Truly Like Lightning

by David Duchovny

  Reception for her phone went in and out, so she turned it off to save the battery, just in case. She erased some lingerie photos she’d taken of herself a few weeks ago (’cause her abs were getting so ripped) in case she died and all that was left of her was the phone. She erased her search history just because. About an hour and twenty in, she began to think seriously of turning back, but then she feared she’d wander dangerously astray. She tried to keep her eyes on the peak Yalulah had shown her, and due east on the compass, which she began to mistrust. She began a panic spiral—how does a compass work anyway? Magnetic something or other? What if there’s a disturbance in the magnetic field? That was a thing, wasn’t it? Why didn’t she know how anything worked? Why didn’t she learn anything useful in college? Can a compass break?

  She tried to swallow the rising panic in her throat, it felt like broken glass, and she realized how hot and thirsty she was. What was she thinking? Who was she trying to impress by coming out here alone? Malouf? Bronson? Nothing good happens in the desert. You get an arrow shot at you by a child, a rattlesnake sneaks up behind you, and you die of exposure. She was obsessing on rattlers and magnets when she heard Bronson yell, “What the fuck?” Maya thought she was hallucinating, till she made out a form riding fast toward her on a horse twice the size of hers.

  She hadn’t realized how freaked out she was getting till she saw Bronson’s face and couldn’t fully stifle a heaving sob. Bronson offered her some of his water. She was shaking. “Oh Jesus, you’re scared to death, poor thing. Who let you come out here alone? Yalulah?”

  Maya nodded.

  “Jesus H. Christ.” He shook his head. “You okay?”

  “Now I am.”

  “Sorry about that. Yaya’s a hard-ass, bless her.”

  “She gave me a compass.”

  “Magnanimous.”

  “Well, I get it. I think I know where she’s coming from.”

  “The devil’s hindquarters, that’s where she’s coming from. Follow me now,” Bronson said, and he led them a short way to a shady spot that was quite pleasant.

  Maya started to cool down and relax. She noticed again how handsome Bronson was. She’d been pursued by handsome men before, pretty men, she’d fucked a few even, and watched the power their looks had over her fade with time and bad manners. She thought she had a healthy view of what looks meant and didn’t mean to her. But gazing at Bronson, and those forearms again, she got buzzed. Jesus, what was she, she wondered, a forearm freak? Was she gonna go back home to Santa Monica, get on Pornhub, and type in “big sweaty forearms”? Probably get diverted to some “fisting” movies; best not to have that on her history. There’d already been a wonky sex scandal at Praetorian about five years ago involving an exec, now fired, and the eating of much cum.

  No, it was something else, ’cause Bronson wasn’t young anymore, and the sun had taken its toll on his white skin, especially around the neck. She realized it was that his beauty was “functional,” that Bronson worked, that everything about this man worked, and she couldn’t believe how much that functionality was starting to turn her on. Shit, she thought, this is weird, maybe I’m just scared and he’s like a knight in shining armor right now ’cause I was about to bite it in the desert and this is some silly romance novel shit I’m getting off on; or maybe he’s got this off-kilter, old-timey charisma that got through my protective shields and modern-day, state-of-the-art bullshit detector—he’s a fucking polygamist after all, right? He keeps multiple women happy. He’s like a cult leader; he’s got that cult leader vibe, too, that Manson-type sneaky power. She wanted to get to the bottom of it and get away from it at the same time. Shit, she was in the desert with Charles Bronson Manson. That’s not good either. She’d come out here to play him, and now she was freaking and spinning out. She realized he’d asked a question and he was smiling.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I asked what you came out here for. Like a minute ago.”

  “Oh … I wanted to give you an update on the kids.”

  “Mary’s been doing that.”

  “Oh, right, of course. I just wanted to check in.”

  “Check in? Like we’re on the same side? I didn’t think we were on the same side. I think we want very different things.”

  “We do?” she asked. He nodded. “What do you want?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I know what I want. That won’t change. I don’t need to talk about it. What do you want?”

  That was a good question. What Maya wanted, from Praetorian, from life, might have changed in the last few months. The Cushing/Hammer effect. She wasn’t sure. She decided she’d start talking and they would both find out at the same time. She trusted her gut; the play would arise. “I came here ’cause I wanted to make a fortune. I saw an opportunity. I had a vision. I’m sure you can relate to that.” Bronson looked inscrutable. “Remember, at first, the offer was to buy a piece of your land, less than half, and we’d keep the government off your backs? And we’d leave you with a buffer zone so you could live the way you were living? Peaceful co-existence. I think that’s the best deal. I’d like to figure out how to get back to that. Get your kids back to you right now. I make a lot of money for the boss and you get to be the way you were.”

  “The boss?” He laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You don’t know who the boss is.” He got up and roped her little pony to his horse. “And we can never be the way we were.” He said, offering her his hand, “It’ll be dark soon. And cold. Let’s ride back. I’ll help you up.”

  Bronson put Maya on the back of his horse and he jumped on in front. He didn’t speak for ten minutes. It was starting to cool down and the early December sun was no match for his August incarnation. Maya shivered as the sweat evaporated off her skin. What was she doing with her arms around this strong man’s waist? She had to be honest with herself. But, in order to do that, she’d have to know herself. And she knew enough to know that, in this moment, she was unknown to herself. She imagined seeing the two of them, from a distance, as an objective observer, this man and woman on horseback. They could be father and daughter. Or they could be lovers. They could be in love.

  Finally, Bronson spoke, or seemed to speak, because Maya didn’t understand what was coming out of his mouth at first, whether they were words or not. He was pointing, too, as he spoke in tongues. “Acmispon argophyllus. Asclepias erosa. Cucurbita denticulate. Agave utahensis. Xylorhiza tortifolia.” She realized he was identifying all that he saw by the proper Latinate names of the flora. It felt like a Catholic mass performed in Latin. It felt holy, it made Maya feel holy.

  She remembered and the words cascaded through her from the deep past, “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.” Maya hadn’t been to church since she was a child, with her Catholic mom, but the ancient Latin flooded back to her, smuggled in on the backs of Bronson’s words. She lifted her eyes to the sky and realized she was in church again, had been all along, and that the desert was a place of worship, mystery, and revelation for this strange and powerful man. The observer at a distance in her thought now these two on horseback could be teacher and pupil, priest and penitent. Bronson continued, “Verbena gooddingii. Stipa speciosa. Rafinesquia neomexicana.”

  The old words flooded back to her from God knows where. She said, “Judica me, Deus, et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta: ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me.”*

  “Igneous rocks/skull rocks. The desert thinks with that skull.” Bronson pointed out boulders that looked eaten away by millennia of rainfall fashioning divots like eyes and smooth fronts like foreheads, like nothing else but a huge skull made by the maker, a self-portrait, the earth thinking itself at the beginning of time, dreaming itself into being. “There’s Phoradendron californicum. Yucca schidigera. Sometimes I think,” Bronson continued, “that my only job is to say the names, to speak the names, to bear simple witness. That because I saw them here and spoke their names, I existed, and b
ecause I bore witness and spoke their names, they existed. Ah, Yucca brevifolia—Joshua tree.”

  “Joshua tree,” Maya repeated, like a child.

  “Let me tell you what I’ve noticed since I got here, it’s getting hotter, it seems, and dryer every year.”

  “They call it climate change back there. Maybe we need the Latin for that.”

  “You can call it whatever you want, but see that ring of Joshua trees there?”

  He pointed out what indeed was a circle of the Joshuas, almost as if they had been planted in such a geometric shape. “Because of ‘climate change,’ you say—hotter temperatures—the Joshua trees are migrating to what they call climate refugia; the trees are finding the better, more temperate climate for themselves, which is great, smart nature, but the problem is they are leaving the Yucca moth behind. The Yucca moth hasn’t been moving with the Joshuas, she’s a terrible flier, she can’t make the trip, if you touch one, it just falls to the ground writhing, but the Yucca moth is what pollinates the Joshua tree, on purpose she does that, never eating the pollen for herself. Why? Perfect symbiosis as God ordained—she lays her eggs in the Joshua. It’s a succulent, ain’t a tree, and they need each other to procreate. But the moth can’t keep up with the migrating plants so they’re not getting pollinated and not bearing fruit, but are asexually reproducing from their roots, creating the ‘fairy rings’ you see there—circles of newer plants radiating out from the empty center where the living Joshua used to be. But these asexual plants don’t reliably reproduce—so they die out.”

  “Jesus, asexual reproduction, that’s like a horror movie,” Maya said, thinking inevitably about Hammer films. All I ever fucking think about is dumb movies, she thought, before wondering seriously if there was the germ of a scenario in there for Malouf, playing fast and loose with the science metaphors, climate change perverting the planet, transforming it into a ghost of itself, asexual, incestuous. Stop, she told herself. She had come to realize, since working at Praetorian, how she habitually tried to monetize information. Climate change? Fascinating subject—what will it do to real estate? Or now, what’s the movie? But that training started way before Malouf, at home in America and in school, she couldn’t lay it all at his Ferragamo-clad feet. But wasn’t this, she could almost hear Malouf in her head—and the idea that she was internalizing his voice freaked her right the fuck out—wasn’t this a prime example of making Arnold Palmers when life gives you lemons? Seeing the silver lining in the hurricane.

  Sure, sure it was, but soon, Bronson seemed to tell a cautionary tale, soon there would be no water anywhere, only lemons. Then what? Bronson monetized nothing. Reaching for the cliché, she thought, he knows the price of nothing and the value of everything. She wanted to compliment Bronson, but all she said was, “There’s a metaphor in there somewhere. Or a movie.”

  She thought she saw him smile at the mention of a movie. Maybe he missed his old life sometimes? She snapped her fingers. She had the title—The Moth Effect. She said, “If a moth flaps its wings in Joshua Tree, a storm ravages Europe.”

  The smile left Bronson. He looked away. “Lepidoptera Tegeticula” was all he said, as if in final benediction for a friend. She could feel his grief for the lowly moth. It was real. “That sucks,” she heard herself say. Ugh. What an inadequate and inarticulate response to his passion. She felt like a dilettante, an interloper on a planet she should be loving and taking care of. Yeah, she drove a Tesla, eschewed plastic whenever possible, and carried a metal straw in her purse, but maybe that wasn’t enough to save the world.

  “Do you know why it’s called a Joshua tree?” he asked, like a favorite professor again, she thought, like a real-life, present-time Indiana Jones. “Named that by the Mormons who settled this area.”

  “Mormons settled this area?”

  “Old school.” She laughed at his attempt at hip lingo. He continued, “Reminded them of when Moses raised his hands up in prayer for Joshua in battle.”

  “Why isn’t it the Moses tree, then?”

  “Good question. Pearl used to ask me that exact thing. I’d tell her the definition depends on your mood. Figure you can call that tree Joshua or Moses or Bill or Ted, but he still won’t come. Can you see him—Joshua or Moses or whoever it is?” He raised his arms to the sky in prayer. “Can you see him praying?”

  “Yes,” she said, seeing his forearms again, and raising her hands in prayer as well. “I can see him pray.”

  She kept her arms aloft for a while, but they got tired. There was no Equinox machine that could prepare her for lengthy horseback prayer. Bronson pointed out some surprisingly vibrant flowers beneath their dangling feet. “There’s some Bigelow’s monkeyflower, Mimulus bigelovii, ain’t he cute? Ah damn, look there”—he pointed to a big, gorgeous five-petaled pale yellow flower, a color so subtle no master paint mixer could ever approach—“Mentzelia involucrata, the sand blazing star.”

  “Wow,” Maya said. Again with the inadequate response to the wonders Bronson was sharing. But she knew nothing about flowers except the famous “Dutch Tulip Bubble” cautionary tale she’d studied at business school. Bronson didn’t seem to notice or mind.

  “There’s Pearl’s favorite,” he said, “and her mom’s—the desert five-spot.” He dismounted, helped Maya down, and stooped down to a light purple bulb. He didn’t pluck it. He bent it Maya’s way and motioned for her to join him. He gently spread the bulb. “See inside here, Eremalche rotundifolia, five red spots here, like the best poker hand you ever got. Royal flush.” She looked inside the bulb at the painterly beauty within, the hidden order out here in what she had thought was a chaos of random desert. A sublime hierarchy that only initiates could uncover. She was thankful for Bronson, her guide to this otherworld.

  The flower seemed to overwhelm Bronson momentarily. He stroked the fragile, weightless skin of the bulb comfortingly with the tip of a finger, saying, “There, there…” He seemed to drift off somewhere.

  But just as quickly, he was already standing up and striding away. “Goddamn cheatgrass and Sahara mustard are bad out here.” He began yanking the grass out of the ground angrily. “Invasive species,” he said. “I consider myself a guardian, like the angel Michael with a flaming sword. Cheatgrass shall not enter.” He had a smile on his face. He knew he sounded a bit pretentious. She noticed he didn’t give cheatgrass or Sahara mustard the honor of a Latin handle.

  “What’s cheatgrass ever done to you?”

  “This desert should be barren of fuel to burn. Naturally it is. Cheatgrass doesn’t belong here. It’ll burn. It’ll make a fire burn way farther than it should and burn what it shouldn’t.”

  “Oh.” Oh? Jesus.

  She watched as he pulled up the vandal roots. She got the feeling he wanted to purify the entire desert with his bare hands. He just might succeed. “You sure we should be out here? Humans?” she asked. He stopped yanking at the grass.

  “You mean, like we’re cheatgrass, too?” Maya nodded. Bronson inhaled. He seemed to consider the possibility. “I suppose humans are fuel for fire, too,” he said. He sat back and scanned the horizon, seeming to take in the quixotic nature of one man’s quest against runaway nature. “Ever fire a gun?” he asked.

  “No,” she replied, though the question startled her, and scared her out here all alone.

  “Come here,” he motioned to her, and withdrew his gun from a side holster.

  “I played paintball once,” she said.

  “Oh—paintball.” He smirked. “Then you’ll be fine.”

  “Hey, don’t hate on paintball.”

  He pointed at a cactus maybe twenty yards away. “See that saguaro?” She nodded. “Okay, here, take this.” He placed the gun in her hand, way heavier than they seemed to be in the movies. “Nothing to it. Just make believe it’s an extension of your finger, the barrel, just point and shoot.”

  “Like a camera.”

  “Sure, if that helps.”

  “Wow, it’s so heavy.”

&n
bsp; “Uh-huh. That’s the weight of life and death you feel.”

  “Show me,” she said, realizing that her tone had become flirty.

  Without turning around, Bronson gestured with his head. “Okay, see that boy back there over my left shoulder? He’s not praying, he’s got his hands up ready to go.” She looked where he pointed. There was a big cactus about thirty yards away, its two branches, she didn’t know what else to call them, almost perpendicular to its trunk and directed their way as if it wanted a hug or to fight. She could easily imagine a man with a gun. “He thinks he’s got the drop on me, but…”

  In one fluid motion, Bronson snatched the weapon from Maya’s hand and spun around like a gunslinger in a Western, shooting from the hip. The cactus in the distance popped wetly, three times, some of its succulent flesh sprayed out right where one might assume a head would be, dead center. Pap, pap, pap. He’d shot holes for eyes and a nose, boom, like that. He spun the gun on his index finger. “Pearl calls that ‘old man strength.’”

  “Oh God! Don’t hurt it,” Maya said, surprised at how her heart went out to the ambushed saguaro.

  “Nah, it’ll take more than a bullet or two to take down cactus-man. He can take whatever God and man throws at him. His skin will heal. Now you,” he said, handing the gun back to her. “I’ll help.”

  He was showing off. She liked that. He got behind her and held her arms tight, his hands around her hands. He placed her finger on the trigger and said, “Inhale, exhale, pull.” She inhaled, exhaled, and pulled. The bullet disappeared with a spray into the cactus again into one of its “arms”—a hit. She yelped with genuine delight.