Desert cactus flash sheet

You climb the rungs with rope burn on both palms and find the old pump house swept clean. Beyond the cactus stand, where the wind harp hangs from its wire, a scrap of tin shaped like a fish has been nailed to a post. The children call it the swimmer. Below it someone has scratched three wavy lines into the grit, and beside them a crescent moon with a small star. Those were the water-runners' marks, from before the reservoir stopped answering the radio. A moon and a star meant the night meeting. Three lines meant the wells were still breathing.

You follow the trail up to the prickly pear terraces, where the fruit still comes purple every second summer. Mave Okonkwo-Riley is sitting on a flat stone with her knees drawn up. She has left a bowl of pears for you, and beside it a brass disc with rays cut into its edge, and three dots of ash in a row. She does not look up. She is counting something on her fingers, lips moving.

You understand then that she is not hiding from you. She is counting the wells, the ones her mother knew how to find and no one else alive remembers. You pocket the tin fish, take a pear, and walk toward the tallest cactus on the ridge, the one with two raised arms, where the second well sleeps under its roots. You kneel, lay your palm among the spines, and feel the cool come up through the stone.