelops it, the rolling greens coated a pure pinkish white, strips of red storm dust visible in the hollows of the sand traps. She passes a cemetery beside a seedy business district. Colored Christmas lights festoon the eaves of Vietnamese massage parlors and shabby strip clubs/casinos promising all- nude dancers and half- price drinks. She walks beneath a sign proclaiming, all nudes, all the time
! The snow settles upon
cinder- block liquor stores and palm- reader shops advertising vi siones del porvenir, amuletos para buen suerte, y pocíones contra mal ojo. She walks on, feverish and dizzy.
On Polk Street Ruby comes upon La Iglesia de los Niños de Jesus Cristo. Her skin burns. A heavy weakness fills her bones. She can no longer see clearly. She rubs her eyes and holds out her good hand, watches the snow settle upon it like pink icing.
The sky above ripples. Ruby limps through the churchyard, tears the gauze mask from her face, and gasps, spots in her eyes. When she reaches the steps of the brick church, her vision clouds purple. She sits on the cold steps.
The snow grows heavier, falling in great fluffy flakes. Her hair is soaked and limp. Near her stands the church's nativity scene, a small hut of recycled lumber, a roof of juniper bows and straw,
