The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid (18 page)

“I assume so,” I said. Susannah and her mom were talking as if this were a normal conversation, so
I
just went along for the ride.

pan>
She turned back to her mom. “So Hubie and I have been debating whether the body is a mummy or some modern person who might have been killed.”

Hil
ary looked at me with a smile exactly like her daughter’s. “I’m sure Susannah is the one who thinks it’s a murder victim.”

“Mom
s know everything,” I said.

“Do you have a wager riding on it?”

I started to answer, but Susannah jumped in. “No, but I think that’s a great idea. What should we wager, Hubie?”

“Er…”

“Don’t say anything that will
embarrass your old
-
fashioned mom,” said Hillary.

I had no idea what she
meant by that,
but
I didn’t like the sound of it.

“We can talk about it on the wa
y back?
” I said.

Matt and Mark arrived, and I braced for two crushing handshakes. The two brothers are
in their early twenties and look like the football players they were.

The four of them spent the next hour in a family chat I enjoyed listening to. It was good to see Susannah with her
brothers and her mom who called her Sorne.

Before we left, the boys insisted I take a tour of the place with them. I know they’re proud of
the place and probably like
show
ing
it off, but I assumed the real motive was to give Susannah and her Mom
some time
alone with each other.

As we rode along, they pointed out
a
peak off to the
ea
st. They were impressed I identified
it as J
umanes Knob
. T
>hey d
idn’t
know I’ve been studyin
g
New Mexico topological maps for
over
twenty
years.

And that I have a pot in my shop that c
ame from just below Jumanes K
nob.
The pot is from the Tompiro people who died out
in the 1600s
and is decorated with their distinctive asymmetrical cross-hatched shapes. I have it priced at
thirty
thousand because
few complete
Tompiro pots
have ever been found. Frankly, they are
unattractive compared to pueblo pottery from the same period, which is why it hasn’t sold. I’m waiting for a customer who appreciates the rarity of the pot.

It was a desolate place back when I found that pot,
so
searching
t
here was safe. Now there’s a wind farm on the mesa
with a dozen employees who might spot me if I were di
gging at the base of the slope.

Looking at those giant turbines made me think about the strange collection of assets that have attracted humans to this area over the last thousand years or so. The
Tompiro
came here because of the dry lake beds. They harvested the salt and traded it with both the plains Indians to their east and the pueblo peoples to the
ir
west. After the arrival of the Spanish, families settle
d
here to farm the rich soil. Torrance County
eventually became the ‘Pinto Bean Capital of the World’ with almost 800 carloads shipped out from the railhead at
Mountainair
during peak production. A decade-long drought ended farming and led to ranching. Salt,
soil
, and grass are now giving waynow/fo to a new asset – wind.

We stopped at
a
stock tank fed by an old-fashioned w
indmill
. Looking past th
at
venerable Aeromotor
up to the giant turbines on the mesa filled me with a sense of passage. I wondered if a generation from now, city kids passing through on vacation
would see those turbines as quaint indicators of rural life
just as we now
regard
the old windmills.

It was then
I discovered I
w
as wrong about the ulterior motive of the tour. It was not to get Susannah and her mother alone together.

It was to get me and the brothers alone together.

We were standing by the windmill when Matt said to me, “You seem like a nice guy, Hubie.”

There was no edge to his voice and no scowl on his face, but somehow I felt uncomfortable.

“Thanks,” I said, “You two also seem like good guys. Of
course
that’s what I would expect based on knowing Susannah.”

“She’s very special to us,” said Mark.

“I’m sure she is
.”

They looked at each other. Some silent brother communication passed between them by
means of
which it was decided that Matt would speak.

He looked me
i
n the eyes.
“What are you
r intentions regarding Susannah?
”

“Completely honorable,
”
I said
reflexively.

They both patted me on the back, and we got back in the truck.

I realized immediately
I had misled them
. Friendship is an honorable thing, but they pro
b
ably didn’t take my answer to mean that. I couldn’t think of any way to explain thing
s
that didn’t seem
ter
ribly awkward, so I just let it pass. If they didn’t know their sister and I are just friends, they would figure it out soon enough or she would tell them
.

It
woul
d
all work out with a minimum of embarrassment.

18

We got closer to Willard on the way back than we did coming in, but still missed it, turning north on State Highway
41 less than a mile from town.

If we hadn’t already eaten in Belen, I would have argued for going the extra mile into Willard for a stop at the Willard Cantina & Café, a mom and pop place run by Alex and Lisa Garcia
. They serve
hamburgers
with green chile that a sign on the place describes as
‘
chile with attitude
’
.
Delicious.
You can smell it from the parking lo
t.

Highway 41 reaches Interstate 40 with geometric simplicity – a
straight line thirty miles long. It seems boring, but onc
e you enter I 40 and start line-
dancing with the eighteen wheelers, you long for that empty two-lane road.

Susannah said, “So what should we wager on whether the dead guy is ancient or modern?”

“Before we decide that, maybe you can tell me what your mom meant when she said we shouldn’t say
anything that will embarrass your old-fashioned mom
.”

“Well, she is old-fashioned, and people make crazy wagers these days. I guess she didn’t want to know about it if one of us had to sky dive or run naked
across the Old Town Plaza.”

I wasn’t sure that was what
her mother had
meant, but she’s Susannah’s mom, so I
didn’t argue the point
.

“I hope you have a saner wager in mind, because I’m not doing either of those things.”

She thought about it for a minute.
“I’ve got a great one. We’ll wager
my
car. If I lose, I have to keep it. If you lose, you have to take it.”

“You’re going to lose, so what are you going to do about transportation? I can tell you the buses are a challenge.”

”I’m not going to lose. But if I do, it will be the perfect excuse to buy another car.”

“You a
lready have a perfect excuse. It’s back at the ranch waiting for you to reclaim it when you return this truck.
”

“I can’
t
buy another car while
my current one
is still working. That would be wasteful. But if I lose it to you in a bet, then I’d be forced to buy another car and would
n’t
feel guilty about it.”

Instead of commenting on her logic, I said, “In this case you’re not going to lose it to me. You’re going to win it to me.”

After we laughed at that and
agreed to
the wager, I asked her if
‘Sorne’
was
a nickname.

“Nope. That’s my real name, given to me by my Grandfather.”

“
Gutxiarkaitz
.”

“
Wow.
You re
member my grandfather’s name.
”

“It’s hard to forget. And even harder to pronounce.”

“You were close.”

“Thanks. So where did ‘Susannah’ come in?”

“My parents didn’t want to disappoint my grandfather by not accepting the Basque name he gave me, but they also wanted me to have what they called ‘an American name’. Susannah starts with the same letter and they think it has a western ring to it.”

“Your grandfather named your father Gus. That’s not a Basque name
,
is it?”

“No, and it’s not his real name either. His name is Eguzki. ‘Gus’
i
s his American name
, chosen
because it sounds like his real name.”

“Let me guess – your mom is not really named Hilary.”

“Good guess. Her name is Hilargi.”

“Is that the Basque
equivalent
of Hilary?”

“There is no Basque equivalent of Hilary. There is no Basque equivalent o
f
anything. It’s not an Indo-European language, remember? There are no cognates.”