Hegwitha and Martha had jumped from the truck. Sonoma’s jaw went slack—and then, despite herself, she’d grinned.
“Hey, dudes. How did you find me?” Her voice warbled, her face was white with raccoony rings of mascara encircling her brimming eyes. As they watched, a tremor rose up through her body until her lips and her fleshy cheeks began to wobble like aspic.
Martha and Hegwitha ran over and put their arms around her. Martha pressed her cheek against Sonoma’s head and inhaled the dusty scent of her hair. T-Bone had climbed down from the truck and was watching from a distance. Sonoma leaned against Martha and burrowed her damp face into her neck.
Sonoma was talking and crying at once, gulping back spit and tears. Gesturing incoherently, pointing at the cactus just behind them, she seemed to be saying something about the giant saguaro with two huge arms that curled in a tilted loop, roughly parallel to the ground.
At last Sonoma quit sobbing. She said, “I got tired. I stopped to rest by this awesome cactus. I stood there, just like this, between its arms—and I heard the arms talking. They were chattering to each other in their crazy space-creature voices. But the weirdest thing was that somehow I knew, I knew they were talking to me. They were giving me a message, telling me to stay put and do nothing and stand here and wait for you guys to come get me. They were saying you would find me…Hey, listen. Come on. It’s still happening. Hear that? Hear the cactus talking?”
No one asked Sonoma how she’d got there or where she had been or why she had run away from the camp or where she thought she was going. Motionless, barely breathing, the two women and the girl stood on the desert floor near the cactus, not far from the edge of the road. Like human arms, the cactus branches entwined them in its embrace.
“Hey. Voices,” said Hegwitha.
In the distance crickets chirped—or was it the hum of telephone wires? A high-pitched twitter, an answering murmur, a question, call, and response.
“What is that?” said Martha. “What are those sounds?”
“Hush,” said Sonoma. “Listen. Stay tuned. Are you listening? Hear it now?”
They huddled closer together.
“I think so,” Martha said.
About the Author
Francine Prose is the author of sixteen novels, including A Changed Man, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel, a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. A former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Prose is a highly regarded critic and essayist, and has taught literature and writing for more than twenty years at major universities. She is a distinguished writer in residence at Bard College, and she lives in New York City.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1995 by Francine Prose
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
978-1-4804-4509-3
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Hunters and Gatherers Page 23