Driving down another dry, endless stretch of a hot, rural highway, her thoughts, like the road led her nowhere. Long, yellow painted dashes and reflective dots, one after the other, safely dividing those who were driving east from those who were driving west hypnotized her. She fiddled with the tuner button on the radio, moving it a bit to the left and a bit to the right but never enough in either way to silence all the static. Well beyond the reaches of any radio station antennas the static was now louder that her favorite songs that were playing. 

"I ain't never been with a woman long enough"...sssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhsssssssssssssss..."Heard it in a love song, heard it in a"...sssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhs..."Darn it! This always happens! What the heck am I even doing here?!"Frustrated, she slammed her hand on the dashboard sending the tiny Hawaiian figurine into a frenzy. Reverberating furiously from side to side; the plastic hips attempted to keep up with the wild, brown eyes bouncing back and forth. Upset, she turned off the radio and just sang the song herself. "If I ever settle down you'd be my kind"...hmm...¦hmmm..."Heard it in a love song"...hmmm...hmmm... "can't be wrong." The sound of the flute and the piano riff carried her away.

 Her singing took her far away from the miles of desolate dirt that surrounded her, far away from the nothingness, far away from the destitution, and far away from the loneliness...anything anywhere had to be better than this.  She tried to find another station, maybe the Eagles or the Allman Brothers Band would be playing somewhere but the only other stations she could tune into were the valley Christian stations. They came in loud and clear.Growing up she was always told she was a sinner...a sinner who would never amount to anything and finding redemption would be impossible because she was flawed from the start; through no fault of her own. No!! It was because of Adam and Eve she thought but that was blasphemous and no matter how faithfully she recited her prayers at night, or how many times she drank the wine from Sister Claire Marie's goblet or consumed the communion host during Monsignor O'Toole's Sunday masses, she was still doomed. She would never be able to drink enough salvation or eat enough redemption to save her unfortunate soul from the grips of Satan so she didn't want to hear it again.  She bit her bottom lip, turned the radio off and thought about something else.

She remembered her childhood scribblings inside her mother's leather bound bible:  I LOVE GOD AND GOD LOVES ME written in great, big, awkward letters about a hundred times in all the 64 colors inside her Crayola crayon box. She wondered if she still loved God or if God still loved her. She was such a devoted little girl but no one ever noticed her scribbles or her love for a God who never appeared. She waited but he never came. His absence was proof that she didn't believe hard enough and now, the translucent flames emanating from the asphalt in front of her were just assurances of the eternal damnation waiting for her once she left this world. 

Her eyes focused on the road and there was no end to it; stretching straight into eternity right into the opaque furnace that lay before her. The closer she got to the flames, the more they retreated. She could never catch up to them. They laughed and danced in front of her. She stepped on the gas pedal so she could drive right through them but the flames ran away, knowing she would never go fast enough to extinguish them. Gripping the steering wheel, her knuckles turned bright red as her fingernails cut holes into the leather covering. She was hoping now that maybe if she only drove faster, she would drive right through those flames and pass them and put them out but they knew better.

She stepped harder on the accelerator pedal of her Dodge Dart but the flames were always there. Gradually, she passed one car after another. 55 mph, 60 mph, 65 mph, now 75 mph. but as she passed each car, she couldn't go fast enough. The flames beckoned her and as she followed, the flames went faster still.  Her ankle grew sore from the constant pressure on the gas pedal. She lifted her right foot and the speed of the car decreased.There was not a single car behind her so she could go any speed she wanted to now. The car slowed to a sluggish 50 m.p.h and as her left elbow hung out the window; her skin sizzled and burned under the unrelenting summer sun. Bored with the scenery and the silence, she grew drowsy with every passing neglected, ramshackle fruit and nut stand.

One by one the signs read Tovmassian Farms...tops of trees and stiff, upright almond branches whisked by... Garabedian family owned...row after row of twisted, gnarled grape vineyards went by in a blur...Nakamoto Orchards since 1942...dusty pathways filled with hundreds of hunched brown figures covered underneath flimsy straw hats and colorful, tattered handkerchiefs wrapped around their mouths; delicately plucking row after row of bright berries that stretched as far as the highways.  And in between the farms, horses and cows and more and more horses and more and more cows. She drowned in the stench of the manure-scented fields. Tired, she didn't want to read any more signs or see any more livestock or smell any more shit.

She didn't know how it happened, but the dashes and dots on the highway began to bleed into one; they smeared into one big, yellow tsunami devouring the black asphalt. She rode the waves of the blacktop but she wasn't sure what side of the road she was driving on until a big rig came up right in front of her blaring its horn to remind her what side of the road she should be on. She swerved to avoid being hit head-on by the massive aluminum monster on 18 wheels. The rig zoomed by and a violent gust of dusty wind swept through the open windows and the monster's roar vibrated and shook the fragile frame of the car.  Both hands on the wheel, she spat out the dirt from her mouth and wiped the sting from her eyes and the sweat from her forehead.

 She hated driving these dirty, isolated highways. It was the same landscape over and over and over again. It was enough to put anyone into a senseless stupor. Even the most experienced of drivers would find themselves mesmerized by the monotony of it all and hopefully steer their vehicles out of the way just in time to avoid an accident. Sometimes people were not as lucky. Driving off the road and landing in a canal killing all passengers inside rarely made the obituary section of the local newspaper since people expected this to happen all the time anyway. No one cared since it was usually the drunken farm workers who met with such a fate.

Arriving dutifully to work at the packing house every morning, her uncle Ismael knew that if someone was missing from the line for a day or two, they were most likely hungover. But, if they were gone for longer, it usually meant they met their end at the bottom of a ditch. 

"Pobres" he would say. Just  "Pobres" and shake his head, "tsk, tsk." It was difficult to determine who Ismael was referring to when he said "Pobres" for soon the empty spots on the line would be replaced with another indistinguishable, forlorn-looking face reluctantly accepting the paid task of sorting the good fruit from the bad. Eight to ten hours a day spent sluggishly laboring underneath a rusty, slow-moving three bladed fans that hesitantly steered the stagnant air. No one was ever completely released from near asphyxiation inside the archaic structure of the packing house until it was quitting time.

Reading the obits section on his lunch break, Ismael looked for a mention of a familiar name, a Lopez, a Hernandez, a Gutierrez but none was to be found. Up and down over the columns his eyes went but the only names printed were a Johnson, a Williams, and a Smith...He stopped reading. Knowing, the obits were saved for those upstanding citizens of the community who supported the 4H, the Kiwanis, and the Rotary Clubs. 

The respected members shared a group like appearance of being kept alive by a healthy dose of daily intravenous drips of formaldehyde. You could always spot them out. Their paper-thin skin stretched across their frail skeletons draped in matching polyester suits and elevated orthopedic shoes. Hands trembling, they grasped their walkers hobbling with crooked spines toward the pharmacy counters like resurrected corpses. Purchasing supplies for their drips and arthritic medication; the pharmacist couldn't service them as quickly as he liked for soon enough, their diapers filled with pee and fecal matter. The poison odor was unavoidable no matter how polite an expression the pharmacist pretended to have.  Customers as far away as aisle 13 could smell the rotten stench wafting over the metal tins of La Campana and the clear bottles of witch hazel. With their supplies filled, they shuffled slowly toward the exit, their polyester clothing now ballooning with diapers filled with waste.

 Wondering and wandering; she didn't know what but something made her stop daydreaming. She focused on the windshield and noticed the enormous amount of insects splattered yellow and oozing their green little guts all over the place. The gooey, crusty gunk spread out and dried up instantly. The continuous tapping of the insects dying upon impact made her think of the mess she would have to clean up later. Scrubbing and spraying the glass at the corner dime slot car wash near her house with any old, smelly rag she could find. Right alongside the elderly couples who took great care of their cars and went to great measures to keep their vehicles clean so they could drive with pride into the church parking lot on Sundays. She would look at them with bewilderment as they looked upon her with pronounced judgment as she scraped her car clean in her fluorescent, yellow tube top and skimpy, denim cut off shorts. She thought for a moment as their eyes met and she was reminded how she always seemed to be on the wrong side of approving glances.

Once the car was clean, she would continue her drive down the lonely stretch of asphalt with the motor humming and wonder about the insects that she had just scraped away; thinking about people and the similarities between the two. Was the lifespan of an insect so very different from that of a human? Whether it was only a few weeks or eighty years, the outcome is ultimately the same - we all find ourselves concealing our various stages of decay as we all move along on the same conveyor belt... a conveyor belt moving us all to the same destination - a destination leading to death.

It happened in an instant, a drowsy response to a barely seen roadside hazard, and suddenly, a bright, flashing light, accompanied by an invisible force thrusting her from the driver's seat and onto the side of the road. Hazily, in a state of shock, she wondered what happened. "Am I alive? I don't think I'm dead.... I don't know.... where am I? I think... I'm alive; yes...I am alive...." The last things she remembered were the screeching brakes and the sound of breaking glass. She struggled to move but her body wouldn't listen. She tried to yell: "Get up! Walk!" But her commands went unheeded. Lying on the scorching asphalt, her skin began cracking into cavernous, jagged fissures.

Gasping uneasily, she looked toward the car and thought it resembled an abstract sculpture she had seen once on a field trip to the only museum in town. She was fascinated with the sculpture, never seeing anything like it before. So when the class made a return visit to listen to a lecture on local native tribes, she wandered off to find the piece and realized it was gone. She knew better than to ask about it because she knew early on that people didn't like things that weren't normal or pretty.

The shards of metal and the stink of rubber, the broken plastic and the shattered pieces of glass still falling to the ground turned the once moving vehicle into an alarming signpost of danger. Surely anyone driving by couldn't ignore the twisted, gnarled spectacle and not decide to pull over to see if everything was okay; but the familiar sound of another car's motor was not to be heard. The accordion looking engine produced a cloudy altar of steam as it achingly moaned like a carnival calliope; hopelessly trying to keep from evaporating as it spread across the lonely roads. Far off, the sound of tractors churning acres of soil could be heard. The whistles and shouts of the farmer's instructions to his field hands wafted through the air and reassured her that help was not too far away.

Help came in the way of an army. An army of red ants began crawling in and around her toes and wrapping themselves tightly around her ankles, ripping and voraciously stinging into her skin and depositing their venom. Her skin welled up into mountainous peaks erupting and cascading with rivers of pus and milky fluid dripping from each blister top. With reinforcements arriving, the giant, bloodsucking horse flies buzzed all around her, landing on her listless body and laying their eggs inside her open wounds. She could do nothing to shoo them away and they began to multiply. One by one they flew in like miniature fighter jets skillfully coming in for a landing; their proboscises mechanically extending and retracting as they eagerly lapped up her nutrients; feasting and gorging themselves until they were so full they wobbled clumsily before readying themselves for take-off. Even though she couldn't move, she could feel the pain of the insects eagerly feeding upon her.

"I just need to pray...praying will make them go away." "Padre Nuestro que estas en el cielo (Our Father who art in heaven)...Santificado sea tu Nombre" (hallowed be thy name)...she forgot what came next. She just knew that the insects were still there and her prayers didn't help.

Moving her head slightly looking for help, she could feel the gravel piercing her scalp. She lifted her head to remove it from the painful cushion of rocks and pebbles but she couldn't get comfortable. The dry weeds screamed agonizingly for her attention. They screamed for water as they tumbled across the roadway toward her, reminding her of her own thirst. She licked the roof of her mouth and tried to swallow the saliva.

"Madre Maria, dame agua" (Mother Mary, give me water). Her throat stung with every attempt, her eyes looked around for water but all she could see were the smashed empty water bottles unceremoniously strewn around her Hawaiian figurine with its brown eyes still cheerfully bobbing from left to right.

An overbearing heat wrapped around her throat and quickly enveloped her entire body. After the intense heat passed over her, she couldn't feel anything. She tried to move her arms and legs again but couldn't. She blinked quickly, the light from the sun hurt her eyes and all she could see was the sky. The pale blue sky that always surrounded her was still there. She ignored it so easily before but now it was her only companion. Covering and caressing her, the clouds joined in and danced around the sun; shielding her from his angry rays. Happy for the clouds and their protection, she guessed that maybe her prayers were working. With the light coming in and out, she thought she could see God. God was here. She finally believed hard enough. Squinting to get a clearer view, she was ready to receive him.

The buzzards and crows loudly announced his presence. They encircled her from above and through the feathered blanket, she caught glimpses. Glimpses of a man who peered from behind the clouds; he was playing hide and seek, revealing only bits and pieces of himself. Darting in and out, she could see that it was a man, but was it, God?"I don't think so." He looked nothing like her classroom pictures of God. "Who was he?" The clouds parted and she saw that no, it wasn't God. She still didn't believe hard enough for him to appear. This man was draped in elaborate sun-drenched robes and now emerged right before her. Hanging beside him was a sword dangling by a horse's hair. The sword swayed from side to side, lowering, getting closer and brushing the tip of her nose. She hoped that the delicate horse's hair wouldn't snap. Not knowing who he was, she asked him to remove the sword. "If you are someone who knows God then you must be here to help me." He listened. "I'm in trouble, the flies are eating me and there is nothing I can do." He made no response. 

"I don't think you're here to help me."

She felt foolish for not paying better attention to the road. She, like the farm workers, met with the same fate. "How could I've been so careless?"Wanting him to go away, she closed her eyes and thought maybe when she opened them, he would be gone..."Please.... please." Opening her eyes, he and the sword were still there. She closed her eyes again. Eyes opened, he and the sword were gone.Careless or not, no one was immune to the hypnotic effects of the main artery known as Highway 99. Regularly devouring legions of drivers and their unsuspecting passengers. Whether it was with the support of the blinding reflections of the sun, or the torrents of rain from the storms, or the thick drapery of fog; the presence of her arterial grasp was always there. Locals knew of the unreliability of the 99 during any type of weather but to get through the valley, there was no other route. Even with the planting of twelve-foot 'freeway flowers' to serve as a barrier between the north and southbound lanes, the pink and white colors of the oleander never proved to be a suitable safety barrier. The accidents still happened. Drivers and passengers still flew through windshields, spun out of control and eventually stopped underneath stretches of sporadic eucalyptus groves. Abandoned trailers, rusty trucks and a hodgepodge of automotive debris told the tale of past accidents. Most drivers when passing such a display often said their prayers to St. Christopher in the hopes of a safe passage.

No matter the conditions, the 99 always made certain that she was pristinely adorned in her 425 miles of tri-colored ribbons of paints and tar; but she was neither a kind guide nor an adequate assistant to getting one to their destination. As if on a first date, she eagerly beckoned you to follow her, to follow her down her paths and stretches and to have eyes for none other than her. When she noticed your eyes stray, your gaze preoccupied with another, she turned on you. Justifiably, she wreaked havoc. By the time you noticed you made a mistake, it was too late. She was already enjoying the banquet of bodies who thought at one time they were only driving back and forth from one hardly known desolate town to another.

The tractors stopped and the whistles and shouts were no more; just a few barking dogs waiting to be fed. She strained her ears to hear just a little bit more but now the dogs had stopped and all she could hear was the silence....just the silence. Arching her neck toward the horizon, she figured she was lost somewhere near the middle of the emptiest part of the earth. Someplace between the raisin capital of the world and the abandoned chain of Dairy Queen drive thru's.

Her thoughts began to slow like the diminishing flicker of a broken neon light and the blanket of pale blue sky was lazily devoured by the night and everything was dark. She closed her eyes and did not open them for a very long time. The prayers she learned in school called her to participate.

Inhaling heavily and exhaling slowly several times before the words from her classroom recitations sputtered out. "Dios te salve Maria" (Hail Mary)....Her chest slowly heaved up and down. "Llena eres de gracia (full of grace)"...Coughing up blood, the words flowed down from her memory but became blocked with each scarlet gush and gurgle. "Santa Maria, Madre de Dios (Holy Mary, mother of God), ruega por nosotros los pecadores (pray for us sinners), ahore y en la hora de nuestra muerte (now and at the hour of our death), Amen."

...Amen...amen..."Drifting...her prayers and the night breeze carried her far away from the reality of the car wreck and into the world of memories and dreams. One after the other images and feelings flashed across her mind like lightning bolts of raw emotions fleeing the mental incarceration of not wanting to be remembered anymore. The keys to this cage having been thrown away a long time ago. Now they were set free and were in a tangled hysteria of excitement. Appearing as disjointed montages on a tattered movie screen with the sounds of the night as a soundtrack for each faded celluloid scene.

Sitting in a classroom month after month memorizing prayers and reading all the stories in the Bible was deemed necessary for the indoctrination of young souls. Each child seriously preparing to make the decision to find the flesh and the blood of one's God suitable for consumption. 

For her, the months spent in Sunday morning catechism classes filled her with agony. Images of Christ dripping with blood as his emaciated body hung upon the cross. His hands and feet embedded with nails, his loincloth slightly askew and the groups of soldiers and of mothers both laughing and weeping made her wonder if the King of the Jews would make for a tasty morsel.

This particular morning she arrived late to class so she was forced to sit in the front row, something she never chose to do. Sitting at her desk, legs crossed at the ankles, she wondered as Father Roberto Bellini spoke whether Jesus and the saints in their infinite power and wisdom, could read her thoughts. Her thoughts were not of absolute beliefs. Could Father tell? Would she be thrown out of class? She couldn't help it but she began to think that there were some things that just didn't make sense with Father Roberto's teachings.

How could God live up in Heaven and watch over every single one of us? When feeding the multitudes, how did Jesus take five loaves of bread and two fish and feed so many people? How is that possible? How did Noah live to be over 950 years old? She just couldn't figure it out and neither could the volunteer instructors. Whenever one of her classmates asked for one of these questions to be explained, they replied:"Now, now little one, don't be bothered with such questions, for you must believe. If you believe then it is so. Remember, one must demonstrate faith and never falter from believing what it is we are teaching you."

As the children's heads were patted in a mocked demonstration of concern and care, a child could not miss the condescending actions of the instructors. Knowing they were not cared for in the classroom, their only hope was to remain unnoticed and unapproached. Invisible just like the Almighty God they were told was everywhere but couldn't be seen.

She observed the manner in which the various modern-day disciples interacted with one another when being bothered by the children's questions and could see that through the crooked, aged, caffeine stained, smiles that not only did they not care for the children but they didn't care for one another either. Smiles, jokes, and laughter abounded but sincerity was not a concern. They looked just like the pictures of Hell's inhabitants that she colored last week in her catechism workbook. They were definitely people she was warned to stay away from but now they were right before her in the classroom. Was she the only one that could see them? She looked around and the rest of the class was quietly coloring. Nobody else noticed Satan and his host of demons. She was the only one who could see them.

She became alarmed. She had found Satan and his soldiers right there in the classroom. Surely this revelation would bring her closer to God. She thought that perhaps she should alert Father Roberto right away that demons were present in class. She gripped her hands together and thought for a bit. When she gathered enough courage to approach the cloth clad, hefty man she fell mute. She looked into his green eyes but the light from the window gleamed from upon his shiny, bald head and made her wince. She soon became convinced with his contorted expression of concern and a lopsided smile that he was not only the leader of the small church congregation but was also the leader of the crooked, the aged, the stained and the insincere. She held her breath turned away and returned to her desk. Her courage now falling down her forehead as beads of sweat. She placed her hands on her lap, sat very still and looked outside. Hoping he would not see her or notice her meek attempt to warn him of the demons in the classroom.

He cleared his throat and walked toward her, paused near another student's desk, scratched the front of his rotund waist underneath his thick, white cloak, blew his nose and proceeded to walk by her as if she wasn't there. Her stillness worked, he had not noticed her in his classroom nor her attempt to tell him that there were demons in the classroom. She was invisible like God and overlooked. By the end of class, Father Roberto was the only adult left. What had happened to the others? She didn't care as long as they were gone. All she wanted was to escape from the classroom and get the ceremony over and done with.

After reading the pages of scriptures and reciting all the prayers, the months of Sunday school finally culminated with the celebration of First Communion. This was to be the next step in the initiation process. Not knowing exactly what to expect, the children were told to be excited and anticipate the joyous event. So they smiled and squirmed in the pews during rehearsals as they were being instructed on how to receive the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. She wondered if he would be as tasty as a steak or as flavorless as a piece of dry, unbuttered toast. She had no idea. As for his blood, she knew what that tasted like, having sucked away at her own playground wounds. The day for consuming her God was drawing nearer.

For weeks, the parents huddled together outside the classrooms to talk about this, that, and the other. Chatter about dresses, veils, shoes, and suits. Roundabout discussions about cakes, parties, outdoor bbq's, and relatives. She sat near the door of the classroom and listened. Parents were talking rapidly and over one another. Everyone excitedly engaged in a verbal merry-go-round of nonsense. Leaving the classroom, her hands tightly grasped the mane of her horse as she rode through the group of grown-ups with the menagerie of animals that no one else saw but her. The sound of the maniacal carnival organ played faster and louder until it finally drowned out all of the adult voices. She rode away on her brightly painted horse with elephants, zebras, and giraffes in swift pursuit.

The special day finally arrived. The class of third graders stood on the altar with Polaroid flashbulbs going off all around them. She looked everywhere trying to find a lens pointed at her to 'smile,' someone out there to call her name but she was blinded by all the bright lights and the sounds of voices calling the names of her classmates. Once the ceremony was done and all the pictures had been taken, parents and relatives proudly grabbed their children and brought them down the steps of the altar one by one.

The pews had emptied and were strewn with church missalettes and crumpled Kleenex tissue. She stood there with her hands clasped behind her back, slowly swaying from left to right. No one was around. She clenched her fingers together even tighter and stopped swaying. She looked down at her patent leather shoes. They were nice and shiny. She looked at her lacy, white anklet socks. She looked at her little knees that she scrubbed so clean with a sponge the night before in the tub. The silk lace of her dress was a design of florets and berries. She began to hum the songs she learned in class...Ave Maria was her favorite. Kneeling on the marble altar, she prayed for one more flashbulb to take her picture on this day she was told was to be a special one but there were no flashbulbs, no cameras, no smiling faces...no one at all.

The heavy, wooden double doors creaked open.

"What are you doing there? I've been looking all over for you."

It was her mother, the only one to show up. She scurried from the altar eagerly searching for a Polaroid camera.

"Mom, did you see me?" Jumping from side to side. "Did you see me up at the altar?"

"Of course I saw you."

"Did you take a lot of pictures?"

"Of course I didn't. Your father was supposed to do that and he never showed up."

She stopped looking for a Polaroid. All her mother had was her purse, the car keys, a wad of crumpled Kleenex, and a silent car ride home.