Nuts - Anne Wright

The three of them sat on the floor of the deserted house, watching the rain shimmering on the big window glass as light from a passing car beamed by, the only vehicle they had seen in days. Paulie and Sue had laid claim to this room first, laying out their sleeping bags next to the wall. Then Samson had appeared.

Samson was tall and very tan, burned by the sun and sandblasted by the wind. He wore his grey hair in a twisted, ropy crown of dreadlocks and looked to Paulie like someone from long ago. When Paulie first saw him, he flashed on an image of Samson walking through a barren canyon carrying a basket of crows on his back. That was the way Paulie was, though, burned out from the peyote and vodka, nuts enough to believe that the image meant something. Really big. Enormous. Earthshaking.

Samson had asked if he could stay a few days. He was on his way to Mexico. Paulie looked at Sue and tried to smile. His lips quivered. He wanted Samson to stay but first he needed to get Sue’s approval.

He took Sue aside and told her of his vision. “There is something about him. I feel his power and it is good, and has to be channeled,” he said.

“I don’t have a problem with his staying, but he’s gotta do something for us, pay us. We own this place now.”

That was Sue, Paulie thought. Always wanting from people. Like the universe owed her.

They talked with Samson and agreed to allow him to stay the night; they cared about people, Paulie said, and they wouldn’t want to send him back into the rain. Paulie looked at Samson’s boots and saw the sole of one was held together with duct tape and all. He decided right then that the silver tape was a sign. A sign of something good, but Paulie didn’t know what it was, yet.

How they happened to be in the desert still amazed Paulie. It was the thing he talked about the most. They loved the space and the open sky and the dryness, and when the rain came they loved that more. But it was old truck who took them where it wanted, it was like that. Truck was what got them everywhere and they gave it rein. When truck needed gas, they stopped for a while. When truck decided to take a break and blow a tire, they’d stop again for a while. It was here in the desert on a lonely road near the old shack of a farmhouse that truck wanted to stop, and Paulie and Sue knew it was another sign. Like when Samson appeared.