Chapter1

No matter how hard you try you just can’t prepare yourself for the cold, damp wind that blows down Montgomery Road. You make little milestones of preparation as you walk down Clarion to the corner. You could run in Grandma’s house and feign illness or loose a mitten and she would make you go right home. Or sneak next door upstairs to where the old old ladies, Cora and Gertie, live and just eat cookies for the rest of your life. Just maybe the firemen will have opened the big door. Seeing the big red engine warms you up and they always smile and laugh at you. Sometimes they let you pet their really pretty dog. He’s all white with black spots. He likes to lick your face. That warms you up. It’s too bad you can’t turn the handle on the little door and let yourself in, your mitten seems to just slip around on the shiny brass knob, that’s just too high too. You can’t take your mitten off to try ‘cause you can’t get it back on by yourself and you know your bare hand would just turn to ice and fall off as soon as you turned the corner.

You don’t have any idea what a wasteland is. But walking up that hill to school seems so formidable, so endless, so barren, so gray, so empty and so, so alone. You wonder if you’ll ever make it through the valley of giant factories and smoke stacks looming black against the just dawn morning gray to school, much less to first grade. And, you dare not blink, it is so much effort and concentration to miss the cracks in the sidewalk, you love your Mother.

Wonderfulness is lunchtime. The nuns help you with your mittens and scarf and make sure all the buttons are buttoned on your clothes Mom made from Dad’s acid eaten work clothes, tough khaki with neat blue patches on the knee’s, perfect stuff for a little boy. Off to lunch but you don’t have to go home like the other kids, its downhill with the wind at your back and even if the sun’s not shining a great hug and a laugh and smile is waiting. You’ve hardly pushed the back door open and Nona grabs you and kisses you and strips the cold off. She picks you up and sets you on the stool at the giant rolling board back in the corner by the great massive ovens. You just glow in that radiance. And you eat really good stuff like spaghetti and warm bread and everyone smiles and treats you special.

Nona makes sure you’ve eaten enough then puts you down. In a wonderful Italian you’ve long since forgotten, great-grandma says “find your Grandfather!.” You skip and run through the long kitchen past blackened skillets frying wonderful meats and shiny cauldrons of boiling pastas. Cooks cooking, bakers baking, waiters waiting, “Stop running! Slow down” but you can’t your little heart is just beating so fast, Grandpa! You get to the swinging doors and caution does take over. You wait and time your attack, one, two, three, you run to the door and shove the toe of your little shoe in the crack at the bottom. Safely wedged now, you can slowly push it open, no one can see the little red haired boy so far below the round portals.

And there he is! At a table with his special friends, he is talking and arguing with the severe thinkers. They make room for you at the table, these crisp men dressed in black. Grandpa hugs and kisses you and they tousle your hair. And they return to talk and you listen and learn from the severe ones…of Aquinas, of Augustine, of Spinoza, and de Cusa….of pantheism and monotheism, of mystics and monks. Father Tommy lends you a copy of the Divine Comedy and you learn of fear, and you learn how to think.

It was the mysticism of mathematics that was the haunting beat in young Luigi. How could things be irrational? Why couldn’t the circle be squared? Why was irrational? Hadn’t Ramanujan come up with the beautiful strange value of (9²+ 19²/22)^{1/4 .} Perfect?, no, but so close, a quarter inch in a circle 8000 miles across, perfectly beautiful. Was it rational to presume eventual solution to perfection? Was irrationality truly a proof of transcendence? Was transcendence a proof of God? Was a proof of God a proof of the divinity of Man? Or was a circle the proof of the oneness of God and the irrationality of Man? Cusa had to be wrong, truth was attainable and the circle would someday be squared or there was no divine nature to Man. It was that simple just like Grandpa’s love.

Sara really loved her car. It was a tad old, but wasn’t she? Sure the red paint was a little chalky, a couple dents, the rear bumper falling off and a small slash in the convertible roof that only leaked a little when it rained. Yep, she couldn’t deny her affection for “Fritzy”. That old Volks convertible was the only stable thing in her life or perhaps it was the only thing she was stable with.

The full moon was rising over the Atlantic on an unusually clear night and quite warm for early spring. She was celebrating her 50^th birthday. Alone, but not really lonely, in a cheap motel at Nags Head south of the pier where she had been sent by the local tourist bureau. She had brought some books and didn’t even rent a remote for the TV. Sara had a craving for warm Sake, it would be her birthday present to herself, and some solitude. Though she craved time to herself she had no experience with it and wrestled with trying to figure out what one does with it. She and Fritzy went for a ride, ostensibly for Sake, but to really be around people and avoid dealing with all those questions.

They found a place that said “Thai Food and Sushi” in beach neon. The restaurant, if that wasn’t too much an exaggeration, seemed run by El Salvadoran refugees. It had probably been a Mexican restaurant before that, though the sombreros on the stucco walls didn’t assure it. She ordered a vegetable dish that was extremely bad with some unidentifiable ugly taste and watched the little Mexican chef slice fish for an unsuspecting or simply unknowing couple. They had good Sake though. A little cool, but three little jugs later it tasted just fine. Fritzy waited patiently to drive her back to the motel.

Sara decided that maybe she didn’t want to be all by herself on her birthday. It was probably the effect of the Sake. This was, after all, her own idea. Friends across the world had asked her to join with them to celebrate this momentous occasion, even her ex-husband, who she loved dearly but just couldn’t live with anymore. Hey the kids were grown. It was time for herself, something she’d never known. She decided to stop at a corner bar on the way back.

She wasn’t bad looking for fifty at all. She’d lost quite a bit of the weight she’d gained over the last twenty years. Sure she had a bit of gray and a little sag to the bosom but one look at her smile and, when she wished sparkling, green eyes and she could smite a man twenty years her junior. She would sometimes do that just to make sure she still had “it”, but she never carried it too far because those kids just didn’t have anything to talk about, at least nothing that touched her soul or was part of her world. She hadn’t even met one who knew the name Mary Wells. If she did she might consider “teaching”, until then she’d keep her very passionate self for those who at least had an inkling about what sex was about, sharing. Of course, she understood that men only viewed the conquest as important and it was her job to extract what she needed, but it had to be there to be extracted, didn’t it? The bar was boring and the two guys who tried to pick her up, one drunk and the other just too stupid, weren’t gonna do it for her. Besides she really wasn’t interested, reflection was consuming.

It was hard to believe it had been thirty years ago, her second year at Antioch, that her Dad had given her “Fritzy”. He didn’t really understand that a VW convertible, with its inadequate heating and “natural” ventilation, wasn’t the car for the sometimes harsh winters of Xenia, Ohio, though he was equally unaware of their prowess in mud and snow. Dad couldn’t be blamed for not knowing, he’d only ever left L.A. on business trips and heated limo’s from the airports of the mid-west doesn’t really give you a feel for the area. Every where he went that year, down to Laguna to the beach house, or down to Brentwood around UCLA, or with his wife to Rodeo Drive to get her hair done, there were, little girls in VW’s with the tops down, laughing and smiling, California girls, just like his little girl.

Those certainly were the “good days”, the best days. She had passions, curiosity, beliefs, that was what she thought her beauty. What now? What had she paid for with the “best years” of her life? What had she proven? Cynicism? Where was her beauty now, conviction? Of course there were the kids, and Mark. After twenty years why did she just walk away? What was driving her? She really wanted to know.

Her students would laugh at the “education” she received at Antioch. It fit her though, at least the image she had of herself. She knew she wasn’t unique in her desire to save the world; that was common to her generation. She thought perhaps that it was a reaction to the nihilists, the great poets of the previous generation that drove these children of the sixties. A proof of the celebration, sitting down at the feast of life rather than wallowing in the mire of despair like the intellects of her father’s generation. She wanted it back and refused to believe this was a “mid-life crisis” or menopause or some sexual craziness. It was her spirit and she had a right to it. Antioch was where she learned, not of the world so much, as of herself. Anthropology and art were the vehicles she chose to that understanding.

She would have centered immediately in feminist and women’s studies but they were only budding at that time, as was she. She hadn’t achieved a political stance revolving around her womanhood. Sara never saw herself as the ravishing beauty she was as a girl. Maybe it was being Jewish or having breasts or not being blonde, she knew she was desired but never quite could figure out why. She liked herself especially her taste and knew men liked her, a lot. Later at graduate school in New York, having followed Christopher there, she delved into feminist anthropology with fervor, ignoring its antithesis masculinism rather than fighting it like her peers. It was the only way she could rationalize why she followed man after man rather than setting her own course.

Then at thirty everything happened at once. She finished her doctorate and her thesis, “Pickup Trucks, Male Dominance Through Religion in a Matrilineal Society” was received as a “classic” of cultural anthropology landing her an unheard of assistant professorship right out of school. It, like most good works wasn’t in the conclusion, which was self-evident, it was the wonderful way she drew inference from seemingly unrelated facts and the poetry of her writing. “Two shadows fall on the dusty road as the Nakais walk toward sunset. In this society, Mrs. Nakai silhouettes the larger form.” Then there was Mark. They had nothing particularly in common, he was working class worker, she upper middle-class pseudo-intellectual, he clear in his thoughts, she muddled by thoughts. She loved him and wanted him to be the father of their children, her children, it was that simple. Other than an occasional affair it remained that simple until now.

Dexter worked the shovel like the pro he was. Thirty years of shovel Yoga, ten as the Major Domo of the Acequia Madre for Ojo Caliente. It was back breaking work and would be unbearable except the chill April winds and the realization that these ditches supported a life style that was almost gone. Only a few acequia were still maintained in the old way, Dixon, Embudo, Las Trampas, Tres Piedras, Velarde, and of most importance El Guique, the home of the best chile in the world. These he was familiar with, a part of. Most now had old Gringos like him on the ditches, though there was a time not so long ago to be an Anglo in Rio Arriba County was a mortal sin. Mortal in that it could mean a horrible death by hanging or blood loss by the after effects of castration. Dexter had lived through it, by luck, good manners, and he didn’t take anybodies shit. His 12 gauge shot pistol hadn’t hurt either. He kept it for “medicinal” purposes, a believer in an ounce of prevention.

The Acequia was an ancient science almost a religion, as old as agriculture itself and Dexter was a priest. His staff of office a shovel, no collar, usually not even a shirt. The object was to catch the snow of winter mountains and have it wet the parched soils of desert valleys. This is not the easy task it appears as it requires an almost mystical vision of volumes and densities, distances and time, and need and value. Without the Acequia there would be no life. Without the Acequia there would be no cultivation, no civilization. Dexter had traced the history of his Acequia back through Spain and the great city of Alhambra to Morroco to Tunisia then to mighty Rome from there to Greece and Ptolemaic Egypt to Alexander and Babylon and the Fertile Crescent to times before Ibrahim and long before Mosche. The heart of his ditch was older than the history of Man, and he knew it. He asked himself, “Could Prometheus have had the forethought to give man water, before fire? Could this be answered like Wiles had answered Fermat, indeed could they be the same question? Like light, magnetism and electricity, can the answer to a question be found in some seemingly disparate relationship?”

Dexter Savage, despite his name, was everything he appeared to be and much, much more. A work hardened simple man of the soil, thin, muscled, slow talking, an expert cowboy, forester, fire fighter, logger, carpenter, builder, mechanic, electrician, plumber, animal husband in more ways than one, jeweler, in fact, an expert at anything he tried. He had gone to Cal Tech on a full scholarship for one day. Realizing that the young women of that institution found more joy in their slide rules and calculators than sex he quickly abandoned his pursuit of theoretical physics.

Curiously, he took the wrong road hitchhiking out of Santa Fe one night. Seeing the sign “Las Vegas” he presumed it meant Sodom and preceded towards Espanola, arriving in front of the drive-in theater just as it was to letting out. Threatened for his life he was saved by 5 very drunk little Pueblo boys from San Juan in a stolen car. They reasoned after a twenty mile ride up the Chama that if they returned the car before daylight the chiefs would be forgiving. Dropped off in the blackest of mountain nights literally in the middle of nowhere, he determined it was an act of God and made it his home.

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Sara fumbled around for her backpack. She had meant to change the mantle on her kerosene lamp before dark. “That would have been the smart thing”, she thought. Probably smarter yet, to use those propane lamps, they were much less fragile. But she was set in her ways. An accident as a child with a pressurized white gas stove quickly converted her to kerosene. Camping without the sweet odor and sticky soot wouldn’t be the same no matter how illuminating.

It was a bit rough on her, this dry, high mountain air. Hard to believe, it was just…Thursday or Wednesday…what day is it?, that she looked at the sign at the beginning of US64 and said, “Wonder what’s at the other end of the street?” Through and over the drenched Smokey’s, perfumed by a honey suckle night in Tennessee, dinner at Graceland, cropped dusted by a bright yellow dare devil in the rice lands of Arkansas, country dancing with some cowboys in Oklahoma, wondering more about Billy the Kid as she looked on the vast flat grass lands of Union County, didn’t even resemble the movies, then overwhelmed by that first view of the Sangre de Christos as they erupt from the high plains.

Sara knew the end of the road, Toc Nee Poh in the Navajo lands. It was really the beginning, wasn’t it? A youngster with goals and ambitions once wrote her thesis there, well, Rock Point but close. She was starting over.

She was startled at the sight as she turned up her lamp. A horse was standing just a few feet away. As she continued to look up she saw the rider. Added to the strange perspective from kneeling close to the ground, the lamp threw a golden glow up on his face and he was silhouetted against the deep purple night sky, quite startling. There was no sound, he was just there!

“Ma’m this isn’t safe country for an attractive woman to be on her own”, he said quietly.

She stood, was this a golden angel or a fiery devil, she was looking at behind the shadows? What now?

“What country do you recommend?”

“Sorry ma’m, I was just …I didn’t mean to offend” as he began to wheel his pony.

“Wait, I’m sorry…coffee?”

“That’s friendly. I surely would.”

Dexter was in an Indian squat stacking and lighting her little fire. How’d he do that she wondered? She never saw him dismount the little buckskin much less walk to her fire pit. Her interest in this lanky fellow soared. Dexter too was curious, what was this gringa doing out here and alone.

Sara filled a pan with water and placed it on the rocks in the coals. She grabbed two blue enameled tin cups from her pack and the jar of instant coffee. Dexter laughed and went over to his horse. She half suspected he was going to get a bag of beans and crush them with his gun butt like a Louis Lamour hero. But Dexter merely grabbed a zip lock bag from his saddlebags.

“Fresh ground Kona. Just did it before I left.”

Sara laughed and took the baggy. “So what are you doing here?”

“I’m checking on trespassers and rustlers. More’s the question what are you doin’ here?”

“Am I trespassing?”

“Yep…ever since you crossed that cattle guard ‘bout 6 miles back. I saw your dust from my place over near Ojo. All this part of the Mesa is leased. If I had seen it was a Volkswagon, I wouldn’t have bothered the hour an a half ride…woulda figured it was just some kids smokin’ weed or something but we’ve been havein’ a bit of trouble lately.”