Fossil Country

The pickup was of an indeterminate color. Between the patches of rust and the veil of yellow dust covering the entire vehicle there were suggestions that at least one fender had started life as a robin’s egg blue, the color of spring and hope.
The truck motored sullenly along the ribbon of macadam highway in a rusted and veiled country like itself. The land, he thought, had once been the floor of a teeming ocean; the eons had settled the debris of life year by year on its warm shallow floor. Now the floor was a cliff, ruptured and pushed up to the grey sky by the whim of the world. The private lives of countless beasts were now thrust into the harsh scrutiny of the sun, their secrets exposed anew with each winter rain. Trails of red ochre seeped down couloirs of the yellow rock toward the ignominy of the roadside ditches.
George looked at the broach in its box next to him on the seat which he had covered in an army blanket to prevent the escaped springs from attacking unwary passengers. His father had given the thing to his mother, she said. A broach instead of a ring, George thought. He picked it up and held the small box between his large knuckled hands as he steered, turning it over and over. The corners of the box had become scraped over the years and the many moves. The paper exposed by the scrapes had become foxed and the water-stain from the flood at the last trailer-park was still evident. His mother never seemed to have a reason to wear the broach, except the once when he got himself baptized. That had made her so proud of him. He remembered how young and alive she looked, a green ribbon in her auburn hair.
In the hospital in Tucson she had looked scared and much older than her forty-two years. The doctor had told her the bad news. He said that they could do some stuff to ease her pain. She gripped his hand as she listened to the quiet voice, as once authoritative and ashamed. He had stayed with her for the short time it had taken her to die in the hospice. She had been comfortable enough he supposed. Once she smiled at him through her labored breaths, “This takes so long to die.” He had squeezed her hand.
Once she was asleep he had gone out to the truck and collapsed against the hurricane fence in the parking lot. Grief overcame him and he had folded his tall frame into a ball of grief and misery. He had cleaned himself up and found a ribbon for her hair, a green ribbon. She had died while he was gone.
George opened the box and looked at the broach, the fire within the large opal flashing green and red, pink and blue as if it were alive. On the back was engraved in a shaky free-hand, “All my love forever, G.”
He wondered what he could get for it when he hit Phoenix. It should sell well on display at the pawnbroker's.