Stivers Valance sat on the side of his bed staring at the dusty shoe print in the doorway. It was the tread pattern of a pair of boots he knew all too well. The boots had belonged to another before Stivers had taken them by ill-gotten means back in Oklahoma. This morning wasn’t the first time he had found the dirty prints made by the boots around his tiny spartan apartment in Modesto, despite the fact he had not worn them at all in over a month after the first mysterious appearance of the prints.
The killing back in Oklahoma had been more of an omission of decency rather than murder, Stivers felt, but as he drove off leaving Lowery King, his wife, and two small children, “Murderer,” is the word the man kept yelling. In his rearview mirror, Stivers had watched the deadly dust storm rolling toward the family stranded on the side of the road. The storms had turned the prairie land into a Dust Bowl, as the newspapers called it. Hundreds of lives had been lost in the storm, the never-ending dust drowning people on dry land, suffocating them with dirt. Deep inside, in the dark heart that Stivers kept hidden from the world, he knew Lowery King told no lies.
Black Sunday had been the final straw for families across the Central Plains. The massive dust storms covered a thousand miles and wiped out the hopes and dreams of many Oklahomans. Stivers lived a life looking for the shortcuts and the fast buck. With so many moving to California, Stivers planned to somehow take part in the exodus. The lack of a car and traveling money was just a minor inconvenience in his plan. A problem that was solved when he overheard Lowery King had sold off all his family’s land and holdings, was loading the car with his wife, kids, and cash, and making for the supposed promised land of opportunity in California.
It had been easy enough to plan his actions, then carry them out. Waiting a mile down the road from the former King homestead, Stivers flagged down the approaching car. The dust storm hundreds of feet tall swept toward the scene from the direction the car approached. Car stopped, the revolver presented, and Stivers had taken the car and cash and left the Kings standing on the side of the road, certain death bearing down on them.
Three days later found Stivers Valance out of the dust and in California, living off the money he had stolen from the Kings. Over the next two weeks he’d worn the work boots that belonged to Lowery to three different construction job sites, fired from each of them for lack of doing any real work. Stivers decided to spend the remaining cash he had acquired from his Oklahoma theft and then find an easier way of going about making money, something other than work.
Now, with the appearance of the boot print once again, Stivers’ belief that what was happening to him was something otherworldly, solidified. Somehow Lowery King, and maybe even all the King family, had found Stivers to haunt him. In that black heart of his, he felt a sense of regret, an emotion as alien to him as putting in an honest day’s work. But just as quickly, the feeling passed. Who were the King’s to him? Why should he care? Stivers walked to the closet, grabbed the boots, and flung them out the front door into the parking lot.
He headed off to the liquor store down the street and picked up something to drink to take his mind off his problems. As he returned with the six-pack of beer, Stivers parked the car and noticed the front door of his apartment was open. Someone had seen him leaving and decided to rob the place.
Slamming the car door, and with the beer in hand, Stivers approached the apartment. His anger turned to worry as he noticed the cloud of dust blowing around the interior and the pair of boots he had tossed sat in the middle of the door to the bedroom. Stivers shuffled through the dust that coated the floor and the meager furnishings that came with the apartment.
To hell with all of this, Stivers thought as he opened the first beer. He sat down on the threadbare couch and quickly worked his way through the entire six-pack. Not quite drunk, but feeling the effects of drinking the beer so quickly, Stivers laid his head back, closed his eyes, and drifted off to sleep.
Before even fully waking, Stivers felt the warmth and weight bearing down on him. His eyes snapped open. His vision swam before him at the strange sight. Latched on to each of his legs was a small child, their little arms and legs wrapped tight around him. The powerful grip held Stivers impossibly immobile. The form of the children was made up of a dust layer that shifted to and from across their bodies.
Stivers leaned forward on the couch and made a move to grab these specters when he felt his arms jerked behind him and crossed behind his back. Unable to move his torso, he turned his head and saw Lowery King, holding him in place. The dusty form, same as the children, made up Lowery’s body. This is impossible, his mind screamed, but there was no rational part of his brain left there to accept the thought.
Dirt dribbled down onto his head, and he jerked around to find King’s wife, he never even knew her name, standing over his sitting form. She shook her left hand, sending an unending amount of dirt pouring over his face as her right hand gripped his jaw and forced it open. The dirt filled his mouth, packing in as it slipped down his throat, and filling his stomach.
Stivers’ body convulsed as it suffocated on the dirt. He thrashed around but couldn’t slip free from the hold of Lowery King and his children. All the while the dirt continued to pour into him and over him from the wife. Stivers felt his life slip through the thin veil to the other side. The regret of his choices had returned and haunted him as he crossed over.
Lowery King loosened his grip on the departed Stivers Valance and nodded to his family to join him in an embrace. The reckoning complete, the family felt the dust fall from their forms, a golden glow surrounded them as they faded away.
