A tu tierra, grulla, que esta no es tuya.
Go back to your home, crane, for this land isn’t yours.
I’m still a bit shaken up by my encounter with Lorenzo and haunted by the thought that I could have been in serious trouble with that neighbor on the hill. I imagine him up there with a rifle, watching for me to come around again. So, on my way to check on Esequiel again, I stop at the home of a neighbor of his, Diane, on the pretense of photographing a moldering 1957 Chevy in back of her house. Really I want to ask about the mysterious and dangerous man on the hill.
Diane breaks into a hearty laugh when I tell her the story. “He’s not dangerous,” she chuckles. “His name is Salomón, and you can go see for yourself. Tell him I sent you.”
So I drive around behind Diane’s house and approach the place on the hill, a handcrafted building obviously constructed in phases. With trepidation, I open the gate to the small yard and immediately hear a dog yapping furiously. I let out a shouted hello and hear stirring inside. In a few minutes, a figure makes its way to the door and an old man opens it, greeting me with a puzzled smile as he scoops up the Chihuahua at his feet.
Salomón’s face radiates humor and openness, and all my trepidation vanishes. After all, “El bien y el mal a la cara sale.—Good and evil are reflected in the face,” and this is clearly an expression of kindness.
Salomón invites me into his kitchen, welcomes the dog on to his lap, and asks why I’ve come to visit him. I skip the story about him being a scary fellow and tell him about my quest to explore Chimayó and meet people. He’s amused, engaged, and willing to tell me his story. But first he puts on some water for coffee.
The violence I’d so feared could erupt seems a ludicrous, paranoid fantasy now. Yet I know just how real such scenarios are in Chimayó and how quickly I can become ensnared in them—even acting out the violence myself. I shudder to remember when I was a hairsbreadth from pulling a trigger.
Soon after the plaza bully had killed my dog and threatened me, my father came to Chimayó with a small pistol. He called it a “man stopper” and implored me to carry it with me, at least for a while. He feared that the next time I was assaulted I would not come out unscathed. After much discussion I agreed to carry the gun for a month or two.
Just weeks later, I was taking a walk into the hills, and there he was, my antagonist, waiting for me. He jumped from behind a juniper and shouted at me. There was a fence between us, and he stopped there, cursing at me and beckoning me toward him. I lifted the gun in my pocket, leveled it at him, and placed my finger on the trigger, keeping the weapon hidden. It was a .38 caliber snub-nosed revolver, five shot. The lead-tipped bullet was designed to enter a body and spread wide, carving out a huge, bleeding wound. It was meant to stop an attacker dead at close range, my father had explained. I imagined just such a scenario and envisioned myself dragging this 250-pound corpse back to my house across the road, as the policeman had supposedly coached my neighbor to do.
He lifted his foot and placed in on a strand of barbed wire as if to jump over. I thought of the irony that this fence line marked the boundary of property first claimed by my ancestors in the early 1700s, the boundary marked by the blue rock on the hillside. The family papers record a dispute about this property soon after it was claimed. Now, over two hundred years later, another disagreement has brought neighbors to conflict along the same line.
If he crosses that fence, I thought, I’ll shoot. My finger tightened on the trigger, and I pointed toward his sagging gut. But he didn’t climb over.
I turned my back on him, the hair raised on my neck, and listened for the fall of his footsteps if he should jump the fence and chase me. He didn’t. When I returned home, I emptied all the rounds from the revolver and locked it in an outbuilding. I never held it again, and I gave it away after my father died some time later.
As Salomón and I sip coffee and he tells me of his life, I reflect on how close I came to participating in the violence that so often flares in this valley that I love, feeling grateful that my fears proved unfounded this time.
And yet I know that Lorenzo’s outburst, while misidentifying Salomón as a danger to me, is fair assessment of a sentiment among many here. The antagonism toward strangers nosing around can be very real.
Entre verde y seco, pero mas seco que verde.
Between verdant and dried up, but more dry than green. (Said when one is not feeling too well).
Es peor el remedio que la enfermedad.
The remedy is worse than the illness.
Las enfermedades entran corriendo y salen despacio.
Illnesses strike quickly and leave slowly.
Más viejo es el aire y todavía sopla.
Much older is the wind, and it still blows. (Said of older people still full of life.)
No hay mal que dure cien años ni enfermo que los aguante.
There is no sickness that lasts a hundred years nor a sick person who can endure so long. (Someone can’t stay mad at you forever.)
Soy como el cerco de rama: no sirve pero algo ayuda.
I am like fence made from branches, which doesn’t work very well but helps somewhat. (Said of an old person who can’t do much anymore.)
Tras de ser malo, es caro.
In addition to being bad for you, it’s expensive. (Said of a costly bad habit.)