Desert Cut Read Online Free Page B

tourists.
    The park was nearby, so it didn’t take me long to get there, even after stopping to assist a sunburned couple who, speaking with Brooklyn accents, asked where they might see some Indians. Amused, I gave them directions to Casino Arizona, a mile away. “Indians all over the place,” I told them, “They’ll be happy to show you how the new slots work.” Feeling only slightly guilty, I jogged away.
    The centerpiece of Papago Park is the Buttes, rough sandstone mesas erupting from the flat desert floor. Just as I entered the thousand-acre park, the Buttes caught the last rays of the sun and glowed with gaudy flashes of mauve and red. I jogged in place for a while, watching the show. Once the sun slipped behind the Phoenix skyscrapers to the west, the Buttes returned to their usual dull red, so I moved on.
    For a while, other runners shared the trail, but they turned onto the wide path that ended at the south parking lot. Fleeing my sense of dis-ease, I took the more isolated path. It was one of my favorite routes, but not without danger, since this unmanicured section of the park served as home to various species of wildlife, none of them friendly. Coyote, javelina, snakes, and scorpions considered the high brush their own turf, so I wasn’t too startled when I passed a sandstone outcropping and flushed an angry javelina from a creosote thicket. Mama Javelina, trailed by four squealing youngsters.
    I froze.
    Javelina are ferociously protective, quick to fight for their young. Whatever they fought usually lost, because a charge from even a small javelina could knock you off your feet. If you didn’t regain your feet before they charged again, you might lose your intestines to their sharp tusks.
    This particular javelina seemed more irritable than most. Maybe she’d had a bad day at the office, maybe Saturn was in her Pisces, or maybe her boyfriend was dating another javelina. Whatever the reason, she lowered her head and moved in front of her brood. When I took a test step back, she snorted and pawed the ground like a Brahma bull.
    Then she started to circle.
    Since the chances of outrunning Mama Javelina were nil, I froze again. Hardly daring to breathe, I waited while she checked me out. As I stood there the twilight faded, leaving us in growing darkness. And yet she continued to walk around me, grumbling to herself while her oblivious babies rooted for grubs in the nearby sagebrush.
    If worse came to worse, I could use the .38 in my fanny pack, but the revolver was there to defend me from two-legged demons, not four-legged ones, if you could call a protective mother a demon. If more of them existed, little girls would never get shot in the face or dumped in the desert.
    With that stray thought, the image of the girl in the Dragoons returned, and even the very present danger of the circling javelina couldn’t chase her face away. A wave of grief, palpable as the sandy trail under my feet, swept the fear from me.
    Then something changed. Perhaps the girl’s ghostly presence somehow communicated itself to Mama Javelina, because she stopped circling and gazed into my eyes.
    I gazed back.
    She grunted, pawed the ground.
    I kept my gaze steady.
    After what seemed like forever, the pawing stopped. Her eyes left mine, settled on her children. With a final grunt, Mama Javelina gathered her babies together and herded them down the trail.
    I waited until they disappeared behind a butte, then turned around and jogged home.
    ***
    Main Street was deserted when I reached my apartment, and so was my voice mail. Hip hurting but mind still haunted, I decided to organize my CD collection. For the next hour I cleaned discs, returned them to their proper cases, and filed them alphabetically by performer. That accomplished, I wandered into the bedroom and began straightening out my closet.
    Since I don’t own many clothes—one all-purpose black dress, one pants suit bought off the sales rack at Nordstrom’s, and several