The Sword in the Saguaro

I promised you a sword.

You already know I didn’t have it the night a ghost rode off with my bicycle. 

This is not that night. 

It’s a velvet night, an empty night, a gibbous moon rising over an open road night.

A ruby-colored van slides through pewter. A woman of the road (ish) grips the wheel. She’s nearing the third of three GPS coordinates.

A month or so on, and she’d have been home hours ago, at the first spot. But this is not a month or so on. And the banks of the wash seemed high and foreboding. The thin forking paths of fine saffron sand, soft and unpredictable.

The second required a climb. Around and up, they circled, the ruby-colored van’s engine straining, the chassis shaking, the woman’s eyes widening. A surprise of thick ice and crusty snow at the apex had stopped her before a locked gate, a road closed till spring. To U-turn, she held her breath. She pointed the van’s nose toward towering pines that had settled on the edge of a sheer drop, toward white-gold nothingness between their trunks, inched forward, backed up, repeated. Then came the slow unwinding back to the desert floor, her eyes wet from the vastness of the views and the sting of burnt rubber. 

Now, per her GPS, she’s “arrived.” “Arrived?” she snaps, stopping here, which is nowhere—not even the end of the road.

Now what?

Scouting on foot, she spots a break in the shadowy brush, just wide enough for the van to pass with only the scratch of a branch here or there.

Once she’s planted a ruby-colored, van-sized flag on a flat clearing, she steps out. She looks to the skies and sighs. Gentle folds of green-gray hills stretch toward slate-colored foothills and silver mountains that rise like gratitude. The perimeter of her abode is a desert garden—a lanky mesquite, patches of prickly pear, a trio of saguaros without arms, fuzzy cholla.

Wait. What?

Her gaze whirls back. There, behind the armless sentinels, a glint. Her brain flashes understanding—weapon.

She swallows hard, freezes. There, among shadowy shapes, was that movement? Slow and deliberate?

I promised you a sword. But do you want it now?

“Remember, our support team is here to help you. Please treat them with kindness.” This from the AI software before transferring me to tech support the other day.

Ouch, my heart responded, thinking of the jabs that necessitated that plea.

The woman of the road (ish), now back inside the ruby-colored van, hurries through dinner. In bed, she tries not to think about who leaves a sword in the desert and why. And for how long.

To let the outside in and the propane from her heater out, she sleeps with her head inches from a cracked window. Her newness to this life turns her imagination painter—a branch tickling her fiberglass roof, a bough moaning to the touch of a breeze, that snap in the distant dark all the paint and brush it could hope for. Tonight, it watercolors: A swath of gray for the night. A splash of lemon moon. A buttercream pillow square, light brown strands splayed across it. And reaching in, a hand.

***

I promised you a sword. And don’t you want it now?

Yesterday, I read that members of the US Congress are spending energy trying to keep a woman out of women’s bathrooms.

Ouch, my heart thought, recalling Senator McBride’s warmth and pride, what she knows of loss already (a husband to cancer), what she knows of bravery (being herself in public).

My sister’s friend, her ancestry Chinese a few generations back, was at the library the other day. When she heard a woman, “an American who pays taxes,” complaining to the librarian about LGBTQ+ books and “unAmerican content” on display, she decided to use her voice too, noting she also was an American who paid taxes and was glad the material was available. The first woman, taking her in, snapped, “You’re not an American.”

Ouch. My heart cringed, thinking of too many other examples of recent coarseness and cruelty I could list here, of how easily we humans can be emboldened to give into our worst selves, especially when those who do so by rote are elevated.

Dawn nudges the woman in the ruby-colored van. Even before opening her eyes, she recalls the glint. She pulls the curtain. There stand the three limbless saguaros. And behind them, against a fourth, a sword.

To make her coffee, she ignores it. A mourning dove coos as the water boils. She sips from a steaming mug. Black silky flycatchers the size of her palm dart from prickly pear patch to mesquite to weather-gnawed posts of an old fence.  

To set up her table and laptop and put in some hours on the manuscript she’s editing, she ignores it. A buckhorn cholla near her “office” bends as if also huddling from the cold that cramps her fingers.

To get warm, she explores the trails around her spot. She plods through soft sand in soft light, her cheeks pink and flushed.

I promised you a sword.  

A favorite podcast host said we’re silent to each other. He said one side thrusts: “I hear your grievances and anger and frustration, your desire to ‘move up’ in the world; and you’re right.” He said the other side parries: “You’re not hearing other people’s grievances and anger and frustration and desire for equity; and you’re wrong.” Thrust: Here, take this sword. Parry: Here, fall on this sword.

I want to say, We don’t need swords. We need ears. I want to say the two-sides premise is the problem. I want to say, Disinformation is a fantastic painter. But I don’t want to listen and try to understand why anyone lets it paint some of us as inhuman, as outside, as deserving of contempt or worse.

Enough, says the woman of the road.

Back at camp, she marches straight to the sword. She lifts it, surprised at its heft. Slowly, she draws it from its scabbard. A worn leather blade cover extends from the guard. Running her finger gently along the blade, she chuckles at its dullness. She turns it over to find a rusted etching: “Wild at Heart.”

She wraps her hand around the hilt, raises the sword high in the air. She swings, bursting into laughter as she feels its slight wobble, and then swings again and again, dancing through dust and brush.

“I dub you,” she says, speaking for the saguaro and lowering the blade gently back toward each shoulder, “Wild Heart, queen of the desert.”

“I’m honored.” She bows, sets the sword back in its place.

You understand, don’t you, why I felt let down a month later, when my bike rode away with the thief, who cut it from the van as I slept? Why I had to return a few nights later to the clearing of the sword, symbol of justice and protection? Why you’ll find me at the end of this post once again making my way along that empty pewter road under yet another gibbous moon?

I promised you a sword. We need swords. I mean pens. I mean voices. I mean our wild hearts.

Just before I arrive at the path to the clearing, a shadow separates itself from the shadowy shapes along the side of the road. I notice out of the corner of my eye, pump the brakes. In the yolky glow of headlights, the shadow takes form of coyote. Mid-lope, two glowing eyes turn my way. Then it slides into the brush across the way, shadow once more.

I roll down my window, feel the desert’s gamey tongue on my cheek, grin. I already know the sword will be gone.

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