The Pot Thief Who Studied D. H. Lawrence Read online

  But something other than Lawrence’s prolixity caught my attention. He was describing New Mexico. And I was pretty certain the ranch he called Las Chivas in the story was actually his own ranch above Taos. The Brit who turned English literature on its head was describing my land and using words like ‘arroyo’ and ‘adobe’ that never passed the lips of Tennyson or Dickens. Somehow, I found the idea fascinating.

  I came to the part where they arrive at the cabin on the ranch, and there’s a large packrat sitting on the roof staring down at them defiantly as if the ranch is his and they are intruders. The rich woman is offended at the cheek of the rat and, “turning to the Mexican, who was a rag of a man but a pleasant, courteous fellow, she asked him why he didn’t shoot the rat. ‘Not worth a shell!’ said the Mexican, with a faint hopeless smile.”

  I found myself also with a smile, perhaps faint, but not hopeless. My enthusiasm for reading Lawrence hadn’t increased, but my enthusiasm for seeing the ranch where he lived had.

  I admit that my primary motivation remained the Duran pot, but now I felt that even if I couldn’t find it, the trip might still be worthwhile. That assuaged my conscience somewhat.

  10

  I had forgotten to buy champagne, so I asked Angie to put a bottle in the cooler so I could take it with me when I left.

  She smiled and said, “We always keep one for you, Mr. Schuze,” and went to fetch our margaritas.

  Susannah said, “The restaurant got an email blast today from the Education Director of the French Wine Society explaining that you shouldn’t refer to Gruet as ‘champagne’.”

  “She mentioned me by name?”

  “No, silly. And she didn’t mention Gruet by name either. She said we shouldn’t call American sparkling wines champagne.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because true champagne comes from Champagne, France. Everything else is sparkling wine. It has to do with authenticity. You know, truth in advertising.”

  “But the Gruet family is from Champagne.”

  “But the sparkling wine they make here in New Mexico is not.”

  “It says méthode champenoise on the label.”

  “Yes, but that means it’s made like champagne, not made in Champagne. Like your fakes. You could call them methode anazasoise, but they aren’t the real deal.”

  “But nobody can tell the real from the replica. And if they don’t ask, I don’t tell.”

  “We’re not talking military policy here, Hubie.”

  “What are we talking about?”

  “Terroir”

  “Dirt?”

  “No, a sense of place, the vines giving voice to the soil.”

  “How many margaritas did you have before I got here?”

  “I’m serious. It’s like…” She paused and took a sip of her drink. “It’s like chiles. Hatch for green, Chimayó for red.”

  “Well, Gruet does tastes like New Mexico.”

  “They put chiles in it?”

  “No, but it has a great nose, as wine people say. It’s not as yeasty as some champagnes. It’s clean like the desert after a thunderstorm. And it has a hint of cherries. Not the ones in the grocery stores, the ones found along the little river valleys in the Sacramento Mountains around Ruidoso and Cloudcroft.”

  The wine topic led us to discuss whether tequila has terrior. After we agreed we had no idea how to answer that question, I told her about the theft from the church.

  “You don’t suppose someone heard us talking about the theft in Boston and got the idea to—”

  “No way,” I assured her. “It’s just a coincidence.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you? There are no coincidences, Hubert. That exhibit’s been up a while. Why would they do the robbery so shortly after you and I and Martin were talking about art theft?”

  “The time they picked didn’t have anything to do with our talking about art theft. They didn’t know what we were talking about or even that we were talking. They just picked a Thursday, and it just happened to be after our conversation.”

  She gave me a skeptical look.

  11

  The next morning was a Saturday, and I left early to drive south to the unnamed dirt road where Emilio and Consuela Sanchez live in a modest adobe, bringing coffee and breakfast burritos. Emilio was waiting outside their residence.

  “Bienvenido, Señor Uberto.”

  “Buenos dias, Señor Sanchez.”

  “Consuela, she is asleep, but I know she is anxious to see you. I will wake her.”

  I put a hand on his arm as he turned to go. “She needs her sleep,” I said.

  He nodded.

  We walked around to the back of the house. He had a fire burning in the fifty-five gallon drum he uses as a parilla. We sat down close to the warmth and I handed him a coffee. He removed the lid and steam rose around his face as he took a sip.

  “It is strong coffee, amigo.”

  I took a sip and nodded my agreement.

  When Consuela Saenz came to work for my parents, she was in her late teens. She was not only my nanny (a word I didn’t know until many years afterwards), she was also part older sister and part second mother. We left my parents’ house in the same year, me to go to college, she to marry. I looked at Emilio and thought she got the better deal. She got a good husband, strong and true. I got kicked out of school for digging pots.

  Emilio has worked in the fields for fifty years, his gnarled hands and leathery skin a badge of honest toil. But he was looking drawn and even thinner than his usual sinewy self.

  We finished our coffees in silence. I opened the bag and drew out two more along with the burritos.

  He smiled. “You could make a cocinero. You are always...¿Como se dice provisionado?”

  “Provisioned,” I answered.

  “Ah, another word English has taken. It is no wonder your language cover the world. It has...¿Como se dice adoptó?”

  “Adopted.”

  He shrugged and smiled. “It has adopted the words of others.”

  After we had eaten, he turned to me and said, “She grows weaker each day,” and he swallowed hard.

  “When does Ninfa arrive?”

  “Tomorrow. On Monday they make the tests at the hospital to see if her kidney is right.” He turned his head away from me and stared out at the pecan trees. “It should be my kidney she receive, Uberto. Ninfa is a young woman without even children of her own.”

  I said nothing. After a minute, he turned back to face me.

  “Your kidney is too old, Viejo,” I said.

  He laughed and then dried his eyes with his handkerchief.

  We talked a while longer, and I told him to let me know how the tests turned out. I had to cajole the latest doctors’ bills from him, and I took them with me when I left. I looked at them when I got home and thought again about the Duran pot.

  12

  On Sunday afternoon, my nephew Tristan dropped by. He’s not actually my nephew. He’s the grandson of my mother’s sister, my aunt Beatrice, but I call him my nephew and he calls me Uncle Hubert.

  I asked him if he’d ever read anything by D. H. Lawrence.

  “Sure. We had to read Sons and Lovers in soph lit.”

  “What did you think of it?”

  “It was boring. I think the prof said it was a thinly disguised autobiography. I guess he hated his father and loved his mother. Very Freudian.”

  I told him about my invitation to the Lawrence Ranch, and he seemed excited about it. He told me he could help me with something called a “power point” presentation, and he was so enthusiastic that I agreed to it.

  Tristan is always enthusiastic. Also happy and easy-going. He’s never lost his layer of baby fat, and his olive skin and dark ringlets of hair seem to entrance young women.

  Before he left, I asked him how he was doing and he said he was O.K., so I gave him fifty bucks, and he said he’d come back in a couple of days and teach me about power points. As I watched Tristan strolling a
way with that loping gait of his, I imagined Ella Fitzgerald singing, “Just because I always wear a smile- like to dress up in the latest style - cause I’m glad I’m livin’- take troubles all with a smile.”

  She could have been describing Tristan.

  I spent the rest of Sunday and all day Monday in my workshop making replicas. They’re easier to sell, and with tourist season approaching, I needed more inventory.

  Throwing pots is thirsty work, so I was glad when five o’clock finally rolled around. Susannah asked how things were going with my girlfriend Dolly – she likes romances even more than mysteries.

  “She’s cooking dinner for me tonight, but to tell you the truth, I’m not too excited about it.”

  “You don’t like her cooking?”

  “Her cooking is fine. It’s just that she’s been moody and argumentative lately, not her usual happy-go-lucky self.”

  “Maybe she’s worried about something. Any changes that would upset her?”

  “Her father’s health seems to be deteriorating.”

  “That would more likely make her seek your support rather than bickering with you.”

  I shrugged. Psychology is not my long suit. “She seems to have gained a bit if weight, but I’ve never said anything about it.”

  “Jeez, just like a man. You think the only reason a woman would worry about her weight is because it might affect the man in her life.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You implied it. Anyway, gaining weight does make a girl moody.”

  “How would you know? You’ve never had a weight problem.”

  She smiled one of her New Mexico sunshine smiles. “When I was in high school, I told my Mom I wanted to look like one of those skinny models. She said it was up to me. So I started dieting. We would sit down to a big dinner and Mom and Dad and my brothers would pile steak, potatoes, beans, and fresh corn on their plates and butter up big chunks of yeasty bread right out of the oven. I’d sit there with cottage cheese and a pear feeling miserable. After about a week, I complained to Mom that I was hungry all the time, and she said, ‘Why do you think those skinny models are never smiling?’ That was the end of my diet.”

  She took a sip of her margarita and changed the subject. “I keep thinking about the theft at the church. You know which one of Quick-To-See Smith’s pictures I liked best?”

  “Was it War Shirt 1992? I liked that one.”

  “No, it wasn’t one of her paintings. It was a photograph she showed in her talk, the one of her as a small girl on the reservation dressed up as Toulouse Lautrec. Remember that one? She said she used grease to paint a beard and mustache on her face. Then she stood on her knees to look short and had someone take her picture.” She paused in reflection. “She was so cute in that picture, Hubie. And she’s such a nice lady. I hate it that someone stole her work.”

  Her words hit a little close to home, but I just reminded myself that the people who made the pots I dig up are not losing anything.

  13

  I met Dolly Madison Aguirre when I was going door to door in Casitas del Bosque looking for a house I had visited while blindfolded. I’ll spare you the details. Turns out her father had been my history teacher at Albuquerque High School. One thing led to another, as it usually does, and we ended up dating.

  I showed up at Dolly’s now-familiar front door at ten past seven and rang the bell. Judging from how quickly she opened the door, she must have been standing behind it.

  It was not because she was anxious to see me.

  “You’re late,” she said.

  “Sorry,” I said and leaned in to kiss her.

  “If you don’t think enough of me to show up on time, just don’t bother,” she said and closed the door in my face.

  She had been moody for the past several weeks, but nothing like this. I stood there on the porch debating whether to ring the bell again. I decided against it and drove home. My phone was ringing when I opened the door.

  “I’m sorry, Hubie,” said Dolly when I answered. “I overreacted. Will you come back? I have a nice meal all ready.”

  I told her I would and drove back. She gave me a passionate kiss at the door, but once we sat down for the meal, she berated me for not having a cell phone.

  “The food is cold. I could have called you as you were driving, but I had to wait until you got all the way home. Why don’t you have a cell phone like everyone else?”

  I told her I would get one if she wanted me to, hoping that she wouldn’t because I really hate the idea of being at the beck and call of everyone on the planet at any time of the night or day.

  My response seemed to satisfy her, and the rest of the meal was spent in small talk. Then she suggested that I get ready for bed while she did the dishes. She knows I don’t like sleeping over at her house because her father is in the next room. Call me old-fashioned, but it bothers me. But given her moodiness, I didn’t want to refuse the invitation.

  I was in bed when she returned from the kitchen. After going through her usual evening routine, she slipped in next to me wearing nothing but the scent of gardenias. We kissed passionately for quite some time, but then something happened.

  Or, more accurately, something didn’t happen. I knew it was because her father was next door, but she had a different explanation.

  She started sobbing. “You don’t want to make love because I’m fat.”

  I held her awkwardly until she calmed down. “You are not fat. I love having sex with you. Surely you know that after all these months. I’m just inhibited by being one room away from your father.”

  She started kissing me again, but I realized another failure would only reinforce her view that I no longer found her attractive.

  “Come back to my place,” I suggested.

  She rolled on her side and said, “Go home.”

  14

  I slept fitfully.

  Emilio showed up Tuesday morning with the good news that his daughter’s kidney was a match and could be transplanted into her mother. At least I thought it was good news, but then I wasn’t facing the prospect of both my wife and my daughter undergoing major surgery.

  Tristan, Susannah and I had all been rejected as donors, not surprising given that we are from different gene pools, but each of us had insisted on being tested. I figured I have two kidneys so I wouldn’t miss one of them. It’s not like I had given them pet names or anything.

  It was obvious Emilio was still digesting the news and fretting, so I decided to change the subject. I asked him if he had ever heard of D. H. Lawrence.

  His eyes lit up. “Claro,” he said, “everyone in my secondary school was made to read La serpiente con plumas.”

  What an odd quirk of translation, I thought to myself. I had read in D. H. Lawrence in Taos that Lawrence titled The Plumed Serpent after Quetzalcoatl, the mythical beast of the Aztecs. In Spanish, the book should therefore be called simply Quetzalcoatl. But the publisher evidently chose to translate the English back into Spanish literally.

  The title was all I knew of the book, so I asked Emilio what it was about.

  “I have forgotten most of what I learn in school, but I remember that book because I thought it was about the agraristas of Michoacán. My grandfather was one of them.”

  “Who were the agraristas?”

  “Mr. Lawrence did not call them by that name. Some said they were communists. Others said they were fascistas. I do not know about these things. I know only that they wished to stop the changes the conquistadores brought to Mexico. They fight against the Church, and they want people to live on the land like before the Spanish come.”

  “Did you like the book?”

  “I am a camposino, Uberto. I do not understand such books.”

  “I would value your opinion,” I said.

  He nodded and sat for a moment in thought. “I did not like the book because the narradora was a woman from Ireland, and she see the Mexican people as uncivilized. I think she is unhappy with civilizat
ion, so when she say the Mexicans are uncivilized, she say it as something good. But I don’t think it is good. I was young and proud to be a Mexican.”

  “And now?”

  His leathery face formed into a smile. “Now I am old and proud to be a Mexican. We are Indians and Spaniards both, and we should be proud of both parts.”

  Emilio departed after presenting me with a large sack of carne adobado. I rolled some of it into corn tortillas and enjoyed tacos for lunch with a couple of cold Cabaña beers from El Salvador. Globalization.

  15

  Which accounts for the fact that I was asleep when Tristan arrived later that afternoon.

  Turns out that what I had been calling power point is actually PowerPointTM. In addition to photographing some of my pots for the trademarked whiz bang software, Tristan also brought two books. He handed me a beat-up, yellowing Penguin paperback called D. H. Lawrence – Selected Letters and told me to read the letter on page 146. It was addressed to Catherine Carswell and dated 18 May, 1924.

  Lawrence wrote, “Did I tell you Mabel Lujan gave Frieda that little ranch – about 160 acres – up here in the skirts of the mountains? We have been up there the last fortnight working like the devil, with 3 Indians and a Mexican carpenter, building up the 3-room log cabin, which was falling down. We’ve done all the building, save the chimney – and we’ve made the adobe bricks for that. I hope in the coming week to finish everything, shingling the roofs of the other cabins too. There are two log cabins, a 3-roomer for us, a 2-roomer Mabel can have when she comes, a little one-roomer for Brett – and a nice log hay-house and corral. We have four horses in the clearing. It is very wild, with the pine-trees coming down the mountain – and the altitude, 8,600 ft., takes a bit of getting used to. But it is also very fine.”

  Dorothy Brett was a British painter associated with the Bloomsbury group. She came to Taos at Lawrence’s invitation and remained there for the rest of her life.