Ashes and Dust

You could say that it was and evil place, that the land was possessed by something. But, to all those who lived there it was home sweet home. The land was like a desert, dead and dry. Fields of dead discolored grass stretched as far as the eye could see, like the ocean stretching beyond the horizon with the sun setting yonder the waves. I guess it would resemble the ocean if in fact in this land you had ever seen a thing called the ocean. And if you had seen one surely you must have been hallucinating.
Here in this land, the air is poisoned, and the sky lingers over you like a fog lingers over the valleys in the earliest of mornings. The sky is like a blank canvas, nothing but darkness covers it. No stars peek through and no light shines through the deep grey clouds that are scattered about the great open sky. Standing on the porch of the place I called home, I looked about the land at the dead trees scattering the hills and the dead grass and twigs you would dare to call a garden. Pebbles of red, litter the ground like garbage, and dust twirls about the air like a tornado.
No I guess you can say that there is nothing great about this place. It is no fairytale land, there are no happy endings, and there is no happiness in the people that inhabit the small white houses that line the roads, with pealing paint, and broken windows.

As I stood there looking out over the hills, time seemed to just go on forever, where in fact time didn’t go on at all. From out the front door behind me, sauntered a friend of mine, Andrew. Rubbing his eyes and petting his pillow hair forward to make it look at least half way decent, he stumbled forward and plopped down on the steps in front of my. He sat there for the longest time without saying a word, and without dividing his attention from the road stretching to the ends of the earth. Finally after for what seemed like forever he spoke, in an almost whisper.

“Do you ever wonder what’s out there beyond the hills and beyond the dying land that we call home? Do you ever think about something more pure than the dirt we walk on, the choking gases we breathe and call air” he muttered as he grabbed a handful of dirt and let it slowly poor from his pale fist, back to the cracked and dusty ground.

It amazed me that he thought so deeply about something better, something that we couldn’t have, and to me didn’t really exist. It made no different to me whether or not there was anything better, I was already adapt to the weakness and of what I had. Again for the longest time he just say there and let his mind wander, his eyes scanned the land like radar. I sat there and tried to think about what he had said about there having be something better out there.
He once talked about colors that were brilliant and bright, as if he had actually been to a place where those kind of things exist. He told me he had seen it in a dream that he had. There was water so pure that you could see through it, and it sparkled like the stars twinkled. The sky opened up and there was a blue behind the grey clouds, not a black canvas, but a bright blue blanket, warm and soft. Trees were lush and green, and the grass you could run your hands to through the blades and the morning dew would rub off onto your soft skin, not like the dead grass that only cut you and scared your hands if you dared to touch it. As much as I wanted to sit there and listen to his story of a dream world that we all know had no existence, I couldn’t bare to hear it anymore, cause I knew there was no such thing as life beyond a world that was as real as you could get already.
More time went by when Andrew would sit on the steps and scan the land as if he was waiting for something. On a morning when the clouds were lifted and the sky shown red with and clear, I stepped out from the front hall of the house and sat beside him on the steps.

“You’re still thinking aren’t you” I mumbled in a low voice as if I really wasn’t interested in the answer, but just saying something so that he would actually respond. I sat right down next to him.

“I don’t want to be here anymore. What is here for me? There’s nothing, and having nothing is being nothing.” He whispered as he got up and walked back into the house.

I just sat there in amazement in the response he gave me. I got myself up from the steps and started to head back into the house only to find Andrew walking back out with a can in his hand and a book in the other.

“You can come if you want. But I’m never coming back if I really do find what I’m looking for.” He shoved me aside and started walking east down the road, down the road to the side of the land where the sun sets. In the old world the sun would rise in the east, but here it sets in the east, for the east is in the direction of Israel, a place that Andrews book talked a lot about.

I didn’t want to let Andrew leave here all alone, so I jumped from the top step and started on after him. If there really was something out there, I too wanted to be a part of it, even if in the back of my mind I knew it didn’t exist.
We traveled east for hours, and finally came upon a stump surrounded in swamp water. Yellow and green bubbling up onto the surface and bursting like a soap bubble in the bathtub. Andrew just kept walking on, ignoring the stump, trying to leave everything that reminded him of home behind.

“I’m tired and parched.” Andrew finally said as he stopped and sat down on the rocky dirt covered ground.

A forest of dead trees scattered the land to our left and to our right a desert stretched out for miles, you could even see the heat waves racing horizontally to the landscape. Andrew set his book down and the can on top of it. The book was covered in leather and had a red ribbon folded between the pages at least half way through the book. Neither one of the objects found curiosity in me, so I just ignored them. But after a while the can was starting to look interesting to me. Andrew keep putting two fingers in there and pinching something and then just sprinkling it back in there.

“Hey Andrew what you got in that can of yours?” I said looking at him with curiosity. Andrew let out a bit of a chuckle. And picked up the can and peered into it before looking at me.
“It’s nothing really, just a can of ashes and dust from the fire place back home.” He said, with a slight smile that faded into a blank face.

It absolutely puzzled me! A can of ashes and dust? If anything to bring why not water? Water would have quenched out thirst, water would have provided us with something a lot better the ashes and dust.

“Why not water?” I said to him as we started walking further.

“I don’t need to bring water.” he said smiling, walking and looking down at the ground.

“God will provide me with an abundance of water.” He said as he continued walking, and as I stopped.

“Is that what this whole thing is about? Finding your God that you read in that book of yours?” I said in the most puzzled and furious voice. Andrew was trusting a figment of his imagination. I mean sure there were those who said that God was real, that there was such a thing, but if there really was a God, what kind of God would give his people a bare and deserted hell hole to live in?

All this just about made my head explode when he had said that God was the one who would provide for us. Andrew almost ignored a word of what I had said and just continued to walk.

After what had been almost two days we came across a vast rock that sat right on the corner of a four way path

“The corner stone?” Andrew whispered to himself.

“The corner what?” I said, hunched over with my hands on my knees, panting for air.

“I want to go home.” I added, but Andrew didn’t respond. Andrew just stood there, turning about and looking around as if something was suppose to be there waiting for him.

“I said I want to go home you ignorant bastard.” I said in almost a frenzy of anger, and a sense of revenge for having him drag me all the way out into the middle of nowhere.

“You can’t go back now, we have come so far!” he said as he held the can in his right hand, that was only a foot from my face, it was within hitting distance.

“God said he would provide, he promised his people a land full of life and color, and full of food. A place we could live and be free.” He said with a huge smile on his face, stretching from ear to ear.

“I’m sick of this God!” I said in a violent rage, hitting the can from his hands, and watching as it fell to the ground about his feet.

“You never said anything about God when we left; you just told me that you had seen it in a dream. What did an angel come and flap his wings and give you a message from God? Is that what he did? Tell me what he did!” I said now yelling and screaming at him.

As I was yelling at him I noticed he was down on his knees crying over the spilt ashes and dust. I had never seen him cry before, it amazed me. I turned around and started walking away as I left him there to cry and drown himself in his own pettiness and imagination. But as I walked further I didn’t hear his sobs of sadness anymore. For as I turned around and saw him standing above a patch of grass. Not brown nor dead and yellow or shaped like the blades of a knife, but a patch of green grass that was rapidly growing bigger around the stone that occupied the corner. Pretty soon trees started to sprout up from crack in the ground. The sky soon transformed into a blanket of blue with white clouds, and an ocean arose to our right, and the forest of lush green trees to our left. It was all so amazing to me. I spun around, looking about me, amazed at what I was seeing.

I turned about only to be face to face with Andrew, who was just standing there with a smile on his face. And said in a confident tone of voice.

“Yes my God will provide.”