Excerpt from The Scent of Rain
Trak Benally shifted the aged truck into gear, picking up speed as he hit the
invisible line dividing Arizona and Utah. He glanced at the clock on the dash. He’d
put in eight hours repairing a roof, sweltering in the late spring sun. Still, he couldn’t
complain. He enjoyed the work, which baffled most of his friends who thought he
was destined for bigger things. He’d joined up right after 9/11 and served two stints
as an army medic in Afghanistan, then earned a degree in Criminal Justice from
Arizona State University. But he didn’t stay in Phoenix long. Home had beckoned,
and he’d returned to Hurricane where he’d made a name for himself as the guy
who could fix anything.
Unscrewing the cap of his Gatorade, he gulped down the green liquid and chased
it with an equal amount of water. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as
the white Ford pickup roared down the empty road past the sign that read: Summit:
4310 Feet. Wind-sculpted cliffs rose through a dusty sky. Would he have retuned
to this lonely stretch of land had his parents not needed him? His dad, in his mid-
seventies at the time, struggled with heart problems. Mom, five years older,
stubbornly refused to bother her only child with the fact that caring for her husband
had become increasingly difficult. Trak’s best friend, Chase AllrAed, was the one
who made the call, summoning him from his job in Phoenix where he’d worked in
the Maricopa County court system.
Trak laughed out loud when he thought of his friend. They attended grammar
school together and went on to high school, where Chase turned out to be the
smartest kid in the class. He went on to become a doctor, earning an MD in
pediatrics at the University of Colorado and a PhD in anatomy and physiology at
UCLA. But something had drawn him back to Hurricane as well. Dr. Allred now
practiced family medicine in the place he always swore he couldn’t wait to leave.
Just past the sign for Apple Valley, he saw a towering dust devil sweep along the
desert floor, the twister a testament to the heat. Aside from the recent freaky storm
that had left a late snow on the Vermillion Cliffs for a day, the weather in the
Arizona Strip would soon be primarily high desert hot.