The Silver Box of the Desert

The truck's windows were down, but the air that came in brought no coolness; it scorched. Ramón gripped the wheel hard, and his sweat-slick hands left damp marks on the leather like tire tracks. The road stretched out ahead of them, a thin line, with nothing on either side but sand and thorny scrub.

Lucía sat beside her father on the seat, swinging her feet. The hem of her yellow dress was caked with dust, and her braids with their red ribbons clung damply to her neck. On the seat between them sat the silver box, covered with an old blanket; with every jolt it slid a little, and Ramón reached out and pulled it back into place.

“Papa, when will we get to Juárez?”

“We have to be there before sundown tomorrow,” said Ramón, without taking his eyes off the road. “The buyer is waiting there. If we don't hand him the box and get the money...”

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to; Lucía remembered the tension in her father's jaw, and that piece of paper nailed to the door of the shop. Don Salvador's name no longer even crossed her lips; he was just a shadow trailing them.

“And if we do hand it over?”

“If we do, the shop stays ours,” said Ramón, his voice softening a little. “Everything goes back to how it was.”

Lucía turned and looked back, down the road they had come along. On the horizon, where sky and earth met, a brown wall was rising, slow but determined, like a curtain swallowing the sky.

“Papa, what is that?”

Ramón glanced in the mirror, then back at the road. His jaw hardened.

“A sandstorm,” he said shortly.

“Will it catch us?”

Ramón didn't answer. He pressed down on the gas, the engine growled and picked up speed, and the box slid again on the seat. Lucía's eyes stayed fixed on what lay behind them. That brown wall kept growing, as if the desert itself were chasing them.

When the wall of sand reached them, the sun seemed to go out all at once. The windows turned yellow, then black, and the wind began to shake the truck like a leaf. Ramón gripped the wheel with both hands, but the tires could no longer find the road; everything had been painted the same murky gray, the road, the sky, everything in front of him.

“Papa!”

Lucía's voice was lost in the howl of the wind. Ramón slammed the brakes, the truck skidded to the right, struck something as it slid, and then the world turned over. For a moment everything was upside down, the sky below and the sand above, and then the truck rolled into a hollow, the shriek of metal bursting in his ears.

Silence came after that. A long, heavy silence.

When Ramón opened his eyes, his cheek was stuck to hot metal. His bones ached, but he could move. He forced the door open, fell onto the sand, and crawled on his knees around to the other side.

“Lucía. Lucía, sweetheart.”

He found his daughter hanging half out of the seat, her eyes open but clouded. There was a thin cut on her forehead, the blood mixed with sand and turned red-brown. Ramón gathered her into his arms and pressed her to his chest.

“Papa, my head...”

“I'm here, I'm here, stay calm.”

His voice trembled, but his hands tried to stay steady. The wind had slowed now, the cloud of sand was drifting away, and the sky was showing again, a tired, dirty blue.

Ramón laid his daughter on the ground, stood up, and turned to the truck. The seat was empty. He searched the floor, under the door, in the glove compartment, his hands shaking. Then he looked around him, at the dunes, at the horizon.

The silver box was gone.

The desert had swallowed it, quietly, without leaving a trace, as if it had never been there at all.

Ramón dropped to his knees, scooping up the sand with his hands and flinging it aside. The grains working under his fingernails stung, but he didn't stop. The storm had passed and the sky had turned blue again; only the sun was no longer overhead but directly above them, merciless. His hands were bleeding, but stopping was not an option; the fate of the shop, perhaps the fate of everything, lay hidden among these grains of sand.

“It was right here,” he said to himself, his voice cracked. “Somewhere around here.”

A few meters away, Lucía sat in the shade of the truck, holding the canteen with both hands. Ramón turned to look at her, then turned back to the sand. His daughter's face was growing paler by the minute, but Ramón didn't want to see it; he kept his eyes on the ground. As the sun climbed, sweat left a dark patch across the back of his shirt. The water bottle in the truck was down to half; he knew it, but he didn't want to think about it.

Suddenly his fingers struck metal. Something hard. A corner.

“Found it!” he shouted, and there was a joy in his voice that hadn't been heard in years. “Lucía, I found it, sweetheart!”

When he turned, he couldn't see her. Then he saw her on the ground, lying on her side, her arms limp. He ran, knelt, and laid a hand against her cheek; it was burning hot, but dry, she wasn't even sweating.

“Lucía. Lucía, look at me.”

Her eyelids opened slowly, but the gaze behind them was empty, far away.

Ramón let go of the half-buried box without a thought. He took his daughter in his arms and stood up; his knees shook, but he didn't fall. Neither the money nor the silver box was on his mind anymore; all he wanted was to hear his daughter breathe. He walked among the dunes, his steps growing heavy, his throat on fire.

Just then he saw a cloud of dust above a distant hill. Then a horn sounded, long and unbroken, tearing through the silence of the desert. The hoarse roar of an engine was coming closer; a truck swung out of a bend and raced straight toward them.

When the truck pulled up beside them, dust covered everything. The door creaked open, and a man in a red bandana jumped down, squinting as he looked them over.

“What happened to you two?” he asked, his voice deep and urgent.

Ramón couldn't answer; he simply held Lucía out to him. The man took the girl, laid her in the shade in the back of the truck, and poured water from a jug over her lips. Lucía coughed first, then opened her eyes.

“Papa,” she said, her voice thin but audible.

Ramón dropped to his knees, took his daughter's hand, and didn't let go. As the truck swayed along the dusty road, he felt his chest ease; his daughter's breathing evened out, and a little color returned to her cheeks. When a small clinic appeared by the roadside, the man stopped the truck with a hard turn. A woman in a white coat came running, and they carried Lucía inside.

Outside, in the shade of the clinic wall, Ramón took out his phone. His hand wasn't shaking anymore.

“There's no box,” he said, without raising his voice. “The sand took it. And I have no money, Don Salvador.”

The other end was silent for a while, then a cold voice answered.

“Then you know what happens to the shop.”

“I know,” said Ramón. “Do what you have to do.”

He hung up and put the phone in his pocket. The pain he had expected didn't come; he only felt a weight being lifted, something as real as the sunburn on his skin.

A little later Lucía came outside, traces of dust still on her cheeks, but her eyes were bright. She sat down beside her father and took his hand.

“Will they take the shop?” she asked.

“Maybe,” said Ramón.

Lucía shrugged and smiled, a weak but real smile.

“It doesn't matter,” she said. “You're here.”

Ramón squeezed his daughter's hand. He didn't even look at the sky anymore; looking at her was enough.