Richfield

It is not quite cold enough for snow, but a white cloud wafts across the two-lane highway, just a few hundred yards ahead. It is too dense, and contained in too neat of a billow, to be snow; nor does it float with the lightness of smoke. The pickup is too close upon it, and going too fast, for the driver to resist entering the opaque fog.

The pickup is soon bombarded with a deluge that has the consistency of hail; but instead of balls of ice, clumps of tiny, rough crystals pound the windshield. Each one explodes in a thud. The hitchhiker is awoken, if he was actually sleeping in the first place, by the erratic, dull plops.

“What the fuck?!”

“I dunno. There was juss a huge cloud an’ then…..an’ then this!”

The driver swerves to avoid the fist-sized clods, but they’re everywhere. They rock the hood in metallic rasps and the wipers struggle as they choke on the mysterious debris from above. It fills out the treads on the pickup’s tires and causes it to skid from one side of the road to the other. The driver wrestles with the wheel. It puts up a good fight in return, and the pickup takes him across the middle line into the oncoming lane; or so he has to guess since the road is covered with the same even, sparkling blanket as in a snowstorm. He estimates the truck must have lurched twenty feet to the left, and he’s lucky if he can keep it from diving off the road altogether. Sweat soaks into his clothes and stings his pores.

The hitchhiker hurriedly rolls up his window to close the gap that had been left open. In the meantime, a chunk hits the side of the roof and some of the fallout rains onto his shoulder. He gets a chalky finger-full and brings it to his nose. He snorts and immediately coughs and chokes. There is no mistaking the dry, saline bite enflaming the back of his throat.

“Salt!’ He reminds the driver of a prospector who’s hit gold. Though salt is probably the most widely available mineral on earth, it takes on an alien quality when it’s pounding down from the sky in a torrent.