|
TRANQUE
Margarito and I were picking apricots at Sebedeo Pacheco's house. I'd
been dropping roundabout hints and questions all day about a girl I'd
seen that morning at Lebanon's store. Margarito finally got around to
an answer, sort of.
"Tranquilino Trujillo."
"Who?"
"Tranquilino Trujillo. Everybody just calls him 'Tranque.'"
"What about the girl?" I pleaded.
He dropped a handful of apricots into a bucket and went ahead like he hadn't even heard me.
"Tranque always had an opinion about everything. Whether he knew anything about it or not, he thought he did.
"When he was young he was always fighting with every guy in Rio Pueblo, and everywhere else, about anything and everything. Sometimes nothing.
"He had the scars to show for it too. His nose was broken so many times it couldn't decide which way was right, left, up or down. His huge hands were scarred and calloused from impacts with other men's bones. Half his right ear was missing, his left ear curled like a cabbage leaf and his eyebrows, chin and forehead are all scarred. I've never seen them but I heard he has a whole encyclopedia of scars on his body from knives, bullets and all sorts of weapons.
"The bad thing about it was you just couldn't help laughing at the guy . . . .
"Weeell . . . , maybe you could. If you wanted to keep your teeth.
"Worse, Tranque had a way of getting things all mixed up when he talked. He'd always say things like 'natural florist' instead of National Forest. A high powered rifle was a 'high powdered rifle,' concentration was 'constipation' and precipitation might be 'perspiration.' You get the idea?"
I nodded. "I get it. What about . . .?"
"In those days Prescilla Gonzales was the beauty of the whole valley."
There was just no stopping him once he got started.
"All the boys and young men wanted her. When Prescilla walked by, old men wished they were boys and the girls and women were all jealous of her.
"Prescilla had the darkest hair, the brightest eyes, the finest nose and the most inviting lips . . . . The cutest ears in the mountains peeked seductively from behind her midnight locks . . . and her body . . .? Eeee ho, what a body!
"From her head to her toes, Prescilla was created to inspire dreams of lust and romance.
"Problem was, nobody could get to first base with her. Well, actually, nobody even got to the batter's box. She never dated anyone. She never showered her favors on anyone, not that it was necessary. Just the sight of her was enough to give most men . . . .
"Well . . . you get the idea."
I nodded.
"Nobody knew about it until it happened. Tranque, he was thirty and Prescilla, she was seventeen, announced their wedding date.
"Nobody could understand it. Maybe Tranque was bewitched. Maybe Prescilla was bewitched. Maybe somebody witched both of them just to take them out of circulation. ÀQui'en sabe?
"People rolled their eyes in disbelief and wondered how long it would last. The mean ones said that Tranque had somehow gotten Prescilla pregnant. Whatever it was, it was the talk of the valley, whenever Tranque wasn't around to hear it.
"Prescilla's parents could barely wait for her to leave home. For years they'd lived with whole herds of hormone ridden boys driving past their house, whistling, honking horns and just generally being male teenage pests. Relief was in sight.
"The wedding was one of the biggest ever in the valley. People had to see for themselves that it was really happening. Gossips had to know whether or not Prescilla was pregnant. Others just wanted to see who, or how many whos, Tranque would beat up at the wedding dance.
"They were all disappointed. Tranque didn't beat up anybody and there was no swelling beneath Prescilla's wedding gown --except for those marvelous hips and breasts that we had all grown to love, or hate.
"Ten months after their wedding Prescilla gave birth to a girl that would obviously be another knockout, like her mother. A year and a half later they had a son with hands that would be knockouts in their own way.
"Then, just like that, Tranque ran for county commissioner . . . and he won. He did a great job. He was the best commissioner we ever had. He didn't mess around and nobody messed around with him. If he wanted a front end loader he went straight to the legislature in Santa Fe.
"And he got it.
"'Culverts for the roads? No problem Mr. Trujillo.'
"'Money for a senior center or medical clinic? No problem, Mr. Trujillo.'
"First, he'd crack them up with his speech and then he'd hammer one of those huge fists of his on the podium.
"'BOOM!'
"The sound of it would echo in the halls of the capitol building for a week and the night-time cleaning people were found cowering in fear of the echoes. The rumor went around that the place was haunted.
"After a couple terms as County Commissioner, Tranque ran for state representative. He won, of course, and things were even better around here for awhile. Tranque never forgot his roots or the people of the valley. He might have fought with them all his life but he loved them."
"So, what happened to him?"
"He stayed in Santa Fe for a couple, maybe three, terms and then he just quit. He and Prescilla and the kids came home. They live in Llano Alto, on their farm."
"That's it? That's all there is? Nobody died?" I couldn't believe that was all of it.
"Everybody dies."
"No witches?"
"Maybe. But I don't think so."
"No magic?"
"Just their love for each other."
"And the girl?"
He grinned and pulled another apricot from the tree.
"That girl at Lebanon's? She's Tranque's daughter and you better stay away from her."
SHEEP
I was twenty two, raised in a city and knew nothing about sheep when
I moved to Llano Alto to stay with my grandmother. What I have
learned didn't always come easy.
Sheep are as New Mexican as adobe, chile and "la Llorona." They've been an integral element of life here since the conquistadors brought the Piggly Wiggly-supermarkets-on-the-hoof to the New World. The days of large flocks are gone but most farms in the Llano Alto valley raise a few for wool, meat and the tradition of it. My grandmother did. So did our friend Margarito.
Sheep have a five month gestation period and unless you want to be up all night in sub zero temperatures warming up newborn lambs you take measures to control the breeding season. My grandmother preferred a hobble, a two foot long piece of leather that went from the right front to the right rear leg of the ram and kept him from mounting a ewe and breeding.
It fell to me by default to get the thing on him.
The brute glared at me as I approached, hobble dangling from my back pocket. Every time I got within six feet of him he darted to the other side of the corral. I finally gave up trying to catch him with class and dove full onto his back. My grandmother jumped, waved her arms and shouted instructions in Spanish, which she knew I didn't understand.
She must have forgotten in all the excitement.
Three circuits around the corral and the ram came to a halt. He was breathing heavy. I was breathing heavy. My head hurt, my left thumb hurt and the knees were torn out of my pants. I spit out a mouthful of dirty wool and reached behind me for the hobble. It was gone. I lifted my head and looked around. It was lying in the dirt on the other side of the corral. I groaned, let go and slid to the ground. The ram waddled off across the corral, turned and glared at me.
It took most of the afternoon but I got it done.
One day my grandmother decided she needed a new ram. She was going to give hers to Margarito, his ram was going to Eusebio Medina and Eusebio Medina's ram was coming to my grandmother's. The common denominator in all this was me.
I put it off as long as I could.
Somehow I managed to half lift, half roll my grandmother's ram into the pickup bed, slam the tailgate and stock racks closed and pull the hobble off before he could mash me. On the drive over to Margarito's I noticed a pain in my lower back steadily working its way toward my right foot.
Margarito was out of town. His ram was in a log pen. I backed the truck into the pasture where his ewes were grazing and started to drop the tailgate. Grandma's ram bolted for the opening. The tailgate came down hard on my left knee. My leg went numb. The ram ran toward the ewes. The ewes ran away from the ram. The ram followed them. Margarito's ram started slamming his horned head against the logs of the pen trying to get at the interloper.
I sat on the tailgate and whimpered involuntarily.
I backed the truck up to the pen and lowered the top two logs. The ram charged at the opening. I stepped in front of him, closed my eyes and grabbed hold with both arms.
The saints were with me.
I went up and over backwards into the truck bed with my arms around two hundred pounds of horny, pissed-off ram. The ram landed on top of me, somersaulted once and came up butt first against the truck cab. Before he could figure out what had happened I slammed the tailgate and stock racks closed and slid to the ground, trying to catch my breath.
My head hurt, my right eyelid was swelling, my back hurt, my left knee screamed, my shirt was torn, a red welt ran from my collarbone to my navel and I was sure my left ring finger hadn't been crooked like that before.
I wondered if I had enough body parts left to finish the job.
Eusebio Medina lived in Dos Ojos, a twenty minute drive from Llano Alto, one way. I toyed with the idea of just driving around for about an hour, then taking Margarito's ram to my grandmother. Would she know? My grandmother? Oh yeah, she'd know.
I pulled up behind the Medina house, got off the truck and collapsed against the fender. I had to use the bathroom. My left ring finger was swollen and had turned sort of a shiny purple-blue color. Mr. Medina stepped out of the house. He stopped when he saw me.
"Who you been fighting with?" He asked.
I gave him the fifteen cent version of what had happened. He laughed and told me to back the truck over to the gate in a log corral behind the house. I did and asked him where I could take a leak.
He waived his hand. "Anywhere where you want."
By the time I'd finished, tucked the remnants of my shirt into my pants and wandered back to the corrals he had unloaded Margarito's ram and was closing the stock rack behind a ram that I hadn't wrestled before.
"Good timing." He smiled. I nearly passed out with relief.
"You better have that finger looked at by a doctor." He really was concerned. "It sure looks broken."
Yep, it was broken.
I don't think the doctor in Taos really believed me when I told him I wasn't sure how it had happened and that it could have been when the tailgate slammed down on my knee or when I went over backwards into the truck bed with a two hundred pound ram in my arms or maybe when.... He really didn't have the time.
David Kyea has lived in Northern New Mexico for 37 years, more or less. He has worked as a cook, logger, ski lift operator, carpenter, shepherd, cowboy, adobe brick layer, cleared trails in the Pecos Wilderness and planted trees at altitudes of 10,000 feet. He worked 25+ years as a deputy sheriff, criminal investigator, deputy medical investigator and magistrate judge. He is a graduate of the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy and the FBI National Academy. He dabbles in music and enjoys playing traditional New Mexico Spanish music on the guitar, mandolin, tin whistle, harmonica, violin and viola. He and his wife, Lani live on their ranch. (April, September 2009)
If frames-incompatible, use your backspace arrow or Click Lunarosity