Desert Flowers

by Paul Pen

  Rick gave a half smile.

  “We’re having breakfast, and I have to get to work.”

  Melissa yelled from the house. “He can stay and have breakfast with us!”

  Iris opened the screen door and came out onto the porch. Hugging one of the structure’s posts, she waved the slotted spoon in the air. “I’ve already made eggs for him!”

  Rick left his boots on the floor, his socks in a ball inside. He placed the backpack protectively between his legs when he sat at the table. The first thing he noticed was the little girl’s arm. It was the twin with the scratches, not the one who’d had dinner with them the night before. His heart accelerated when he remembered the document in his folder. Melissa ate cereal while she stroked one of her rocks, grinding the occasional flake against the mouth painted on the stone.

  “It’s Gregory today,” she whispered to Rick.

  The twin with the scratched arm was watching the rest of the family with her mouth slotted onto the edge of her glass, blowing bubbles in the milk every time something made her laugh. Iris kept seeking out Rick with her gaze, giving him conspiratorial smiles every time their eyes met. He tried to avoid her looks so her father wouldn’t intercept them. He didn’t ask about the dirty T-shirt he’d left hanging on the back of a chair. He sensed that Iris had something to do with its disappearance, and he preferred not to risk the rest of the family finding out. He did his best to overcome the desire to take off the one he was wearing, which was soaked in sweat. Staying inside the truck until they came looking for him had been tough. When the sun reached the cab soon after dawn, not long after Rick returned, the temperature had risen until it was difficult to breathe. He’d made himself hold on because the pretext of having overslept would be more believable than any other he could come up with. It was the excuse most likely to enable him to remain at the house after Elmer had told him, twice, to leave the place before daybreak.

  The father ate quickly, his fork scraping on the plate every time he skewered his scrambled eggs. He alternated each forkful with sips of coffee as black as the scorpion that had crossed in front of Rick’s flashlight in the night. With the quantity of salsa verde he’d poured over his breakfast, each mouthful must have burned more than that scorpion’s sting. A foot brushed against Rick’s. Iris’s flushed cheeks gave her away.

  “What soft feet you have,” she whispered.

  He moved his chair backward.

  “Come on, kid, eat,” the father said. “We’re leaving in five minutes.”

  “We’re leaving?”

  “You’re coming with me to the gas station. That way you can save yourself a ninety-mile hike.”

  Rick took a sip of coffee to give himself time to think.

  “But that would be cheating,” he improvised. “I’ve come to walk, and walking’s what I have to do.”

  “Nice try, kid”—Elmer let out a guffaw—“but I’m not going to leave you alone in the house with my daughters.”

  “Dad, he’s still got lots of food left to eat,” Iris broke in.

  Elmer stood and picked up the boots from the floor.

  “You have five minutes to get it down, or it stays on the plate.” He dropped the footwear on the table, making the teaspoons tinkle in the cups. “Five minutes.”

  “Are you seriously going to leave that pair of boots where we eat?” Rose scolded her husband. “Just look how worn and filthy they are.”

  He removed them right away, picking them up using a finger and thumb as pincers.

  The ball of socks fell out. It rolled along the tablecloth among the cups, the plates, the box of cereal. Rick watched it move in slow motion, his mind working at full speed trying to come up with the excuse that would enable him to prolong his stay.

  “They stink!” yelled the little girl, who laughed into the liquid in her glass, splashing her face with chocolate milk.

  Rick trapped the ball as if catching an animal. The little girl’s comment had given him an idea.

  “You’re right, Lily, they reek. So do I.” He wrinkled his nose to keep the youngest daughter laughing. Then he asked Elmer, “Do you mind if I take a shower? I think the little one has said out loud what we were all thinking. I’ll only be five minutes.”

  Elmer opened his mouth but closed it without saying anything, as if he’d tried to find a reason to refuse him the shower but hadn’t found one. “Five minutes, not a second longer,” he finally said. “And only because I don’t feel like driving ninety miles with a guy who smells like a run-over coyote, not because I feel sorry for you.”

  “You don’t smell bad,” Iris whispered. “You smell like you.”

  Rick pretended he hadn’t heard her. He drank the rest of his coffee in one gulp, stuffed the ball of socks into his boots, and got up, holding his backpack.

  “I guess the bathtub’s upstairs, right?” He managed to suppress the trembling in his voice prompted by the possibility of investigating upstairs. “The bathroom down here didn’t have one.”

  The father snorted.

  “Our shower’s upstairs, all right,” he said. “You come with me.”

  Rick followed him. When they passed the half bath near the front door, Elmer asked him if he needed a towel or soap.

  “Both.”

  “You really don’t have much in that backpack.” Elmer took a towel and a bar of soap from the bathroom. “Please tell me you at least have a toothbrush.”

  Rick nodded, though it was a lie. His stomach began to contract when they approached the foot of the stairs. Then Elmer strayed off toward the front door. He guided him outside, across the porch. Rick felt the heat from the boards on the soles of his feet. They went down the steps and around the house to the left. Rick stepped on some stones, which hurt his bare feet. On the side wall stood a narrow pipe with an opening at the height of Rick’s chin.

  “No man’s going to take his clothes off in the same house as my wife and daughters, kid, so you’ll have to make do with this faucet,” Elmer said. “And don’t pull that face. I wash here myself whenever I work outside on the trucks.”

  He handed Rick the bar of soap, then stuck the towel on the spines of one of the cacti.

  “As you can see, there’re plenty of places to hang your clothes. Just mind you don’t prick your balls. Come on, hurry up, you’ve got five minutes.” Elmer turned the valve before leaving, and a powerful jet hit the ground. As he turned the corner where the porch was, he yelled, “Four minutes.”

  Rick took a while to react. The idea of using the shower to gain access to the top floor hadn’t panned out as he’d hoped. He needed more time. He couldn’t let Elmer take him to the gas station.

  He swiveled around as if he could find the solution on the ground. The spurt of water spattered him with mud. He left his backpack to one side and started undressing because it was what he was supposed to be doing.

  “Think, think, think . . .”

  As Elmer had with the towel, he hung up his T-shirt using the cactus spines. He folded his pants on top of the backpack. When he took off his underpants, hooking them onto another spine, his nudity made him feel defenseless. He bent his knees to go under the jet, hoping the water would deliver an idea, and rubbed the bar of soap against his chest.

  “Two minutes, kid!”

  Elmer’s voice from inside the house reverberated off the wall. Rick spread the soap over his body, hoping for an epiphany. The revelation arrived as he rinsed his hair. He came out from under the stream of water, leaving the faucet running. He didn’t even wash away all the lather. Without giving the idea time to ripen, he grabbed the towel hanging on the cactus.

  “One minute!” shouted Elmer.

  Rick bit the towel, pushing the fabric inside his mouth. He began breathing more heavily. The sound of the air as it entered and left his nose was louder than the jet of water hitting the ground. He moved closer to the cactus. He was right-handed, so he chose the left arm.

  He had to do it.

  He had to do it now.
>
  He took one last breath.

  He hammered the inner side of his arm into the cactus.

  The spines pierced his skin like dozens of injections administered at once, hypodermic needles extracting blood from his wrist to his biceps. The needles in his muscle burned most of all. Rick screamed into the towel. He breathed in again before moving his arm downward without separating it from the cactus. The spines tore at his flesh like an enraged cat. When he retracted his arm, the spines still stuck to it were the ones that hurt the least. The ones that clung to the cactus exited the flesh as if the nurses administering the injections were digging around with the needles, intent on torturing him.

  He used the towel to muffle another scream.

  He hammered his arm into the cactus again.

  This time, the pain made him light-headed. The smell of blood and cactus sap turned his stomach.

  He swung his arm once more.

  His body went cold. He observed the damage through tears. Blood covered his entire forearm, it dripped onto the ground and his feet. Spines sprouted from his flesh at the most unexpected angles. The image of shaving them like hair made him laugh insanely, causing him to choke.

  He lay on the ground and took the towel from his mouth, struggling to contain a scream. He used it to cover himself in case the girls came out. Lying in the sand, covered in his own blood and spattered with mud by the jet of water, he cried out. First they were generic howls of pain to attract attention, screams he didn’t need to feign. Then he called for aid.

  “Help!”

  The entire structure of the house creaked with the movement that broke out inside.

  Rose shuddered when she heard the first scream. The soapy cup she was washing slipped from her hands. The girls’ chairs scraped against the kitchen floor. She left the dishes.

  “What’s happened to him?” Iris asked after the second howl.

  Rose hadn’t seen her so pale since she told her what happened to Edelweiss. Daisy tried to take refuge between her legs, but Rose got her out of the way and ran to the door. The girls followed.

  Elmer was already outside, on the porch.

  “What is it?” asked Rose.

  “I don’t know. You all stay here.”

  “He needs my help,” Iris sobbed.

  Rose clicked her tongue at Iris’s excessive interest in the young man. She knew the fantasies her daughter would be creating in her head. “I’m coming with you.” She opened the screen door despite her husband’s resistance. From outside, she ordered her daughters not to move. Daisy was crying in Melissa’s arms. “Don’t be frightened, Daisy, it’s all right.”

  Another scream from the boy made her jump.

  “Has a snake bitten him?” Iris’s voice faltered.

  “Stay here.”

  Rose gripped Elmer’s arm. They rounded the house toward the faucet. She let out a cry when they found the boy lying on the ground, near one of the cacti, covered in earth and blood. It flowed from one of his arms, diluting itself in the water and soaking into the towel he had bundled up on his crotch, his pubic hair visible. He struggled to speak.

  “I . . . I slipped when I came out.” He coughed. “I wanted to get the towel, but I fell on the cactus. Right on the cactus with this arm. Because of the soap.”

  With his eyes, he indicated the bar of soap floating in a puddle of lather on the ground. Then he showed them his arm.

  Rose held her hands to her chest with a gasp. “It hurts just looking at it.” She sucked air through her teeth. “That’s a lot of spines.”

  She knelt next to Rick to assess the damage. The blood made it impossible to see the depth of the wounds, but the dozens of needles made his flesh look like a pincushion.

  “Some mess you’ve got yourself into, kid.” Elmer held his hands to his head, the truck keys hooked on his thumb. “And I was already late.”

  “Please, Elmer. Just look at the poor boy,” Rose reproached him. “Help me lift him up.”

  Between the two of them they managed to get him on his feet. Rose washed away the blood with handfuls of water until she had a better view of the injury.

  “It’s not so bad,” she finally said.

  “It’s not?” Oddly, the boy didn’t seem pleased at the observation. “The pain’s making me dizzy.” He held his hand to his forehead.

  “The skin and flesh are broken, but it doesn’t look like you’ve damaged any nerves. And I can’t see the bone,” explained Rose. “It’s the spines you want to worry about. There’re a lot of them and they could get infected. I’ll have to get them out for you.”

  “All of them?” Elmer asked with an impatient snort.

  Rose didn’t bother answering him.

  “Come on, let’s get you to the kitchen.”

  Without giving her husband the chance to complain, she led Rick back to the house, keeping his arm as straight as possible.

  “Kid, make sure that towel’s on properly,” Elmer yelled behind them. “I don’t want it falling off in front of my daughters.”

  Carefully, they climbed the porch steps. Rose didn’t take her eyes off the wound, though Rick was looking away. Elmer ran to catch up with them and reached the door before they did. On the other side of the screen, the girls burst into questions.

  “Oh, no. What happened? Why’s the towel red?”

  “I’m scared, Mommy.”

  “Are you all right, Rick? Tell me you’re all right. I need to know you’re all right.”

  Rose asked them to get out of the way, and Elmer helped clear a path. As they came in, Daisy ran upstairs, Melissa asked if it was very painful, and Iris’s eyes welled up. Iris tried to approach the young man, but Elmer stopped her.

  “If you want to help, bring the first-aid kit.”

  “And the tweezers,” Rose added. She sat Rick down in the kitchen, his arm stretched out on the table.

  “What happened?” Melissa asked, holding the doorjamb.

  “I slipped and fell on a cactus. If only it’d had clothes on like yours.”

  “Thorns, Needles, and Pins would never have done that to you.”

  Iris strode into the kitchen like an emergency-room nurse and bit her bottom lip when she saw the injury. She emptied the contents of a metal case on the table and deposited a pair of tweezers there as well.

  “Your wounds hurt me as much as they do you,” she whispered to Rick.

  Rose elbowed her out of the way.

  Daisy returned from wherever she’d been and picked up the thermometer. “Do I have a fever, Mommy?”

  Rose raised her arms in the air.

  “OK, everyone out!” Elmer said. “You’re getting in the way!”

  Iris took Daisy by the hand. Melissa joined them in the doorway.

  Before leaving the kitchen, Iris turned back. “When pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.”

  Elmer sighed. Rose shook her head.

  The first thing she picked up was a bottle of iodine.

  “This is going to sting,” she warned.

  She soaked the wound in the dark, metallic-smelling solution. Rick clenched his fist and closed his eyes. He bared his teeth.

  “Come on, kid, don’t be a crybaby.” Elmer was pacing the length of the kitchen, shaking the keys to the truck.

  Rose blew on the wound to dry it and picked up the tweezers. They were the ones she used for her eyebrows. She felt woozy looking at the field of needles on his arm. Selecting one of the thicker ones first, she pulled on it suddenly, without warning. She deposited it on one of the bandages, leaving a dark red blot on the material. Then she extracted another one.

  “Is this going to take long?”

  Rose let her shoulders drop.

  “This is the second one.” She showed her husband the tweezers clasping the spine. “Look at his arm and work it out.”

  “What am I supposed to do? I can’t show up two hours late.”

  She left another blot on the bandage.

  “Don’t m
ove,” she told the young man.

  Rose got up and invited her husband out through the back door.

  “I think you can go,” she whispered once they were outside.

  She could smell the garden’s vegetables warming in the sun.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Look at him.”

  Rose guided Elmer’s gaze toward the boy. His hair was stuck to his face, the towel was wrapped around his waist like a skirt that was too small for him. He was shivering.

  “He’s harmless,” said Rose. “He tried to hide it, but he jumped with each spine I pulled out.”

  “He is pretty pathetic, I’ll give you that.”

  “And if he tries anything, it’s five against one.”

  Elmer smiled.

  “Patch him up and then he goes.” He held his wife’s face. “Patch him up. And then he goes. And he doesn’t go near Iris.”

  “I want him out, too. But if that boy has a mother, she’ll thank me for not letting him walk off with an infected arm.”

  “You’re too good.”

  “No, I’m a mother. It’s easy to feel compassion when you understand that everyone’s the child of a woman like you.”

  Elmer kissed her on the lips. They returned to the kitchen.

  “Kid, you’re lucky that my wife’s a better person than I am. I’m going, she’s going to take care of you. As soon as she’s gotten the last spine out, you leave the way you came. Got it?”

  The young man nodded.

  “No eating, no resting, no drinking, no saying goodbye to my daughters. You leave. And if it’s through that back door, all the better.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “And you’re going to do me a favor right now and get dressed, however much it hurts.”

  Iris appeared in the kitchen. She had Rick’s backpack and clothes. The boy snatched them from her hands, his healthy arm fast as a whip. Rose attributed it to shyness at seeing his underwear exposed.

  “We’re going to leave you for a minute so you can get dressed,” Elmer said.

  Before leaving the kitchen with him and Iris, Rose took the basket of flowers from the refrigerator. They found Melissa sitting on the stairs, Daisy using her legs as a backrest.