The man who stole the cactus doesn't sound like he looks. He's a shriveled little grape with the gait of a penguin and the voice of Leonard Cohen. When he first approached me at my station, he chuckled before and after saying anything.
"Heh," he said, "so what's all this then? They got you banished to the middle of nowhere, heh?" He looked at my shack, just big enough for a desk and a stool, then at the tent I'd pitched next to it.
I told him the truth: I was assigned to conduct soil tests and catalog plants in the area, and it was easier for me to stay out here for the length of the survey than to hike in and out every day. I didn't tell him about the cactus, of course. I didn't tell him that my true job was guarding one of the country's three known remaining wild specimens, an ugly gray-green lump five inches wide that, judging by its size, was older than him. I certainly didn't tell him that it was soaking up the desert sun just a hundred feet west of where we stood.
Leonard Cohen asked where the trail back to the visitor's center was. I pointed him toward it and off he went. I didn't see or speak to another soul for the rest of the day. I took my soil samples, boiled some pasta over a fire and ate it plain, went to sleep when the embers did.
The next morning there was a hole where the cactus used to be, a great earthen wound dotted with shreds of white roots, viscera lingering after a massacre. I see it still as I try to fall asleep each night. The hole's depth changes every time I attempt to pin it down. The roots sprout eyes and writhe like maggots.
I've been living in my car for two weeks as of yesterday. Out of bitterness I'm tempted to make it sound worse than it is. In reality, I'm perfectly suited to it. I'm not so large that I can't curl up in the backseat, and I've always preferred my food lukewarm and shelf-stable anyway.
The biggest perk of being permanently mobile is how easy it is to follow the cactus thief. When he heads into town, I do too; when I wake up, I'm already outside his house. He lives in a beige ranch that looks exactly like its neighbors, though if you peer around the side you can see his sole personal touch: the curved peak of a greenhouse behind the fence.
I know the cactus is there. I sense it like a mother senses her wandering child in a crowded mall. If Leonard's trying to hawk it on the black market, he hasn't found a buyer yet. If he intends to use it for a psychedelic experience, he hasn't set a date for his trip. He'd have to be an idiot to try, since this cactus doesn't contain any psychoactive compounds, but stupider things have happened. Whatever his plans are, I'm confident he hasn't carried them out.
But any solace I take in the plant's proximity is darkened by the impossibility of closing the remaining distance between us. The fence around the yard is solid wood and too tall for me to contend with discreetly during the day, and the neighbor has an oversensitive motion-activated light that precludes a nighttime attempt.
For now I content myself with watching the thief. His existence is so structured that structuring mine around it is effortless. He rises early and closes his curtains as soon as the sun sets. He eats breakfast at McDonald's every morning: buttered flapjacks and syruped sausage and two limp hash browns. He goes to Lowe's and walks around for two hours, leaves without buying anything. He likes the electrical department and the endcap of discounted paint. He gives the nursery a wide berth. A few minutes after he gets home, sounds start emanating from the greenhouse. The clattering of clay pots, the clearing of a throat, the occasional sharp, vulgar inhale.
He is almost always alone.
The exception is Thursday evening, when he carries a cardboard tray of potted cactuses to his car and drives to the library. In the community room he joins a circle of a dozen other old people who have also brought cactuses. The people chat and laugh. The cactuses watch from a folding table by the window; outside, I watch from below. The plants are sensational: tall powdery blue ones with yellow spikes, stout spheres with intricate red crowns, dense multi-headed clumps with spines so fine they look like down. My cactus isn't among them.
I turn my attention to the thief. From outside I can't hear what he's saying. I've barely heard him say anything since I found him at the gas station a week ago, when I heard Leonard Cohen ask for twenty dollars on pump number two as I stuffed beef jerky sticks down my pants. Tonight, though, he can't stop talking. His torso jerks at the beginning and end of each statement; my brain fills in the chuckles. He smiles the entire time. All of the old people do. It's sweet at first, endearing even, but I can't enjoy the feeling for long. Every time I start to I remember the hole in the ground, all those raw white roots.
My break comes three days later. The morning is overcast, the normally warm-hued houses tinted uncomfortably blue. He opens his curtains at five-thirty and emerges from his house at six, just as he always does. But this time I notice something I haven't before: he doesn't lock the door when he leaves.
I pick at the skin on my thumbs for an hour before deciding to do it.
The house smells like an estate sale, someone else's memories, the scent that's released when objects are moved after decades spent in situ. The entryway is carpeted a dusky pink, as is every other room I pass on my slow, silent journey down the hall. Even the bathroom, emitting a biologic odor all its own, is plush underfoot. At the end of the corridor I find the dining room, taken up almost entirely by a massive walnut table. Mail addressed to "Harold Collier" occupies most of the place settings. And beyond the table, a sliding glass door reveals the yard and the greenhouse.
I step forward and the floor creaks. My body locks up for a moment; I try to unclench from the top down. Jaw, shoulders, chest, stomach, thighs. I tell myself it's just us, my parts and me. We don't need to be so tense. We're quiet not out of necessity but out of respect for the nature of our crimes.
I take another step. This time there's a creak behind me. I know it isn't mine.
I steel myself to turn and possibly fight the old man, but when I finally swivel around my eyes meet a woman's.
She breathes through her mouth, clutches both hands at her chest. She's as wrinkled as the thief, a third of his size. Leonard's Marianne. Her wispy hair is dyed a flat, shallow black. Beneath it, two thick purple scars cling to her white scalp like caterpillars.
"What do you want?" she whispers.
"I—"
"I don't have money," she says, her eyes widening as she interrupts. "There's jewelry. There's a collection of vintage Pyrex."
"That's not—"
"Thirty-four complete sets. The turquoise snowflake mixing bowls alone are worth hundreds."
"I'm not robbing you. I'm looking for L—Harold."
Her entire body twitches. She braces herself against the wall.
"I'm sorry," I say. "I didn't know you were here."
She nods slowly. My face burns under her stare. "So you're her."
"I'm—"
"It figures." She rubs the inner corners of her eyes with her index fingers. The heat in my cheeks cools for a moment, then returns as her gaze does. "Oh, lord. I thought I'd be madder. I just feel sorry for you."
"Sorry?"
"This is sad. He's got to be three times your age. Twenty-five?"
"Twenty-seven."
She shrugs, cocks her head. "Well, he's not here. You'd think he'd have the common sense to tell his girls not to show up here. Or maybe you wouldn't think that. What do I know." She steps to the side and motions me back toward the front door. "I'll let him know you stopped by."
"Please," I say. "I just need to get something from the greenhouse."
"Oh, you do? And just what might that be?"
"It's—he was helping me propagate one of my plants. For the cactus club. I just need it back. You'll never see me again. I promise."
The woman looks like she might crumple in on herself like a dying star. She closes her eyes; it feels worse than when they were boring into me. "Go on. Then get out."
There must be thousands of plants in here, fifteen feet of spiky eyes on either side of me, watching as I walk down the aisle. An herbaceous church, a full congregation of cactuses. If they're organized, the methodology used to do so is beyond me. Columnar specimens four, five, six feet high commingle with minuscule blips that barely rise above the soil line. Rings of flowers crown some; others look devoid even of spines, nude among their natty neighbors. The cactuses overwhelm me, slowing time and cluttering my vision until I nearly forget which one I'm looking for.
"Turn around right now. Slow. With your hands up."
Leonard's disembodied voice, as hypnotic as it is on record, as it was out on the mesa—but now chuckleless, fortified.
I do as I'm told. He's holding not a gun, as I'd feared, but a gnarled wooden staff as thick as my arm. He wields it like a baseball bat over his shoulder. Its heft throws off his power stance; he sways as he squints at me, trying to match me to a memory. When it clicks, his face softens. The talons of his crow's feet shrink back down to the quicks. But he doesn't lower the stick.
"You're that girl from the park. The soil girl."
At the park they taught all the new hires how to defend ourselves against wildlife. Cougars, coyotes, broody javelina. You make yourself big and loud, stomp and shout, launch projectiles, never turn away. Fear, the instructor said, is just a few neuron fires, a few hormone spritzes away from dominance. You only need to shift your mental state by a fraction of an emotion to get an animal to back down. And if that fails, you dodge the mouth but aim for the face. You only run once you're sure you can't be chased.
"That's me," I say, letting the words resonate around my chest and in my cheeks as I speak them. I stretch my raised arms out to my sides, keeping my hands open. I'm as big as I can be, and it's nearly impossible to look away from the thief even if I felt so inclined. If it comes down to it I can throw a cactus at him. A clay pot, a pound of soil, a thousand spines to the eyes, the lips, the neck.
"I suppose you're here about the cactus," he says. "The Ariocarpus."
We can tell my fear is still fear.
"Where is it?"
"It's here. How did you find me?"
"You're distinctive. Why did you take it?"
"Don't worry about the cactus. Worry about yourself."
Keep steady. Bare your teeth. Don't look away.
"Myself? Heh."
"The police are on their way."
Your mouth will naturally produce more saliva. Allow it to disperse as you snarl.
"I lost my job because of you. I was out there guarding that cactus. I was there to protect it. And you stole it."
"So you lost your job because you didn't do it. And you were only doing harm anyway." He stumbles an inch forward, glances at the plants to my right, returns his gaze to me. "These plants are rare because the world has become inhospitable to them. We can only save them by bringing them to safety and cultivating them anew. Not by leaving them to languish under the unwatchful eye of some little girl."
Whatever you do, don't look away.
"Give me back the cactus."
He opens his mouth like he's about to say something, stops himself, sucks his teeth. Hums a little. "Do you love it?"
"What? The cactus?"
"The cactus."
His eyes dart to my right again. I follow them. It's there. It's a foot away from me, hideous and formless and alive in a terracotta pot.
"I care very much about the cactus," I say.
"Well. I love the cactus. I love it as deeply as I love every cactus in here. Every cactus around the world. I would do anything for any of them. Would you?"
I laugh; it comes out a shriek. The thief, startled, falters under the weight of his weapon. His hip hits the edge of a table and he flails, trying to steady himself as all the pots jostle and clang against each other. But he fails and stumbles to the ground.
I grab the cactus and run.
When I hit the dry air outside, I realize I'm dripping in noxious sweat. Then I realize I have nowhere to go. The way I came in—through the house—is out of the question. The yard is fully enclosed with no gate, no gaps in the fencing.
There is no choice but to go over.
I charge at the fence, the cactus swaddled under my arm like a football, envisioning myself as a spring compressing, releasing, floating up up up and arcing down with gymnastic grace. But I launch myself too late and my body slams full-on into the fence. There are multiple crunches. I can see my nose in the wrong part of my periphery. I touch it and wish I hadn't. The cactus and its soil have flown out of the pot, which rests in pieces on the brittle brown grass. I scoop the plant up and choke back a cry when I see its half-dozen broken tubercules, some tips hanging on by a thin strip of skin, others crushed or torn off altogether. Its dense, wet inner flesh now exposed, desiccating in the desert's arid breath.
Leonard shouts from the greenhouse. He babbles and sputters like he hopes the words will assemble themselves on his behalf. He calls for his wife: "Martha!" He calls to me: "Get back here, you little bitch!"
I stuff the plant in my back pocket, willing myself to remember it's there. Then I run back toward the greenhouse. The thief, now supporting himself with the stick in the entryway, shudders, recoils, regretting his command. By the time I feel the rush of power I've already turned around. I look for the patch of lawn my shoes tore up on my first attempt and leap before I reach it.
This time I stick the jump. The top of the fence rams up under my breasts; I'm supported by them and my armpits. I draw my legs up to my stomach, plant my toes against the fence, push as hard as I can, and—
I'm over. I'm on the ground. On my side, fetal, beanlike. I know I'm in pain but I don't feel it. I pat my back pocket. The cactus is still there. The thief is still yelling. My car is still across the street. I free the cactus from my pants just in time to open the door, throw myself into the driver's seat, and go.
I don't stop driving until I'm nearly in Tucson. Behind me, big rigs chug into the rest area; to the right, cars scuttle back onto the highway like wayward ants. The sun is slinking away, blending its final rays with the city's eternal pollution to create an impossible orange, violent and beatific. I set the cactus on the dashboard so it can experience the light. I've wrapped its roots in a damp napkin. Its wounds have already started to scab over.
In the rest stop bathroom I lift my shirt in front of the mirror, prod the contusions on my chest. Then I lean in close, try to remember what my nose is supposed to look like, count the scrapes and scratches on my face. Soon, they'll start to scab over too.
