by Paul Pen
“What’re you doing wandering around here?”
“I ask myself that very question sometimes. So does my mother. She asks me endlessly whenever she sees me planning another trip. And you know what? I don’t know the answer. I walk because I wouldn’t know how not to walk, simple as that. And every time, I need a bigger challenge. The Pacific Crest Trail took me five months. Five months walking.”
Iris let out a sigh of wonder.
“I’ve done the States to death, so I wanted to try Mexico, walk the length of the Baja California Peninsula, north to south. Almost a thousand miles. It’s going to keep me busy for a while. We don’t do this country justice up there, do we? We only mention it as a hiding place for fugitives, but it turns out to have all these wonders.”
Rick gave a short pause, his eyes fixed on Mom.
“Well, what’s the use in telling you if you’ve decided to live here? It must be for a reason. This landscape’s incredible. I never get tired of looking at it, with all these cactuses, these imposing rocks. This solitude. I love deserts. And the smell—such clean air.” Rick breathed in with gusto, looking around at the land with his arms outstretched, as if wanting to breathe in the entire landscape. “See what I mean? They’d have us believe that saguaros only exist in Arizona, symbol of the Wild West and all that. Turns out there are even more of them here than in our country. We’re so ignorant up there. So ignorant.”
“Those cactuses aren’t saguaros,” Daisy corrected him. “They’re called cardones.”
“Is that right?” said Rick. “And what’s the difference?”
Daisy shrugged. She took two flowers from the basket. “See how nice they smell?”
“May I?” Rick asked Mom, who nodded after some deliberation.
The young man went down on one knee in front of Daisy and smelled the flower.
“And this?” He pointed at the scratches on the little girl’s arm. “Did the cactus do it to you for trying to take away its flowers?”
“No, my sister did it.”
Mom’s back tensed.
Daisy held her hand over her mouth when she realized she’d said too much.
“Yeah, it was me,” Melissa put in, to hide the truth. “But I didn’t mean to do it, and I’ve already said sorry.”
“That’s true.” Daisy nodded in an exaggerated way. “I forgive you.”
Rick kept looking at the wound on her arm, oblivious to the lie.
“Well, it’s no big deal. I don’t think it will even scab over.” He blew on the scratches. “It’ll be gone in a week.”
As he stood, the weight of his own backpack unbalanced him. He had to take two steps to one side to steady himself. He ended up facing the cacti that Melissa had clothed. He opened his mouth in surprise.
“They’re my sister’s,” Iris hastened to explain. “She’s the one who does those weird things.”
Melissa gave her a reproachful look.
“No, well, they’re just a silly thing, they’re nothing, I don’t—”
“Hey”—Rick turned his head—“I love them. They’re very original. I’ve never seen anything like it. They’re like desert scarecrows.”
The display of acceptance filled Melissa’s chest. She gave her sister a smile.
“They’re named Needles, Pins, and Thorns?” Rick asked. “How apt.”
Melissa nodded with a hint of shyness.
“You have lovely daughters,” Rick said to Mom.
“My husband’s about to arrive.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to . . . Oh hell, I keep putting my foot in my mouth.”
“You didn’t say anything wrong,” Iris said.
“And it’s true, we are lovely,” added Daisy. “We’re three lovely sisters.”
She winked at Mom as she said the number.
“I can see that. One, two, and three.” He pointed at Daisy, Melissa, and Iris. “You don’t have any other sisters?”
The four of them answered at the same time: “No.”
There was silence. Melissa sensed Mom’s intention to end the conversation. Despite the laughs they’d shared, she still didn’t seem to like the presence of this stranger at the house.
“And how old are you?” Rick suddenly asked.
“I’m six,” Daisy quickly replied.
Mom shushed the little girl, but Melissa answered as well.
“I’m thirteen.”
“And I’m sixteen,” added Iris.
Rick repeated Iris’s age in a murmur, as if making a note of it and filing it away. Iris played with a lock of hair. Melissa understood the meaning her sister was ascribing to the boy’s attentions. She was always thinking about the same thing.
“So may I have that?” Rick gestured at the glass in Iris’s hands. “I think I’m hiding it pretty well, but for five minutes I’ve thought of nothing but drinking down that cold water. I’d love to do it before the ice has finished melting.”
Melissa and Iris laughed.
“You may,” Mom said. “But then I’m going to ask you to leave. My husband’s about to arrive.”
“Can I give you some advice?” Rick invited Mom to come closer to him. He spoke in her ear so the others wouldn’t know what he was saying, but Melissa managed to hear him. “Next time a stranger arrives on your land, best not tell him that your husband isn’t home. You’ve told me twice now. Me, I’m just a harmless guy, but someone with worse intentions would’ve been thrilled to learn that you’re here alone with your daughters.”
Mom nodded as if she’d been told off. She took the glass from Iris’s hands and gave it to Rick herself. He drank it in one go and expressed his satisfaction with a pant that made Daisy laugh.
“Well, thank you very much for that.” He showed them the empty glass. “And for everything. You have a lovely family, really. A family of flowers. I’ll go back the way I came.”
This time, Mom thanked him for the compliment. Melissa and Iris communicated with her by raising their eyebrows over and over.
“Come on, Mom,” Iris said out of the corner of her mouth. “He’s a nice guy. Let him have dinner with us.”
“Please . . .” Melissa whispered. “I want to talk to someone.”
Mom looked at the clothed cacti.
“It’s almost dark,” Melissa added. “Please . . .”
“Don’t worry,” said Rick. “Being alone is part of my adventure. Sometimes I think I walk to get away from everyone. And if I’m going to leave, it’s best if I go before the sun disappears completely.”
The young man swallowed the ice from the bottom of the glass. Iris whispered in Mom’s right ear. Melissa followed Rick’s movements as he crouched at the foot of one of the cacti to leave his drink beside the pitcher and the rest of the glasses. Melissa saw him point at them, one by one.
Counting.
One, two, three, four, five.
In the same way he had counted the sisters before. He was pensive for a moment, with his elbow resting on his knee, his fingers pinching his bottom lip. Then he stood eagerly, as if driven by a new energy.
“Do you know what? I’ll be honest. I could do with some real company. Having dinner with people would do me good. I think my brain’s going to degenerate if I don’t talk for a while. I’ve always believed in the kindness of strangers, and I think this is a good opportunity for the universe to show me that it exists.”
“The kindness of strangers,” Iris repeated. “That’s from A Streetcar Named Desire.”
“I love that play. Have you read it?”
“Have I read it?” Iris finished the question with her mouth open, a hand on her chest. It was several seconds before she closed it.
Rick turned to Mom again.
“I can cook my own food. I have a can of baked beans.”
Mom took a while to decide. The sun hid itself behind the horizon. The light at that time of day was Melissa’s favorite, because there was just enough of it to see the reality of things, without shadows or dazzle. A dust
cloud was visible in the distance.
“There’s my husband,” Mom said. She seemed happy to be able to delegate the decision. “Let’s go ask him.”
Rick walked into the kitchen gripping the straps on his backpack. Right away he looked around the room for photographs. Or painted family portraits. He found none. He searched for information on the refrigerator door, but there were only children’s drawings colored in with beads.
“You have a beautiful kitchen,” he said to Rose. “Thanks for letting me stay, Elmer.”
The man took a step forward. He faced Rick with his chest puffed out. “How do you know my name? I hadn’t told you.”
“From your coveralls.” He gestured at the badge embroidered on the garment.
Elmer tilted his head to one side and frowned. “A very observant young man . . .”
Rick didn’t know whether it was a compliment or a suspicion.
“Then try not to notice this mess,” Rose intervened.
In a single flurry of activity, she removed a notebook from the table, took a pan from the stove, and threw the remains of a lemon in the trash can. With a cloth she wiped some red drops from the countertop and gathered crumbs in one hand.
She dusted off her hands. “You can leave that here.”
She swooped on him to take his backpack, but Rick moved away from her. He didn’t want her to touch it.
“You travel light,” Elmer observed.
Once again, the intention of his words was difficult to decipher. Rick moved his backpack from his back to his belly and hugged it as if it were a traveling companion.
“It’s the first thing you learn when you start walking long distances. You have to choose between taking things and being able to keep going,” he said. “The more it weighs, the less chance you have of completing the route.”
“And what do you take with you?” Melissa asked.
“It’s rude to pry,” Rose chided her.
“Just enough to survive,” he replied. “A compass, a sweater, a raincoat . . .”
“You walk in this heat?” Elmer asked.
“To tell you the truth, it would have been better to come at another time of year.” He pointed at the sweat stains around his neck. “Progress is real slow because of the heat. In fact, do you mind if I use the bathroom to change?”
Iris bit her bottom lip, waiting for her parents’ response with wide eyes. Rose left the kitchen, went into a room that was probably the bathroom, and remained in there for almost a minute.
“All yours,” she said as she came out, holding the door for Rick.
He thanked her with a smile, went into the bathroom, and locked it from the inside. The small space contained a toilet and a sink. The first thing he did was count the toothbrushes in a glass. There were three. He opened the mirror door above the faucet. He found several used razors. A dry bar of soap. A plastic bottle of perfumed water. Bobby pins and hairbands. Some tweezers. Another toothbrush with the bristles splayed, black from being used to clean the space between tiles. In the top section, he found various medications. Most were labeled in Spanish, but Rick recognized some of the active ingredients. Salicex had to be a painkiller, Profineril, an anti-inflammatory. And Dormepam, some kind of tranquilizer. Given the number of boxes of this last one, it was clear that one of the adults, or both, suffered from anxiety. Under the sink, a metal case contained gauze, surgical tape, Band-Aids, scissors, a thermometer. Rick looked around as if he might find something of interest on the walls, by the toilet bowl, on the ceiling. He clicked his tongue.
He opened his backpack.
First he took out the towel he’d used to pad it. He saw that his other T-shirt had ended up at the bottom. To retrieve it he had to remove all the other contents of the backpack: a Polaroid camera, a flashlight, a cassette recorder, a pocket notebook—its cover decorated with fake passport stamps—and a can of baked beans. He exchanged his T-shirt for another that was identical but clean and dry. He repacked the backpack, leaving the can out and using the towel to fill it out again and cover up its other contents. He left the camera on top.
Although he hadn’t used the lavatory, he pulled the chain.
He went out drying his hands with the T-shirt he’d just taken off. Rose and her three daughters were still in the kitchen. The little girl was flitting around the legs of her mother, who was chopping vegetables on a board.
“My husband’s gone up to get changed.”
She invited him to take a seat. He left his dirty T-shirt on the back of the chair before sitting down. On the opposite side of the table were Iris and Melissa. He evaded their excessive attention by looking out the window.
The last trace of daylight, a purple line, was fading in the distance. Darkness was closing in on the cacti, the rocks, the trucks. There were two just outside the front door, in good condition. A little farther away he could make out the bodywork of three others, perhaps four. They appeared to be burned out, but with so little light it was difficult to be sure. Within a few minutes he wouldn’t be able to see those. It would be as if there was nothing out there. Rick imagined the house seen from the sky, just a spot of orange light lost in an immense black desert.
“It’s incredible how we human beings insist on living in the remotest places, don’t you think?”
“It’s incredible, yeah, yeah,” Iris repeated.
“Are there streets where you live?” Melissa asked. “And people?”
Rose turned around. She upbraided her daughters by pointing a knife at them.
“How far is it to the nearest town?” Rick went on. “Seventy miles? A hundred? I can’t even remember how many days ago it was when I passed the gas station. It must be a very long way.”
“Dad works there,” the little girl said.
Rose shushed her. “Or maybe the incredible thing is that we humans mass together in cities. That we live on top of each other, with no space. That everyone sticks their noses in everyone else’s business when we have all this space available to us to live more freely and peacefully. Without having to explain anything to anyone.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Rick said to reassure her. “Did you live in a city?”
“She did, not us,” Iris said. “Does that seem fair?”
“A long time ago,” Rose replied. “Before we had the girls. My husband and I got tired of living that kind of life and decided to give the girls something better. A life that’s real. More earth and less asphalt.”
“And separate us from other people,” Melissa added.
“You were born here?”
“I already told you they were.” Rose let a pitcher of water land with force on the table. “They were born right here.”
“Like fillies,” Iris whispered when her mother withdrew.
Rick gave her a smile and saw the girl’s cheeks light up.
The intensity of Rose’s knife blows against the board as she chopped increased.
“Do you like spicy food?” she asked.
“Don’t worry.” Rick took a multifunction knife from a side pocket of the backpack and positioned himself at the countertop beside her. “I don’t want to be more trouble than necessary. I’ll make my own food and you make yours. I can imagine how hard it must be to grow stuff here.”
He drove the can opener into the metal and hacked his way around edge of the circular top until thick, rough fingers interrupted his movement. Rick smelled gasoline. Elmer spoke near his ear.
“If you eat in my house, you eat in my house.” Elmer wrenched the can from his hands and threw it in the trash. “And you must be sick of canned and powdered food.”
“I appreciate it, but—”
“But what?”
“There was no need to throw away the can. I could have eaten it tomorrow.”
Iris laughed, covering her mouth. Elmer looked at him with his head tilted to one side, his hands inside the front pocket of the denim overalls he’d traded his work clothes for, weighing up whether to take offense. His d
eliberation ended in a guffaw.
“I can promise you, kid, you don’t want to miss out on my wife’s food. She’s the best cook for a hundred miles around.”
“She’s the only cook,” Melissa murmured at the table.
Her father took two beers out of the refrigerator and chucked one to Rick without warning. He managed to snatch the bottle from the air.
“Good catch. Do you like basketball?”
“I play baseball.”
Elmer showed his disapproval with a snort. Rick shrugged while he opened the bottle with his knife.
“You know the good thing about being a man?” Elmer asked after his first sip. “That we can follow different sports—support different teams, even—but we’ll always be able to enjoy a beer together.”
The older man put his arm over Rick’s shoulders and clinked his bottle against Rick’s. Rick took advantage of the friendly gesture to propose something.
“Could I spend the night here?” he blurted out.
A chair scraped along the floor. Melissa and Iris held hands. Rose’s knife hammered into the board. Even the little girl, who’d sat on the ground with the basket of flowers between her legs, looked up to hear the response.
“Here? In this house?” Elmer’s tone had risen at least an octave. The proposal must have seemed so ridiculous to him that he could find no reason to be angry. “In your dreams, kid. Do you think I don’t know how pretty my daughters are?”
Rick regretted having put the idea forward so soon. He thought of the five glasses he’d counted outside, by the pitcher. He needed more time in the house.
“Maybe he could sleep outside,” Iris said.
Elmer looked him up and down. “If you want to sleep in one of the pickups, I won’t say no. But the door to this house will be locked when you go out. You’ll be alone out there. If you need a bathroom, you have the entire desert. And when the sun comes up you’re going to roast, so you’d better get going before dawn.”
“No problem,” Rick said. It was better than nothing. “After twenty days sleeping on the ground, the seat of a truck will feel like a bed.”
Rose peered out the window.
“Sleep in the Dodge. It’s been in the shade all afternoon and it’ll be cooler.”