The Wagons

The wagon caravan route passed through the fearsome dune-sand desert in Chihuahua, and no water was to be had, except what they carried, for fifteen days. And on the ninth day the oxen began to die and two days after, the horses. The boy walked alongside the wagon with his mother, she trudging in her leather lace up boots and dark blue skirt and white blouse, both of them gasping in the heat, while the father sat on the wagon box with an unlit pipe clamped in his teeth, glaring at the heat-waving horizon and the immovable blue sky, shaking the reins whenever the oxen slowed to a crawl. The oxen plodded dully, sinking into the sand. Every few hours the caravan had to stop and the men pitch in to rock a wagon's wheels out of a sink hole. There were few words and many grunts, curses and other profane outcries, while the woman stood helpless, grim and attentive with their kerchiefs tented over their heads to protect their already parched faces from the dazzling sun. The boy tried to help the men but was waved brusquely off, so he squatted on his heels, watching through slitted eyes. Nothing lived in this desert, not even ants or scorpions. Only rarely was a bird seen in the sky for the circling carrion birds who would pick clean the hulking ox and horse corpses left behind.