The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid (12 page)
Read The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid Online
Authors: J Michael Orenduff
“Huh?”
“Maybe he was an Indian who felt a special kinship with that place and requested
to
be
buried there.”
“That is so lame. You’ll come up with any excuse to avoid telling the police.”
“There’s no reason to tell them if it was a planned burial.”
“Who gets buried in an ancient cliff dwelling?”
“People specify all sorts of weird places to be buried.
Some get buried in a pet cemetery next to their cat or dog. A Beverly Hills woman named
Ilene West
was
buried in her powder blue Ferrari
. Her will specified that the
seat
be
reclined
to a comfortable angle.”
“Well she wouldn’t want to spend eternity with the seat at an uncomfortable angle, would she? But that’s Beverly Hills. We’re talking about the real world here.”
“No, Suze, we’re talking about New Mexico
. Weird things happen here, too.”
“Such as?”
“Well,
Carrizozo
passed an ordinance making it illegal
for a female to appear unshaven in public.
And don’t forget about the aliens in Roswell.
”
“Where do you come up with this stuff?”
“I’ve been reading
all
about our state because it’s the centennial year.”
She shook her head. “Let’s get back to the subject. Are you going to tell the police about finding the dead guy?”
“I’ll
send them
a
n anonymous
letter telling them exactly where the body
is. They can dig it up
and
do whatever the
y
need to do.”
She was shaking her head while I was talking. “Not good enough. They’ll need to question you.”
“No they won’t. I’ll include everything in the letter.”
“You don’t even know what everything
is
. They may have questions that wouldn’t occur to you to answer. You have to do this in person.”
“You can be very irritating, you know that?”
She gave me another rancher-girl smile. “What
else
are good friends for?”
“
Going to the police will get
me in trouble.
”
“Because you were breaking the Archaeological Resources Protection Act when you found the body.”
I nodded.
“How much trouble
can that be
? You didn’t carry anything away.”
“Actually, I did. I found a shard before I found the dead guy.”
“Nobody cares about shards, Hubie. Our sheep and cattle tromp
over them every day. The whole
state is littered with them
.
”
“You know I agree with you, Suze, but the Feds don’t look at it that way.
”
“So don’t say anything about the shard. No one but me knows you took it.”
I shook my head.
“
Two other people know – Dr. Fred Koehler and
Alonso Castillo Maldonado
.”
“Why would you tell the
doctor and his
hunting guide you took a shard?”
“I didn’t tell
them.
It was sticking out of my pocket, remember?”
“You think
they
even noticed?”
“
Castillo
was staring
at
me
.
”
“
What about the doctor?”
“No, he wasn’t staring at the doctor.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t know if Koehler noticed the shard, but we were together in the front seat of his rental car for three hours and in my house for another hour while he set my ankle.
Incidentally, he’s a big fan of Billy the Kid and has read everything ever written about him.
”
“Well even if he did see
ksee”
the shard
, he’s back
home
now
. Do you think
Castillo
was staring at the shard because he’s an Indian and was upset that you had it?”
“I don’t think he’s an Indian. He had a thick beard.
And I don’t know
for sure that it was the shard he
was staring at. Maybe he just like
d
my shirt with the button-flap pockets.”
“I don’t think
i
t matters, Hubie. How
would the F
eds know to ask
Castillo
whether you took anything?
They won’t even know you two ever met.”
She was right, of course. But I still had a problem. “
Just the digging is illegal even if you don’t find anything. And the punishment for first-
time offenders
is a fine
of
up to
$20,000 and
a prison term
of
up to a year.”
“
It might be worse for you because
you aren’t a first-time offender.”
“Actually, I’
d be considered one because I’ve never been caught.”
I thought about the rest of the law – I know it well – and laughed.
“What’s
so
funny?”
“ARPA also allows the Feds to confiscate any vehicles used in the violation. Maybe I could strike a plea bargain with them to just take the Bronco and not give me a prison term.”
“But the Bronco is gone.”
“Precisely. If they can find it, they can have it.”
12
I was missing my
mother
.
There, I said it. It’s not that easy for a guy to do. Sentim
ent is soluble in testosterone.
She passed away
on the last day of the twentieth century.
Mom
was an idealistic person who devoted much of her considerable energy to promoting civility. She was in poor health the last year of her life, but I
like to think she cho
se to die on December 31
st
, 1999 because she didn’t want to know what the new millennium would bring.
I’m fortunate to have a sort
of
second mother, a nanny who arrived in the Schuze household the day my mother brought me home from the maternity ward. I learned Spanish from Consuel
a
, not by lessons but by the method children
naturally
learn a language, having her speak to me in that tongue from the time I was an i
nfant. My mother was happy
I grew up bilingual even though she herself never made any attempt to learn Spanish.
Consuel
a
left to get married the year I started college, and she and Emilio eventually ended up living in Albuquerque’s South Valley in a modest adobe home surrounded by pecan trees. The urban sprawl has almost reached them, but for now it
remains
a pastoral setting.
Emilio and Consuel
size="+0" face="Palatino Linotype">a
have one daughter
,
Ninfa, who is now short one kidney because she was the donor for her mother’s
recent
transplant.
I had volunteered to be the donor but neither my blood nor my tissue samples were a match.
But my wallet was.
The money I paid for the ‘patient responsibility’ portion of the bill
would have come in handy
now that I was broke,
but it was money well spent.
And money neither Emilio nor Consuela knew I spent. They think my parents provided them with health insurance. And I guess in a way they did – me. So when someone criticizes what I do for a living, it doesn’t bother me. It’s not like I use my income from purloined pots to buy Ferraris and Rolexes.
No big sacrifice. I’d be afraid to drive a Ferrari and I don’t care what time it is.
I was under the pecan trees
on Saturday morning
drinking coffee and eating
marranitos
, spicy little gingerbread pigs. These pigs are perfectly kosher. It is their shape, not their ingredients, that give rise to the name. The scent of the spices
from
Consuela’s kitchen
tugged me back to my childhood.
“I will bring more
marranito
s,
”
Consuela said, starting to rise from her chair.
I raised a hand like a white flag. “
Gracias, pero no
. I’ve had too many already.”
“But you are too skinny.”
She thinks a man in his forties should have a bulge here and there, a
sign of health and contentment.
I had looked that way before venturing out to the Rio Doloroso, but I’d lost fo
ur pounds before I was rescued.
Then I gained twice that much in the s muan>
That was because Dr. Koehler put an eight pound cast on my ankle. I figured dragging that weight around would help me lose more weight. And I was also cutting back on the margaritas.
Consuela
subscribes to the
dicho
that a good husband should be
feo, formal y fuerte
.
Although the literal meaning is ugly, formal and strong, what those words mean in the
dicho
is
more like
masculine
, stable and
stalwart
, an exact description of Emilio.
I usually get all the exerci
se I need by walking, but
I had used city buses
for this visit
, the number 54 from downto
w
n south on 4
th
, right on Bridge, across the river and sou
th
on Coors. I changed to the 155 at the bus stop
near
the intersection with
Arenal and continued even further south almost to Gun Club Road.
Emilio met me at the road, and I hobbled do
wn the dirt lane with
my rental
crutches and his assistance
. Tristan was right. I had to buy a vehicle.
I had spent the night wrestling with my conscience instead of sleeping. Should I do nothing? I didn’t think the dead guy was modern, and I certainly d
idn’t think he’d been murdered.
But I couldn’t be sure.
So why not just send an anonymous letter? Susannah’s argument that I might leave something out was not convincing. Once the police dug the guy up, they could find out everything t s evgument thahey neede
d to know.
Maybe.
The only thing I was certain about was I didn’t want to go to prison.
Sitting under the trees with the sun just starting to peek over the Sandias, the smell of irrigated soil in the air and a warm
marranito
in my hand was just what I needed to relax. And maybe get some advice.
“Y
our leg, it is broken?”
asked Emilio.
“Only sprained.”
“Sprained?”
“
Esguince
.”
“Ah. Is worse than broken.”
“I never see you sunburned before,” said
Consuela.
So I told them about my adventure on the Rio Doloroso.
When I got to the part about the dead person, Consuela crossed herself and said, “This is very sad. He is forever alone.”
“I guess all dead people are alone,” I said.
She shook her head. “No. We visit them each year on
E
l
día
de
los m
uertos
. We clean and decorate the graves and bring
ofrendas
such as
dulces
, tequila and of course
pan de muerto
and
cempasúchil
.
”
“You know what is
cempasúchil
?”
Emilio asked.
“
Claro
.
It
was originally a wreath of twenty flowers that we call marigolds in English.
The Aztecs called them the flowers of death.”
“
Bravo
,” he said and patted my shoulder.
Consuel
a
said, “Someone must move this man so that his family can visit him.”
I was afraid I knew who that someone would be. As unsavory as the idea was
to me
, only one line of action
satisfied my conscience
. I had to return to the cliff dwelling and look at that hand. If it was the hand of a prehistoric person, I would leave him to rest in peace. He had no family who would visit.
If it was a contemporary corpse, I would go to t
he police in person.
It was risky business. Unless I bought another vehicle with a winch and repeated my rope trick,
I’d have to wind down those switchbacks and
creep
along the precipice, a terrifying prospect
.
I’d have to dig in a grave
and examine the hand of a dead person close enough to be sure if it
was
ancient or modern
. And finally, I’d
be risking a prison term
.
I didn’t think it would come to that. After all, I would surely get some credit for
reporting
the body. And I hadn’t taken anything except the shard which only Koehler and
Castillo
knew about, and neither of them would know I had gone to the police.
But prison was a possibility.
Although I decided that doing the right thing was worth
facing my fear
of heights, breaking my code of never digging in a grave and even going to prison,
I don’t want to leave
you with the
impression that
my motivation
was
totally
pure
and noble
.
There was also an upside.
If I was going to put fear, principle and prison on the line, I figured
I might as well do a little prospecting
before I dug up the hand
.
13
Clambering onto the bus
back to town
with crutches was awkward, but the riders were understanding and friendly, so once I was aboard, I enjoyed the ride.
There’
s a sort of democracy to public transportation, everyone paying the same fare and sitting on the same
uncomfortable
molded-plastic seats. Strangers become instant comrades.
A
woman next to me asked in h
alting
English how I
injured my leg. I answered in Spanish that I had fallen down while drinking water, and everyone around us laughed. When she got off at the next stop she said goodbye as if she expecte
d to see me the next afternoon.
I suppose many of the riders do see each other repeatedly. They take the sam
e
bus at the same time every day to go to wor vizela
or
on
Friday
s
to shop for groceries. They are mostly poor or
too young or too old to drive.
I thought maybe I wouldn’t
buy another
car. A personal vehicle is convenient, but it is also isolating. When I have to drive on the freeway
s
, I’m always struck
by
how humorless the
other
drivers all look
, h
ow almost every ve
hicle contains only the driver.
Maybe that’s the key. Cars are for drivers. Buses are for passengers. Buses are earth friendly, but they are also people friendly. Being on that bus made me feel
more
like a citizen of Albuquerque.
Sharice knew I was in a cast and had agreed to
come
to my house for our
dinner
date.
So I had to prepare the meal.
W
hen I reached downtown, I switched from the 54 bus to the 8 and rode to the
La Monta
ñ
ita
Co-op
on Menaul where I bought two fresh trout.
I had to wait
an hour in the hot sun for the next number 8 going
back
west
. I hadn’t replaced the disappeared hat
, and I began to w
orry about my already abused skin.
And to reassess the idea of depending on b
uses to get around Albuquerque.
I didn’t have to worry about the trout because the nice {aus19" lady behind the counter had packed them with a little bag of ice.
After I got home and put the trout in the fridge, I crutched down to Miss
Gladys
’ and was happy to discover
she had some grape leaves left over.
I had slashed an old pair of Levis from cuff to knee on the right leg and worn them every day since getting the cast. Now I faced a dilemma.
Th
e split Levis were grungy, and I didn’t want to ruin a pair of good
trousers
. I
considered wearing my bathrobe,
but quickly
dismissed that option
.
I threw the split Levis in the washer and started
cleaning the trout. I had decided to do
truchas en terracota
, a dish
from the menu of
Casa Sena
in Santa Fe.
The trout had been gutted but otherwise unprocessed. I washed them and patted them dry.
Trout don’t need to be scaled for this dish because the skin disappears.
I fil
l
ed the cavities with fresh
basil
,
a pinch of freshly ground green peppercorns, salt and
pi
ñ
on
nuts, making sure
the nuts were all shelled.
Another chipped tooth would be bad for me but even worse for Sharice in her line of work as a dental assistant and hygienist.
I wrapped the fish in the grape leaves
and
encased them in clay
.
I don’t know where
Casa Sena
gets their clay, but mine came from the banks of the Rio Puerco
and was dug up at night. It’s not illegal to dig for clay. But with my reputation, who would believe that was what I was after?
