Chapter 7: Land of Enchantment

Sunshine Valley, New Mexico

When we first came to New Mexico, I thought, how could anyone live out here? Last night I caught myself thinking, how could anyone not?

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Some ways past the New Mexico border, all traces of trees disappeared.

The desert rolled out under a blanket of blue-green sagebrush. Here and there, flat-topped mesas draped in alluvial curtains of sand and stony dirt loomed under an impossibly large sky. Ben imagined a giant da Vinci squatting over colossal blocks of sandstone eons ago, chiseling at the rock to release the sculpture within. But for some reason the work was left half-finished and forgotten. Maybe he’d died of sunstroke.

The few homesteads they passed faded into the desert like part of the landscape. All grey, twisted wood and sheet-metal roofs and orange-brown stucco. Rusted pickups and tractors sat like tombstones in dirt yards cut into the brush. To the north, a single low mountain loomed and a larger range spiked across the horizon to the east. There was no way to tell how far away they were.

By late afternoon they passed a peeling billboard beside the highway that read, “Sunshine Valley.” Soon afterward they found what they were looking for.

“Is this it?” Tyler looked at Ben as they pulled off the road.

Ben got out of the car. A shovel was thrust into a pile of three tires on the shoulder. A bleach-white skull hung on the shovel. Bones and beads hung on strings from the skull’s twisted horns. The address was scrawled in black paint across its forehead, and several letters stuck out of one of the eye sockets.

“Gotta be. Matches Lilly’s directions.”

“Where’s the house?” Tyler asked

About twenty feet of gravel fanned out from the highway. A pair of ruts wandered into the sage a long way before disappearing over a low rise. Ben folded the worn map in his hands and stuck it in his back pocket.

“Must be out there.”

“This is our guy? We’re gonna spend the night a few miles off a highway nobody ever heard of with a man whose idea of a mailbox is a dead moose on a spit?”

“Moose have antlers, not horns. And somehow I doubt this guy gets too many letters. These look like they’ve been here a while.”

“Makes sense. He’d probably eat a letter before he read it. The mailman, too.”

“Give it a rest. We’re broke, remember? It’s a free place to stay, and he might pay us to work for a couple days. Besides,” he said, “I think this place is pretty cool.”

“Cool is not the word I would use.” Tyler stood on the shoulder with his sweat­-stained back to Ben, his hands on his hips, and surveyed the land. Ben mopped his forehead. It itched terribly. A tumbleweed blew by.

They were alone.

“Yep,” Tyler declared. “We’re gonna die out here.”

Ben itched his nose. “Are you done? If you have a better idea, I’m all ears.”

Tyler shook his head. “If this guy shoots us, cooks us, and craps us into a prairie-dog hole, I will haunt your half of that godforsaken grave for the rest of eternity.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

It took the better part of twenty minutes to navigate the Mustang through the ruts cutting through the desert. The pungently earthy, herbal smell of burning sage clung to the car’s low-riding exhaust pipes as they wove around the potholes and sinks leading to a cluster of structures slowly taking shape in the distance. The land sloped almost imperceptibly uphill. The sun beat mercilessly down.

 A morass of sticky clay at a dip in the road finally did the Mustang in. It was designed for much easier terrain than what its wild namesake had once roamed, and Tyler wouldn’t risk getting stuck. They shouldered their packs and left the defeated machine behind.

As they trudged through the desert, the highway now just a narrow ribbon behind them, Ben felt swallowed up. Sage behind and sage before. The solitary mountain to the north watched them, looming tall and black and silent. Ben shivered despite the heat.

Horses, sheep and goats watched from a large enclosure as they approached the homestead. The cluster of buildings had grown into a battered RV trailer, some livestock pens and what appeared to be a huge mound of dirt with a door in the front. Chickens chased each other around totem poles spread across the yard. Two dogs sprinted out to meet them, scattering the squawking flock. They ran circles around the new arrivals, sniffing at their shoes and pants. Their host soon followed.

It was immediately apparent how Thomas “Badger” Helmsman had got his name. Muscle and corded sinew bulged over every inch of his squat frame. Black hair snarled over scarred knuckles protruding from thick, rough paws as he crushed each of his guest’s hands in turn. Ben guessed he was about sixty.

Badger’s sharp eyes pierced theirs.

“You ain’t from the county.” His voice was high and hoarse, as though it was an effort to push the words past vocal cords shrunken by long disuse.

“No. Your sis—"

“I sent the last inspector home with a broken finger. The one he stuck in my face. Told him next time it’d be his neck. You sure you ain’t government?”

Ben wondered how far he would get before the dogs ran him down.

“No, we’re not. Your sister sent us. Did she call?”

“I ain’t got a phone.”

Tyler tensed beside him.

“But I got a real good radio.” A broad smile cracked Badger’s rough face. “Judgin’ from the fact that you tried to ride that road pony into my sage, you must be the city pukes the old nag said were coming.”

A wave of relief washed over Ben. “That’s us.”

Badger spread his arms. “Then welcome to my home! While you’re here, everything I have is yours. Thisaway, friends! I’ll show ya where you’re to be sleeping. My sister mentioned you’re lookin’ for a hard day’s labor, or two.”

Ben cleared his throat. “Yes, sir, we’d appreciate the work if you’ve got it.”

“Work’s something I’ve got.”

“So you’re a farmer?”

“Homesteader. I do some farming, and everything besides. I got some animals here, and some cattle out to pasture, too.”

“Cattle? Where?”

“Forest service has got grazin’ lands for permit up in the mountains across the valley. I truck my herd up there every spring. Got a guy who looks after ’em. I used to do it myself, but I don’t like leaving the land for so long.”

Badger led them across the dusty hardpack in the yard. Brightly painted eagles, wolves, and grotesque faces grinned down from the totem poles. At least one pole was posted near every structure. A ring of six of the tallest surrounded the dirt hut.

The dogs, satisfied the newcomers were friendly, rocketed past and tumbled into a snarling ball of dust in the dooryard of the hut. The older of the two, a black shorthair with a graying muzzle, lunged at the younger. She caught the dancing pup by the throat and threw him to the ground. Badger whistled.

“Attagirl, Lola! Teach ’im good!” He winked back at them. “Miller’s barely older than a pup. He ain’t been in a good fight yet. But Lola, she’s been in plenty.”

“Don’t they hurt each other when they do that?” Ben asked. Miller whined and kicked at Lola’s belly. She released him, rolled in the dirt and sprang up. The two circled each other, snarling, searching for the next opening.

“Naw. Miller’s just testing himself, and Lola knows that. If they were fightin’ for real she’d have ripped his throat out just there. Once it starts, a real dog fight don’t last too long. Just like people.”

Tyler spoke up. “Is this your house?” A door fashioned from rough planks hung on a frame of railroad ties. A short pipe jutted straight up from the top of the dome. There were no windows.

“No, that’s my hogan. Strictly for ceremonial purposes. I sleep in the trailer. But you fellers can sleep there.” He pointed to a small shack with a sheet metal roof. A donkey poked its head out of one of the open stable bays. “I lay my head to rest in the trailer, but I keep my ass in the stable. You can park yours there too.” He grinned at Tyler’s expression. “You’re welcome to sleep outside if it’s more to your liking, twinkletoes.”

“The stable is fine, thanks,” Ben said quickly. “If you don’t mind my asking, are you an Ind—a Native American?” he asked, gesturing at the totem poles.

“Everybody out here’s got a little Indian in ’em, whether by blood or spirit. But my folks, we had this land forever.”

“Were these poles here, then?”

“No, I made those. I sell ’em in Taos.” His expression turned grave. “There’s a lot of spirits roaming these lands, you know. A whole helluva lot of bones and blood got spilt in this desert. So these poles, they’re a sort of tribute for me, I guess. A way of taking in those spirits and letting ’em back out.”

“You believe in that stuff?” Tyler scoffed.

Badger was unfazed. “You see that lonesome mountain there to the north? That’s Ute mountain. It was sacred to the Injuns a thousand years before the Spaniards put ’em all in the grave. And that range there—those are the Sangre de Cristos. Named for the blood of Christ.

“You spend a night out there all alone on this land. You listen to the wind blow down from the mountains. I tell you boy, between the ghosts of those gold-crazed Spaniards and the blood of the Injuns and the howlin’ of the coyotes, you’ll soon change your mind about spirits on the land.”

It was late in the day now, and as Badger spoke, the totem poles seem to loom a little taller, their shadows stretch a little longer, bending toward the interlopers, the unbelievers, the trespassers on hallowed ground.

“Yup,” said Badger, “I got a few of my own out there, too.”

Ben shook off a chill.

“Thanks for the heads up,” Tyler said. “So when do we start work?”

Badger laughed, and it was just a summer evening in the desert again. “You two look pretty rough. Take the evening off. Tomorrow morning, be up at sunrise and we’ll head over to the river bluff. I need your young backs to hump some basalt into the truck.”

“River bluff?” Ben asked. “There’s a river here? Where?”

“We’re on the banks of the Rio Grande, boy. You ain’t real observant, are ya?”

“But we’re in the middle of the desert. There can’t be any water for miles around.”

Badger pointed toward the setting sun. “You walk half a mile straight thataway, you’ll fall off a big damn cliff and go splat right in front of a big damn river.”

“Huh.”

“Yup.”

Ben made a mental note to find the river. But not tonight. He was beginning to fade. Badger showed them to the stable and brought out a jug of water—there was no plumbing, which explained the man’s pungent body odor—then disappeared inside the trailer. The sun was low on the horizon to the west, where the Rio Grande cut a gorge unseen through the stony bones of the land.

Cold sank into the desert on the heels of sunset, but it was warmer in the stable. As Ben drew his thin summer blankets up to his chin he was unable to suppress a sigh. The exertions of the week seemed to catch up with him all at once. He was bone tired.

Laying atop a mound of straw a few feet from Tyler, a bag of grain for his pillow, he listened to the donkey chewing softly in the opposite stall and thought he’d never had a finer bed.

Ben awoke to the roosters crowing, and the scent of peppers and onions and campfire smoke. He woke Tyler and they found Badger outside the hogan preparing coffee, southwest omelets, and biscuits over a small cookfire.

“These are delicious,” Tyler raved, reaching for a third biscuit.

“Eat up. We got a full day’s work ahead of us,” Badger said. “I’m building a bigger house for your stablemate and I want to use some of them lava rocks by the river as a foundation.”

“Lava rocks?” Ben asked.

“Yeah, basalt. Ute mountain is a cinder cone. Blew its top a billion years ago, or something like that. Now there’s black basalt lying everywhere around here. And that’s just what you can see. This whole valley is sitting on dead volcanoes. There’s lava caves all over the place. Every now and then one’ll collapse and you’ll find a whole underground world down there.”

“How do you know your house isn’t built on one?” Tyler asked.

“Cause it ain’t,” Badger said gruffly. “Anyhow, basalt’s good for building, and it’s pretty, and most importantly, around here it’s free. Finish up. We roll out in ten.”

They lumbered through the sagebrush in Badger’s battered pickup, following no particular path. Ben nodded politely as their host pointed out the marks of old cowboy camps or a pile of bleaching horse bones, but mostly he hung his head out the window, enjoying the scent of juniper and dry soil and crushed sage warming in the morning sun. A prairie dog, no bigger than a squirrel, poked its head out of a warren to watch them pass, forepaws held primly aloft, nose twitching. Six more popped up from scattered holes. Their tiny heads swiveled together as the truck passed.

The Rio was barely a half mile from the homestead, at the edge of a large field of volcanic sputum, but it took a while to get there on account of the rough terrain. Chunks of black stone barnacled with neon green, orange and rust-red lichen studded the hard dirt. Some looked razor sharp. They increased in frequency as they approached the river until the ground was littered with them.

Ben now understood why he couldn’t see any trace of the river the day before. The land rolled up slightly from the site of the homestead before ending abruptly at a basalt cliff. The roughest, craggiest bluff he’d ever seen tumbled and snarled twenty-five yards down to where the river boiled over boulder-strewn rapids. A few juniper shrubs stuck out of cracks between the basalt or rooted in the tough grass at the bottom of the gorge. A deep rumble rose to the top of the cliff.

Movement caught Ben’s eye. A few coyotes were tearing at a dead antelope beside the water. The hair on the back of Ben’s neck pricked.

“The Rio Grande,” Badger huffed. “Fresh Rocky Mountain snowmelt delivered straight to my backyard.”

“And I’ll bet it’s not even chlorinated,” Tyler quipped.

Badger laughed. “You bet it ain’t. Okay, enough gum flappin’. Let’s get to work.”

They filled the truck bed several times that morning before taking a siesta during the hottest part of the day. In the afternoon, Badger had them dig a shallow oval trench around the spot of the new stable, to serve as the footing for the stem wall they would build out of the lava rocks. Tyler and Ben took turns swinging a pickaxe into the hardpack, chipping away at deposits of stubborn caliche and sandstone below the dry soil.

Lilly’s sunburn salve had worked wonders, so they stripped to the waist, wrapping their t-shirts around their heads like turbans. The afternoon heat was invigorating on Ben’s bare back, as though he could soak up the energy of the sun along with the land itself. Spiced desert air mixed with the scent of sweat and bronzing skin as they labored. It felt good to work.

Badger made a hearty chili for dinner. Ben and Tyler each had three bowls. Afterward they sat sipping beers and soda beside the fire outside the hogan, watching the setting sun turn the sky to wine. Lola and Miller sprawled at Badger’s sides, working scraps of meat off a bone.

Badger stirred in his faded lawn chair. An empty six pack rattled at his feet.

“You boys did real good today,” he grunted, “Damn, it’s good to be young.”

Ben smiled and said nothing. His whole body ached. He was tired, but deeply satisfied.

“How long have you been out here?” Tyler asked.

“Oh, sometimes it feels like I never been anywhere else in my life, son. My father lived on this land, and his father too. But I was in the navy when I was young. Long time ago.”

“The navy.”

“Yup. I went all over the world, for the usual reasons. Wanted to piss off my old man. Get a girl in every port. I was doing pretty good for a while there, on all counts. I moved to Maine after the service, far away as I could get from the desert. I had a catering company. A house.”

“So you’re kind of like a sailor cowboy. Don’t meet too many of those.”

“I guess you could say that. I’m just an old guy, now.”

“Were you married?” Ben asked.

Badger sighed. “There was only one woman I ever wanted to have children with. We were engaged out there in Bangor, but—when they told me my father died, I—I left her behind. Just walked into the woods. When I came back three years later, she was gone. It was all gone. I been out here ever since.”

Badger slumped in his chair. The fire was sputtering now, struggling to keep the heavy desert night away.

“What happened to your pops?” Tyler said softly.

“Oh, I hated my dad. I did. He was a drunk and a bastard. After my mother left him, he got worse and worse. Eventually he just walked out into the desert and never came back. By the time anybody knew he was gone it’d been a month or more. I tried to find him, but it’d been years by then. He’s still out there, somewhere.”

He was fading now, his head heavy with liquor and memory.

“Just wish it could’ve been different. That’s all.”

Tyler went in the trailer and got Badger’s blankets. They wrapped the old man as best they could and left him in his plastic lawn chair, the dogs curled up at his sides. A million miles away and just out of reach, the moon rose over a sky as old and vast as time itself.

Ben gasped.

It was still dark. And cold. His head spun, foggy with the weight of a deep sleep interrupted. His heart raced.

Something had awakened him.

But his pulse had already begun to slow. Beside him, he could see Tyler’s chest rise and fall, illuminated by a shaft of moonlight spilling through the open windows. Tyler’s breathing was regular, slow and deep. It was silent in the stable.

Ben felt his eyelids droop. No, nothing was wrong. He was at home in his bed, and he had a few hours to sleep before his shift at the warehouse began.

Something screamed.

Ben shot up, fully awake this time. Adrenaline spiked his veins. He shook Tyler, but he was already up. Ben could see the whites of his eyes in the gloom.

A long, mournful wail floated over the desert outside the stable walls. Three others joined it, rising and falling in a terrible symphony before degenerating into a chorus of yapping.

“Coyotes?”

Ben glanced over the wall of their stall. The donkey was up and stamping its feet, back pressed into the corner, eyes wide and rolling.

“I think so.”

“They must be hunting something.”

“I think we should go look.”

“Are you nuts?”

“I’m going,” Ben whispered, a strange urge rising in his chest. He wasn’t nuts. He just had to see. “You coming?”

Tyler swore and kicked off his blankets. “You’re insane.”

The door to the stable swung open. A Comanche moon shone full and bright on the desert. Passing clouds cut the moonbeams into columns of light ten miles wide, shifting like spotlights roving over the sage. The desert seemed flat and colorless, robbed of dimension and volume. Where the moonlight was lost in a cloud, the land vanished.

The noises continued. Ben turned west.

“It’s coming from the river,” he whispered.

“That’s great for it,” Tyler hissed.

“You’re not scared, are you?”

“I’m scarier than anything that walks on four legs out there,” Tyler growled. “I don’t want to break my leg in a hole just to pet some mangy dogs.”

“Stay then.” Ben’s heart was pounding with fear, and something else, some wild longing that had risen with the moon. He had no choice. He had to see what was happening at the river. He padded into the sage. Tyler swore and followed.

The yapping steadily picked up, louder now. Ben was sure the pack was at the river. They would find the cliff soon.

The night split with howls from a dozen straining throats. It was the sound of the dead waking in their shallow graves, a preternatural shaman’s wail summoning sun-bleached bones to rise and dance under the desert moon with the predators at play.

Goosebumps swarmed beneath the cold sweat pouring down Ben’s back. His limbs locked in response to a primal terror. They could not be more than two hundred yards away.

Then the howling stopped. Silence.

Ben heard Tyler let out a breath.

Something growled, long and low and deep.

The pack was not two hundred yards away.

It was here.

A pair of gleaming eyes slunk out of the shadows into the moonlight. Then another. And another. His back pressed against Tyler’s, tense and slicked with sweat. He could hear more of the beasts approaching from behind. The circle tightened.

“What was it you said earlier?” Ben whispered hoarsely.

“Shut up! Keep still!”

A snarling maw inched into the moonlight, lips curled over black gums and yellow fangs. Ben stared straight at the gleam in the animal’s eyes.

“No,” Ben whispered. He stood up straight. “No, I’m not afraid of you.”

The coyote growled.

“I’m scarier than anything that walks on four legs out here. I’m scarier than you,” Ben warned it, his voice rising.

The predator lunged. Ben flung himself at the animal, howling at the top of his lungs, overcome with the urge to kick and tear and kill. The coyote backpedaled. Ben charged after it, fingers curled into claws, teeth bared, screaming as loud as he ever had.

The pack bolted. Tyler hurled a twisted branch into the sage after them with a hoarse yell. The yapping faded and was gone.

Ben stood shaking and willed his fingers to uncurl. Tyler thrust a finger into his chest. “You are bad luck with animals, bud.”

He couldn’t help but laugh.

“Maybe. But at least we weren’t naked this time.”

The rest of the week passed quickly on the homestead. Ben enjoyed doing the morning chores and driving Badger’s truck back and forth from the basalt field. It was endlessly amusing watching the chickens chasing bugs or each other—Chicken TV, as Badger called it. Sometimes the dogs would break up a particularly vicious fight between the roosters.

It felt good to rise before dawn, nap at noon, and work again until the sun set. He could feel his back growing stronger; his hands getting rougher; and his skin tanning in the sun. It was immensely satisfying watching the stone foundation of the stable rise out of the dirt and knowing he and Tyler had built it themselves. This kind of work made him feel alive. But it was the land he loved the most.

Sunshine Valley was beautiful in a way previously unknown to Ben. During most of the day, the air was clear and pure. In the absence of hills or trees, buildings or haze, he could see more than fifty miles in any direction, and the sky was constantly evolving. It was monsoon season, so it seemed always to be raining somewhere, but not like Ben was used to.

Though it would be sunny and hot on Badger’s homestead, miles in the distance a massive stratus column would be dumping a curtain of grey rain that stretched unbroken from the heavens to the sage. Sometimes there were two or three of these solitary clouds roaming different parts of the valley, seeding rainbows in their wake.

The evening and night sky evolved even faster, changing colors and geometry minute by minute. After dinner around the campfire, sunset was every evening’s entertainment. The golden hour set the desert aflame.

As the sun sank in the west, the tips of the sagebrush glowed with turquoise fire as the stems sank deeper into shadow. Clouds advanced over the valley from all directions, rushing toward the sun like scavengers to an exhausted kill, until the sky ignited with the colors of wine and blood and fire. In the east, the Sangre de Cristos smoldered like coals kindled by the dying breath of the day, until finally the sun sank; the clouds closed in; and the embers winked out.

The clouds would chase the sun right over the horizon and disappear, clearing the sky for the next act. As the moon rose, the Milky Way billowed out beneath it in a dense cloud, raining shooting stars on Ute mountain. Coyotes in the valley mourned their passing.

Dawn cast long, eerie shadows. It was always cold. Clouds shrank away from the east as the sun rekindled the coals on the mountains. The sage glowed with a pale golden light of their own as the shadows melted into the dust.

When he walked through the silent desert at sunrise, knowing a fresh drama was about to unfold over the land, Ben couldn’t help but feel he’d encountered an enchanted place.

They mortared the last rock on the wall on Friday afternoon. Badger tossed them each a sweating can of soda and surveyed their work.

“Not bad. Truth be told, you finished twice as fast as I thought you would. Tell you what. Take the afternoon off and let’s settle up. And since we’re so far ahead of schedule now, I’ve got a better idea for tomorrow. You ever been to music festival?”

“Like a concert?” Ben asked.

“Naw, a festival’s got more flavor. There’s a big one out in Moab tomorrow night. I figure we’ll do the morning chores, take the siesta, and head up to Utah for the evening’s festivities.”

“U-taw.” Ben repeated, feeling the word tumble off his lips. That arid land of red rock ruins and dinosaur bones and Mormon temples.

“Hell of a party. Whattaya say?”

Tyler drained his soda and crushed the can. “We’re in.”

--

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