Gauguin was going to practice his music a good part of the day? We were now living together in a small three-room adobe near Blue’s house. We had no running water, an outhouse, a wood stove for heat, and a gas one for cooking. Our rent was seventy dollars a month. We split it.
I ate breakfast and drove into town. Town was the plaza, stores built around a central square. All the stores were brown stucco like adobe. El Mercado was where you got nails and string, the army surplus was for wool socks, and there was the good old Rexall counter. It was so gray out that the lilacs hanging over the parking lot of the Taos News were like wet mops, and there was mud everywhere. You had an inkling it would be a lot sweeter missing and longing for Taos than actually living there just then.
I took my book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , and plopped myself in a booth at Grandpa George’s. Grandpa George was a Pueblo Indian, an elder in the peyote church. He was married to an Italian woman from Baltimore. She had a mole in the shape of a star on her right cheek and four front teeth missing. She was twenty-three years old, and Grandpa George was eighty-two years old. She was five foot eleven, and he was five two. One day I asked her, “How does an Italian girl from Baltimore who majored in physics end up here?”
She was turning over a white flour tortilla on the wood stove. She turned to me, grinning. “I got lucky.”
I was on chapter four in the Kesey novel. I ordered chocolate cake. Some things at George’s weren’t so good, but their chocolate cake was okay. I looked up as Cassandra walked in. Cassandra was a nomad who rode her horse across the mesa in the company of five cats and eleven dogs. I said, “Hi, Cassandra.” She said hi back, but I could see she couldn’t remember my name. I wasn’t insulted, though. Hell, if a person doesn’t know night from day, I don’t mind that she doesn’t know “Banana Rose.”
Cassandra used to own a little house in Rincoñada, a small town of about eleven buildings below the piñon hills. She was always late for her job at the general store, because she had a terrible time with time. She couldn’t understand that if the clock in her house said twelve, the clock in the general store would also say twelve. How could that be? One day she sat at her kitchen table and turned her white Big Ben back to eleven o’clock and then ran down to the post office to see what time that clock said. Lo and behold, it said twelve o’clock. Then she ran home and turned Big Ben to 3:00, 8:00, 6:00. She ran to her neighbor’s. The neighbor’s clock said 12:05. She ran to Sanistevan’s car repair next door. That clock said 12:06.
Cassandra spent the whole afternoon turning the hands of Big Ben. Outside the blue morning glory petals curled in on the heat of the day. Cassandra made 12:30 happen. Then 3:30. Then 8:30. She examined all the half-hours. Then she looked at the quarter-hours. She fine-tuned minutes to 11:23, 4:23, 7:23. She turned midnight to noon, morning to afternoon. The heavens turned faster and the earth spun through stars and sunlight all in her little kitchen in Rincoñada.
Cassandra had gone through many winters and springs. By Big Ben time, she was in 1995. Things were spinning in the room. One o’clock, two o’clock. The flowered wallpaper, the pitcher on the refrigerator. Three o’clock, four o’clock, five o’clock, six o’clock. The green linoleum, the vigas on the ceiling, the light switch, the painting of a Cheshire cat sitting next to a mouse with a peace sign above their heads. It was a whole day of spinning. Did her grandmother Beulah die last year, or was she in some future life about to be born? If it were eight in the morning in Rincoñada, how could she call Peking, China, in the coin phone down at El Mercado and it not be morning in China, when it would be morning in Taos? And how was it that if all the clocks in Rincoñada—she quickly grabbed a pen and
I ate breakfast and drove into town. Town was the plaza, stores built around a central square. All the stores were brown stucco like adobe. El Mercado was where you got nails and string, the army surplus was for wool socks, and there was the good old Rexall counter. It was so gray out that the lilacs hanging over the parking lot of the Taos News were like wet mops, and there was mud everywhere. You had an inkling it would be a lot sweeter missing and longing for Taos than actually living there just then.
I took my book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , and plopped myself in a booth at Grandpa George’s. Grandpa George was a Pueblo Indian, an elder in the peyote church. He was married to an Italian woman from Baltimore. She had a mole in the shape of a star on her right cheek and four front teeth missing. She was twenty-three years old, and Grandpa George was eighty-two years old. She was five foot eleven, and he was five two. One day I asked her, “How does an Italian girl from Baltimore who majored in physics end up here?”
She was turning over a white flour tortilla on the wood stove. She turned to me, grinning. “I got lucky.”
I was on chapter four in the Kesey novel. I ordered chocolate cake. Some things at George’s weren’t so good, but their chocolate cake was okay. I looked up as Cassandra walked in. Cassandra was a nomad who rode her horse across the mesa in the company of five cats and eleven dogs. I said, “Hi, Cassandra.” She said hi back, but I could see she couldn’t remember my name. I wasn’t insulted, though. Hell, if a person doesn’t know night from day, I don’t mind that she doesn’t know “Banana Rose.”
Cassandra used to own a little house in Rincoñada, a small town of about eleven buildings below the piñon hills. She was always late for her job at the general store, because she had a terrible time with time. She couldn’t understand that if the clock in her house said twelve, the clock in the general store would also say twelve. How could that be? One day she sat at her kitchen table and turned her white Big Ben back to eleven o’clock and then ran down to the post office to see what time that clock said. Lo and behold, it said twelve o’clock. Then she ran home and turned Big Ben to 3:00, 8:00, 6:00. She ran to her neighbor’s. The neighbor’s clock said 12:05. She ran to Sanistevan’s car repair next door. That clock said 12:06.
Cassandra spent the whole afternoon turning the hands of Big Ben. Outside the blue morning glory petals curled in on the heat of the day. Cassandra made 12:30 happen. Then 3:30. Then 8:30. She examined all the half-hours. Then she looked at the quarter-hours. She fine-tuned minutes to 11:23, 4:23, 7:23. She turned midnight to noon, morning to afternoon. The heavens turned faster and the earth spun through stars and sunlight all in her little kitchen in Rincoñada.
Cassandra had gone through many winters and springs. By Big Ben time, she was in 1995. Things were spinning in the room. One o’clock, two o’clock. The flowered wallpaper, the pitcher on the refrigerator. Three o’clock, four o’clock, five o’clock, six o’clock. The green linoleum, the vigas on the ceiling, the light switch, the painting of a Cheshire cat sitting next to a mouse with a peace sign above their heads. It was a whole day of spinning. Did her grandmother Beulah die last year, or was she in some future life about to be born? If it were eight in the morning in Rincoñada, how could she call Peking, China, in the coin phone down at El Mercado and it not be morning in China, when it would be morning in Taos? And how was it that if all the clocks in Rincoñada—she quickly grabbed a pen and
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