One quick check. A last investigation. One final look, so that I may verify—fully, completely, now and eternally—the disappearance of my succulent friend. Then I will turn around, crawl directly to the parking lot, and it’s goodbye to the desert forever. Goodbye to the dust, salt, and sweat. Goodbye to brutal distances. Goodbye to arid rimrock, waterless mazes, mournful branches, and the mass of light and heat laughing at me from space. Goodbye to my war with nature.
Just a few more yards to the cactus area (or the area formerly known as the cactus area). I’d know the way blindfolded. I could easily give a lecture on the anthropomorphized characteristics of this scenery.
First, there’s the high point of the sandstone wall on the left (a primitive structure, just begging for a cave painting; my cave painting: a stick figure and the word idiot). On the right: the steepest drop (a word from our sponsor, gravity, about depth, powerlessness, and not being in charge). Blind man’s corner (evocative of the wise seer). Turn the corner (I am neither wise nor a seer, but I am incredibly compulsive). Easy does it. Prepare to greet the nothingness.
Except there is no nothingness. Or rather, the nothingness is now a somethingness. Where before, I am sure, stood only rock and air and sky, there now stands (again!) a giant cactus.
My giant cactus.
Yep, we’ve got a live one, folks! Green as an olive. Tall as a crane. Fat like a concrete truck. It’s statuesque and corpulent all at once: a viridian zeppelin, a brambly blimp. The grooves are grooving; the spikes are spiking; the arms are on the up and up and up. It is here, it’s existent, and it’s fabulous. A miracle of chlorophyll.
Still on hands and knees, I go crawl-skipping toward the colossal vegetal tower. I get up very close and conduct a thorough examination of the base. With my good hand, I sift through sand and gravel, looking for any signs that the cactus has been displaced or replaced in any way—ripped from the ground (like a tooth) or stuck back in (like a fake).
But the cactus is profoundly entrenched: rooted deep underground, anchored to the core. It’s probably drinking molten lava right now. I could dig for days and not hit bottom. No, this is a binding marriage of earth and vegetable: no superficial crop circle; not some Jethran UFO or flying saucer; zero signs that indicate a departure or an arrival, no tearing or fraying, no burning or breaking; nothing reflecting a having-been-here and then a not-having-been-here and then a return.
Nothing, of course, except my memory. But this is a discrepancy that could be directional: a question of mistaken latitudes and longitudes, an error I made somehow, in thinking that the cactus was where it actually wasn’t (though if that’s the case, then why were the Grab N’ Go bags there, right where I’d left them? And the rocks too, in a heart shape?).
It could also be a case of perceptional anomaly: scientific principles I don’t understand, like metaphysics, or what Carmela said about frequency. Yes, it’s possible there are millions of cacti growing all over this place that I simply cannot see, because I don’t have my dial tuned correctly: CACT-FM or CCT-1060 or 101.1 The Spine! Believe.
But I did believe—at least, I think I believed (in spite of Zip and his stupid negations)—and where there was something, then there was nothing, and now there is something again. Something, nothing, something. With no symptoms of movement, disruption, or turmoil. Even the ground around the cactus is pristine.
There’s only one sign of distress I can see, one rupture, and this is the wound on the column, the injury that was there all along (from first slit to gaping guffaw). Now the wound has shape-shifted again; no longer a jovial-looking smile, not the same slack-jawed, happy-go-lucky grin; no, the wound is worsening, or at the very least, widening. Wider and rounder. An O shape. A look of surprise; horror, even. A silent scream. A Munchian O, an O like: Oh my god, I exist. Oh my god, I have to die.
It is an O that looks the way I feel most of the time.
“I know,” I say to the cactus. “It isn’t easy.”
The cactus says nothing.
“The task we’ve been assigned is crazy!”
I reach my good hand inside and feel around the inner rim of the wound. The edge seems to be calcifying, hardening. It’s leathery. No moisture there.
“Exist! Don’t exist! Frankly, I don’t blame us for not being up to the task. It’s frightening!”
The cactus says nothing.
“Is this why you hide?”