She Could Dance

We were soldiers once...and young.
Personally, I was an Air Force Munitions Specialist serving in the great desert not long after the first American war in these land, and long before the current one. I was still fresh to the world and boggly-eyed at every new place I went. What made this place even more intense to be there was that our forward operating location was as remote as you could get. Located in the plains west of the Gulf of Oman in the great, sun-scorched stretches where our ancestors brought forth the seeds of humanity.
Not only was our little compound far from life as I knew it, but my particular place of employment was even more remote from the base itself. For example, each morning I would wake up in tent city and walk to the shower tent to get my "shit, shower, and shave" on...in military parlance. With a towel wrapped around me, sandals on my feet, dust kicking up in the morning breeze I would walk back to my tent and then dress in my little sheet-draped slice of heaven. Then would come the four minute walk to "motor pool" weaving between barbed wire and barricades to check out a truck for the drive across the desert. I'd get the vitals and sign-off the daily check sheet so like a good, little soldier. During this deployment I was a part of the administrative elite and thus granted the privilege to drive a small pickup which only ferried officers or other members of the  administration. This would entail picking up whoever had made arrangements the day before with me. With my passenger on board it was then off to the first of five security checkpoints just to get the half mile off base. All the badge passing and password muttering took about twenty minutes. Once outside the main base it was a silent 35-50 minute drive across the desert basin with only two turns on an open four lane road inhabited by military vehicles, wild dogs, and white jalopy pickups with occupants of unknown origin.
Out there it was as flat and open as a nightmare. Brown and blue forever.
No flowers.
No bushes.
No birds. Just flies and the occasional mesa (which i don't think is the correct term since this was another world).
It was on this long and empty drive that one of the sweetest gifts I have ever been given by nature came to me.
On this particular day Command wanted me to deliver some packages to the main base and pick up a fellow troop that had missed the bus. Since it was early enough that I wouldn't miss lunch I took off without much ado (they would have made me do it anyway but if you miss lunch out there you truly miss lunch). It was after I picked up the arrant troop and passed over the wheel (because I out-ranked him...ha!) for the long drive back that destiny tapped on my passenger door.
We had passed the last checkpoint and the wide open desert lay before us. The heat of noon was running across the flat plains towards us and the ground began to shimmer and bend. During the summer months the heat is so pervasive and intense quicksilver makes an ocean of the hard scrabble. The whole desert floor shakes with it.
Now, I don't know enough science to backup this statement, but it appears like the concave shape of the earth and reverses it. Instead of rounding off at the corners and away towards China it would make the edges of Earth curve skyward. What once was hidden just past horizon's slope would now be raised towards the clouds. A hidden city hours drive away now sparkled off in the distance. The sunlight burning white hot on the top of the highest buildings. Bright fires burning the magical floating kingdom of my inner boy.
The troop driving was talking about something I couldn't tune into. Probably because I had rolled down the window letting the amazingly hot air blow over my head and gush in my ears.
The repetition from having traveled this road without event day after day, after month had me already filing away the moments to a circular file in my head. Just another day down and one day closer to home.
Just waiting to get to somewhere else.
I was looking east out my window arm slung over the window sill and slumped in the worn out bench-seat trying to give my tired rump a break from the bumps in the road. Being tossed around because of the worn out springs in that government-issued dried turd of a truck was literally a giant pain in the ass. The sad state of the trucks, Humvees, buses, and tractor trailers cannot be overstated nor can the woeful negligence of the dirt roads we drove on daily.
Back in the cab of the truck the driver's voice had stopped. I didn't even notice until I heard him utter a second "Whoa!".
I just glanced with my eyes to the left trying to avoid looking interested in anything so he wouldn't take it as a signal that I wanted to talk when I saw the apparition.
Not fifty yards away a dust twister was winding up for some action.
The driver slowed down and I started to slide up in my seat. Not but a few seconds after he uttered his sound of surprise the twister jumped the road in front of us and tripled in size.
Tall and skinny she was.
Almost a hundred yards tall. She shimmied across the hard sand like a belly-dancer bending at the middle and side to side rhythmically. I could almost hear the cymbals shaking to her tune.
She was carmel and milk in color.
Her smell was ancient tombs disturbed by robber's feet.

My mouth started to hang open in amazement and the truck had come to a complete stop without my acknowledgement.
Thank goodness for that, otherwise I would have collected at least a tablespoon of sand in my gaping maw.

Across the endless stage we were parked in she danced. Getting taller and bending ever more dramatically as if she needed to impress us more. The tiny feet of the twister barely seemed to move but as my eyes traveled up her length the bends, twists, colors, and size multiplied and divided at rates I lack the words to describe.
Looking up the twister's length like a lascivious strip-show gawker I finally came to the dancing queen's crown.
As she skirted across the desert floor she was sucking up the sand, stones, and the diamonds. yes, I said diamonds. In this massive desert the sand and stones are blown for so long and get so hot that they can fuze together with other grains. As they keep on rolling for lengths of time I cannot measure or postulate they undergo something similar to the heat and pressure that real diamonds go through. Some soldiers take them to the Arabic jewlers to get cut and polished and afterwards you can't tell them apart from the real thing.

There I was, sitting in that dingy truck looking at this epic dance.  Waiting for the grand finale.

It was like fireworks coming out of the top of this enormous dust tornado. I could hear the heavier stones landing all across the ground at fantastic rates of speed, but in my mind I heard only the sparkling of those diamonds high up in the azure firmament like fizz in a champagne glass.
Shots of white light numbering in the hundreds against a blue palate.
I wanted to get out of the truck and go dance with her. Shed my spectator's skin and become like the risk and the dream. Wrap my arms around her dainty foot and feel her pull me up inside like a lover...like a dancer.

That was the brave me. A dreaming hero.
The real me sat in the truck and watched.

On and on she went twisting, bending, and dancing for almost three minutes until she started to fade into the east getting skinnier and shorter until at last I couldn't see her in all the dust she had kicked up. A dream lost in the dust.
"tre um boi"
The driver had already started us rolling again as I watched the scene fade behind me and eventually become a distorted image in my rear view mirror.
That moment in time will forever more be stamped indelibly in to my brain. I hope some day she and I will get to meet again. This time I won't be scared to dance.