I was sitting on my backpack, on the shoulder of a stretch of two-lane highway down which, just then, no traffic was coming, when I saw, in the brush on the side of the road, after I’d been doing nothing but gazing in an abstracted way in the direction of the sky and the landscape that I happened to be facing, wondering whether anyone would stop for me and give me a ride or whether I’d have to sleep another night on a patch of ground under the stars…yes, I saw, in the brush on the side of the road, an empty and faded beer can that had been slightly crushed, and twisted, and that I guessed must’ve been tossed from the cab of a passing vehicle, at some point, and had landed there, or somewhere nearby, before a gust of wind had carried it to its present location, so that its life after its contents had been poured out, or consumed, could be intuited and observed, and described in a single sentence, or just a few words, even though the time that had elapsed since it had been discarded through the open window of an onwardly rushing pickup (if that is what had transpired), might’ve been relatively long, in the sense that I myself might’ve still been on the other side of the country when it had happened, working whatever job I was still working, waking up and going to sleep, waking up and going to sleep, doing whatever I was convinced was worth doing, so that the thought of going on the trip I now was on, and that had been underway for several weeks, and that had seen me in a number of other states and cities, many of which I’d been in before (though some of which I hadn’t), hadn’t yet occurred to me, or been countenanced by me as a possibility, let alone settled on as a decision, all the while this beer can had sat here, in the brush, exposed to the elements, unaware of itself as an object, and of the constituent parts that comprise it as an object, yet somehow possessed of the dignity of which all things are possessed, by dint of their reality, and because they belong to, and participate in, the mystery of existence.

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Edward Mullany is a writer and illustrator. He is the author of four books, including If I Falter at the Gallows, and The Three Sunrises. This piece “Joshua Tree” is from a novel-in-stories he is currently working on.