IN THE DISTANCE someone was whistling the most beautiful concerto. I knew who it was and I walked toward the sound.
“Remember me?” I asked old Joe Sandoval. “Do you have any of last year’s dried apples?”
Joe was leaning on a pitchfork next to a ten-foot pile of straw. “Maybe so. I’ll go look in the root cellar.” Joe was sixty-five. He’d lived in Talpa all his life. He traveled to Taos, five miles away, about once a month. He’d been to Santa Fe, one and a half hours away, only three times in his life.
He reappeared. “Now I remember. You and that fellar lived down the road. He had some kind of instrument he was always carrying. Can’t recall.”
“A trumpet,” I said.
Joe handed me a plastic bag full of dried fruit.
“Are these still the best?” I asked, opening the bag.
“Suppose so,” he said, scratching his ear. “You look good. How many years ago was it?”
“Four, four and a half, maybe. Ummm, these are good. How much?” I took another bite.
“A dollar maybe.”
“Sold.” I handed him a bill. His fingers trembled. He’d been hit by lightning three times and lived.
We waved good-bye.
I walked farther down the road. I’d been back a week. Wild sunflower heads bobbed all along the road. Apricots were turning yellow-orange and under each fruit tree there were many that had already fallen. I looked over at Taos Mountain. Thunderheads were forming that would bring the afternoon rain. This land had not failed me. Each rock held a slice of eternity. I passed rose hips, not yet ready for picking. I turned and saw the elephant mountains. They were still kissing. I waved. Dark cloud shadows floated across their faces.
How could you ever leave? I asked myself. I’d left it for him. The letter was in my pocket. It had arrived yesterday. I took it out and read it again.
Dear Nell,
L.A.’s okay. A tough place. I’m trying to connect with the music scene. I’m still blasted from everything that’s happened this year. I think about you, sometimes so much I want to burn you from my brain. Then I realize: You live in me. I have to let you be. I hope you are well and happy. I still love you.
Gauguin
I folded it up and put it back in my pocket. My heart was a dark prune. It became more wrinkled every time I read that letter.
“This is where we lived, Gauguin,” I said out loud. “This is where we walked and kissed”—I passed our old house—“and made love.”
All of a sudden I needed to get away from Talpa. I ran up to the reservoir where my car was parked, got in, and drove into town.
Lee’s Bakery was next to the post office. I ordered Harvey’s special there—lox, onions, and scrambled eggs—and from a rack near the counter bought a card with a picture of the pueblo on it. I sat down in the back room, and while I waited for my order, I wrote.
Dear Anna,
I’m sleeping out on a platform Sam built—I can watch the stars at night and I’m using the school bus for a painting studio. The mesa is still heaven. It’s calling you. I hear it. “Anna,” it says, like a long low train whistle. I hope you come. I miss you.
XXX,
Nelly Belly
P.S. Treat you to a malt at Rexall’s when you get here. No vanilla.
I didn’t tell her that Rexall’s had become a tourist place, but at least they’d kept the soda fountain.
When I finished my eggs, I dropped Anna’s card in the mail slot next door and drove back up to the mesa. Blue and Sam had been gone for three days on a wood run near Tres Piedras. They’d be home this afternoon. I was glad. I was getting tired of being the only one up there.
I parked beside Mohammed, Sam’s 1940 red Chevy pickup, got out, and looked around. Boy, this was big space. A person could get lost here. Not me. I smiled. I’m going to paint.
I went right over to the bus. Even though I could already see lightning in the distance, I opened some windows. It was hot in there.
Okay, I said to myself, we’re inside, but let’s paint what’s outside.
I drew a straight horizon line. Above it would be mountains. I’d keep the bottom flat and full of sage. Yellow sage, I decided. Who could ever capture the mysterious dusty blue-green color it really was?
The painting pulled me in. I concentrated on a red mountain, then a purple one. Rain pelted the hood of the bus. Lightning flashed. I drew a jagged silver line half across the sky and half across the mountain. The landscape informed me of what I should paint. There was no way I could do an abstract painting here. The land demanded my complete attention.
Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something moving. I ignored it. What could be out in this rain? Even the jackrabbits had more sense. I went back to the red, and then, surprising myself, I dipped the brush in black. I wanted rain in this painting.
Something out there moved again. I put down my brush, crossed over to a window, and shut it. Water streamed down the glass. Repeated strikes of lightning lit up parts of the mesa. I squinted to see if I could catch that moving object. I wonder if it’s dangerous to be in this bus? Wait a minute! I saw it again.
“Sylv—!” Just as I began to scream, lightning hit the ground right in front of where I was looking. There was a blinding light and a huge crackling sound like fat sizzling. Then it was gone. The sage on the side of the bus was dwarfed and blackened.
I ran out. There he was, looking like a burned marshmallow. I picked him up. Hanging from his body were those dinosaur feet. They were almost untouched.
I heard a car and looked up. I could see its lights moving slowly on the muddy road. It was Blue and Sam.
I ran toward them. My right sandal got sucked off in the mud. I pulled it out and put it back on.
We met at the driveway. “Honey!” Blue yelled as she opened her door. “What are you doing out in this rain?”
“Blue—” I held Sylvester at arm’s length in front of me.
“Oh, lord!” She ran toward me and took the charred heap. “Sylvester? Yes, Sylvester.” She saw his feet. She turned, showing the carcass to Sam, who now was out in the rain, too. “It’s a sign. It’s a sign!” she yelled. “Nothing that little and low gets hit.”
“Of what?” I was cold in a sleeveless shirt, clasping my arms full of goose bumps.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure. An omen. Why didn’t his feet sizzle? Let’s get in the house. We’ll toss the runes. We’ve got to do something! Poor biddy Sylvester.”
We got in the house and Blue put the corpse right in the middle of her wooden kitchen table. “Now, Sylvester, don’t you worry. As soon as this rain stops, we’ll bury you out back next to Nijinsky and Mrs. Montoya in the poultry cemetery.
I began to feel a little crazy. What was going on here? In Brooklyn we ate chicken, we didn’t have a graveyard for them.
“Sugar, why don’t you go dry off? I’ll heat up some soup.”
I nodded.
She handed me a towel.
When I came out of the bathroom, there was hot tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches on the table where the chicken had been.
“Ohh, that looks good.” I sat down. “Where’s Sylvester?”
“I put him in the greenhouse,” Sam said as he put the spoon to his mouth.
“Nell”—Blue took my arm—“that must have been a terrible experience. I threw the runes. It said, ‘More darkness to come.’ ”
“Geez, it’s already been raining so much,” Sam said.
“Not that kind of darkness, Sam.” Blue turned her head to me. “Nell, you better do some paintings full of light to ward this off.” She shook her head. “Poor Sylvester. Wasn’t he just the most special rooster?”
The ground was very wet when I walked back to the bus. The distant mountains almost looked navy blue and clouds still hung heavy. There would be more rain. The sage filled the mesa with its pungent aroma.
I stood in front of the canvas I had begun earlier. I had no taste for it. I took it off the easel and leaned it against a bureau. I sat down in the overstuffed red rocker I had dragged from Blue’s shed a week ago and picked up a book of Mark Rothko’s paintings that I’d borrowed from the owner of The Plaza Gallery.
I turned the pages. How could there be so much in a simple colored square? I looked at the thin line of black separating a white and a gold square on a background of red. Below the white space was a square of hot pink. I could swear God had crawled into that painting. How’d Rothko do it?
It was a thick book, and I got lost in it, lost in the same way as when I painted. Time disappeared. I even disappeared. I was all eyes, pulling color into my body. Nell Schwartz from Brooklyn was gone.
It began to rain again and the sound of the drops hitting the roof of the bus brought me back. I closed the book and then my eyes. The drops penetrated my skull and I felt sound. A moment ago I was square colors, now I was rain.