The Last Tumbleweed in Texas

Every cowboy movie has one

The Lazy Bones Motel was three blocks down and one block over from Jackie’s Cold Day Inn. I checked in and made an executive decision that even though it was only 3 o’clock, it was time for a cold beer or my usual Jack & Coke. A big flatbed lost its load of alfalfa on the 87 a half mile outside Amarillo forcing me to make a 60 mile detour. By the time I arrived at Panhandle I was done for the day. Amarillo could wait.

I saw Les at the cash register as I passed his General Store. He waved, made a drinking motion with his hand and pointed at the clock on the wall. Either he was saying it was too early to drink or that he’d join me after when he closed up at five. I waved and pointed in the direction of Jackie’s place.

And the 22 miles after that

The bar was empty, except for Jackie and Wendy who was sweeping out the storeroom and stacking the empties. I took a seat in the corner next to the window facing the street. Jackie said hi and gave me a look --- beer or Jack? I said one each.

I saw Sheriff Tom coming out of the post office holding some letters in one hand and his hat in the other. He dropped the mail in his cruiser except for one letter and made his way to Jackie’s.

He called to Jackie when he came in and sat down with me. I complained about the detour. Yeah, he heard about it, road’s still jammed up probly for another couple of hours.

Patting his breast pocket he said, “Jackie, I got a letter here in my pocket from somebody in El Paso. You ever hear anybody named Luís Ordaz?”

“Can’t say I have. What’s he say?”

“I haven’t read it yet. Here goes.”

He opened the envelope. It was one page.

“Damn it! It says here he’s Charlie García’s neighbor. Charlie died on the tenth and they’re holding up the funeral until they hear from me. They found out about me from papers found in his house. Funeral home, address, phone number, call Kaster & Maxon to confirm arrival. And that’s it.”

Tom’s shoulders slumped. He shielded his eyes with his hand and said, “I gotta go to El Paso. Charlie was an old friend. Les, Charlie, and me did a lotta growing up together.” He folded the letter and put it in his pocket.

Jackie brought Tom a shot of bourbon and put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Tom. All I heard about him was the trouble you three were into all the time.”

Tom stood and said, “I gotta tell Les. Be back in a minute.” He came back a few minutes later and said Les was real upset about Charlie but couldn’t travel. His wife was having a bad time with chemo.

It seemed to me that Tom would need some company so I made up a story about going to El Paso to see a new line of small tractors. It wasn’t much of a lie but that’s all I could think of.

I said let’s go in my car the next day; spell each other at the wheel, make the eight hour trip and arrive in El Paso before nightfall if we left by noon, bunk at my hotel on my company’s dime. He gave me that look cops give when they know you’re lying, but he didn’t say no to my offer.

We decided to leave before sunrise, me driving the first leg from Panhandle to Seminole. Tom put his bags and gun in the trunk and a cigar box between us on the front seat. I hoped he wouldn’t light up.

It breathes so you don't have to

He started talking as soon as we cleared the city limits -- unusual for Tom. He usually waits for you to talk so he doesn’t have to talk about himself.

“Charlie and I go back a long ways. Les, Charlie, and me grew up in the same neighborhood since we were kids, same schools, teachers, right through high school. We were more or less best buds unless grownups were around. Him being a migrant family’s kid, it wasn’t smart to treat him equal. I loved my momma and my daddy but now I’m old and still don’t understand what made their hearts so hard. Gotta give Charlie credit, he knew his place and pretended it was ok when he had to.

“We got our draft notices a year after we registered with the draft board and found out right away the military mind works in mysterious ways. They sent Les to Fulda, Germany, Charlie to Fort Greeley, Alaska, got bad frostbite; me, I wound up in forward bases north of Saigon.”

He was quiet for a while then said, “My daddy was the Sheriff ‘til he retired. Folks elected me probly so they wouldn’t have to change the name on the office door. He was Sheriff so long nobody could remember who came before. After me, probly Deputy Dudley. He’s a smart cop, been a good one to have around. I’m thinking of retiring early, before the elections so he’s already sitting in my chair when it’s time to vote.”

I asked about Les.

“I wish he was coming with us. I remember times Les took the blame for stuff Charlie did; took the punishment because Charlie would be punished worse than him. Same crime, different perp, go figure. He’s a good friend, sticks with you no matter what. Charlie can back me up on that. Well, not anymore he can’t but it’s still true.

“Some people think Les ain’t too bright because he don’t talk much but I’ll tell you what, if you wanna be on the losing side of an argument, don’t matter which side, bet against him. He coulda been a lawyer. He opened his store after he talked the bank into lending him $500. I mean, the kid was 17 years old. Who lends that kind of money to a teenager? Especially one that hung around with the likes of me and Charlie. If my daddy wasn’t the Sheriff, no telling how we woulda turned out.”

  

We stopped at Seminole, gassed the car and switched drivers. Next stop, Carlsbad.

Tom didn’t say anything for the next hour. Finally, I said, “What about Charlie?”

“Oh, Charlie’s an old friend I haven’t seen since we were young and fit. That’s all.”

We went on to Carlsbad, had some homemade chili at a little diner, gassed the car. We could see the Guadalupe Mountains and El Capitán as we drove into White’s City.

Mind the crosswinds on the way down the other side

We switched drivers again and Tom stirred around in the seat, stared out the side window for a long time. He made up his mind about something, turned to me and said, “I loved him like a brother. After ‘Nam, Charlie stuck around for a couple of years, fell in love with a girl who had to make up her mind between him and another guy. When she did, Charlie was out. I never saw a man go so deep into himself and I saw plenty of that in the war. He thought, and I did, too, that she’d pick Charlie. You see them two you’d think love and caring was invented just for them. I was as heartbroke as him.

“A few months later he said he was leaving for Galveston, work on the docks, maybe join the Merchant Marine, see the world. I figured he was just talking to say something but he left like he said. And like everybody who’s ever left friends behind he said he’d write. I said sure, not believing it. But he did write, kinda. Every few months I got a postcard from somewhere he’d been. Never said what he was doing, only where he was, what he saw. The postcards stopped coming ten, eleven years ago.”

Patting the cigar box, he said, “This box has all the postcards he sent. Now he’s dead and I won’t know anymore about him than I do now…” He slammed his fist on the dashboard. “Shit.”

As we crested Guadalupe Pass we saw El Paso and Juárez sprawled across the desert all the way to the horizon.

We checked into a Holiday Inn then went to the funeral home to see Charlie. The receptionist gave Tom a note. It said, “Tom, I’m at the Kentucky Bar across the border. Meet me as soon as you get this note. Also, I promised the nice lady $10 to give you the note. Give it to her for me, Charlie”

“Sonofabitch. What the hell is the Kentucky Bar and why tell me he’s dead? I’ll kill the sonofabitch.”

We left the car at the funeral home and took a taxi to the border. On the way I told Tom about when I was a teenager growing up in El Paso I’d go to the Kentucky Bar for cheap drinks and to listen to musicians bang away on a creaky six-man marimba. I could tell he wasn’t listening but I kept talking anyway hoping he’d get mad at me for chattering and get his mind off murdering Charlie.

The Kentucky Bar in Juárez was at the same location but twice the size and sterilized top to bottom. The seedy dive I remembered from my youth was gone, replaced by a fern bar as inviting as a walk-in freezer.

How I remember it

I love what you've done. It has that certain nothing.

It was mid-afternoon so there was nobody there except for the bartender and a waiter who idly waved us in, evidently sensing we were bad tippers.

Charlie sat with his back to the wall so he could see anybody coming in. He called out “Tom, over here”, waving his Stetson. His table was littered with empty bottles of beer and tequila.

Tom slammed the cigar box on the table and swatted Charlie back and forth with his hat. He was sorely pissed. Charlie covered his head with his arms, laughing.

In between swats he managed to say, “Tom, how does a Mexican become a Spaniard? He works hard and makes lots and lots of money.”

Swat. “So, are you a Spaniard now?” Swat.

“Halfway there, my friend. I might make it to full on Spaniard but my wife says I’m half crazy so maybe half and half is all I can do.” Still laughing he said, “Sit down or I’ll take away your hat.”

“Joven” he called to the waiter, “más tequilia, birria y limón para mis compañeros, por favor.”

Tom plopped down on his chair. “How did you know I was coming today?”

“I asked the nice lady to call me at home when you picked up my note. I’ve only been here 15 minutes. I paid the waiter a dollar to put the empty bottles on the table. He thinks I’m crazy. Did you give lady the $10?”

Pointing at me, “Who’s he?”

“This is a friend of mine who’s never once told me he’s dead. What the hell, Charlie.”

“Hey, it was a joke. I didn’t think you’d come but I took a chance and here you are. Here we are. How’ve you been, Tom? You look a lot older than me. What’s it been now, 30, 40 years?”

“Goddamit, Charlie. All the way down here I was thinking about how we wouldn’t sit around and bullshit like we used to, talk about women, horses, or whatever. Now all I got in mind is to kick your ass back across the border.”

“Tom, this isn’t Texas.” Stretching his arms wider with each syllable he said, “Es Méx-i-co. Your badge might get you in trouble. Juarez cops and El Paso cops, they’re not best friends. Hey, man, I’m sorry. If I knew you missed me so much I would have sent flowers on your birthday or chocolates.”

Swat.

“Ok, ok. It was a bad joke. Really, I’m sorry.”

The waiter brought tequila shots, beer chasers, and small plate of lime slices. He cleared the empties and gave Charlie a little smile. We had another round before Tom cooled down enough to stop glaring at Charlie.

He patted Tom’s hand and said, “It’s good to see you, Tom. What’s happened to everybody we knew in Panhandle? Les? Doc Harris, Mary Ann, Cindy, did the Hammond brothers make it back from ‘Nam?”

Between sips of beer and tequila shots Tom told him about everyone Charlie remembered. When he finished they relaxed, settled into their chairs, thinking. Thinking what? I felt like a third wheel, eavesdropping on a reunion of old friends. I got up and went to the bar to pay the tab, intending to leave, but Charlie wouldn’t have it.

“Amigo, don’t you want to hear my rags to rags story? I’ve been rehearsing it for years. It didn’t work with women but it’s not a bad story. Come on, sit down, have another drink with us.” Both men waved me back.

“Before I tell my story. Tell me who you are, what you do?”

Compared to other people’s lives, mine wasn’t that interesting but Charlie asked questions that made me feel that I wasn’t as ordinary as I thought. When I was done, I said, “So, Charlie, what’s the story that doesn’t work on women but not a bad story?”

He took a long swallow of beer, rested his arms on the table and looked off at some point above and behind me for a moment.

“Before that cabrón Columbus ‘discovered’ us, my family was already here for hundreds of years. We came to the U.S. side in the 30’s.Things were bad in the U.S. back then but they were worse in Mexico, you have no idea.

“Tom, you never noticed that I didn’t have any uncles, aunts, or cousins. Well, neither did any of the other Mexican families. Not by blood but by necessity, every woman was our aunt, every man was our uncle, every kid was our cousin. We were like a pile of tumbleweeds in the corner of a barbwire fence, pushed together by the wind.

“When I left home my father give me a little notebook with the names of his and mom’s brothers and sisters, their kids’ names. All these years I never found anybody in the notebook. I was lonely. It was like I was the last tumbleweed in Texas.

“Been everywhere in the country wherever there’s work I can do, mostly construction work where there’s a lot of Latinos. All the time I was looking for people who might know the names in my father’s notebook. You know, after work you sit around having beers with the guys and it’s always the same at the beginning. Somebody says, ‘So, Paco, where are you from?’ And Paco will say ‘Sinaloa’ or ‘Durango’. Pretty soon they say, ‘Do you know fulano or sotano de tal, that means ‘so-and-so’. And it goes like that back and forth. Sometimes the guys have people in common back in Mexico and it’s like finding a brother even if you just met the guy a few days ago. I was never that lucky.

“I met a lot of good people but I moved around so much there was no way to stay close... I fell in love with two women, one in Arizona, another in Tulsa but they didn’t love me back.

“Twelve years ago I heard there was a lot of work in El Paso restoring historic buildings. They offered top dollar for stonemasons, English speaking a plus. I was good on both counts. Been here ever since.”

My tequila brain stirred. I heard myself say, “So the lonely guy routine didn’t work on the women?”

“No, it didn’t except the one time it counted. Margarita.”

“No thanks, I’ll stay with beer.”

Tom didn’t say anything out loud but in my head I heard him say, “Jeez, try to keep up, Dumbass.”

Charlie flicked a slice of lime at me and said, “I married Margarita, a widow with two teenage sons. Her brother, a carpenter I worked with, invited me to his house for a birthday party. He didn’t say he was setting me up with his sister. He told her I was rich but when she saw me she laughed. She said, ‘Luis! You told me he was rich. Look at his hands!’ Working with rocks, my fingernails were chipped and broken; calluses on my palms. She was nice to me anyway and apologized for laughing. We had a nice time at the party talking about books and then we said goodbye.

“Luís invited me to his house again a few days later. I said I would go if his sister was gonna be there. He smiled and said she wouldn’t come unless I was coming, too. Long story short, Margarita and I been married eleven years. Her two boys and I fought but I expected that. Their father was quite a man and me replacing him was a hard sell but it happened eventually. They call me Papá now.”

Tom pushed the cigar box toward Charlie. He opened it, surprised to see his postcards. He picked one up, studied the picture and read the back.

“The horse farm in Kansas City.” Pointing to the horse on the front, “This is a Paso Fino, the finest riding horse in the world, the Cadillac of trail horses. My job was to ride the owner’s six horses every day, keep ‘em exercised, brush their coats. Best job ever, riding fine, fine horses through the woods and hills and getting paid for it. Had to clean the stables though, six horses make a lot of shit.”

Leather seat, power steering

He flipped through some more cards, let out a laugh over a postcard of a wooden bridge in Colorado.

“Boulder, Colorado, there was this three chair barber shop. One of the barbers was a nice looking woman and guys were always hitting on her. Man, she was like Wonder Woman bouncing their come on’s away with her magic bracelets, a real artist. When it was my turn in the chair I asked her what her name was. She said, ‘Barbara Seville’. I laughed so hard I fell out the chair. I got even, told her my favorite Spanish composer was El Beethoven. She had a nice laugh.”

Another card. “Conch Republic, Key West. I almost got elected mayor, lost to Jimmy Buffet by 326 votes. I demanded a recount and lost by 413. Worked on deep-sea fishing boats, first mate. All that meant was that I did all the work while the captain got drunk with his customers. Sometimes they actually fished. But the tips were good, made a lot of friends there.”

I picked up one of the postcards. This one from Houston had a picture of the city skyline. Charlie took it from me, looked at Tom and said, “I saw her there. She asked about you.”

With too much tequila buzz to mind my own business, I blurted, “Who’s her?” before my memory reminded me that “her” was the girl Charlie had lost to the other guy in Panhandle many, many years before. I really shouldn’t drink tequila.

Charlie didn’t react like I thought he would. He put his arms over his head, stretched, and said, “Yeah, when she picked what-his-name instead of me, it messed me up. Until I met Margarita I never met another woman like her. For a long time I went through a hundred ‘what ifs’ but one day it came to me that I was only thinking about myself. If she was happy with him then I should be happy for her. Isn’t that what love is? It still hurt but not so bad.

“I saw her ten years later in a shopping mall in Houston. She called my name and I froze when I saw her walking towards me. In my mind I saw us hugging, going off together, leaving our lives behind. Together again, starting over.

“What actually happened, she put her hands on my chest and kissed my cheek. We had coffee at a kiosk and talked about our lives for about an hour before she had to leave to pick up her kids from school. The way she smiled when she said, ‘my kids’, I could tell she was happy, no regrets. I watched her walk away and the last of my ‘what ifs’ went away.”

He put the card back in the box and picked up another one.

He had a few more postcard stories. Tom spoke about life in Panhandle, some tales about Jim and Angel, his favorite miscreants. Said Charlie should come visit, have a reunion at Jackie’s with Les and Doc Harris and the others, “Before we're all dead for real, you sonabitch.”

Charlie said, “Maybe next Spring. Right now we’re building a rock house out on three acres near the river in the Upper Valley. Teaching my sons all I know, work with their hands and their brains at the same time.”

Cool in the summer, warm in the winter

Tom started to say something but Charlie interrupted.

“I think it’s better if you come here for the housewarming, Tom.

“I spent most of my life looking for my roots. I felt like a tumbleweed going wherever the wind took me. Most people don’t know that tumbleweeds aren’t native to this country. They’re Russian Thistle, got here in the 1800’s from Asia. Western movies, TV shows, they all have tumbleweeds blowing in the wind. Maybe they're looking for their home like I was.

“I’m not a tumbleweed anymore. I’m a hundred year old Mesquite. My roots go all the way to the center of the earth.”