PodCastle 433: Telling Stories - a podcast by Escape Artists, Inc

* Author : Xander M. Odell

* Narrator : Julie C. Day

* Host : Graeme Dunlop

* Audio Producer : Peter Wood

*

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PodCastle 433: Telling Stories is a PodCastle original.





Rated PG-13

Telling Stories

by Sandra M. Odell

Sam knew there would be trouble the night the saguaro came to call. “Evening,” she said, and stepped aside for her unexpected guest.

The cactus scrunched down as far as it could and skittered through the door on its roots, bringing with it the breath of rocks, sage brush, and the cold Sonoran desert night. It stopped in the middle of the cabin’s sparsely furnished main room and straightened until its spines brushed the roof. “I hope I didn’t come at a bad time.”

“Not at all. I don’t get many saguaros stopping by.” She didn’t have many anybodies stopping by anymore, but saying so would have been rude. She settled into the rocker by a bookcase crammed with dog-earred issues of Popular Mechanics and National Geograhic. “What can I do for you?”

The cactus tried to straighten to its full height, but the roof got in the way. “I wish to marry a gila monster.”



Sam stopped rocking. She stuck a finger in her ear to clean out a bit of wax. “Um…Come again?”

“I wish to marry a gila monster.”

Sam took a moment to gather her thoughts and clean her glasses with the tail of her shirt. “You don’t say.”

“She hunts in the early morning, and I am rooted near her burrow. We started talking, and now we spend most of our mornings together. She is lovely, all black and pink and yellow skin, and has a very dry sense of humor.”

The cactus quivered with what Sam supposed was laughter.

“I see.” She let her glasses drop to the end of their beaded chain. “And?”

The saguaro twitched. “We don’t know what to do. We both love the sand, but I stand far above it, and she burrows beneath. I drink in the glory of the sun; she feasts on mice, and eggs, and such.” Its arms slumped. “I gave her one of my fruits, but she said she could not eat it.”

“Of course not.” Sam looked at her hands, short, wide fingers with nails worn ragged from working in the garden. Growing up on the Taos Pueblo, PopPop Donner used to say her hands were “beautiful with hard work.” “Why come to me?”

“You are very wise. Your family has been here for always.”

Sam snorted. “I wouldn’t say always. I moved to Arizona in ’73.”

“But your people know the desert ways.”

Sam shook her head. “Not so much. Ma was a nurse at the Taos clinic, and Pa worked as a handyman any time he climbed out of the bottle.” She scratched the back of her head. “My grandfather kept to some of the old ways, and I used to, but that was a long time ago.”

“For the always, yes,” said the cactus.

Sam set her glasses back on her nose. “I spent thirty years fixing cars, and working the liquor store counter in Yuma. I’m too damn old and set in my ways for magic anymore.”

“The gila monster and I do not need your medicine.”

Well, that was a relief, but it didn’t tell her what she wanted to know. “Then why come asking me for help?”

“Your family has the always.” The saguaro straightened as best it could, arms upright and sure. “Will you marry us?”

Sam blinked, and barely noticed when her glasses slid to the tip of her nose. “Pardon?”

“The gila monster and I want to marry, but we don’t know how. Will you marry us together?”

Sam sat upright in her chair.

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