Featured Writer:

 Jean M. Madigan

Jean M. Madigan is a writer living with her husband in Phoenix, Arizona and has stories published at http://www.worthfinding.com  http://www.sistersinthelord.org and http://www.penwomanship.com. Madigan is also the Women In History columnist for penwomanship.com, and has a nonfiction piece published http://www.whowon.com. Links can be found at her website: http:jean.handsforhope.com

Enjoy the drama in her  short story.

  DESERT GRIEF

     Pelagia glanced at the clock on her night stand. It was 1:27 a.m. She thought about the recurrent nightmare she had that night, which bathed her in sweat and fear.

Pelagia and Clive were on the plane with "M36JH" painted on its side. The sky in Flagstaff at 7:51 a.m, June 15, 1986 was robin egg blue. Her friend, Forsythia, snapped pictures of them with her camera. They boarded the plane with a thermos and camera. This was Pelagia's first flight. 

Despite her fear, Pelagia consented to the journey. She wanted to conquer her phobia and to please Clive, who wanted her with him when theyvisited Canyon de Chelly, near Chinle, Arizona. She clung to him like a life preserver while he piloted the plane.


"Pelly," he said, shaking her arm off of his. "I'm very experienced. Nothing is going to happen to us." He smiled, and Pelagia settled into her seat. He looked back at her from the pilot's seat. There's coffee in that thermos. Have some."


She drank a cup, savoring its strong, fragrant smell, dozed for a few minutes, but awoke suddenly. Clive slumped over the wheel.  She felt his wrist, but found none. Frantic, she prayed, "Whoever you are out there, I don't know how to fly this thing!" The plane spiraled downward, and Pelagia braced herself, hugging her knees to her chest. The craft careened out of control, narrowly missing a mountain range. Then it happened. They crashed into the silent desert night, outside of Yuma. She was unconscious for a time, then stumbled from the wreckage into the cold night, battered and bleeding. She had bruises on her cheek and arms. Her watch read 127 a.m. They were supposed to be married in eight hours. Sadness engulfed her like a shroud, and she stretched out her arms to the heavens. "Why?" she cried, "why?"

Clive and Pelagia had been sweethearts since grade school, from the time he lent her his handkerchief on the day Jeffie Paxton tripped her, making her shins bleed. Thinking of this, she glanced at her surroundings. She would have to get out of the desert, and on to the highway as soon as possible. Grief would have to wait. Five or six hours had slipped into the netherland of lost time, never to be recovered. What happened next made her hair stand on end.

She heard the clatter of a rattler, and stood perfectly still, like a soldier.  "God, if that's your name, don't leave me."  For what seemed like a whole day, she stood still and the rattler disappeared. Pelagia breathed a silent "Thank you." She was grateful for whatever force guided her to Highway 8. It took three hours for a motorist to see her. She turned, and saluted in the direction of the plane wreck, close to the foothills of Castle Dome Peak. The desert stretches to infinity, a sea of sage brush, sand and nothing. Her love lay dead there, in the blazing desert sun.