Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist by Kathleen Alcala

Author:Kathleen Alcala
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 1992-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

READING THE ROAD

Sister Lucy threw a sweater over her nightgown and walked out to the highway just before dawn. The sun was hidden behind the Shadow Mountains, though not for long.

Sister Lucy read tire tracks the way others read cards or tea leaves. Her grandmother had been a Pueblo Indian, and the sky, the earth and the trees had been an open book to the old woman. They had told her the past and the future. But Lucy knew that the blood of California flowed through its roads and highways, and the highway leading west went past her front door. Everything happened first in California, but not before it passed Lucy's house.

Sister Lucy examined the highway. A pair of long, black streaks showed where the brakes locked up on a rig when the driver tried to avoid a stray dog. Edie Livingston's yellow mutt was fond of standing on the road at dusk and tempting fate, looking each driver in the eye as though seeking a long lost master. Sister Lucy understood the tracks to mean that she would have a visitor that day.

Crunching her way back across the gravel, broken glass and shredded rubber that formed the highway shoulder, Lucy stood in her yard and faced west. She could see the sharp edge of shadow cast by the mountains moving rapidly towards her across the flat desert between the town of Baker and her house. She turned east just as the sun burst over the ridge, momentarily blinding her. Lucy stood there shivering, then felt the hairs rise on her neck and temples as the temperature shot upward. Her old calico cat sat on the porch at exactly the right angle to catch the heat. Sister Lucy's skin began to feel hot before her insides had stopped shivering; she imagined that's what a frozen chicken felt like when you ran hot water over it in the sink. It would be an especially hot day.

Sister Lucy went back inside and put on a green flowered skirt, a red blouse, and purple sandals. When she first started using her powers, Lucy began calling herself "Sister" as a token of her reverence for the holiness of all life, although she had no religious training. She had dressed in a brown robe, but customers responded more enthusiastically to bright colors. They thought they were getting more for their money. She still, however, wore her keys on a rope around her waist, where they banged against her hip, and a dime store crucifix dangled from her neck.

Lucy pulled her sparse black hair back in a ribbon, then colored her eyelids peacock blue. If she squinted and stood back from the mirror, Lucy still looked young and beautiful, but her face dissolved into a thousand wrinkles up close. She colored in the scar on her lip so that it hardly showed. Lucy completed her outfit with red plastic earrings.

Outside, she dragged her sign away from the house and set it up by the highway: Sister Lucy, Professional Clairvoyant Counseling.

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