IF SPARROWS SMOKE CIGARETTES original mixed media wall art

"Pass me my purse.”

She extended her right arm towards the passenger seat where her sister sat, left hand loosely steadying the wheel while with a ghost white cigarette pinned between index and middle fingers.

Plunking the leather purse into her lap, she dug blindly into its contents, searching for her heavy Zippo lighter. The Volvo swayed gently, narrowly missing the other zigzagging cars flitting past on the expressway. Traffic into Boston was already gnarly, and they were growing steadily more late for arrival to school for her sister and the opening shift at the restaurant for her.

No luck searching with fingertips alone, she looked down for a split second to peer into her purse. Just enough time to miss a previously shouldered delivery truck’s quick dart back into traffic. Into her lane. She was going 75 miles an hour.

It was as though a vacuum had pulled all the sound from around them. A silent crash. The cessation of momentum. The sensation of being pulled through space, through the windshield, silently, calmly, and then… darkness.

***

There was a sweet smell on the wind. Around her, shapes started to come into focus.

She pressed her lips together, tasting salt and dry dirt. Was this heaven? Close by, her sister was sitting upright, surrounded by an ocean of knee-high grass. She was looking in the other direction, her gaze fixed upon a pronghorn antelope who grazed contentedly on the dry grass about fifty yards away. There was no highway, no sound of rushing cars, no smell of diesel smoke. There was the sound of the wind and buzzing locusts, the call of a Red Tailed Hawk, intermingling with the air buzzing around her body like a hive at the peak of summer.

Pushing herself up from the ground, she noticed her clothes. They were not her own. A pair of tall cowboy boots? A wide-brimmed cowboy hat? Surely she was losing her mind. She’d never dressed like this a day in her life.

Before she could ask her sister what was going on – why she, too, was dressed from another time and place – a cloud of dust kicked up from the horizon, moving quickly toward them.

Horses. Four of them. Two wore men on their backs, each in a hat and silhouetted against the bright sun.

There was nowhere to run, so the women stood frozen in the vast field of grass, waiting.

"Emma Jean!", one of the men called. "Emma Jean Ransom, I thought you were dead and gone! Thank the Lord you're safe!"

He leapt from his horse, still in motion, and charged towards her – repeating, a wild look in his eyes, “I’ll be, I’ll be - if sparrows smoke cigarettes!”, over and over. He was not menacing. His eyes beamed and his smile spread as wide as Texas. But she did not know this man, and so she responded – rather, reacted - by swinging a solid roundhouse punch, landed squarely on his jaw, knocking him to his knees.

The other man on the horse laughed, extending his arm to help his fallen comrade from the ground, nothing much wounded but his pride. "You always this pleasant?" he joked as she kicked her feet up to keep him back just far enough. “We've been looking for y’all for two weeks straight, Emma Jean. I told him you probably got drunk and ran off with the circus. Am I right?"

She stared at him, perplexed. Her sister remained silent. The younger man, now up from the ground, gave her a doleful look, rubbing his face. "Dammit, Emma Jean…”

"Well, I'm just happy we found you,” the older man on horseback said. “Grab your horses. We need to get back to the ranch: your brother leaves for Abilene with the cattle on Thursday and he needs some help. You can explain where you’ve been on the way.”

She threw her sister a furtive look. They couldn’t very well stay out here in this field. Tossing the reins from the smaller black steed towards her sister, she marched over to the fourth horse, an auburn mare with bright eyes.

"Don’t really matter to me,” she spat, threw her leg over the saddle, tossed the reins in the air and shook the stirrups.

She really needed that cigarette now. Where was that darn lighter?