Red

[image error]"She is up there," they tell us. "Up in them hills."

They file on past, eyes averted, some making religious gestures, clasping tokens, intoning auguries, chanting maledictions, the superstitious fools.

A red-tailed hawk catches a thermal and whistles a falling oath, while rising. Pretends to give a shit.

We set to climbing the red hills, breathing the sun's furnace and its diffuse issue from the world's parched surface, the sounds of the ferrous rocks we dislodge like a pool hall absent the c...