Home again, home again, jiggety-jog
Writing by treason on Wednesday, 23 of August , 2006 at 7:48 pm
The trip had taken a morbid turn. We drove through Rocky Ford and the Arkansas Valley and there was fog. In literature there are devices writers employ to warn the reader that something ominous this way comes. Devices, cliches. One is a black bird.
We were driving and saw an entire flock like a black cloud - not in the sky, but rather on the road. All dead, as if they’d flown directly into the path of a semi. Later I saw two cows, dead, lying side by side.
“Maybe they were just sleeping,” T offered.
Then dead baby horses. Then a sign for the Ludlow Massacre. We drove through Trinidad, then through Raton where I saw buffalo in great numbers on the landscape. There’s something about the silhouette of these wooly-headed creatures that makes me sad.
“No offense, but this trip is bringing me down.”
We stopped to walk the dog in Las Vegas, NM. I remember the last time we were there - it was with our Barbara over ten years ago - and I’d thought then the town was charming. Yesterday I looked around and could see and feel the change. That town is turning to crap. And I couldn’t help notice that ever since we crossed the NM state line, T’s blood pressure was on the rise. Mine started rising when I couldn’t tune in our big AM station until we were practically on top of it. And that’s when I heard the news report that confirmed the message that I received in Limon.
My friend is tall, statuesque, and vibrant. Though she would never think to admit her age to anyone who knows her, we’ve always guessed that she’s somewhere between seventy-four and eighty. While T and I were in Kansas City, a Mexican national - we don’t refer to them as illegal aliens in Nuevo Mexico - broke into her house, beat her severely, and attempted to rape her.
He would have succeeded but she was able to pull a framed print off the wall and crack him over the head with it. We’d recently met up to see a mutual friend in a local production, and she was preparing to have cataract surgery the next day. I understand her attacker shattered both her eye sockets. I know her well enough to know that she won’t bounce back from this. She’s currently hiding out in a relative’s home and refuses to return to hers. She won’t see anyone, she doesn’t want friends to visit.
Ah, life in a border state.
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