He sat alone in the desert, broken like the charred frame of a burnt-out house. His eyes were closed, his head bowed. Sweat gathered on his brow, streaked down his nose and cheeks, and dripped off his chin. The salinity burned his eyes and lips: one final mockery. Nothing was left, he knew, nothing at all. High overhead a small black figure circled on a thermal, waiting. As he had been waiting. He had drawn his limbs together as a last defense. That had been his last active deed. Resignation, complete in its onslaught, had since emasculated his will and rendered him passive. The sun continued to suck away his body fluids.
He had stood for a long, long time on this very spot before he had collapsed. The ribbon continued to shine on the horizon, impossibly far away. That ribbon, he suspected, was the road he had long ago lost. Now it played a game of hide-and-seek, appearing and disappearing like a Cheshire cat, leaving nothing in its disappearance but the tantalizing assurance of salvation. The game had long ago turned cruel. He could not bear to think that he might be the pawn, the plaything of desert gods, a disposable, non-reusable entity to be taunted and discarded at will; he shunned this thought repeatedly, warding it off fiercely to protect his sanity and the fragile peace of mind he had constructed for himself in these, his last moments.
He raised his head and opened his eyes one last time. An endless vista met his gaze, bleached to dull shades in the blazing afternoon sun. Desert visibility was once again mocking him; salvation looked to be only a dozen hard miles away. He knew from long experience in these lands that fifty miles could masquerade as a dozen. It did not matter; he no longer had the strength for even the latter.
Tragic. He had lost his road, he reflected as he gazed out, all too easily, very easily indeed. One moment he had been strolling rather absent-mindedly down a reasonably well-rutted, if lightly traveled road. The next moment, he stood bewildered in a landscape of Joshua trees, creosote bushes, and desert pavement. There was no trace of the road. He had frantically retraced his steps as far as his foggy memory would allow, but it was far too late. He glanced at his watch and realized it had been over an hour since he could remember noting anything at all about the road. Lost in his own world, he had wandered far beyond the bounds of prudence and safety. Now he was lost in the world-at-large as well.
He had angrily cursed his stupidity at that time, yet even then he struggled to pin down what it was that deflected some of the self-blame. He sensed that it was not entirely his fault. Suddenly, it clicked. He had not wandered off the road. The most distinctive feature of the road had been the rutted wheel tracks and the large banks that bordered the ruts. He knew that the act of crossing either bank in leaving the road would have interrupted any reverie he had been in. No, he had not wandered away from the track; this road had gradually, almost imperceptibly disappeared beneath his feet, diffusing into the land like river currents into the sea. As more and more time passed, he began to harbor a nascent bitterness towards the elements and circumstances responsible for his predicament.
After the initial panic had passed and he had regained his senses, he had turned once again to face his direction of travel and the uncharted unknown. He had strained his eyes and searched the horizon. There, he had caught his first glimpse of the resurrected road, a thin line wavering in the heat waves. He could see it was far, far off, over many deep ravines, winding up precipitous hillsides. It shimmered so tenuously, vanishing of its own accord at irregular intervals. Was it real? Was it actually his road? He felt a great hesitation in accepting what his eyes showed him. Other considerations crept in. Was it worth pursuing? Or should he husband his resources and seek his road in the immediate vicinity? He had stood in the rising wind that afternoon, debating these questions, horribly important questions suddenly, questions of life or death import, eyes squinting in the blowing dust and straining to the point of tears. Searching, searching for some sign, some concrete and telltale signal to allay his mounting fear and dissolve this unbearable uncertainty. The tears dissolved only the image of the shimmering ribbon, and the decision was made. Despair began its slow burn.
He stumbled through the wilds in aimless arcs for the next two days, hoping to stumble across his road, disbelieving that what he knew had happened to the road had actually occurred. He saw nothing but wasteland wherever he turned. The awesome silence and fierce heat of the desert, long his special friends, now assumed an alien and menacing nature. The strange beauty he had admired in the Joshua tree mutated into a grotesque and frightening spectacle. Periodically, he looked again to the horizon. Sometimes, the ghost-like ribbon was there, shimmering on the breeze. Sometimes it had vanished. Dreams. Dream images. He could not believe that such a harsh, sharp-edged reality could harbor such phantoms. Doubts about his choice of alternatives began to plague him. Had he struck out immediately, would he even now be back on track?
He began to curse the day he had set out on this journey. How was it he was expected to make this trip blindly? Why did the fates think this possible? Over and over, he bitterly tallied the elements against him: no road, no maps, no eyesight in the blowing dust, no feeling in his tired and numbed feet, and no guidance at all. Above all, he railed against his rising indecision.
Now and then in his erratic wanderings through the vicinity, he would cross a faint track in the sand of the type that couldn’t be seen until his eye began to sweep away from it. He would stop and stare intently. The outline would melt until he could no longer be sure if it was the ghost of the road, a game trail, or simply his imagination. Some of these he followed for a while until, disgusted with the lack of assurance, he abruptly abandoned them.
The thirst had become intolerable. His strength was gone. His will had been crushed. He felt the inevitable; he knew the certainty now of his impending death. This realization somehow comforted him and freed him from personal concerns. He let his mind wander to what it might find.
Doubt and faith. Doubt and faith. His mind kept circling back to these issues, unable to release them, unable to leave them alone like a tongue probing the hole where a tooth once resided. He knew now what had never been clear to him before. It was not as simplistic as he had been led to believe, as he had grown up believing. The vulgar credo that had been pounded into his head for years and years was wrong. Faith did not necessarily save. Doubt did not necessarily condemn. No, it was entirely possible that faith could condemn and doubt could save. He thought back on the irrational faith that had consumed him in his first hours of being lost. His blind belief that the road was to be found near-at-hand had led him to waste two precious days looking for an assumed salvation. Only now, with all decided, could he see his grave error. His faith would cost him his life.
It was true that he had doubted during that time; the road shimmering so far away throught the desert haze had been the object of his doubt then. It had complemented his faith. There was, he saw, no faith that was not on its flip side a doubt of something else. There was no way in the end of separating them. He had chosen foolishly. This particular orientation was to prove lethal. He could easily imagine another orientation, one of doubt in easy salvation and of faith in the distant shimmering vision that just might have saved him. But in the end, doubt and faith always resided in equal quantities; there could never be a surplus of one and a dearth of the other. The issue did not turn on any supposed abundance of faith or lack thereof; the only critical factor was the orientation of the faith/doubt.
He saw something else, too; faith/doubt was not necessary for his salvation. He knew it was possible to withhold all such projections and judgments. He knew that he could have put his head down at the outset and trudged forward without any emotional investment one way or the other. This, too, would have saved him. The only absolute requirement for his deliverance was furtherance of his course through the desert. If faith/doubt proved to be unnecessary to this end, then it need not be employed. If, however, it was employed, the orientation had better be in line with reality if disaster was to be averted. Misguided faith/doubt was the only attitude that guaranteed that one would go astray. He knew that he would pay for this truth with his life.
He looked into the sky and saw the vulture that had been shadowing him for three days now. He let his mind drift and imagined, with utmost clarity, the landscape as seen from the vulture’s eyes. He saw his own lone figure huddled and dying in the midst of a vast landscape, a small and insignificant object amidst miles and miles of evenly-spaced creosotes, grotesque Joshua trees, desert washes, ravines, and hills. He saw something else then in his mind’s eye; he could not tell whether his bitterness was prodding his imagination or if the desert itself was taunting him on some level. For quite clearly now, from the vulture’s perspective, he saw his long-sought road winding over a hill a couple of miles away. He smiled at the bitter irony of it.
There was, he affirmed, an office for compassion in this desert.
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