Creative Writing Sample

An excerpt from Chapter One of a novel I’m working on…

The red Trans-Am roared down the highway, chewing through black asphalt and premium unleaded with equal enthusiasm. The desert that used to be farmland crawled slowly past like the revolving backdrop of an old Technicolor movie, despite the speedometer creeping up past 135. Monochromatic hills marked the hazy horizon, hemming in the God-forsaken valley like the parapets of a castle wall. They were low, smooth, and tan to the west, but gradually grew to ragged purple spires on the eastern horizon. Clouds gathered in those peaks; angry banks of pent up energy growling and snarling with occasional bursts of rolling lightning. And although the noonday sky was as spotless as a robin’s egg, the driver could feel the static charge in the dry air, and the golden hair on his arms stood on end. Out of the Trans-Am’s booming speakers came the shimmering guitar and high, sweet voice of Glenn Frey…

On a dark desert highway, he sang, cool wind in my hair…

But the wind was not cool today. Relentless, yellow sunlight baked the pavement, summoning shimmering mirages to dance beneath the faded denim sky.

Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air…

The driver hadn’t the foggiest idea what a colita was, but he was sure this desert didn’t smell like it. Unless, of course, colita was the Spanish word for dust, or motor oil. Which, thanks to a few years of half-remembered high-school Spanish, he knew was not the case. The driver recalled coming down this road as a kid… the mostly featureless 362 mile stretch divided in his mind by three landmarks: the outlet mall at the valley’s southern mouth, the rest stop with an In-N-Out a few hours north, and the reeking industrialized cattle-ranch a little ways past that. He was driving south now, and while the methane and ammonia of cow leavings had long ago dissipated into the wide dome of sky, he could see where that ranch had been, and a fair number of cow bones poking out of the stiff, dead grass. Both grass and bone had been bleached white enough by the sun to star in their own Colgate commercials. The poor Grade-A slabs of beef had never even tried to run.

Hand painted signs shouted their messages at the driver of the Trans-Am:

No Water = No Jobs

and

Dams, not Trains!

But they had built trains, hadn’t they? Behemoth locomotives with shrieking steam whistles howling at the moon, and polished, chrome hulls scattering kaleidoscope light onto the ancient hillsides. The roar of their engines and the rumble of wheels might have at first sounded like the horn of progress, but towards the end, it had sounded like the screams of a man in hell, begging Abraham for a drop of water to slake his burning thirst and cool his blistering tongue.

Even the railroad tracks had faded now, swallowed by the pale sands marching in from the west. The sparse grass that remained bowed in Mohamadean submission eastward, and the once gleaming engines now gathered rust and dust in their lonely stations between Los Angeles, Fresno, and Sacramento.

Dried up riverbeds and discarded tires were the only things that greeted the driver as he hurtled across the deserted landscape. A prophetic green sign warned of “Gusty Conditions Ahead,” and sure enough, the Trans-Am soon began to jolt and skip sideways, its broad, genuine Firestone tires squealing in protest as the invisible hand of wind nudged the vehicle east. The road changed too, from smooth, black asphalt, to an old gray road, textured and rough with spiderweb fractures and cracks. The driver raised his aviators to sit on the top of his head and sharpened his gaze, keeping a weather eye out for potholes. They were made maddeningly difficult to spot with the sun shining directly overhead, and more than a few times he braced himself for a blowout as the Trans-Am’s suspension jolted sharply, rattling the driver’s bones sore, and sloshing the Jerrycans of gasoline lassoed together in the backseat. He slowed, and soon found himself rarely exceeding 70 miles an hour, which the Kelly-green signs frequently reminded him was, in fact, the prescribed legal limit.

Not that there was anyone around to enforce that law.