Dawn... New Mexico

.... We rode through the night and dawn found us in Las Cruces, New Mexico, hitching a ride north on Interstate-25.
    We stood at that on-ramp that morning for a couple hours until a, canvas topped, twenty-one window, Volkswagen van pulled over driven by a forty or fifty something, weathered skinned, blond woman (with gray roots) wearing a ton of silver and turquoise jewelry; necklaces, rings and wrist bands.
    “So where you kids goin’?’” she called out, opening the sliding side door to the back of the bus.
    “Taos!” I called back.
    “Well, get in. I’m goin’ beyond Taos but I have friends there and planned on stoppin’ overnight anyway.”
    The van roared off and she introduced herself. “I’m Maggie… what do they call you?”
    “Hi, Maggie, I’m Norman and this is my friend, Max.”
    “Do you know anyone in Taos?”
    “No, never been there.” I liked the idea that she knew people in Taos.
    “Do you know anything about Taos?” she had this air of knowing about her.
    “What do you mean?” I tried to figure her line of questioning. I felt tense in anticipation.
    “Yeh, well, whew! Taos…. It’s God’s Country!”
    “I heard something about free land and communes.” The tension in my gut rose as I said it.
    “Free land? Hah! Yeh, there are communes… New Buffalo of Easy Rider fame, Hog Farm, Rising Star, and a couple of others that amount to nothing more than communal crash pads around town.” She named them off with a familiarity I found soothing but the tension was still there.
    “What do you mean Easy Rider fame?” It was one of those movies I saw back in Waikiki.
    “Yeh… you know that commune they ended up in and Peter Fonda had to make a decision to stay or go?”
    “Yeh, it was the turning point in the flick.”
    “Well, it was shot there at New Buffalo and that nude scene in the hot spring was shot at the old stage coach crossing on the Rio Grande.” She wanted to say more but I interrupted.
“No free land then?” I really didn’t care who or what was in a movie.
    “None that I know of. But a couple of the communes I mentioned are open to newcomers.”
    There was something homey about Maggie. She seemed the kind of good-natured and strong women I’d grown up with in Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho. They were different from L.A. or San Francisco people, men or women. Completely absent from her attitude was any pretension towards snobbery that I was homesick for and found refreshing. The tension was gone now and I could relax once I heard a more realistic appraisal of the situation.
    “What’s with that?” I asked, pointing to a cross with colored yarn wound or woven around it dangling from the rear-view mirror.
    “Oh, that’s a God’s Eye.” She was grinning.
    “You religious?” I was comfortable asking what I would have considered an all-too-personal question otherwise.
    “You mean a church or something?” Her face lit up.
    “Yeh, like… do you smoke pot or anything? Or do you have a church you go to?’ Norm piped in.
    I could tell she loved where the conversation was going and she seemed so warm and genuine with Norm… maternal.
    She gestured broadly; her whole arm jangling with turquoise and silver, “This, my dear friends, is my church. We are driving through to the high altar of the most sacred country… the church of my religion.” She then let out a, “Whoopee!” that caught me off-guard.
    Laughing I said, “I want what you are on lady!”
    “No,” she directed her answer to Norm. “I smoked plenty up ‘til a few years ago.”
    “You don’t get high?” Norm was authentically puzzled.
    “I didn’t say I don’t get high… I just don’t smoke pot.” It was getting warm so she wiggled out of the fringed vest as she was driving. I noticed she had some pretty substantial boobs hanging bra-less under a tank top. I paused a moment and wondered if this were going to be one of those great rides where everybody gets laid and so on.
    “…Acid, then?” Norm probed further.
    She gave him a sweet smile as she answered, “No, dear… I got tired of taking the same trip over and over again.”
    “Did you have a bad trip, a bummer, or something?” Norm was like a puppy tugging on a sock he couldn’t let go of.
    Her gaze was off to the horizon as she spoke, “I was a black-jack dealer in Vegas. I drank after work but never on the job. It got to be a problem… Smoked pot a lot too.”
    “But you quit?” I let Norm do all the questioning but I was listening and paying attention as the open, broad, vista of the Rio Grande cutting its way through basalt cliffs spread out before the plane, back-dropped by purple-ish mountains far beyond. “You quit just like that?”
    “No… not just like that. I got my ass away from Vegas… for one thing.” I realized I was appraising her body: Firm, lithe and energetic for her age. Hell, she could even be sixty but she looked more like forty. Under the arms of her tank top I saw the fleshy white underside orb of her right breast and decided it wouldn’t be so bad to do her even though she was old enough to be my mother.
“I got some money from an insurance settlement and bought forty acres up by Questa… north of Taos. Man, if you guys haven’t been to Taos you are in for a treat.” I heard her saying. My thoughts turned back from the perpetual horny I’d been feeling since we got in the van back in Las Cruces.
    “This is the country settled by Kit Carson and over the hills that way is Lincoln County where Pat garret and Billy the Kid…” She waved her hand toward the east as we were entering Truth or Consequences.
    “Was this town named after the TV show or was the TV show named after it?” I was only kidding.
    “You got it. It was a spa town called Hot Springs before 1950. Ralph Edwards visited the place so they named the town after his radio show before TV.”
    “I thought it might have a more ominous meaning… like, ‘This is your last chance to water your camel.’”
“Speaking of watering the camel… You guys must be hungry.” She pulled the van over to a drive-in burger joint on Broadway.
I was lost in thought, thinking how every town has a street called Broadway or Main and this one had both. The streets were all broad and dusty looking in a semi-arid landscape that took some getting used to for me. Still, I could see in the older buildings the images I’d grown up with from Western movies. I started singing… “Gettie-up, gettie-up… hum-bob-hum mao-mao… My baby loves those Western movies…”
Hamburgers dripping with grease and fries hit the spot. Norm dove into his greasy brown-paper-bag only to come up for air to ask, “I figured you for a vegetarian or something.”
“Naw, I like red meat too much to give it up.” She said, as I felt a strong stirring in my groin with her mentioning red meat. Norm was grinning too.
    Seeing New Mexico and being reminded that this was the Wild West I’d imagined; with my childhood heroes; Billy the Kid and Kit Carson, stirred me. So much of what it really was, and is today, was unknown to me except for the fact that I was a born a Westerner myself and I’d come from folks who were part of that history. This thought brought me back to the God’s Eye hanging on Maggie’s rear-view mirror.
    “What about the God’s Eye, is that an Indian thing?” I asked as soon as we got back in the van.
    “Yes… easy enough to make, eh?”
    “What about the Indians? I saw some in San Francisco when I was there…. Y’know, Alcatraz and all that? Still goin’ on as far as I know.”
    “What about ‘em?”
    “I mean, what I know of Indians is from what I grew up with in Spokane: Chief Joseph, the Nez Perce, Generals Howard, General Miles and so on. I had an Indian friend who was a boxer, Danny Broncho. But really, I don’t know much and Indian stuff is all over this place.” My curiosity was authentic and ran deep. I realized that I had neglected or dismissed a whole people and that the very place I’d been raised was once the land of a tribe, a people, a nation shoved aside and forgotten in the tide of history.
    “Well, you know, the Taos Pueblo people have lived on the same land for centuries before white folks got here. They consider themselves stewards of the land.” There was nothing preachy about the way she said it and I wanted to know more.
“Max and I were going to be extras in a Western by Otto Preminger but we came out here to play cowboys and Indians instead.” Norm chimed in.
I told her about Otto Preminger… or the guy who said he was. She listened to it all, how we ended up heading for New Mexico, and then said, “Well, kiddos, you came to the right place. This here place is for those who have nowhere else to go; from Billy the Kid, Kit Carson to the Spaniards who came up here looking for El Dorado. You might not stay and you might not ever come back, but your heart will never leave this place if the Spirit sent you.” When she said Spirit she waved her arm over the landscape of sage and sand spliced through by a magical hand with hills and mountains… letting go of the steering wheel as the van barreled along the highway, crossing over and back the Rio Grande along the way… she drove seemingly unaware that the machine had any need for her guidance.
We got to Albuquerque as the sun was setting. She stopped at a motel and rented a room. I had my hopes up but she told us we could stay in the van. The three of us sat in the room, ate some piñón nuts and so on but I could see that she was more interested in Norm than me: she and Norm were touching, gently fondling and squeezing each other there on the bed. I was actually glad for Norm because I hadn’t really seen Norm get laid through all our travels so far. I wasn’t sure whether or not she was in for a threesome but I knew that I wasn’t. Everything was okay with me as it was. I retired to the van and let the children play.
That morning found us traveling further north and the further north we went the more mystical the landscape became. Approaching Santa Fe the Sangre de Cristo range hovered in the background as sacred as the blood of Christ. Being raised Catholic, the transformative power and meaning of the blood of Christ was not foreign to me.
Maggie and Norm hit it off so well the night before that Maggie wanted to spring for a lunch in Santa Fe at The Pink; an other-era real sit-down, restaurant. The setting was old adobe and rich with atmosphere that had me transfixed; I was home at last. It warmed me as much as my companions and the anticipation of what was to come.