Eight Hours in the Shiftless Sun

Eight Hours in the Shiftless Sun

Written by Joshua Cruz Illustrated by Cynthia Lee Cynthia felt like a smoker in a locked car. She worked in a nursery off Modesto where the Central Valley sun drove in circles. Except this joyride was stopped short—a gas guzzling mass which landed at the bridge of Cynthia’s nose.

“Why,” Cynthia found herself asking. The sun had melted away any interest from potential customers, and she started to feel like her continued presence was a cruel joke. Only the silence of statues and plants answered—not even the Medusa was there to listen. “Why hasn’t the sun moved yet?”

Her brain worked into overdrive. What started as a recap of last night’s movie marathon became a mythological stage play. She pictured Apollo with his lowrider, the Sun, foolishly driving into the In-and-Out parking lot. In classic fashion, the line spread like a putrid banana peel from Sac to San Fran—leaving the Central Valley to melt like a bowl of ice cream. All for an animal-style with the works.

Apollo would post the burger on Insta, then cruise around Modesto before he built up the courage to travel east. Even with his meandering, he’d still have to wait for the Gang. Ra and Huitzilopochtli were the couple by the wall. They argued on Ra’s phone— Apollo was on the other end asking for hyacinths. This pissed off Ra who kept repeating “and?,” “get over it,” and “you broke up like three thousand years ago.”

Huitzilopochtli’s turquoise jewelry danced in the wind. He tried to pull Ra towards the hummingbird feeders. A singular hummingbird, whose feathered armor puffed with the colors of Mexico, sipped his syrup with a spaghetti tongue. Huitzilopochtli reminded Ra it was his fault Huitzilopochtli’s phone was out of power. “Like how,” asked Ra. “You wanted the damn aux cord.”

“Yeah, but you guys got to hear my playlist,” was Huitzilopochtli’s answer every single time. He tugged at Ra’s arm and pointed at the only hummingbird thirsty enough to brave the heat.

The thought made Cynthia laugh to herself. Especially when she pictured Huitzilopochtli’s playlist to be his Soundcloud link, and he refers to himself as Big H. “My sound is fire,” Big H argued. He stuck his tongue out at Ra. “I wouldn’t call you screaming and clapping into the microphone fire,” Ra replied.

Cynthia’s laugh caught the eye of a custom-

er who was just wandering by like a plastic bag in the breeze. Cynthia looked away, but she caught a glimpse of the customer’s kid pouring fountain water on his head. She imagined they were Shamash and Gilgamesh for no other reason than the theme of her thoughts.

The heat was getting to her. Cynthia took an early break to rest inside the air conditioned breakroom. There, she felt like she contracted a rare form of jungle fever found only in California’s nurseries.

Even after Cynthia’s fifth hour, the sun was in the same spot. She felt some reprise from a steady breeze, but the air was humid. The rush of taking lunch by the fifth hour meant the gardeners had to water the plants. Even if it meant the humidity made Cynthia want to dry heave over the citrus fruit.

Cynthia tried to take her mind off the heat—so she thought of the sun gods again. In her head, the argument between Big H and Ra had died. Apollo’s car had broken down, and they called Amaterasu for help. Even though they were friends, Amaterasu took her time and charged by the hour. She also charged an extra fifty because Apollo’s trash had reached the dashboard—he tried to argue his brothers borrowed the car, but as Amaterasu said, “that’s no excuse.” “Besides,” she added. “I know for a fact your brother is a perfect gentleman.”

Meanwhile, Ra had brought up a lapis lazuli colored terra cotta without its barcode. Cynthia had to kneel in the heat, straining her eyes to find the only pot with a barcode, and trying to ignore the sun burns she got from the reflective brackets.

When she finally got the pot, Amaterasu was finished fixing the car. It started up with a huff and a puff and a couple prayers. Finally, the sun gods reunited, and the sun began to move.

It was now six o’clock, and Cynthia drove back home. She tailgated the sun even though she didn’t want to, and when she finally got home, the sun had broken down towards the end of the valley.

Sleep was impossible. Cynthia felt herself drifting but never fully realizing the gift of dreams. She thought about the concept of sun gods driving around all summer, and while that distracted her from the horrors of a motionless sun, it distracted her from dreams.

It was too high concept, she thought. A dream comes naturally, and the dreamer must wait for it to develop like a movie. Except every time she saw anything associated with the sun, from the color orange to a faint hiss of heat, she’d suddenly wake up thinking she was still outside.

She swore—Cynthia grabbed her phone and started researching moon gods in hopes of taking her mind off the shiftless sun.