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They pass towering saguaros and twisted mesquites. Dirt and dust. Actual tumbleweeds. The desert is stark, but it’s also beautiful with soothing, muted yellows and browns. The cacti and succulents flourish, despite the dryness. The sky stretches high, a pure, unblemished robin’s-egg blue.
After about five minutes, the road forks. A dilapidated shack stands behind a rusted cattle gate. A giant satellite dish juts from a tin roof. Several rusted vehicles stand on blocks in the yard, along with other junk—building tools, a plastic swimming pool, shredded tires. Flies buzz angrily around overflowing garbage bags. Lenna doesn’t realize she’s squeezing the flesh on the back of her leg until it pinches.
“Oh, that’s the Rivers’ place,” Rhiannon says, clocking Lenna’s uneasiness. “We’re not going there.”
Then the car takes a left, where the road gets bumpier. A fence with coils of barbed wire at the top begins. When Lenna looks ahead, a jagged rock structure interrupts the horizon like a giant raised thumb. She gasps; it seems to have come out of nowhere.
Rhiannon smiles. “Isn’t it cool? And that’s not all you’ll see. We’ve got all sorts of mountains, and ravines, and caves.”
Lenna’s heart slows. “It’s gorgeous.” Then she laughs nervously. “I still can’t believe I came.”
“I’m glad you did.”
Rhiannon gives Lenna some history about the community—Halcyon Ranch, they call it. Lenna had tried to google the place, but it had no online presence. Rhiannon explains that’s because the woman who founded Halcyon prefers it that way. To come here, you must be invited.
The community sits on sixty-two acres of prime Sonoran desert. Ten years ago, a land trust purchased the property. The woman who started the collective, Marjorie, built the house herself. “Marjorie poured the foundation, built the walls. Put in the floors, the tiling, the windows, the doors,” Rhiannon says. “A lot of stuff’s pretty basic, but a lot of it’s really impressive.”
Marjorie lived in a trailer until the house was ready. She worked hard to make the property completely independent of public utilities but still with the creature comforts of modern life. “Homesteading was the whole idea, but Marjorie didn’t want residents to have to live like they were pioneers in covered wagons, so she installed a huge bank of solar panels and hooked up the electrical system,” Rhiannon says. A geothermal cooling unit regulates the brutal Arizona heat; Marjorie drilled for a well and placed in a septic tank. Then, she handpicked others to live here with her. Intrepid women who needed a place like this. A respite. A reward.
“Seriously,no oneelse helped her build all this?” Lenna asks.She feels a little of her old envy. Rhiannon seems to worship this Marjorie person, maybe for good reason.
Then they come around a bend. The fence running along the property is even higher, and the barbed wire is wider.
“What’s with all that?” Lenna says, pointing at the sharp edges.
“To keep out animals, mostly.”
“Mostly?”
Rhiannon pulls to a stop at an iron cattle gate. She hops out of the Suburban and types a code into a keypad. It lets out an angry beep. Rhiannon groans. “Marjorie’s always changing this…” she mutters.
She punches in another code. And another.Well,Lenna thinks,at least the Rivers family won’t be breaking in.
Finally, there’s a metallicclunkas the bolt unlocks and the door swings open. Rhiannon climbs back into the driver’s seat and steers the SUV through. Ahead are picnic tables, a fire pit, and a playground. A huge garden and animal pens full of goats and chickens. The house is one story, made of adobe, and sprawls like a shopping mall across the land. It’s painted with a giant mural landscape in all the colors of the rainbow, consisting of so many disparate drawings that Lenna’s eye doesn’t know where to go first. Across the door is a shining golden sun with an eerie smiling face. Painted across the left wing are the twenty-six letters of the alphabet with corresponding pictures:A for apple, Bfor banana. Painted across the right part of the house…is that the Pythagorean theorem? It’s like a psychedelic Sesame Street.
Not a single person is outdoors, maybe because it’s so sweltering. Lenna feels self-conscious as they pull around to the back of the house, wondering if the other residents are watching her from behind windows. She swallows hard, then looks at Rhiannon. “Does anyone know I’m coming?”
“I told Marjorie. She’s probably told the others by now.” Rhiannon opens the door. “Come on.”
As soon as the car stops moving and the engine shuts off, Jacob’s eyes spring open. Sure enough, he starts to scream.
“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Lenna cries, unbuckling her seat belt and rushing to the back seat to tend to him. Her baby’s face is bright red. He shakes his fists furiously.
“Shh, shh,”she moans, lifting him out of the car seat and holding him in her arms.
Sweat pools in her armpits. It feels like she’s standing on the surface of the sun. Her tote bag is slipping down her shoulder, and Jacob is now so distraught he’s doing that choking sort of cry where he doesn’t breathe. Part of her feels the tiniest bit disappointed, too. She’d thought the moment they’d pulled onto this property, a great weight would release from Jacob—and her. It was certainly how Rhiannon had described the place.
Was this a mistake?
Rhiannon stands on a little side porch, smiling and waiting for Lenna to catch up. She unlocks the door, holds it wide, and says, over the sounds of Jacob’s screams, “After you.”
Lenna eyes the house nervously, then her son even more nervously. “Are yousure?”
Rhiannon laughs when she catches Lenna’s meaning. “Honey. No one here is afraid of a crying baby. I promise.”
One thing is good, anyway. The inside of the compound is so starkly cold and dark that Jacob stops crying purely from the shift in sensory input. It’sfreezing,actually, so much so that Lenna’s arms break out in goose bumps. She must squint to make out the furniture so she doesn’t bump into it.
Rhiannon gestures around. “So this is the main living area. Most comfortable part of the house, temperature-wise. Adobe walls. Superthick.”
