by Dana Jean Rider
Tumbleweeds are significant safety hazards to cars and bodies alike on desert highways. They catch inside wheel wells when drivers speed over them—they mess up machinery, wrap their spiny limbs around tire axles. Large tumbleweeds can even break windshields when launched by another car’s spinning wheels.
You think they must also be dangerous for creatures besides man and machine. You try to imagine the sensation of exoskeleton meeting dead, flying plant matter as you crest and descend desert hills in the state agency van.
You find yourself unable to sufficiently conjure what having an exoskeleton would feel like to begin with—to have the hardest parts of yourself outside instead of in. You read once that a turtle could feel through its shell but dimly, the way you can feel when a manicurist presses a drill against your fingernail. A subtle sensation of pressure. You wonder whether having an exoskeleton might feel like that when a tumbleweed passes overhead.
You applied for the job three weeks ago, just after Paolo had announced his decision to move back to Lecce. You initially mistook the round sadness of his eyes for anticipation, thinking, finally, he wants me to meet his family. I will have to get a suitcase and a visa if I am to stay in Italy more than ninety days. I will need to purchase a small purse that can hide my money and passport under my clothes.
Paolo’s indescribable but lucrative internet job—something to do with stocks, you bragged to your friends—had supported you both. You wallowed in your misery for a tasteful six days (prolonged sadness is all well and good for those who don’t have to find an affordable apartment in Southern California), then started sending off job applications indiscriminately: blood bank receptionist, expert bra-fitter at a Polish salon, tumbleweed collector for the state.
Within a day, a gruff man named Rico from an ambiguous government department called and asked if you owned sturdy hiking boots. He told you the labor was easy—find tumbleweeds, which tend to gather in ditches along the highway. Work with a road crew to gather them for incineration. Try not to shake out seeds, because Russian thistle (Salsola tragus) is extremely invasive and doing so creates more work down the line.
(You wonder what exactly a tumbleweed is once collected and placed in the truck bed, where it no longer tumbles.)
Rico also told you about a gargantuan tumbleweed he had heard was blowing through the SoCal desert. Bigger than a rich man’s car, of which it had crushed several. Rico called it the monsterweed, and when he spoke of it, he did so with an almost romantic longing, which made you a bit sad.
You work mostly with men, all of whom ignore you—which is, you suppose, better than several alternatives. The men frown, bend at the knee to pick up tumbleweeds, then frown some more. They nod to you once at the start of each day and once at quitting time. They rarely think to tell you when it is time for lunch, so sometimes you’ll be working diligently to extract a stubborn tumbleweed from a still-living clump of sagebrush, and when you raise the thing in triumph, they regard you without emotion, chewing their sandwiches.
The most involved you feel with the group is when they speak of Rico’s monsterweed, the same hushed yearning hiding in their words. (You suppose everyone wants to see something amazing one day. A true wonder to disrupt life a bit.)
You arrive home each night exhausted, cold with dry sweat, muscles aching. You spend evenings tweezing out the tiny spines left by violently self-protective plants, which find skin even through extra layers of clothing. You are extracting a particularly stubborn thistle from your thigh when a news notification pops up on your phone.
The monsterweed, just outside the city, along the very route you worked that day.
You drive into the rapidly darkening desert, then slow and park around where you think the thing might be headed, factoring in time and the direction of the wind. You sit on the hood of your car and let your eyes adjust to the faint glow of a lunar crescent. Around you, gentle rustling of wind and small animals in the brush and the dry, cold scents of packed dirt, rubber, and asphalt.
After twenty minutes, you are nearly ready to accept defeat. You watch headlights approach on the highway and note the leisurely pace of a driver unbothered by time’s passing or tales of a giant tumbleweed. Those headlights, you observe, belong to a tiny green Fiat you know quite well. In the passenger seat of Paolo’s car, a woman with long dark hair and bright eyes. Even with only a glimpse, you can see that her beauty is full of movement, alive and glimmering and graceful.
(On some level, you—of course—understand the unlikeliness of the scenario and that, perhaps, it isn’t his car but instead a lookalike tainted by what it triggers in your memory. Still, you believe it—and does that make it true? Would anyone else be able to meaningfully evaluate the truth of the matter besides you?)
The darkness falls around you firmly, exerting a subtle pressure on your exoskeleton.
The monsterweed arrives suddenly out of the darkness, a huge botanic ghost. You jump to your feet. It is the size of a house, bigger than anyone said, perhaps having gathered others along its tumbling path. A deafening crackle on the gravel as its twisted branches roll closer. For a moment, it seems likely to crush you, but instead it passes—only a couple feet from where you stand. You feel its ferocious mass displace the air, a slap of wind that smells like the earth. It flies onward, and by the time it disappears into the cold desert dark, you can’t remember why or when you started to cry.
Dana Jean Rider is a writer, teacher, and editor from St. Paul, Minnesota. Her short fiction has also appeared or is forthcoming in The Florida Review, Sundog Lit, Exposition Review, and Revolute. She holds an MFA from the University of Nevada, Reno, where she currently teaches in the English department. Dana lives in Reno with her partner Zach and their two cats, Snorkel and Dante. Find her on Instagram @danajeanspider or online at danarider.wordpress.com.