The Dry Spell by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Chapter 15
June 10, 2010; Cloudy, threatening darkness, but not precipitation. Dryness accumulates. Brown and tan two inch remnants of foliage accustomed to showing off this time of year.
Double locked green gates solidly sitting next to signs excellent at repeating themselves. Brown stucco finished houses blend marvelously.
When we get to the Bosque smoke is in the air. Being at least part Dalmatian Daisy has an instinct to find the source.
Sniffing the air for clues, she leads me to the river and instead of stopping for a swim, continues on south. When we get near the remains of the giant cottonwood, we see that it is on fire, with five foot flames rising from the logs. He can’t even be left alone in death.
Pragmatism takes over and since I don’t carry a cell phone, I lead Daisy back out of the Bosque to the parking area, where I hope to find somebody with one. Of course, the Corrales pattern continues, with people happening not to be around when they could be the least bit useful. I think it’s a crime here, or at least a pungent social taboo to appear mildly helpful. In desperation I lead Daisy to the trailer on the other side of the ditch. The guy who normally is out doing nothing this time of morning must be hiding under a rock somewhere. Knocking on and
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rattling his loose metal door serves no purpose and I lead Daisy down Romero Road, looking for one of the plethora of friendly interesting people always in evidence. As we reach gate two I see a car parking across Corrales Road and approach it. A big, glum guy I don’t know exits his recent vintage dirty yellow or tan Chrysler and looks like he doesn’t want my company, but the Bosque has an emergency so I say; “Excuse me, do you carry a cell phone?”
The question is apparently a difficult one and after a few seconds of thought, he says; “Yes.”
Excitedly I say; “Great, because I don’t and there’s a fire in the Bosque.”
He looks toward it, seeing nothing but tall trees and no flames and either doesn’t believe me or doesn’t want to be bothered and says; “I don’t see anything.”
No truer words were probably ever spoken, but I try again, saying; “It’s right next to the river and the flames are only five or ten feet now.”
“Where?”
I pointed in its direction, saying; “You can’t see it from here. The flames are below the trees.”
He gave me a look that indicated disbelief, annoyance or both, but retrieved a cell phone from his pants, pushed a few buttons and said; “Hi, this is Al Litter. I’m at the Bosque and
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there’s a guy here who tells me there’s a fire.” .... “No, I can’t see it.” ..... “All right.” He puts the phone back in his pocket and gives me another of his bored discerning looks, saying; “They’re on the way,” and walks away from me toward the Bosque.
I say; “Thanks.”
I want to stay around to see matters taken care of by the zealous fire department, so I lead Daisy slowly back down Romero Road, keeping a reasonable distance behind Mr. Helpful and I stop her on top of the levee path. About a minute later I see two cop cars enter Romero. I’m surprised there are not yet any diligent firemen present, but am happy to see the cops. I walk over to their cars and they both get out, one saying; “You’re the guy who saw the fire?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
I point and again say; “You can’t see it from here.”
“Tell me where it is.”
“If you go straight down the path to the river and make a right, it’s a few hundred feet away, before the path turns back inland.”
One says that he knows the spot, takes a shovel out of the trunk and takes a shortcut through the trees. Daisy and I take the path and when we arrive at the spot, we find him shoveling
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dirt on the few remaining flames. I say; “This must have just started before I got here. Maybe the culprit is still around.”
He says; “No, this fire has been burning since last night.”
“Last night?”
“Yeah, it takes a while for them to really get going.”
I follow him back to the cars where his partner is waiting, who asks me; “Is it out?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks for catching it.” They both get back in their cars to leave, stopping at the gates to re-lock them. As Daisy and I walk slowly back down the road, I wonder where the firemen are and consider that they could be on an emergency excursion to the sign and/or gate maker’s.
When I got home I couldn’t help thinking about the demise of my giant friend. There were so many things I’d like to have known. I took out pen and paper and listed my questions.
1) Did you tire of the cold scrutiny, now being so near a well- traveled path?
2) Did you feel guilty having been placed in such an ideal location, while your smaller relatives huddled inland?
3) Did you tire of the rope swings tied to every reachable branch?
4) Would you have preferred the privacy off the beaten path?
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5) Did you get some human disease from all their contact?
6) Were you a new breed of cottonwood, without the resistance to disease and insects, fundamental in your relatives?
Or, were you so inbred you experienced the same problem?
7) Did your view allow you to see too much?
8) Did you find it impossible to relate to your peers on any level?
9) Did you want to stop the scrutiny of your every pronouncement, their hanging on your every sound?
10) Did you just want to laugh, like everyone else?
11) Did you have a special friend who stopped coming?
12) You came here when Corrales was a place to escape. Now that the population has gone up tenfold, was it too much?
13) Were you guilty that your enormous wingspan permanently put other plants in the shade?
14) Did you have to escape the turd water by any means necessary?
15) Did you want to leave of your own volition before the MRGCD or Fire Department made the decision for you?
16) When did the dream begin and end?
When Daisy and I got to the Bosque the next day, we went directly to the great one to see that the three charred logs had been chain sawed into fifteen, maybe by the hour late and dollar
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short fire department as a means of trying to display their competence. As we looked, I saw something I had previously missed. One of the tiny logs contained the carving of a heart, enclosing the letters “MK+”, the bottom half burned away.
As I stood there lost in thought, a young woman with long black hair approached. When I heard her footsteps, I looked her way and for some reason she looked familiar, though I was sure I had never seen her before. She must have read my mind, as she softly said; “I was here the day the great one fell. It was early fall, not warm, not cold, with a tremendous northern wind.
The enormous amount of still green leaves caught the full impact and it went over right into the river, shattering on impact and floating away.” I looked out to the river, visualizing her description and when I turned back to her, she was gone.
I looked back at the chain sawed and burned parts. I thought; “I wish I could have seen you forty-five years ago, when you were fifteen feet tall and getting your first views of the expanses of the valley; when you first knew you could do anything you wanted and were stretching out your young limbs to meet the beautiful world. I’d give anything to have been here then. It wasn’t for lack of trying, I just didn’t know how. I feel privileged to have known you the last few years of your youth.”
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I went to the log with the burned heart, took out my list of sixteen questions and stuffed it in a split in the wood. The river was running high and I picked up each of the remaining logs and threw them in the water, the charred heart last. As I watched them float toward Texas, I hoped that at least one would find a new home in the muddy banks there and put down roots, preferably the one with the broken heart.
Daisy and I get home to the backyard and she pulled me anxiously wanting to get somewhere. I released her from her chain and watched as she ran to what had become her recent favorite spot, a thicket of locust and elm trees, mixed with evergreen bushes. Over the past week she has been finding a solitary big brown sparrow doing something in the dirt, which has had the foresight to fly away upon her arrival. But, today Daisy stuck her face in one of the bushes and pulled out what looked like the same bird, but it was now dead. She sampled it, but I guess she didn’t find it palatable, as she picked around the edges and left the bulk, the feathery dry death much too sad.
I walked back to the house to fix her lunch and got stung on the hand by a hornet. The nerve of that little bastard! I wasn’t bothering it and it went out of its way to get me. I pulled out the embedded stinger and found it was a painful one
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and I hoped the feeling wouldn’t last eight hours, as two or three had previously.
Five minutes later as I was preparing Daisy’s special diet, I noticed that the pain worsened and I hoped it wouldn’t remain that way. I put my hand in cold water, then hot, without getting any relief. When I tried lukewarm, it got worse.
After I got Daisy fed and settled inside, I went back out to remove the sparrow’s carcass, using a shovel and pail. I saw that more hornets were at work on it ahead of me. I brushed them aside with the shovel and got the remaining parts in the pail and discarded them where nothing could ever hurt her again, thinking that we’d all have been better off if the sparrow had just kept playing on the ground and flying off when she sensed danger.
My hand still throbbed when it was time for bed.
September 27, 2011; Perfect day, few clouds, no wind, no rain, temperatures down 10-15 degrees from their peaks.
Joyriders.
Daisy and I get to the car at sunrise and I say “Uh oh.”
We can both see mass ascension, or perhaps some would spell that with capital letters. Today must be the start of the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, as at least thirty of them jump up from behind the trees in the distance, causing her to stare at
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the space invaders rather than getting right into the car, as she regards them as fire breathing monsters, while the chorus of dogs barking at them do little to make her eyes return to their normal size. I’m sure that she’s trying to tell me that it’s okay with her if we skip our hike today, especially after having gotten me up at 2AM to take care of her most important business of the day. An hour prior to that we experienced a blackout which made the house oddly quiet and dark, reminiscent of the way people lived prior to the twentieth century. Not being accustomed to it, I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. Not wanting to risk the mine field of dog and cat toys I just stayed on the mattress as Daisy barked at a skunk near our window.
We are now so accustomed to the artificial light, hum of the television and drum of the radio that the complete silence is unsettling, at times out and out eerie. I wonder what kind of stimuli the religion professionals promise their desperate constituents exists in heaven. We have become so used to the constancy of images and sound, could anyone now spend an eternity without them?
TV in heaven? God’s channel would have to be very different from what one would associate with religious programming here, as it would no longer be necessary to preach the faith and ask for contributions. So what would He (or She, or Both) provide the good people with? Re-runs of “Ozzie and Harriet”?
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Western European art films? The Smothers Brothers? Bouncy women in bikinis firing Gatling guns? Straight out pornography?
I can’t even guess. On a particularly boring day a few years back I spent fifteen minutes talking to two very clean cut recruiters, wearing suits on a 95 degree day, sent out by the Seventh Day Adventists to expand their market share and when I asked them what their concept of the afterlife was, I was informed without the slightest degree of doubt, that it was whatever I wanted.
I guess this is good marketing; however, it can’t possibly be true. What if after experiencing all the nice rewards, I got bored once day and wanted to torture everyone who did the slightest bad thing to me during my earth days? And what if they in turn wanted to do likewise to me? I suspect at least a few of us would not be getting whatever they wanted. I wondered why anyone even thinks about such things, as we’re going to find out soon enough, anyway.
After some tugs and pulls I convince Daisy that it’s a good idea to get in the car; she could successfully balk, but has over the years, come to generally trust my judgment. No other cars are on the road and we are the only one on open-gated Romero. How strange! Are the usual seven or eight morning trekkers at home pondering the silence? Did they acquiesce to their dogs’ desire to stay in the bomb shelter? Did they injure
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a foot fumbling around in the dark? Are they attending an AM
Balloon Fiesta party? Were they compelled to go to church? Are they exhausted from all the lascivious sex engaged in during the blackout? I remember that years ago when New York City had a blackout, the birth rate went up dramatically. Are they up, up and away in their beautiful balloons, or are they trying to remember the date and time?
We are allowed to park at the end of Romero Road today as we have had a few days of rain, one estimated at two whole inches, a minor desert miracle, which has provoked those concerned with the potential of fire to back off and allow cars access to the road, inviting the Federal government to visit, they worried about the possibility of a flood. I made a mental note that when I get back home I would try to find which branch of the government is in charge of pestilence, enabling me to predict who next will see fit to launch the next Bosque improvement project.
Her eyes on the sky and mine on her we take the southerly route adjacent to the Rio Grande, soon coming upon the former dwelling of the Great Cottonwood and stand there in the barren sandy soil watching the river continue on its centuries old journey, me wondering if parts of the giant are out there somewhere and she wondering if his absence made it easier for the balloonists to negotiate their infrequent dips a few feet
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above water level. No doubt his presence is still felt and no doubt his physical absence makes things easier for some. How dare he reject the pinnacle of stature and possessions the rest of us spend our lives striving and lusting for? Who does he think he is, not to play the game according to the unwritten, but yet well=established rules, that govern the lives of all mentally competent people? He should be lording it over all the less talented ones, so that they could hate him and say that he wasn’t all that good, just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. How dare he say; “Shove all your petty bourgeois dreams” and then leave before a competent rebuttal could be formulated? Those possible postulants did not realize that he had other places to go and didn’t want to sit an eternity in his rooted spot. Only the young at heart have any chance of understanding.
Maybe because of her trepidation over the balloons getting closer and maybe because her legs aren’t what they used to be and therefore not knowing when, if ever again she’ll be able to make it to this spot, Daisy, un-customarily, sits gazing in all directions, but mostly upward, hearing the whoosh, whoosh of those who today own the sky. When one finally gets close enough to scare the hell out of the fish, she walks slowly back to Romero Road, taking the same route on which she entered. The parking area still only holds our car and she dawdles and
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circles, looking up at me as if to say; ”Where are all my old friends?” I just slightly shake my head and softly say; “I don't know. I don’t think I know anything.” That’s probably not a comforting thought for her as she’s become accustomed to me knowing the answers, without realizing that some of the time I faked it with lucky guesses and other times any answer would have proven to be correct.
As she slowly meanders, not wanting to go home until at least one person pets and says “Hi” to her, we hear a car coming down the road. As we look I don’t recognize it, but after it parks I see that it’s Peter, with his two energetic Chihuahuas and that for some reason today he took his father’s car. We’ve known the group for a few months now, the frisky little dogs reminding Daisy of her youth and Peter of mine, with interests including math, physics, engineering, metaphysics, psychology, religion, politics and probably a whole bunch of other things we’ve not yet had time to bring up. He seems to be scientifically looking for some consistent truth blending the different disciplines and I’ve never told him, but I wish him luck as the world needs something like that and he’s got a better chance of doing it than I, as he’s only thirty and well ahead of me at the equivalent age. The unlimited abundance of information available on the internet is devastating, if one can cast off the chaff. His approach is more scientific than mine, looking
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for “proof”, while I always thought absolute proof would do away with the faith that I believe any higher power would want people to have and establish a quid pro quo system, perhaps screwing up the grand design. Having said that, I hope his results are better than mine.
We say “Hi” as he exits his car and the Chihuahuas run over to Daisy exciting her. I ask him; “Do you know why no one is on the road today?”
“Yeah, it’s blocked off a bit north of here. They’re removing a huge tree limb that came down, which may have been responsible for the blackout. It kept me up in the dark. When my computer shut off, I couldn’t do the permutations I’ve been sitting up, working on. So, I waited and waited and am dead tired.”
“A similar thing happened to me. The silence woke me up and then Daisy started barking at a skunk. I never got back to sleep, so I’ll probably wind up sleeping all afternoon.”
“I wish I could do that, but I’ve still got a lot of stuff to go through.”
I tell him of another passage in “Infinite Jest” that I found hilarious and he smiles, but seems to know the way the conversational interchange will go before I say it, despite not having read the book. He turns from me and calls out “Reina,”
looking at one of his dogs who is now exploring private
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property. “She knows she’s not supposed to do that, but does it whenever she senses that I’m not paying attention to her. I better get going. REINA!” and he walks toward the river.
Now somewhat contented at having made some human and canine contact, Daisy goes back to the car and we attempt to drive home. Cars are now out in force, including the meth-propelled balloon chasers, their pickup trucks identified by two blue plastic flags above the headlights, which apparently gives them the right to ignore all traffic laws, as they compete to be the first arrival at a balloon landing, collecting some fee for getting things wrapped up. Before we traverse the mile or so of Corrales Road, we have to come to a complete stop for a few minutes three times as people and officials congregate around vehicles that have gone off the road, plowing into fences. I am advised that some Corrales statute prohibits balloons from landing in the village, but after years of experience walking Daisy, I have surmised that this rule was another that they didn’t really mean, probably keeping ranchers happy with a few strokes of the pen.
When we finally get back home, Daisy eyes the sky and, seeing that the attackers are not close, goes looking for the skunk.
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