Beans and Cornbread D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
October 2009
Beans and Cornbread
Page: 2Obviously the delayed sting of the jalapeos has hit his lips, tongue and throat. He chokes, coughs like he's about to dislodge all his innards, struggles for air and turns his head toward me, his eyes popped out like in a cartoon. By then I'm laughing so hard my eyes are running and I've got to stop so I don't pee my pants. I blow my nose and cough. He mistakes my tears and chokes of laughter for shared pain.
He rasps, "You can't even eat your own food." Then he chokes out the words, "I need more cornbread, another soda. Quickly, quickly!"
With insincere sweetness I say, "I'm so, so sorry. I accidentally dropped the other pan of cornbread — the donkeys are eating it now." Another lie; the cornbread is safe on the floorboard of my truck. I stashed it while everyone was admiring the scenery.
Mrs. J gets up, puts her plate on her chair and her root beer on the ground next to her chair. She turns, looks at me, grins with perfect white teeth, but her conspiratorial smile disappears when he tells her to hurry.
After our memorable late lunch I gather two five-gallon buckets with digging tools and zip-lock bags for specimens. While the men are talking I leave unnoticed, followed by the cats and dog, into the purple-and-red canyon behind camp. Anne Marie my tabby reluctantly acts as Pied Piper to Texas Jack's young cats. She turns, hisses and swats at them. I imagine she is asking the energetic cats to go home. "Anne Marie, I know exactly how you feel."
I dig samples from weathered deposits of deep red oxides and rich yellow ochres and watch the cats and dog chasing and pouncing on each other under a pyramid-shaped Arizona cypress. As I look in the wash I see oxidized azurite float and follow it into a side canyon thick with alligator juniper and pion pine.
The cats follow behind me, dashing from cover to cover. At the end of this narrowing side canyon is a banded rhyolite wall thrust conspicuously into the maze of crumbling mineralized deposits in massive purple-and-green andesite.
I'm ready to turn back when Joey races by and disappears behind the rhyolite wall. The cats zip past. I follow, taking a hard left turn, dragging and scraping my buckets on the rock wall, then a right turn into a three- to four-foot-wide trail with ankle- to knee-high blue, green and chalcopyrite rocks. Joey runs back to me, scrabbling over and around the colorful copper ore boulders, and I notice his feet are covered in red mud.
This bucket-scraping trail opens into a 60-foot by 150-foot box canyon with rice, fluff and needle grasses flowing around silverleaf oak, and a cluster of Arizona ponderosa pines; on my right, Fremont cottonwoods with new spring leaves grow along a vertical wall. The canyon wrens, pine jays and sage sparrows stop singing, flit for cover, and watch the cats. A few minutes later the canyon birds resume their songs.
Joey's red mud footprints lead to a cleft in the wall behind the cottonwoods. I look up and see green algae with clear water dribbling into a washtub-size shelf basin. The overflow seeps into the red clay at my feet.
Hmm, I think to myself, I might move camp here after everyone leaves. If I remove the donkeys' panniers before the first tight turn, they should squeeze through. I will tell Texas Jack about this happy canyon, but not now.
The next morning I sit in my lawn chair next to Texas Jack. We look at the scenery and sip my fresh-boiled Italian roast coffee.
Then I hear bellowing and cursing coming from my curtained-off privy hole. Gerald the Joker is yelling, "Where is the toilet paper?" More moans and bellowing.
I comment to Texas Jack, "Sounds like he has hemorrhoids the size of pomegranates."
Meanwhile I notice out of the corner of my eye Mrs. J moving in slow motion, putting one yellow lawn chair in the back of the camper. A bit curious, I watch her lock the camper door. Without a glance back she climbs into the truck, slides the seat forward, cranks the engine, releases the emergency brake, rolls over the bumpy track, and turns left onto the gravel road. The gravel crunches and pings, leaving a low drifting dust cloud. Texas Jack and I watch silently. A single yellow lawn chair faces the view.
Then more yelling from the outhouse area: "What the hell is going on out there?"
Choking with laughter, I yell back, "I think your wife went to town to get toilet paper!"
Texas Jack, with his coffee cup in hand, gets up and walks toward the road. He stops and watches as the dust trail fades.
Pomegranate Buns yells something about bringing him some toilet paper. I yell back between gasps of laughter, "Use your underwear!" I hear more cursing.
Texas Jack returns. "Yep, she's gone."
"Yep, and it's time for you to take Pomegranate Buns home. I'll see you in a week or two."
I'm eager to pack the donkeys and move to the little oasis Joey found, do some test panning for gold, and see if any well-formed crystals are hidden in the oxidized azurite before I pulverize it for paint pigment. If I run out of food I'll take a half day and go to town. The little drama of Pomegranate Buns' wife driving off into the lavender morning was well worth the brief inconvenience.
Laura Leveque is an artist and worm farmer and currently lives at Jackass Junction in Deming with two dogs, two cats and two donkeys. See www.jackassjunction.net