Today we are in Hobbs, New Mexico, waiting for the wind to calm so we can go over to Texas and begin reloading tomorrow. The gusts are in the sixties, and the dirt is thick in the air, but life goes on in Hobbs with weathered tired faces, stringy flying hair, and shopping carts blowing around the Walmart parking lot.
The night before last, after a day of looking at the destruction in Joplin, I had a nightmare reeling for hours, continually looping, slow motion and chilling. A woman with penciled, arched, blackened eyebrows was staring at me from a dark velvet chair; yesterday I was stressed and couldn't get anything to go right, my mind would see her again, and again. I can see her now. She seems to represent the collective judgment of my neighbors and acquaintances, their misquided and filthy thoughts, illogical and ignorant; I have no use for their talk, ever so thin, without imagination.
Maybe the sharp dark woman is simply the weather girl, evil and merciless, pillaging the country with her tornadoes, wind, fire, drought, and floods. The warning in her arched brows is howling in the wind, around the corners of my truck, while my little boy watches his movies, and eats his dinner.
Tornadoes hit Oklahoma today bouncing vehicles off of Interstate 40, while my son and I battled our own wind in New Mexico. I thought of my dream, I studied her angry face, and I wished we were home with our car, and a beach towel, playing in the sand, watching the dog chase hermit crabs. Maybe soon.
