“Oh,” she said, realizing it then. “This is one of the sleeping giants, Larry. The ones the town is named after.”
That night, Amanda got an ice cream cone and walked the streets of Sleeping Giant. It was like a swath of irrigated strip mall in the desert. Larry stayed back at their hotel, with hot towels wrapped around his sore knees.
She stopped in front of a tourist shop with Mojave dolls in the window. She finished her cone, carefully wiping her fingers on the napkin, then stowing it in her pocket to throw away later.
A burst of friendly cold air greeted her as she entered the store.
“Can I help you?”
The woman inside looked like a local, with leathery skin and bleached hair cut into shingles.
“I’m curious about the intaglios.”
“Here we call them sleeping giants.”
“Do you have any books on them?”
The owner led Amanda past a necklace display dripping green turquoise to an alcove in the back lined with expensive illustrated books.
“Here’s one. A local historian wrote it.”
Amanda peeked at the price. It was above the limit she had for spending. When she went food shopping, she used the calculator app on her phone.
“I’m sorry, I can’t afford that.”
“The author lives in town. He loves to talk.”
“We have to leave in the morning.”
Something occurred to Amanda as she looked into the woman’s face.
“Did you grow up here?” she asked.
“Yes, I did, as a matter of fact.”
“Did you ever know anyone named Martha King?”
The woman looked slightly peeved, like Amanda was asking after a local celebrity and had passed over better ones.
“Of course I knew Martha. Her daddy too.”
The woman set the book back on the shelf.
“She ran a center my brother went to.”
“You mean Axis?”
“No, it was in Oregon.”
“What do you want with Martha?”
“It’s a long story,” Amanda said.
“Listen, I’m closing here. Want to grab a beer? There’s a nice pub down the road. We can sit outside, feel the desert breeze.”
At the pub, Amanda met the bartender, who also remembered Martha—she had done a lot for the town, he said—and a skinny, sad-looking man who said he remembered the center; and a woman who said, knowingly, she had known the sheriff. Amanda tried to get these people to talk, but the bartender seemed too busy, and the man and woman were knee-deep in beer. But plenty of others wanted to share, and Amanda’s table on the deck became a hive of activity, with peoplepulling up chairs, welcoming the breeze on their sweat-dampened foreheads.
Night fell like a hammer. There was no sound of the ocean but one of profound neglect. Nature was silencing here.
