Chapter 15. A Wild & Loose Turkey

The oblivion of alcoholism

was the specter that followed

Max no matter where he went.

That night a barbecue had been set up. One of the kid goats from the herd was sacrificed and put on a spit over a fire pit set up off side of the Pueblo. Tables were full with a variety of dishes like brown rice and vegetables, chipotles, raisin breads and corn cakes all of which was baked in the adobe oven next to the fire-pit. The usual three or four gallon jugs of Red Mountain wine were there too. Billy and Steve had pitched a small dome tent and came over to join in the festivities.

Stan asked Steve,“So, where did you guys come from?” 

The answer made sense as odd couplings do go on with hitch-hiking,“I was hitching a ride in Las Vegas when this guy picked me up.” 

Stan was blunt, “This guy's a nark or somethin’, huh.”

“Naw, he’s straight, but he’s cool. We smoked pot and all that on the way. He had plenty of his own.”

“How about the car?”

“Oh, he has credit cards and rented it back in L.A.”

“He’s gotta be a nark.” Stan wasn’t buying any of it.

Raisin bread and corn cakes
      were baked in the adobe oven

Billy might not have been a nark but he was surely a drinker. I'd been watching him with caution as I could tell that he was one of those belligerent drunks. Maybe he wasn’t a cop… I’d known some cops that smoked dope and drank like that. He kinda looked and acted like Hunter Thompson, at that time Thompson was only known among us as the acid-head running for sheriff of Aspen... Rumors of the grapevine, who knows? 

Celebrity-wise, there was also a short-haired woman visiting up at the mesa that looked like Joan Baez. She spoke of her husband being locked up for draft-dodging but never did sing while there so I’d never know. The party went on into the night and Billy was so drunk he got pushy with her.

“C’mon, where’s all the free love, Baby!” He demanded as he staggered around waving a bottle of Wild Turkey.

Finally, after an hour or so of that crap, Brian came out of his place and confronted Billy, “Why don’t you get the hell out of here? Why are you here? I think you must be a cop," he accused, "you don’t belong!” Brian started pulling up the stakes to Billy’s tent.

I’d never seen Brian or anyone else on the mesa act like that. This was the first time I saw someone kicked out no matter how bad their behavior. Billy wasn’t the only one drunk. I had a good load goin’ myself. I stepped in between Brian and Billy, pulling Brian’s hands off Billy’s shirt. All peace and love, it was a maudlin scene I made of it, crying, “C’mon, man, we gotta love one another. This isn’t right!”

Nobody but Mason could talk Brian down. The mood shifted and everyone went to bed.

Joan came up to me after my display and, in a full-body embrace, said, “Max, you’re a saint.”

I looked into her deep brown, admiring, eyes thinking... damn, she's comin’ on to me? I tried to kiss her lips but, turning a cheek to me, she wouldn't have it. My spirit became Billy's.  The booze put into words without restraint what  I was thinking, “You wanna fuck a saint, do you now? Let's go to the Dome, sugar.”

“No, I would Max, but my husband, David, is in prison... a C. O., and the best I can do for the cause is to stay celibate for his sake.”

Oh GAWD, it is that Joan! “Well, girl, I’m no saint,” I ran to the edge of the mesa and jumped.

The slope down to the Dome was steep but I often enjoyed taking a running jump, landing on soft scree, and skiing down the dirt slope in a cloud of dust. It was my favorite and fastest way to the Dome. From where she was standing it would have looked like I jumped off a cliff. I still wonder whether I messed up having a friendship with Joan, that might have been, her that night. Hey Joan, if that was you... ooops, sorry.

The next morning I went straight to the Pueblo to apologize to the Joan Baez look-a-like. Ashamed because it was my normal behavior before the cosmic revelation on the beach in Waikiki so long ago (time, since then... a mere eight months had passed). She had left an hour before. Then Maya came out of Brian’s digs and woke Billy to ask if some of the people could borrow his car. She had some dope stashed in town. Billy must have felt as guilty and hung-over as me and handed her the keys without any ado. She passed them to Dennis, one of the new guys staying in the Kiva. The fact that Billy didn’t offer to drive her added a little to his credibility. Maya might have been testing him but, then again, she just might have been that indifferent.

Dennis drove the car; Maya rode shotgun; Joe’s girl, Kate, sat in the middle; Stan and another kid, Jamie and I, had the back seat. We had gotten through Taos and were going south on the highway about halfway to Rancho De Taos when a cruiser from the New Mexico State Police lit up behind us and pulled us over in front of a bar on the side of the highway.

The officer approached the car cautiously, “Can I see your driver’s license?”

Dennis took his license out of his wallet and handed it to the officer.

“How long have you been in New Mexico Mr. Lowery?”

Dennis knew the drill, “Just a week or so. I’m visiting friends.”

“Is this car registered in your name?”

“No, it’s borrowed from a guy named Billy. Incredible as it seems, officer, I have no idea who this Billy guy is. We just had to get into town and he told us to borrow his car.”

“Do you know his last name?”

“No, I mean I can describe him. He looks like a cop.”

The officer grinned, “You all can go sit on the curb by the bar if you will.” About that time a Taos County Sheriff squad car pulled up next to us.

Kate asked, “Can we go use the lady’s room in the bar?”

Maya had been out on bail and had no desire to get tangled up in this affair. She went with Kate and, as Kate took her time in the lady’s room, Maya went straight through the bar and out the back door.

The officers conferred with each other for what seemed an eternity. They hadn’t even noticed Magic Maya’s absence.

“This car’s a rental and we need whoever rented the vehicle to come and pick it up.” The state Police officer seemed annoyed or worried.

Dennis pled,“Man, there’s no electricity or phone on the property where Billy's at. Let me get the car back to him. How’re we going to let him know what’s happening?” 

The officers went off to the side of the car and murmured back and forth a few minutes before coming back to us. The County Sheriff offered, “You all can get in my car and I’ll drive you up to the mesa. You can send this Billy guy down to me. We’ll keep his car downtown ‘til then.”

They all got in the sheriff’s car before he’d noticed Maya was missing. “Say, wasn’t there one more woman with you?”

Stan spoke up, “No," Kate nudged him. He had to say something, "Maybe, if there was, she had to go to the can.”

The officer scowled at Stan and asked Kate, “Can you go back in the bar and get her?” 

Kate made a good show of it, came back shrugging her shoulders, “I don’t know where she went.”

“Does anyone know her name?” He could have guessed the answer to that one by now as each of us looked at each other and, mimicking Kate shrugged our shoulders.

“People come and go around here… she just needed a ride, ya know.” Dennis offered the lamest and best story for the moment.

I sensed the worry in the officer’s demeanor and that he didn’t enjoy this part of his job. I tried to lighten things up for him a bit, knowing that cops who love their work sometimes like to talk about it with a sympathetic ear. The image of hippies was that of calling cops pigs and so on so I took a friendlier tack, “How long you been with the Sheriff’s Department?”

“Almost three years now.” I was right. The cop’s voice was more relaxed. “I joined when I got out of the Corps.”

“Well, Semper Fi!” I knew Marines and, though I hadn’t gotten along with them very well when I was in the Navy, any Vet was a brother to me now that I was out.

“You weren’t a Jarhead… were you?” It was hard to tell. I had a pretty good start on almost shoulder -length hair and all the other hippy appearances of the time.

“No, I just got out of the Navy last October.” I offered. “You from Taos?”

“Yah, ‘cept or going to school on the G.I. Bill.” He was proud and I loved him for that particular kind of pride.

“So, tell me. What’s up with this Billy guy? You all knew it was his car, huh?” There was no answer.

“Is he with the F.B.I. or something?”

No answer.

“I knew I wouldn’t get anything out of the cop but I thought I’d let him know that Billy was a weak link and we were onto him. That’s okay, he was sort of obvious.”  Local police sometimes harbor a bitter taste of animosity with the Feds.

The ride went like that all the way up the dirt road to the mesa. Once there, the Sheriff’s car caught a lot of attention but I went straight to Billy’s tent and fetched him.

“Hey, your car was impounded,” I announced, pulling the flap open and peering into the tent. Billy was nursing a hangover and most likely didn’t want to be bothered but he got moving regardless.

“Oh shit, they what!” he scrambled out of his sleeping bag and took a pull off his Wild Turkey fifth.

“They pulled us over and…”

“Who pulled you over?” He seemed authentically confused.

“A State Trooper.”

“The Sheriff's over in the parking lot waiting for you.”

“The Sheriff? Oh, shit.” He was still pulling up his pants as he left the tent.

Billy got in the squad car and the Sheriff greeted him with a familiarity that I wasn't at all surprised at seeing, “Hey, Billy… you had some folks worried.”

The officer didn’t seem concerned that I could hear them and I believe I caught a wink from him. This was probably because the gig was up and Billy was being pulled off the job. He got in the squad car and never came back… leaving his tent and gear to the kid, Steve. It was as though Billy had found out what he’d come to find out and, now that his job was done, he could go back to filling out reports, shuffling files or whatever this misadventure was a hiatus from.