The Wood Wife Terri Windling (best novels to read to improve english txt) đ
- Author: Terri Windling
Book online «The Wood Wife Terri Windling (best novels to read to improve english txt) đ». Author Terri Windling
âWhat do I call your mother?â
âHer name is MarĂa Rosa.â
âMs. Rosa?â
âJust call her MarĂa. Thatâs what everyone else does.â He ran the pickup through another wash, over a hill, and into a little hollow. He stopped the truck. The tape deck switched off, and the desert seemed suddenly very quiet. He could hear many birds and the steady hum of traffic, although the rise of the land hid the Interstate from view.
There wasnât much to his motherâs place. A small trailer, with a porch that heâd built for her out of lengths of Rincon mesquite. An outdoor oven. And the remains of a corral that hadnât seen a horse in years. The trailer was parked in a semicircle of tall saguaro cactus, nestled beneath their protective arms. At their base was a scattering of wildflowers, tall, slender stems of pink penstemon and the smaller, fluffy fairy dusters.
âThere are so many saguaro here,â said Maggie with wonder as she stepped from the truck. âDo you suppose this is where Cooper got the inspiration for the name The Saguaro Forest? Itâs an odd name, donât you think?â
âThatâs what this is called, a saguaro forest.â
âReally? I thought heâd made that up. I thought a forest had to have trees.â
âWhen I was a boy, my mother used to tell me that at night the saguaro all dance together. Thatâs why they look the way they doâwith all their arms raised high. They wonât move while youâre watching them, they wait until you fall asleep. And then at dawn they all have to rush to get back into place again. She used to say to me, âClose your eyes, mijo; the saguraro are waiting for you to sleep so they can run off to danceâŠâââ
Maggie looked enchanted, holding her arms up like a saguaro ready for a waltz. âI can almost see it. Arenât they wonderful? Almost like theyâre human too.â
âThatâs what the Tohono Oâodom say. They call them âAuntâ and âUncle.âââ
He stepped up to the little trailer and called out to his mother, but no one answered him. Fox opened the unlocked door and stepped inside. The air was sour with old cigarette smoke, the place dusty, abandoned-looking. It often looked that way when he came to visitâas though his mother had decided sheâd cleaned up houses for too many years and simply wasnât going to do it again. He usually spent time with a bucket and mop before he left.
He stepped outside and said to Maggie, âSheâs either out in the desert, as usual, or sheâs gone over to the Hernandez place.â
âDid she know we were coming?â
âI told her last week. But sheâs a forgetful old woman. She likes to keep the phone unplugged so I have no way to remind her. Come on. Letâs take a walk.â
He led Maggie on the narrow path that skirted the hills to the Hernandez spread. They could see the Hernandez house in the distance, a low wooden building, a couple of stables, and several empty horse corrals. The land here was dotted with ironwood trees, growing hand in hand with the saguaro. They were small trees, but strong, and toughâlike his mother. Halfway down the trail they found her. She was gathering wild desert plants in a flat-bottomed basket hung over one brown arm. She was a tiny old lady, small as Dora, her face covered with a fine network of wrinkles. She wore a shapeless, faded cotton dress that looked exactly like every other dress sheâd ever worn. A red bandana tied back silver-grey hair, and on her feet were dusty socks and sandals. Fox couldnât even imagine what Maggie Black was going to make of his mother.
A smile lit up the wrinkled face when MarĂa Rosa saw them. She waved her hand at them like a child, and then waited in an ironwoodâs meager shade while Maggie and Fox approached. Fox leaned down and kissed her cheek. He introduced Maggie, glad that he had warned her that his mother was the shyest old woman on Godâs green earth.
But now MarĂa was beaming at Maggie, and the two women were soon chatting up a storm as his mother took them on a circular path, pointing out the desert flora. Fox scratched his head as he trailed along behind. There was just no predicting his mama, he reckoned.
âCreosote,â MarĂa was instructing Maggie. âA little branch under your pillow every night, youâll never have trouble with arthritis. Or in a salve, itâs good if you cut yourself. Now this, this agave. A tincture of this, very good for colic or indigestion. This sage here, dry it out, make a teaâyou have a sore throat? You gargle with it. White sage, that you smudge with, you know? Good for purification. This here, sagebrushânot sage. Good for diaper rash. Ocotillo here, you make a tincture of the bark, put in the bath, good for fatigue.â
This lecture continued all the way back to the trailer, but Maggie seemed completely fascinated. Fox had heard all this many times before, and he wasnât sure why Maggie needed to hear it now, but he knew better than to question his mother. Heâd never get a straight answer anyway.
The women sat down at a picnic table in the small bit of shade provided by the porch. His mama pulled out her tobacco pouch and rolled herself a cigaretteâa habit she knew Fox worried about as her voice grew raspier with each passing year. She gave him a little smile as she lit up, half guilty and half devil-may-care. He rolled his eyes and he went inside to brew a pot of tea.
Outside, the lecture continued. âNow these prickly pear cactus, you must carefully cut off the spines and the skin, and then you have a poultice for bad burns. Leave it right on for several hours; it will draw the fluid out.â
âWhat about the saguaro?â he heard Maggie ask as he put three
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