Ya está viejo Pedro para cabrero.
Pedro is too old to be a goatherder.
This balmy November afternoon I vow to get a close look at a lone adobe house sitting on a hilltop smack in the middle of the valley. It’s a house that draws attention and invites stories: it’s old, crumbling, isolated, and visible from many vantages. It’s situated in the middle of a large, undeveloped pasture, one of a dwindling number left in Chimayó.
This was the home of Don Patricio Cruz not many years ago. When I was growing up, it seemed everyone in Chimayó knew Don Patricio, but he didn’t earn his renown by being particularly flamboyant or notorious in any way. Instead, he had a high profile because he herded goats, lots of goats, and he sold milk to many families around the Plaza del Cerro—and he did so for a very long time. My grandmother and her peers remembered getting milk from him when they were young, and they described in nostalgic terms Don Patricio’s daily ritual of driving the goats up to the hills and back down to the valley. His passage through the neighborhood was a comforting marker of time and a reminder of the slower pace of days gone by.
Since I’ve been exploring Chimayó anew, as an adult, the structure has beckoned. And today I stop in at a neighbor’s place, whose owners I know well. Chris and Nancy bought the house, a beautiful adobe that once belonged to Anselmo Ortiz. I reason they must know whom I can contact to get to the dilapidated structure on the hill.
Chris and Nancy welcome me and show me around their comfortable home. Across a field stands an abandoned house, an ancient barn made of logs, and a row of defunct automobiles, all of them mellowing slowly and melting away. Chris and Nancy aren’t sure who owns the Cruz house a quarter mile away, but when they turn me loose to wander around their property, I’m inexorably drawn to the buildings and cars. They are transforming under the hand of time, their colors fading, their forms sagging gracefully.
I’m deep in the thrall of photographing the late afternoon light on a rusted Oldsmobile when I hear footsteps and the rattle of a dog’s collar. I turn to see a man and a large black dog crossing the fields toward Don Patricio’s house. Realizing it’s another Patricio—Pat Martínez, an old friend from my days on the board of directors of the Chimayó Mutual Domestic Water Association—I call out. Pat returns the greeting and walks over to the fence line separating us, where we meet and shake hands.
Pat is a distant cousin to me, through an unusual link. His mother was Sofía Maestas, and her grandmother Francisca was a criada, or household servant, in my great-great-great-grandfather Francisco Antonio Mestas’s home in La Puebla. (The Mestas family name was later changed to Maestas.) Francisco (a.k.a. El Güero Mestas) fathered children by both his legal wife and Francisca. Both lineages proudly claim him as their progenitor, and El Güero included Francisca in his will along with his wife. You might say Pat is my distant half cousin, but the relationship doesn’t come up in our conversation today.
Pat was a steady presence on the water board. He kept a clear head when the water system broke down (which it did frequently) and residents began quarreling over who should fix it and how. Pat was willing to lend a hand and pick up a shovel. I knew he owned land and kept cows down in the lowlands by the river, and I’m delighted to know he’s on his way out to check on the livestock, who roam not only his property but also, with the permission of the current owners, the property where Don Patricio’s house stands. I tell him of my obsession about seeing Don Patricio’s humble abode, and he suggests I follow him out on his daily chore.
So finally, after years of gazing out at the place, I’m walking up toward that storied building, and as the distance between me and the house closes, I find it ever more compelling. It’s another Chimayó time capsule, sitting for decades, untouched. Beside it, the roof of Don Patricio’s old barn lies intact on top of its walls, canted at a crazy angle. When I last studied the buildings from a distance, just a few years ago, the barn was standing. Ruins of other adobe outbuildings tumble nearby.
The west-facing door to Don Patricio’s two-story home is held shut with a single fence post and a piece of bailing wire; the door on the opposite wall is similarly wired to a screen door laid horizontally on its side. I peer in through broken windows. Some of Don Patricio’s furniture is still there, tables and chairs lying in disarray, thick with dust. Coffee cans and a few plastic dishes litter the floor, and through an open closet door, I can see rows of moth-eaten shirts and jackets hanging. Pat explains that Don Patricio’s nephew lived in the house for a short time after Cruz died in 1985, at the age of 103. It looks like the nephew just walked away one day.
As I examine the house, Pat catches me up on events in the neighborhood and the water association. Finally a new water system is in the works, something I tried to initiate for many years. That’s good news for every homeowner in Chimayó. But Pat points out to me another kind of modernization that is not quite so welcome, at least among some people. Mounds of freshly dug earth and piles of dead tree trunks follow the low ridge marking the location of the Acequia de los Ranchos. Long stretches of fence line have been torn up, too. Pat explains that the ditch association decided to put the acequia in an underground pipe a few years back. They brought in heavy equipment last year to do the trenching and in the process tore up a lot of ground and destroyed fences and vegetation.
Pat says he can understand the desire to put the ditch in a pipe. It’s getting ever more difficult to muster the labor to maintain the acequia. But he bemoans the destruction to the fences and laments that his cows can no longer meander over to the open ditch to get a drink. He has a harder time finding water for them.
Chris and Nancy have also expressed displeasure at the change in the ditch. They, too, resent the damage to their fences, and they also are very distressed to see the cottonwoods along the ditch slowly dying. The loss of the old trees is a consequence few foresaw, it seems.
A chill settles in as the sun goes down and Pat and I walk back across the fields toward his house. When we approach his cows grazing near the edge of a pasture, he cautions me to watch out for a young bull among them. I fancy myself experienced in dealing with feisty livestock, so I don’t pay much heed, but then the bull lunges toward me. Pat shouts at him and waves his arms, but the animal circles and comes at me from behind. I didn’t believe the bull would actually harm me, but now I’m not so sure. He ignores Pat and closes in on me. Pat hurriedly opens the strands of barbed wire to let me escape. The bull pulls up short as Pat curses at him in Spanish. “¡Vete, cabrón!”
Doorway on Patricio Cruz’s house, 2010.
A cada capillita se le llega su funcioncita.
Every little church has its little feast day. (Every dog has his day.)
El tiempo es buen amigo y sabe desengañar.
Time is a good friend and knows how to reveal the truth. (The truth comes out in the end.)
La cárcel aunque sea de oro no deja de ser prisión.
Even if the jail is made of gold, it’s still a prison. (Freedom does not derive from wealth.)
La verdad es como el maíz—cuando uno menos piensa, sale.
The truth is like a grain of corn—when you least expect it, it sprouts. (Truth is sometimes surprising.)
Lástima de tanto brinco estando al suelo tan parejo.
Too bad there’s so much hopping around when he’s on a flat floor. (Said when someone is guilty of something and makes excuses before he has even been accused.)
Lo mismo está el cabo que la hacha.
The handle is the same as the ax blade. (It makes no difference.)
Los locos y los chiquitos dicen la verdad.
Crazy people and little children tell the truth. (Inhibitions can obscure the truth.)
No hay quien escupa a los cielos que a la cara no le caiga.
No one spits to the heavens without it falling on his face. (If you curse God, there will be consequences.)
No le busques pies al gato porque le hallas cuatro.
Don’t go looking for the cat’s feet, because you will find four. (Don’t go looking for trouble, because you might find more than you bargained for.)
Nomás él que carga el costal sabe lo que trae adentro.
Only the one who carries the sack knows what is inside. (Nobody knows your troubles except yourself.)
Nomás la lengua mata.
Only the tongue kills. (Language can cause much evil.)
Ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente.
The heart will not feel what the eyes do not see. (What you don’t see won’t hurt you.)
Vemos la paja en el ojo del vecino y no la viga en el nuestro.
We see the straw in the neighbor’s eye, but not the log in ours. (We notice even the smallest of other people’s faults but seldom see our own, more significant ones.)