Why

elizabeth keller

The population of Why, Arizona is 151 on a good day. The average summer temperature is 103 degrees, average annual rainfall three inches. The air is cool when it blows against your face, hot when it puddles, tying itself around your ankles and rooting you firmly to the ground. Of all the people in Why, only Carolin can fly. Carolin lives on Coon Dock, which is not a dock. It is right next to the RV park. She has three taxidermied cats and only one tooth. She looks to be around twenty-five.

We think Carolin is dating Bernadette, who is from the afterlife. Bernadette can also fly, but we don’t think she’s human so she doesn’t count. Bernadette is beautiful. I tried to give her my number once, and she bit me. Bernadette and Carolin go on long flights together on full moons. The moon gets so big in Why. It too is beautiful.

Our main attraction is Rocky Point Seafood Market. It’s in a little red shack next to an overflowing trash can and an empty, unplugged refrigerator. Sometimes Bernadette will slink over to hug the refrigerator. She’ll stay there, arms wrapped around the textured plastic, for fifty-seven minutes. Rocky Point’s sign is written in three different colors and can be seen from the RV park. Gus runs Rocky Point. He likes flannel shirts, bone spurs, and reading emails. He often brags about his fresh shrimp, though nobody knows where he gets them: Gus cannot fly. 

Most of Why lives in the RV park. I have never seen the inside, as I have never seen anyone enter or leave. The perimeter of the RV park smells like desert marigolds and clam chowder, and sometimes I can hear both singing and screams. Yesterday, the RV park expanded. It unfolded and unfurled, spraying dust and marigold petals hundreds of feet into the air.

Everything and everyone it touched was pulverized. Carolin ran out of her bright yellow clapboard house to stop it, unsuccessfully. Bernadette grabbed her hand and together they pulled their taxidermied cats from the splintered wood. There were six cats, one more than I remembered. The RV park stopped just short of Rocky Point Seafood Market. Half the refrigerator was pulverized, and Gus was inconsolable. He shot the refrigerator right after, to put it out of its misery. As the bullet ripped through the metal, flakes of paint curled and fell to the ground. The dusting of white was beautiful, and the closest Why has ever gotten to snow.

The RV park grew again this morning. It will keep growing, and it will destroy us all. Last night it got Carolin when she was in the giftshop stealing a keychain. The “Why Not Travel” store sells Hawaiian shirts and cactus magnets with the keychains. It hasn’t had a customer in years. The brightly painted walls crumbled around her. I saw her standing there for a beat longer, surveying the bricks before she fell too. I did not see any blood. Bernadette did not scream. 

I wonder how many people live in Why. Beyond the mystery of the RV park, I rarely see anyone twice. Mostly they are vague, shuffling figures in the grocery store. I tried to ask someone with “Shannon” embroidered onto their alligator skin handbag where the canned tuna was. I assumed they were an employee, but I couldn’t see their uniform because Shannon seemed to be a human-shaped patch of dark gray mist. They reached out an incorporeal and slightly damp hand and placed it firmly on my shoulder. The touch was warm and strangely comforting. I realized that it had been a while since I had felt so at home. 

I discovered I could fly this morning. I don’t know how, but the wind is no longer hot around my ankles. All around me is cool and refreshing. There are no clouds today. I just float for a little. The sun begins to set, even though it is only one pm. Perhaps it is later. I’ve been in Why for seventeen years but not long enough to understand time. The sky is a deep eel purple with streaks of orange and red. Down below the dark silhouettes of cacti reach toward me. I could float up into the vast expanse of desert sky and be free. The sky is so, so beautiful. 

The RV park shudders while I’m up in the sky. It makes a sound like a growl, but a musical one. I can faintly hear someone inside the park playing the harmonica as the park creeps closer and closer to the center of Why. If I look down there are heaps of dust and rubble. 

Bernadette flew away and Carolin is dead. Gus found a pickup truck in a ditch and pushed it all the way to Rocky Point. He loaded the refrigerator carcass into the back and covered it with a Dora the Explorer bedsheet. He told me that he’ll leave Why the first thing tomorrow morning. He hugged me and gave me a bucket of shrimp. Behind him the RV park rumbled. I know I can’t escape the RV park. These things happen and leaving Why isn’t an option. 

Soon I will float back down to the desert, to the bright paintings on the side of the Why Not Travel store, to Gus weeping over the refrigerator, and to Carolin’s taxidermied cats, waiting futilely for her to return. I’ll visit the chicken coop, out in the desert, the one surrounded by flowers and frog statues and little lanterns. I’ll sit there, eat Rocky Point shrimp and wait for the RV park to find me.  I see the sun rise just beyond the chicken wire. If I crouch down, the wire divides the sky into silver-framed hexagons. I hold my thumb and pointer finger out against one. The warmth of the wire from the day’s sun reminds me of the hum of Gus’s refrigerator, the silky fur of Carolin’s cats, and Shannon from the grocery store’s misty caress. My nails glow purple, the sounds of the RV park’s rampage form a rhythm like a song, and I think this is what it’s like to hold the world in your hands. 

Elizabeth Keller is a junior creative writing major at Interlochen Arts Academy, and is from Vancouver, Washington. She has been published in Crashtest and her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the Virginia B. Ball Creative Writing Competition, and the Richard Benvenuto High School Poetry Competition.