April 11, 2002

Before I reached the state line between Texas and New Mexico, fine red sand enveloped the pickup in a metal-framed glass cocoon. Sheets of sand swirled across the black road in flurries the same as blowing snow. Light traffic sped along, headlights deflected by the powdery red haze.

Enshrouded in dust, I searched in memory for the name of the old man who lived in the uncharted sand dunes in a dugout on a ranch straddling the Texas and New Mexico line. His brother was the cowboy I wrote about once, who helped roundup bands of wild mares in New Mexico in the open range days. Helped hold a huge herd of horses as a 12 year-old for each rancher to pair his colts with his brand in land as vast and endless as the sky above. (If you have heard me tell this story before, appreciate what a better job I do each time.)

The dugout story didn't come first-hand. A fossil fuel miner told of hunting for two weeks for old so-and-so to have him sign a division order to cash a big roll of dough for gas royalties. Folks living underground in dugouts and caves don't have street addresses. If it'll help locate him, he wore a black roll brim, full crown hat with a red bandanna handkerchief for a neck piece. Probably weren't more than 100 cowboys from the state line going west to Artesia fit his description. Same was true of his boots, which weren't boots at all, but brogan shoes to withstand the grating of the sandy soil.

Hard to place the dugout, too, as an airtight lean-to covered over in the night can become a dugout the next morning after a big sandstorm. One reason, I suspect, that he located in sandy country was because his dad's ranch close to Mertzon rested on solid limestone rocks. The rock was so hard the postholes the family dug fencing the country took 13 inches of digging to make 10 inches of hole.

The oil man said once he found the old man, his mate stayed inside, peering from the darkness. In order to execute the division order, he had to ask if she was his wife. The reply was, "I reckon so. But she don't sign papers, considering how the white people cheated her people out of their tribal lands."

As soon as I uncovered the clue, "I reckon she is," I figured I'd better drop the subject. As cheap as a man's overhead is living in a dugout, and as big as royalties will accumulate with no withdrawals, he may have left some prominent heirs to take grand exception to such a tale. "The grand exception" by someone with an override spewing money from a wellhead might take the form of a fierce Dallas law firm going for your scalp. So here is where we better call the dugout story off before it takes a bitter turn.

Turning back my watch an hour crossing into the new time zone made the sandstorm last longer. I began swerving every time a big brown tumbleweed rolled, bouncing across the road. Steamboat pilots on the Mississippi River used to change shifts if the night man started dodging floating sticks, thinking they were snags. Same is true in driving in a sandstorm. Once you start fading lanes to miss the tumbleweeds, you'd better stop for the night.

Hobbs, New Mexico was the next town having motels. I checked at three places before I found a vacancy. The clerk called the room "an executive room," which should have aroused my suspicion. I didn't ask any questions, just signed the register and handed her my credit card.

The assignment for the coming writer's workshop in Taos was "short descriptive sentences" or "phrases to fit a familiar place." After I'd opened the door to the executive room and discovered the room was actually "a chain smoker's haunt," I sat down at the desk and here's my homework, titled, "Smoker's Refuge in Hobbs, New Mexico". "Mirror so clouded by yellow tint, the reflection emanates a jaundiced image. Watery eyes drain tears over deep sinus manifestations. Smoke-blurred peephole in hollow core door. Tarnished knob bearing nicotine-stained prints. Carbon fumes rising from dead green carpet way before the morning haze lifts."

I spent a fitful night in the executive room. Executives must smoke a lot on the road. I kept dreaming I swallowed one of the filters from my long-ago corncob pipe. Winds rattled the panels around the air conditioner. Way in the night, I wondered if the old man in the black hat and his dark-skinned woman really lived in a dugout covered by a sand dune, or was that just another story made up crossing the plains of Texas on the way to New Mexico…

April 11, 2002