GoKawiilIt fell from the sky like a shooting star, out in the desert west of town.
Had it not fallen then, in that hour before dawn, I’d never have seen it. I normally wouldn’t even have been awake then, but Marcy had quit mid-shift, leaving no one else to sell Marlboros and tar-black coffee and diesel fuel and burritos to all the all-night truckers along this lonely stretch of highway.
Had it not fallen so close to the ranch, I’d never have been able to retrieve it. The Buick would have thrown its grasping transmission before I’d hauled the smouldering mass back to the barn. I normally wouldn’t even have had the trailer hooked up, but the ice chest had busted, and Howard had offered to lend us his deer cooler, though he refused to move it himself.
It was a sign, a miracle, an answer to a hundred prayers. That scraped-up heap of metal and glass, so strange and otherworldly, was going to be my ride out of here.
*****
I slept for half the day and woke surprised it was still there, peering at me with predator-sharp eyes from beneath my carelessly flung tarp. It hadn’t been a dream.
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Its beak-like canopy was knocked ajar and the seat within it was empty. Anyone (or anything) that had been piloting had either ejected or been thrown in the crash. All the better for me; disposing of a body wasn’t exactly on my bucket list.
I hosed her off, clearing off dust and dirt and char from atmospheric re-entry. The landing gear wobbled back and forth like broken talons. Radar-absorbing panels overlapped along her wings, but where a handful had been torn off, the peculiar metal layered underneath glimmered like metallic feathers.
Sometimes it takes a bit of brokenness to see the beauty in it all.
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