thunderheads to the west

the double boom and the contrails in the hard blue sky....the noon shuttle is dropping down towards Lone Port...pick up the pad and thumb on the video from the spaceport landing strip....dust and noise as the scrorched old bird makes it down one more time....the bright orange bus drives out from the terminal....anybody new coming dirtside? probably not...put down the pad and pick up your beer....squint out into the wavering desert air....mid day heat....a plume of yellow dust rising overthere on the jeep trail ....somebody heading from Dead Springs off towards Witch Mountain....must be one of the Tyson boys....another pull at the beer bottle.....the wind starts kicking up....radar on the pad shows a system headed up out of the gulf....thunderheads starting up over the far mountains....doubt if any rain will get down here today....might be flash-floods in the foothills over that direction though....hope any prospectors out that way have their electronics on....those flash-floods can be scary....remember that time my brother got caught out at Split Mountain....back forty years that must be now....devil dogs got him out in the Terrible Lands not long after that ....he should have just stayed here in the Bad Lands, instead of messing around out there in the Terribles....looking to strike it rich somehow, find something strange to sell in Port....plenty strange things out there still, even after all the years....this whole damn planet is too strange for a lot of folks....well, that leaves more for us, the oldtimers....not that many of us left on this mean ball of dirt, out past the edge of any real civilization....nobody much out here to pester you anyway....there's some of them skank crows over that way....wonder what died for them to eat?.....maybe a sand hog....it's getting too hot to sit out here, even in the porch shade....finish the beer and head inside and look for some kind of lunch.....