I will arrive in Laredo by stagecoach. & when I arrive, I’ll have to rent a horse because there’s no longer cars. Peak oil, come & gone.

The horse-desk attendant tells me while the saddle is included, the attire is not. Both are required.

So, even though I am all hat & no cattle, like they used to say & even though it is boiling, I dress in denim & leather & look the part.

I’m given a horse named Dottie. She is spotted & gentle. She takes me from the station into town, slow & sure.

We trot along the river that was once there. I am surprised by what remains. The cathedrals have fallen, but the Red Lobsters hold strong.

We work our way west to our destination: Dolores, a long-abandoned mining town, close enough to the border to spit across.

I do a little spot check. Plenty of water in the canteens. Burritos because they keep. Cigarettes for trade. Cyanide in case of raiders.

In one saddlebag: a pop-up tent & fire in a can. In the other: my father, grandmother & grandfather mixed into a plastic container labeled BIOLOGICAL MATERIAL.

Dottie & I move through the lost highways & loam. I sing Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs in bits & pieces & imagine a big iron on my hip. The ride is almost pleasant.

At dusk, I sit by the fire with my thoughts & I don’t think about how even though the world has ended, it’s still ending & I’m still here.

Nope. Not even once.

We meet Dolores at dawn. It was already a ghost town in my father’s lifetime. Comforting to know some things never change.

The final wishes of my family were clear: Reduce us to ashes. Bring us together. Release us here, where we are from. But only when you have time, mijo.

They twist & turns like starlings. They hang in the air before settling far, far from here.

Long forgotten, their sounds come back to me. Their laughing & clapping. Voices telling me there’s still meat on those bones. To get a sweater if I’m cold. To come home.

The weather turns. Dottie nips my fingers. Eventually, I get the world is telling me to move on.

But before I do, I take in this wasteland, this place where our lives end & began.

I smell the mesquite, run a thumb through the ridges of my chapped lips & sing a little song as a storm comes that, even with a head start, I was never going to outrun.