The Pot Thief Who Studied Georgia O'Keeffe (6 page)

15

W
hich is why we were cruising down Interstate 25 in total darkness Thursday morning.

If you're thinking this is when I encounter the black helicopter, you're jumping ahead too far.

Susannah had recharged the battery on my Bronco because she figured it was better suited to the rough White Sands roads than her old Crown Vic with its chronic oversteer.

It would be Glad's first day minding the shop. I'd given him a key the day before we left. I also left a note that read “Make coffee and sell pots. At the end of the day, turn off the coffee maker, empty the trash and wash the windows.”

The last item was a joke. But if he didn't realize that, I'd have clean windows.

We left the interstate at San Antonio, famous as the birthplace of Conrad Hilton and the home of the Owl Bar and Café, whose green chili cheeseburgers are more popular with New Mexicans than any hotel chain can ever hope to be. Unfortunately, we passed through the sleepy village of 150 people at five in the morning, too early for a cheeseburger.

We were the first vehicle to arrive at the Stallion Gate on the north side of the missile range on the day of the Trinity Site Open House. After we showed our driver's licenses and car registration to the MP at the gate, I took a nap in the backseat.

I'm not used to getting up at two in the morning.

Susannah woke me when the gate was opened, waved goodbye to the MP and pulled away at normal tourist speed. Around the first curve and out of sight of the gate, she switched from tourist to NASCAR driver, explaining that she wanted to put some distance between us and the cars behind so that she could let me out while we had the road to ourselves and no witnesses to my leaving the Bronco.

She skidded to a halt by a shallow draw. I jumped out at a dead run and was ten yards down the draw when she took off. I don't know how far I had gone when the car behind us at the gate passed by because I had followed the draw through a couple of turns and could no longer see the road.

More important, the road could no longer see me.

So far, so good.

I was dressed in brown hiking boots, khaki pants, a long-sleeve khaki shirt and a beige Tilley hat, an outfit that protected me both from the sun and—I hoped—from detection. The idea was to blend in to the desert terrain. My web belt held binoculars, a canvas canteen, a hunting knife, a compass and a piece of quarter-inch rebar.

I scanned the area with the binoculars. There were some structures on the hills off to my right. I hoped they contained radar rather than one guy drinking coffee and another asking, “Who's the short guy in the khaki outfit?”

The United States Geological Survey created over fifty thousand maps that show landform details of the entire country. If you do the math and divide the number of maps into the total area of the Unites States, you'll discover that each map covers a square area roughly seven miles on each side. An hour and a half after rolling out of the Bronco, I was standing under an outcrop of the Oscura Mountains studying USGS map number 193371.

The spot I wanted was close to a contour line that marked 6,800 feet of elevation. The road to the Trinity Site is just below 5,000 feet. So the four-mile hike had taken me up almost 2,000 feet.

I scoped the face of the outcrop. Tristan had shown me a satellite picture of it on Google Earth. Now I was seeing it from a much better perspective—that of
Mother
Earth. Most people would not have known what to look for. I did.

It was the sort of location the ancients built in. Finding the path up to it took half an hour. I was a bit behind schedule but feeling confident because the return hike would be downhill. Perfect for that gunnysack full of pots I imagined myself carrying.

I probed the soil in front of and inside the rooms for almost an hour and was rewarded with nothing more than rocks and animal bones.

I was about to give up. I sat down in one of the rooms and studied it. The walls were stone and mud, the roof formed by the natural overhang so that the room height sloped from six feet at the front to four feet at the back. The opening in the rear wall was too small even for me. I removed a portion of it and crawled into a triangular space. The air was cool and still. The soil was loose. I returned the rebar to my belt and dug out a perfect Tompiro pot with my hands.

And measured it with them. It was three hands tall and two wide.

I smoothed the dirt over the hole. I went to the ledge and gathered some soil, less sandy and with more clay than the soil in the space behind the room and therefore more suited to making mortar. I mixed the soil with water from my canteen and replaced the stones I had dislodged, mortaring them to match the rest of the wall.

As the Park Service likes to say: “Take nothing but memories—Leave nothing but footprints.”

I modified the saying a bit: “Take only pots—Don't leave even footprints.”

I ran my hands over the smooth surface of the pot and closed my eyes. I saw a woman crush limonite and ochre in a metate. Saw her mix the powder with water and willow sap and combine the mixture with wet clay to form a pigmented slip. Saw a yucca leaf slit to the width of the line she wanted and dipped into the slurry. Watched the yucca go limp in the liquid. After chanting a prayer, she began painting the geometric pattern.

I opened my eyes and looked at her design, rectangles of varying sizes, some overlapping, each filled with hatching. Bold vertical stripes. Lines, nothing more. Monochromatic. But organic in a way Mondrian's paintings could never be.

Metaphysical.

There are those who would say what I did is reprehensible. I disturbed a holy place. Stole a pot. Prevented it from being studied in situ by professional archaeologists.

I don't care what those people think. I've made my peace with what I do. The woman who made that pot has been dead for four hundred years. I can't tell you her name, but I can show you who she was by bringing her creation back into history.

Because she couldn't read or write, the Spaniards labeled her uncivilized. But her ability to make and read petroglyphs is the same skill exercised in a different way. The markings on her pot had as much meaning for her as the words in a book do for us. The lines and angles didn't make her pots stronger or improve their capacity to store seeds. They are there because the potter was answering Whitman's question, “What good amid these, O me, O life?”

The powerful play does indeed go on, and she contributed a verse.

The Tompiro were a peaceful people, skilled masons who quarried stone and built beautiful multistory dwellings. Most of these were on the open plains to the north, close to the dry lake beds where the Tompiro gathered the salt they traded to nomadic tribes for animal skins. They used this place when the seasons changed or they wanted to hide from the Apache.

After two Spaniards were allegedly killed by some Tompiro, Juan de Oñate destroyed three of their pueblos, killing nine hundred men, women and children in the process.

During a winter when many Tompiro froze to death for lack of firewood, the Franciscan priests forced Tompiro slaves to make six hundred wooden crosses.

Less than a hundred years after the arrival of the Spaniards, the Tompiro ceased to exist. An entire people wiped off the face of the Earth. A million pots will not bring them back. But the one pot I recovered reminds us that they lived, and that one woman among them created a thing of beauty that can still stir the hearts of men.

There was probably more loot, but it was time to go. I pulled up a clump of grama grass and used it as a broom, sweeping the sand behind me until I hit the rocky part of the trail.

I placed the pot in the gunnysack and hung it on my back with a rope. I didn't want the pot in my hands or in front of me if I fell. An unnecessary precaution, as it turned out. I didn't fall or even stumble. The downhill walk was as easy as I had hoped. Or maybe I just felt light on my feet because I'd found an ancient pot. Touched the past.

I neared the point where Susannah had dropped me off. She was standing on the shoulder of the road talking to an MP. His jeep was next to the Bronco.

I buried the pot behind a dune, sticking the rebar next to it with some of it protruding as a marker. I used my compass to note the degree readings of two peaks to the east and a small hill to the west. I dribbled a bit of water from the canteen onto my pants. I walked to the road.

To Susannah I said, “Thanks for stopping,” and to the MP, “Good afternoon.”

He looked so lean and hungry in his camouflage uniform that I fancied his name was Cassius. His military bearing and courtesy seemed forced.

“Good afternoon, sir. You are not supposed to leave the road.”

“Sorry. I just couldn't hold it any longer.”

He looked at my pants. “That's what Miss Inchaustigui was just telling me. May I see your ID, please?”

I handed him my driver's license. He checked it against a list and gave it back to me.

“You should have no trouble reaching the gate before two.”

He stared at me as I climbed into the Bronco and was still staring when we rounded a corner and he slid out of the rearview mirror.

16

W
ell, you warned me you might come up empty.”

We were bumping along toward Stallion Gate.

“I didn't come up empty. I found a perfect Tompiro pot. It's buried back there about fifty yards from where you were waiting for me.”

“Why did you bury it?”

“I didn't want to. My first thought was to keep it in the gunnysack and hope the MP wouldn't ask about it. Then I remembered our cover story. If I left the road because I had to pee, why would I have taken along a gunnysack with a big pot in it?”

“Because you wanted a pot to pee in?”

I started to reply but realized she was joking.

“I see your point,” she said. “He probably would have asked about it. He looked you over pretty good.”

“Yeah, he was staring at the wet spot on my pants.”

“Did you really have to embellish the act by dribbling water on your pants? It
was
water, right?”

I didn't dignify that with an answer. I asked instead if it was the same MP who was at the gate that morning. It had been dark and I was sleepy. I didn't get a look at him.

“No, he was at the site all day and shooed everyone out when it was time to leave. I was one of the last to go. I let people pass until there was no one behind me. I didn't want anyone to see me pick you up. What I didn't realize was that after everyone left, the MP at the site would come along behind us. He must have had to tidy up a bit because he was not in sight when I stopped to wait for you. So how do we retrieve our pot?”

“I have no idea.”

“Maybe we just wait until the next time they open the Trinity Site.”

I shook my head. “That's a year from now. I need the money now.” I looked over at her. “Must be lonely being an MP inside the missile range. Maybe he'd let a pretty young lady sneak in to recover our pot.”

“I must have left my feminine mystique at home. He didn't even tell me his name. What do you mean,
our
pot?”

“The wheelman shares in the loot.”

“Excellent. What's the pot worth?”

“Wilkes offered thirty thousand for it.”

“He offered you twenty-five for that Mogollon jug, and you never saw a penny of it.”

“He says the buyer this time is more reliable—a big-time collector with deep pockets.”

I told her about my mental video of the woman who made the pot.

“I know why you're not married. You're in love with the ancient potter women.”

For all I know, she may be right. But I think the reason I'm not married is because all through high school and college I was the bookish type of kid girls weren't interested in. I never had a serious girlfriend until I was in my late twenties. By then I was running a pottery store and living behind the shop.

I've settled into the bachelor life. A living space that doesn't demand much upkeep, my own cooking, which I like, and a workshop for my potting. Women seem to like me more now, but I don't think it's because I've become less bookish, and I haven't become taller either. Or sculpted. My only six-pack has
Tecate
written on it.

The simple truth is I do better with the ladies now because they have fewer choices. Ask any single woman over thirty-five how often she meets a guy who's unattached, easy to get along with and has no bad habits.

Well, I drink a bit more than I should and I steal pots. But no one's perfect.

And now I have a nephew who's like a son, and companionship with Susannah.

All that's missing is the
S
word. I have the occasional fling with a woman, but haven't yet been flung as far as marriage. I thought about it with Dolly Aguirre, but that didn't work out.

As we headed back to Albuquerque, I was thinking about it with Sharice. I like her better than anyone I've dated before. Of course, at that point I was still wondering about that list of things she had to deal with one at a time, so maybe—

“How much is my share?”

I hadn't thought about it.

“What do you think is fair?” I asked her.

“Ten percent?”

“That's pretty low.”

“All I did is drive.”

“No. You hatched the plan. And you took the same risk I did. If they discovered I didn't leave the road just to pee, they would charge both of us with trespassing. Or maybe even espionage.”

“That's a stretch. Okay, here's the wager. If Glad increases sales, I get twenty percent. If not, I settle for ten.”

17

G
lad came in the next morning and handed me my key.

“Keep it,” I said. “I have others, and you can let yourself in when I need you to be here.”

“I'm happy to take a key each time I mind the shop, but I prefer to leave it on the counter and let the door lock behind me as I leave.”

I understand that having a key to someone else's place can be discomfiting, so I just nodded my assent.

He then gave me something much better than a key—$800.

“You've already paid the first month in advance,” I noted.

“The money is not from me. I sold that small white bowl with the many black lines.”

“If you're going to mind the shop, you might as well learn the merchandise. We don't call those bowls. They're called
ollas
. And that line pattern is from the Acoma Pueblo.”

His pink face reddened with enthusiasm. “Smashing. What are
ollas
used for?”

“The glazed ones are used for stews, the unglazed ones for water. But most of the ones made these days aren't used for anything. They've progressed—or perhaps regressed—from utensil to artwork. My friend Susannah said having you cover for me might increase sales, but I didn't expect it to happen on your first day on duty.”

“I was a bit jammy, wasn't I?”

“Jammy?”

“You know—outrageously lucky. Here I was, on the job no more than ten minutes, and the first gent through the door makes a purchase.”

I looked at the cash in my hand. It wouldn't make a dent in Consuela's medical bills, but it would keep the lights on.

The young woman from Acoma who makes those
ollas
for me also makes ceramic thimbles and cute little coyotes and lizards, but I don't stock them. I don't deal in trinkets.

“Did anyone other than the guy who bought the Acoma
olla
come in?”

“There were a few people who looked about but didn't seem inclined to buy. There were also two people who asked after you.”

After I what?
I was tempted to say, but I guessed he meant “asked
about
you.”

“The first one was a red Indian named Martin.”

I winced. “That phrase is considered offensive these days.”

“Thank you for telling me. I shall strike it from my vocabulary,” he said earnestly.

“And the second person who asked about me?”

“It took a bit of doing to get him to give me his name. Carl Wilkes it is, a dodgy-looking fellow with deep-set eyes and a close-cropped gray beard. Said he hoped to receive a certain pot from you. When I told him you hadn't yet returned, he said perhaps that was a good sign that your hunting trip was successful. You don't strike me as a hunter, Hubie.”

“Only for pots. Considering you'll be minding the store, I may as well fill you in on a few things. Carl and I are both pot hunters. He used to sell the ones he dug up when he worked for the Army Corps of Engineers. Now that he's retired, he sometimes gets merchandise from me.”

“He seemed quite anxious to get it in this case.”

“Yes. He already has a buyer for it. Carl offered me thirty thousand, so the buyer must be willing to pay at least fifty.”

“Fifty thousand quid for an old pot?”

“A very old and very rare pot. I'm just as anxious to deliver it to Carl as he is to receive it. That's why it's so frustrating that I had my hands on it.”

I told him about my trip south and the frustrating timing of the MP being there with Susannah when I returned with the pot. In his usual fashion, Glad hung on my every word and asked about every detail. He was an eager and rapid learner, and any reservations I might have had about having someone else involved in what had been a solo act for over twenty years began to dissipate.

“Did you clean the windows?” I asked him.

“I thought you were having me on.”

“If that means joking, then you're right. Can you mind the place again today? I have some errands to run.”

He said he would and I left in the Bronco.

Glad's mention of Carl had me thinking about cancer survivors. Carl beat melanoma and went right back to doing what he's always done. Sharice overcame breast cancer, but it changed her entire life. From aspiring dentist to dental hygienist. From Canada to the United States.

There's an organization in New Mexico that provides free fly-fishing lessons to survivors of breast cancer. The guys who teach the lessons say the women seem more like sisters than strangers. Evidently, the shared experience creates a bond.

In one of the things on her list—explaining her post-cancer life—Sharice made it clear to me that she doesn't want to bond. She wants to forget. Blot it forever from her memory. Which is probably a good thing. Given her lifestyle and wardrobe, I can't imagine her in waders with a fly rod in one hand and a box of artificial insects in the other.

When I returned that afternoon just before closing time, Glad seemed so jovial that I thought he'd sold another pot. After a few pleasantries, he asked, “Can you recommend someone who could get my store kitted out at a reasonable price?”

“‘Kitted out'?”

“Display cases, clothes racks, that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, you already met him—Martin. He normally does ironwork, but he's also an excellent carpenter. He helped me set up this place. And he also provides some of the merchandise. The colorful pot behind you on the second shelf was made by his uncle.”

“Brilliant. I have another question. Do you mind if I use my shop as a kip and take spit baths until I get sorted?”

How do you answer a question like that?