Ash Wednesday in Bisbee, AZ

When I got there, Amy was sipping on reposado and talking to an old vaquero, the cracks in his face like red rock arroyos. They sat on a nicotine sofa staring at the fireplace, blowing smoke rings up to the pressed copper ceiling. I ordered a beer, sat at the end of the bar. Everyone laughed and smoked, bumped bony shoulders, slapped dusty knees. She scanned the room, smiled when her eyes found me. I watched her scratch that polka-dot sleeve, excuse herself, and make her way toward me. How long you been sitting there? Don’t go anywhere, she said. I didn’t.

In the mirror behind the bar, the reflection of glassy-eyed heads hung like jurors—javolito, elk, day labor, longhorn, painter, dealer, and puma—while the player piano played a sad one. Sharp-creased cowboys, thumbs hooked behind brass buckled belts, leaned against the bar, fingered the brims of their Stetsons at a girl in a gingham halter top and tight jeans.

Back from the toilet, she poured herself over the stool next to me, hang dog and shining, ash smudged black on her forehead. Want to get out of here? I did. I bought a six of local brew from the peroxide blonde bartender, a real copper queen with a grey-toothed smile. Amy waved over the vaquero and he came. Juanito’s my buddy, aren’t you, querido? He smiled, turned his hat in his leather hands, blushing red as a California poppy, and we walked out into the lamp-lit street.

KBRP played b-sides the whole way home—Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Fragile, Stars and Stripes Forever—as we barreled along the Naco Highway, top down and singing, past the sleeping green and white border patrol pickups. Inside the stale trailer we rolled cigarettes on the Formica table in the kitchen and opened the beers. Amy went to the cupboard. From an old Folger’s can she dumped out a gray 40 watt GE. Holding it above her head she joked, I just had an idea. Juan smiled, doffed his hat, slid a meaty digit in the silk band, and dislodged a glossy printed packet. When it was unfolded and the polvo became filament, we passed the bulb around the table on a wire loop, smoking and dunking it into an open flame like a sacrificial Easter egg. Pink and red, green and blue and yellow burning into one.

Outside, the sky was laced with stars and the foothills of the Mule Mountains were darker than the night that held them. Heads full of dust, cigarette ends bouncing like desert fireflies, we took turns firing her Granddad’s Colt at bottles lined up on the hillside until the first pink light of morning burned the black night.

BIO: Dawson Steeber is a journeyman carpenter working, living, reading, and writing in Akron, Ohio. His poetry and fiction have been published in Thank You for Swallowing, Halfway Down the Stairs, Pink Disco, CC&D, and elsewhere.