The middle years, a new starting point, big decisions made, sometimes easy and right in front of us. Sometimes not…
New Mexico puts out its unique welcome mat. High altitude living can make for a rarefied kind of life. The winds rustle the aromatic sage. Life goes on.
Food for thought, time to roll on, time to push on, that moment to get off the single stone’s foot hold as the big lake’s rising tide swirls about it. What’s that? You say? Say what? That night sitting in the desert, bright stars, no moon, lightning, silent, flashing purple off in the distant visible horizon leading to nowhere. I had moved on.
Time to move. The words worked their way around in my head again, though it had been several months.
Several months ago she’d up and left me and my dog, Max, left us stone cold. The desert sand felt too cool that night, not freezing like, rather a soul cold reaching deep into the heart. She’d left the two boys too; thank God they were mid college age. We were too boring; she told us so. “You’re fucking boring Tom, both of you, you with your couch potato paunch and that dog always itching, itching, ITCHING! I hate it, hate it, I say!”
Key: not to panic. No, not at all my style. Or said in a more practical way: do not allow life’s unexpected changes to cause a deep inconvenience in what has been an amazing life. A little hiccup, that’s all.
Jesus, and here I’d thought we’d stumbled into one of our pockets of mellowness and peace. Been there countless times before. Everything had lined up. All bills accounted for and paid to current. Weather was Southwest perfection, you have to be in it for a day to get it, perfection. I’m led to believe that the high elevation of the region is made according to human kinds’ subtlest requirements. You can sit here, on a porch, or near a shrub that smells of natural spicy wonder at night, so still, crickets going in a chorus, night birds find a song to speak of the night. Speak to the energy rhythm that buzzes everywhere.
A lone rattler, a thing to admire, the perfect killing machine, ever so cautiously approaching a bush sensing a four legged trembling life there.
My iced tea is near its bottom, nothing added, that will follow shortly as the night is young and loaded with creative promise crackling with desert mystical fire power. A smoke night? Hm, I think not. Utter clarity for tonight beckons unmistakably. And yet, there is that thing where one can snitch a tiny bit of weed and not get a buzz, God’s truth. Not tonight. I feel like my natural perch is at a peak, sitting still and comfortably tall. The rounded out adobe of my porch, prickly cactus accent, continues on around and out of sight such as does this night’s writing mystery, around the unmarked corner leading to places only found by digging free of mind clutter, weed, alcohol. Maybe later as a nightcap, no judgment coming from me.
Tonight we’ll have a full moon rising early. One of the tied horses whinnied.
Night blooming jasmine filled the early night, carried past me on an unfelt wind, were it not for the nose, wind carried the message as it so often does. Mingled in was fresh horse droppings. Many will understand when I say fresh horse apples are one of life’s finest aromas…
Earlier this afternoon, the Sasquarro Municipal tribal Committee meeting went as predicted. Nothing agreed to who gets what when and how much water. Yes, those two, as both are very different issues, impossible to solve in this afternoon’s meeting. Lester our president was already ‘three sheets’ in on his Friday. He said: “schedule these damn things Friday, and this is what you get…”. Sat there fiddling with his shirt button.
The conversation included all of us admiring and hefting OL Joes Peacemaker. He claims the wheel gun was as old as the cowboy Wild West. The dark, sweat stained pistol grip had the letters BK dug roughly into its side; Billy the Kid, Joe assured us. That and the rest of us giving even older Cortes a rough time for the new eagle feather he sported in his tan gallon. That and his huge new turquoise bolo.
“What’d you dumb asses know, anyway? This damn bolo tie gonna get me a new lady, keep laughing, you jokers.”
OL Joe responded for the group: “Sure enough, Cortes, did you tell your Carmen ’bout that plan?” All laughed heartily except for Cortes.
Cortes swore the feather was old, but some of us pointed out that the hollow shaft of the plume had red, as in fresh blood. Had it been old the color wouldn’t be fresh red, rather very dark to black. He countered smoothly that he’d plucked it from road kill before reporting it in. People had been shooting the big endangered birds again because they were attacking the eyes of newborn sheep. Like it came in waves. Soon enough for unknown reasons the eagles would stop this behavior, people would stop shooting them. The ecology people insisted that it was the big, black buzzards going after the newborn’s eyes, not eagles.
It took years for the country folks here to accept us, me. It took hard work, but it was worth it. Many of the older ones seemed to still have a direct line to the ancient past mysteries of the South West desert. So much history, even way before the Mexicans, their chiseled faces might easily tell a story. It took a while to gain trust, for a sincere smile to come one’s way, a pat on the shoulder, an invitation to a neighbors old style cook out, beer’n’steer, be sure to take something to add.
Yes, new arrivals to the area could choose to never get close, never become a part of, could live outside the circle for years, and to a certain degree feel as though they were a part of the local fabric. Then there were those who attempted to become a part of the pulse here, I mean really learn to breathe the same air the folks here breathed. You knew you were getting there when the folks began inviting you and your family to the countless gatherings and small events that made up the social face to an ancient mix of cultures. There was unspoken value in arriving at that place where you knew you were now a part.
We’d been here for the better part of twenty-five years, she from the north, Michigan and me from the south, Central America, Guatemala. My wife had originated from Mexico lifetimes ago, a ranching family. She developed an affinity for life here in the desert because of this past connection. Nice thing about being here amongst others was that no one was crouching out in the periphery amongst small cactus and brush in the pebbly sand waiting to attack me and my home. A childhood spent in war troubled Central America does that even though just a hint, though you may never have experienced such a thing, it was never too far away.
In my case, my too young, seventeen-year-old brother shot dead by two bad guys in Guatemala City. Part of the social fabric run amuck. My brother’s luck ran out parked along a lonely tree lined capital boulevard with his teen age date. As my brother lay dying with a bullet to the heart in the back seat of the old family station wagon she was repeatedly raped, somehow escaped. She, running naked down the street, her cries not quite reaching people’s ears.
Years later in unrelated incidents both me and an older brother were each kidnapped, one of the many, this in Honduras. So shit happens. We all moved. Me to the South West, USA. That sort of crime one did not have to worry about here in the desert South West, U.S.A. As a teenager I’d worked two summers on a huge cattle ranch on the south coast of Guatemala. Riding rodeo came easy for me and I started winning, bought the horse farm. We called it The Red Sage Ranch. Some early acquaintances assured us there was no such thing as red sage. Well, we said, there is now… In fact, we had more dairy cattle than anything else.
What you had to watch for was rattlers! That and the pesky scorpions holing up in your saddle overnight only to discover them, painfully, next morning.
A year ago we sold our successful ranch. The ranch house not part of the deal. She wasn’t so sure, so I settled for 40% of the sale. She got the rest. Enough to carry us both carefully to our final resting places.
There was a time when our major concerns, besides raising kids, were her sore knees, hips, sciatica and more hot flashes. She said menopause issues. This level of minor, more relaxed domestic concern came only after years of finessing the ranch, reaching a level of productivity that kept the bank away. Our last two boys working towards graduating college, one an engineer, the other in music. But life was more complicated than showed in plain sight…
The peace was upon us. Or so I had thought. Life seems to let you off gently and then boom! A sense of joy we’d experience off and on, nothing steady. This is life, not Hollywood. We were sorting through life, its lengthy file, to get a taste for what lay in the future. Isn’t that what everybody did? At an age where my day-to-day job no longer required driving to a workplace on the large property at four in the morning. Just passed the cusp of retiring and attempting to fit into this new mold. My wife continued work, she said my retirement had nothing to do with her; she was right. Every day she used to go into Siete Cruces to open her flower store. She’d refused one or two excellent offers to sell her store. I was glad she hung on to the place. Some are just happiest being kept busy.
Over the years, she’d built up the flower business. Convinced that people wanted flowers equally during the good and the bad times. She has a good eye for that. She spent her day in her store, visited by her close knot of friends and nearest neighbors. She enjoyed doing home deliveries, a chance for saying hello to friends. Flowers in gardens were not plentiful, the elevation, the powerful sun and chipped, rocky ground and lack of water the cause for this. She filled that niche.
Life’s a wrinkle waiting to happen. She’d also become chummy with Mayor Dick Warrick. Rumor has it he made his money from a minor stake in an oil discovery a hundred miles south. After fifteen years, the oil, all but forgot he had it he was suddenly in the money, big time, millions. He asked her to join him on a trip to Italy. She told me on the porch. “I’m going to Italy with Dick.” That day she’d come home wearing a brand new pair of impossibly intricate and ultra fine inlaid boots; ostrich or iguana, even saw some teeth in there.
A gift to wear to Italy. This was when she ambushed me and our ageing beagle Max: “You’re fucking boring Tom… you and that dog always itching, itching, ICHING! I hate it…” Max is so perceptive that he could tell she was flustered over something. His sorrow filled eyes under those heart wrenching brows, mouth opened just enough to form almost an ‘Oh’. His white-tipped tail shaking double speed as a reflex, just the tip, attempting to smooth feathers, hers.
I used all my powers to not use the indicated: Dickless, or Dickhead, or Dickwad. I know she could see it in me, and I swear she stifled a smile once. “Going to ‘Itlee’ with Dick, good for you then…”
Yeah, that was the end point of the thing, I mean, why drag it out?
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out the math that she used to add up whatever there might be between those two. Well, I mean besides the money, the sweet life. I’m proud that I didn’t go over to his place at the ritzy Country Club neighborhood right near Santa Fe and beat some sense into him.
Worth saying that his country club used up more water than was allotted to the club and its vast golf courses. Meanwhile, me and my good neighbors fought over the precious stuff in the hills surrounding Santa Fe.
I wanted to hurt him; in fact, all I did was call him and asked him why, why my fucking wife. I should say that in another way…
I said to him: “Hey, Dick. Age is what keeps me from looking for you right now. My question then is what would you do in my situation. You’ve known me through the years, ever since early college days. I’ve mellowed over the years. I can only guess that you can’t help yourself, you’re really taken by my wife. Be careful there, buddy, understand? I’ll just say this, if you hurt her in any way, she is still mother to my sons and is still family, if you hurt her then that would change things. Think it over carefully.”
When this happened I assured my soon to be ex that she shouldn’t be upset if one day I too formed a new friendship, though I said it wasn’t in my current plans. She countered that I didn’t understand. That she did counter, did say something showing her sharp disagreement with me encountering another, friend or romantic partner. I mean, go figure… That’s where it was.
Where’s reason in that? Didn’t understand, damned right. Mr. Dick breath was wise for not showing up, ever, to my house in the desert for fear he might become snack food for the coyotes. Or maybe a huge diamondback set loose inside his pickup.
This was several months ago. The kids will not speak with their Mother. Don’t know for sure how they found out, hell I might’ve said something, they had to know. I mean just that: they needed to know, deserved to be kept informed. They’re bright kids. Oh hell, I tried the high road; I tried to explain to the boys that we adults are just as confused, often much more confused than the youth. That they should not judge Mom, just love her forever. That it took two to make it work. Love her just as she continues to love them…
I keep two fiery Appaloosas in a fully equipped stable next to my house. These horses go in whatever direction you give them, no matter the obstacle. As part of this new chapter I picked up a new, used lever action,.30–30 Winchester and a well-oiled saddle scabbard to carry it in. Sally doesn’t shoot. The rifle’s previous owner had clearly cared for the classic lever action. It’s a Western thing I’ve had all my life, sure as hell not going to shoot anyone or much less any animal unless part of the plan for the night is cooking rabbit over the campfire. Not a speck of rust picking at the bluing. Once that starts, and though it may be the size of the head of a tack, it will remain forever.
My rifle also harkens back to those days when five hooded, pistol whipping men tackled me in a parking lot in Guatemala City, some things go deep… Oh hell, mostly though I’d always appreciated a fine lever action rifle.
I learned again how to camp in the desert. When I had the ranch, my workplace, camping didn’t sit high on my: to do list. I started to write yet again and discovered peace such as I’d not enjoyed in years. Publishers appreciated my down home, western style, mystery tales. They just clicked. I never once took a course, well, except for the one ‘graduate level’ online three week writing thing on how to cut down on passive verbs and filter words. Still can’t tell you what those are.
There I am, spending evenings at Sally’s Book Store and Cookies on Siete Cruces Central Park, reading from my newest book, coffee with a little kick that sweet eyed and full figured Sally added for me along with a wink and a smile. As she passed my cup to me she rested her hand on my shoulder, her warm hand felt wonderful. She’d stop sorting books and cleaning shelves to sit next to me as I read different passages.
Sometimes, as agreed, I’d show a couple hours early to help her unpack new arrivals and sort out shelves, but not before drinking some of her ‘special unction honey’ she calls it in that order, with a wink and smile. Had to google unction; that’s right. A lemony, warm concoction to which she’d added a drop or two of high grade weed oil. Around the time the hour arrived for me to sit and begin thumbing through a book, humor filled our moods and we were accompanied by a happy shell of warmth, often. It wasn’t about getting high, as we didn’t. It was about relaxing in a good place, eating some of her specialty chocolate chipped delights.
Sometimes it was just the two of us, soon kissing like kids. Keeping one eye on the store entrance, listening for the little overhead bell, made me feel like high school sweethearts again. Last weekend there was a western art fair in town, sidewalks festooned in wood carvings, feather works, deer racks fashioned into coat hangers and gun racks, turquoise jewelry, shelves full of used books, small sculpture, a collection of the usual O’Keeffe knock offs, refreshments (some perhaps just this side of legal), and homemade baked goodies, the store filled in the evenings, our only communication were stealing suggestive glances towards each other.
My books published well. Stories of the West. Some traditional Westerns, some contemporary Westerns, and a series of fifteen in a children’s section on becoming young adults in a Western environment. Sure, lots of dreaming. We need that. It’s what people wanted to read. I placed most of my writing in the last forty years so I could always draw from the conveniences and amenities offered by ‘modern’ times.
The architecture in my writing was low, adobe dwellings, rounded edges, low cacti along sidewalks, fresh smelling sage in various sizes and colors. My chapters were full of desert and wildlife, high school football, sweethearts, sneaking beers, small town fairs at night with live bands on the round stage and hay stacks, agriculture and cattle. Siete Cruces was an unwitting subject for most of my fictional writing. The only thing I’d change was the town’s name, just made things simpler that way.
&&&
It had begun at the gas station and bait shop some months ago around the time my wife delivered the news about Dick to me, Sally spotted me as she stepped out of the convenience store and came over to say hi. “Tommy, hey it’s good to see you, where have you been these days?” It’d been a while since I’d seen Sally, been a while since a woman shared her warmth with me. She was the only person on the planet who ever called me Tommy. Been a while since I had cupped a womans breasts in my hands, gently held them together and slowly settled my face in between the soft joy, almost forgotten the warm aroma.
Her womanly instincts had to inform her of where my mind was at the moment. She smiled as though saying: “I gotcha.”
I’m always happy to stand tall and say guilty as imagined…
She stood next to my truck window looking through me; her face about level with mine, her basket settled on a pronounced hip, wind gusting, forcing her to close her eyes and lips creating an exotic moment.
She watched me as I took her in. Short blue jean skirt showed off beautiful thighs and calves, exotic, twisting feather earrings. As she walked towards me, the whole way, she had on her cheerleaders smile, bright teeth, wild blonde hair kept under control with carefully placed hair clips. Full eyebrows, sparkly dark eyes, perky nose and rich pouty lips painted dark red were what one might say were some of her visible attributes through the years. Her loose fitting, long-sleeved jean shirt seemed out of place but her ample breasts richly displayed by leaving the top three buttons undone. The undulating goodness was visible, and more than made up for any fashion misstep. Another misstep may have been her gleaming white canvas deck shoes, contrasting with the cowboy touristy picture, which only showed off defined yet not overdone tanned legs. Her white comfort shoes also expressed an independence, “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna suffer in big boots for the tourists…”
In high school Sally was the impossibly out of reach girl. Unless you played football, I was the team’s captain, which gave me slightly better odds at dating her. During those days so long ago, Sally and I shared special moments. We did as most youths did, explored, discovered, savored. Eric a classmate went to an Ivy league school and came back a cancer doctor, set up his clinic and married Sally. That seemed so long ago now. Their messy and painful divorce was a mostly public affair, Eric took Sally for every dollar she had, some said he was overly intimate with the presiding judge. He succumbed to liver cancer. Bad stuff all around. But this was life in its fullest, and that’s just how I took it in, almost in stride. Not one to panic, to shriek, to moan and groan.
Life goes on.
Sally was the envy of her girlfriends, much loved by her Siete Cruces loyal mix of customers/friends. Her bookstore was a wellspring of joy and friendship for the townspeople. Sally could always be counted on to give a kind word when needed, available to offer a guiding hand on everything from how much butter went into that recipe to guarded advice on what lawyer to see for different occasions. Her go to specialty was local politics. Take pity on any poor bastard at Pearls Coffee Shop right near her bookstore if they grandstanded on the many local pending town hall issues in the spotlight with a closed mind, be warned. Sally would chew them up and spit them out for breakfast. Fun to watch. Her political energies did not include the politicians in Washington. “They have nothing to do with us folks…” she’s right.
&&&
I can hear the deep growl of her pickup coming up the last bend to the house, in the dusk light, the just visible dust cloud kicking up.
As agreed, I’ve saddled up the horses and they’re tied out front. Tonight’s a full moon so we’ll take the short night ride on safe ground to Feather Ridge, the moon will just be rising around then and its silver glow will fill the long valley. The coyote’s high pitched howls are already calling from the dark corners.
