Tumbleweed Boy and the Rambling Man.

By: J.R. Harrington.

(For maximum immersion listen to the music of Colter Wall while reading!)

Tumbleweeds blowing through the dry ache of the desert, kicking up dust devils in their wake. Cowboy ghosts singing their campfire tunes in the night, plucking the strings of spectral guitars. They doff their hats as the lady ghosts pass, ever the gentlemen.

The mountains rise high in the distance, writing love letters to the vast skies above. Cloudless, the sun glints off shattered glass on the roadside, green, brown, and clear shards digging into the sand.

You pick through the goatheads on the ground to find bits of quartz and old arrowheads. Collecting the fruits of prickly-pear, stripping the spines to grill it. Trucks pass on the dirt road running by your pasture. You drift with the wind, tumbleweed boy, chewing mountain sage.

Flat expanses of Colorado desert prairies scream your name, you rove over them alone but never lonely. Making camp coffee over the fire, not minding when you drink up grounds. Living off the land, shucking sunflower seeds by the highway.

There’s something aflame in your heart, something that keeps your feet restless and your eyes sharp. Tumbleweed boy, sleeping in caves, wandering till you find your grave. When you blow into town folks never seem to know what to do with you, dirty thing, a crude gem in your own right.

You sell sage and quartz on the roadside, saving just enough for a meal at the cheapest of diners. Panning for gold in the river, blessed by the land, turning nuggets into cash. You save up for a hat to doff like the cowboy ghosts, but you keep giving away your stash to the old men who play the blues by the storefronts.

Tumbleweed boy, meeting a rambling man with a fiddle in the smoke shop, getting tobacco for the pipe your pa gave you, god rest his soul. You leave together, and walk along the road out of town. He says he don’t know where he’s headed, and you tell him you’re going the same place.

He teaches you new songs, folk music from the Appalachian mountains, which he used to call home. Rambling man said he took a bus with the last of his money, all the way out to the Rockies. You show him what plants you can eat, and in the night you listen to the cowboy ghosts together. He plays his fiddle alongside the guitar.

You tell him your plan to get a hat, he thinks it’s a good idea, since you’re so sunburned. He tells you he ought to get new boots, since his are half-dead. You’re nearly to the city, which you usually walk straight through. Rambling man suggests you stop and panhandle, him playing his fiddle and you singing. Says you got a good voice, best he’s heard in quite some time.

You set up at the edge of a park, staying a few days. The grass is the best bed you’ve had in years, though you consider it unnatural in the desert. Between the rambling man’s music and your authentic Colorado quartz and mountain sage, you make enough for a hat and a pair of boots. There’s enough left over for a night in a motel, which the rambling man insists upon.

The both of you get clean, even having your clothes laundered. You sit on the stairs outside and smoke a pipe under the smoggy sky. No stars, no cowboy ghosts. Rambling man sits beside you and rambles. He tells you about his fiance, how a rattlesnake got her one day, about his family, being the black sheep in their midst, his friends, boozers and troublemakers.

You tell him how your ma died when you were born, and your pa raised you wandering. How one day Pa started coughing up blood, and drove his truck to his brother’s house to die.

How you were stuck there with your uncle until you were old enough to be on your own, how your cousins thought you were strange but had to be nice to you ‘cause their dad said so. Rambling man tells you he couldn’t imagine living a whole life in motion. He says eventually he wants to find someplace to settle, somewhere with plenty distance between the houses, somewhere with room for cattle and horses. You tell him you always wanted a pack mule, so you could get a guitar. As it is, you have to stuff everything you own in the pockets of your pa’s old duster, or the canvas bag on your back.

He asks if you ever plan on settling down. You tell him you can’t imagine being stationary. Rambling man goes to the gas station and gets a six pack for the two of you. You ain’t much for drinking, but you indulge anyway. He tries your pipe and you try his menthol cigarettes, and you laugh at each other’s reactions.

The city noises are strange on your ears and his, and they never stop. Rambling man plays his fiddle like a violin, tells you he used to want to be in an orchestra. You try yodelling, till the owner of the motel yells at the two of you for making a ruckus. Tumbleweed boy, laughing at the cityfolk complaining about noise when their nights are already cacophonous.

Rambling man has scars on his back from a belt, and he ain’t ashamed of it. You can’t help asking why anyone would ever want to hit him, he tells you it’s ‘cause he talks too much. You figure talking shouldn’t get anybody in trouble, what with freedom of speech being a right and all.

He laughs and tells you that’s for the press, not for yapping like a tiny dog. You say you think he’s more like a coyote than a chihuahua. He tells you you’re like a migratory bird. Then he gets sad, that eventually you’ll have to part ways. You hadn’t thought it before, but it makes you sad, too. Rambling man’s the only one other than your dear old pa that don’t think you’re strange.

You ask him to wander with you till he finds the right place to settle. He says he will, and you seal the deal with a firm handshake. You go to bed drunk and wake up with a headache. Rambling man packs up his fiddle. You stare at his scars in the daylight and wonder why his skin looks so nice the way it stretches over his spine and curls around his ribs.

Rambling man smiles at you and you keep the thought to yourself, ‘cause that ain’t the way you’re supposed to think about a fellow. You had never seen a lady’s back, but you reckoned it would probably be even prettier, nevermind the front of her.

As you start the walk out of the city, you ask him what being in love was like. He tells you it was like he found the only person in the world who could handle all of him, that they were twin flames. She was the only one who didn’t think his talking was an issue—even his friends would tease about his rambling, that’s why after she died he had to take off.

He said it was like the wind, that it surrounded you and that you took it in with each breath. Being in love was like breathing, all you could do was love and be loved. He asked if you ever started to love anyone, and you were too busy running his words back to answer right away.

You said “No, never,” and he said “You’ll know it when you feel it. It’s like everything about that person becomes world-shattering, like nothing could ever matter more than the way they smile, the way their voice sounds in the air, or the shape of their eyes when they look into yours.” He keeps going, and you keep listening, and your stomach hurts.

Outside of the city is a great big pine forest, the road winding on cliffsides. Rambling man says it reminds him of home. You tell him you prefer the plains, since there’s more bears out here. Possibly wolves, too. When it comes time to camp, you show him to an abandoned house you’ve stayed in before. He wonders if he could buy it and fix it up, and your heart plummets. You say it isn’t the right place to raise cattle, and he goes along, saying he was only musing.

You go all sorts of places, and end up back where you found each other. He plays his fiddle in the little town, and you sing, and you can feel the journey coming to an end. You show him a cave you like to camp in, and listen to the cowboy ghosts together, and you start to weep when they croon a love song.

Rambling man asks what’s wrong, you say you’ve loved him all along. Tumbleweed boy, a mess of shame, knowing he won’t feel the same. Rambling man lights a cigarette and says, “You know, I’m pretty damn fond of you myself, but it’s a little too soon for me to love.” You knew it’d be so, but that don’t lessen the burn none at all.

He says he wants to stay in that little town, he knows it’s the one you wander into the most. Rambling man says come winter you should stay with him, that he’s sure to have a place by then. The next day he leaves you. Tumbleweed boy, wandering alone again.

The wind screams love and lack thereof, the mountains loom overhead like a cage. Tumbleweed boy sticking to the same area, not wandering quite so far. Rambling man visits on the weekends, comes to that cave and plays his fiddle at the entrance until you come and find him. He comes with food from the good restaurant, rambles about his job working security for the school.

The only school you went to was the school of life, and what little your pa thought a boy ought to know. Rambling man brings a notebook and starts teaching you things, says you ought to try getting some form of education. He tells you over dinner how no-one else seems to hear the cowboy ghosts singing in the night, that he misses playing his fiddle to their songs in his apartment.

You tell him you miss wandering with him, and he tells you he misses it, too. He says once he gets a truck he’ll take you wandering that way, and you won’t get sunburned from walking all day. He still wears the same boots he bought in the city, scuffed and worn from your journeying.

When winter comes he shows you his apartment, and you start going to the library everyday, trudging through the snow like it’s nothing. You read all sorts of books, and learn all sorts of things. You even start studying to get a GED, which the rambling man told you about. In the night he plays the fiddle, and you pick up a used guitar and learn to play along with him.

In the spring he gets that truck of his, and you drive to Nevada, a different dessert. You cook over a campfire and sleep in the truck bed, close together. Rambling man asks if you really don’t mind how much he talks. You ask back if he minds how quiet you are, and he kisses you by way of response.

A couple years later, you’ve got a ranch and a herd of cows. You’re a real live cowboy, with a pretty haflinger horse, a spendy guitar, and a rambling man by your side who don’t mind the way the breeze moves you. In the warmer nights you sit out on the porch and listen to your local cowboy ghosts, playing accompaniment and singing together.