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

  I smiled at him. “Too bad you retired.”

  The next person in the impromptu receiving line was Fred Rich, a big guy in a golf shirt with hairy arms and meaty hands. He had the kind of facial hair you have to shave twice a day. I could tell he had just finished his second because his cheap aftershave smelled like it had just been splashed on, and he had two little pieces of toilet paper stuck to places where he had nicked himself. He told me he was in the “fast food game” and was always looking for talent. I told him I wasn’t really looking for a job. Especially flipping burgers, I thought to myself, but he said I’d have to work sooner or later.

  “When you run out of pots, what will you do? Start selling off the furniture?”

  No answer came to mind, so that was the one I gave. He handed me his card and moved away.

  I gave up. I decided I would explain the whole thing at the start of my presentation in the morning when they were a captive audience. So I just stood there and smiled when Carla Glain introduced herself and said I was just getting a small taste of what women had faced for centuries, exclusion from the workplace and having to rely on handicrafts to eke out a living. I smiled at her and said I agreed completely.

  Once I stopped stressing over the confusion caused by Betty’s announcement, I began to relax. Of course the Old Granddad also helped. I met Teodoro Vasquez, a lobbyist.

  “I can help you network,” he said. “I know everyone in New Mexico who is anyone.”

  I smiled and thanked him, thinking that since he didn’t know me, that made me no one, which was fine with me.

  Vasquez was followed by Howard Glover, a giant of a man with onyx skin, a shaved head, and muscles in places where I don’t even have places.

  “I own car dealerships throughout the state. If you can sell pots, selling cars would be a snap. It’s all on commission, of course, but our top salespersons make big bucks.”

  His handshake was so strong that I almost offered to buy a car if he would let go. When he finally did, I checked my hand for broken fingers and told him I’d keep him in mind.

  Glover was followed by Agatha Cruz who, in contrast to Betty Shanile, had terrible powdery-looking make-up that failed to conceal the wrinkles on her face. She also smelled worse. Betty wore an expensive perfume that was beguiling without being overpowering. Agatha smelled of antiseptic. She said she didn’t feel well and was tired. She retired to her room shortly after we met.

  Charles Winant was next and he asked me again about Susannah. I explained again that we were just friends. He nodded and asked, “Have you found Jesus, Hammett?”

  “I didn’t even know he was missing,” I replied. I didn’t want to be sacrilegious, but I have a low tolerance for zealots.

  He gave me a hard stare and turned away.

  The last person in line was Carl Wron, an elderly rancher with leathery skin and thinning hair. Which is certainly better than leathery hair and thinning skin. He did not offer me a job herding cattle or tending sheep. He wore a western shirt with a string tie and a belt with a buckle the size of a saucer.

  “Are you a donor, Mr. Wron?”

  “Oh, I give a little something now and again.”

  I was guessing it was more than a little something. A check for a hundred bucks doesn’t get you invited to a weekend retreat.

  “Is your ranch around here?”

  “No, it’s on the east side of the mountains. It’s a good thing I don’t have to get home for anything. I don’t reckon I could make it across the passes in this storm.”

  I had now met everyone in the room except a plump young woman standing behind the drinks table and a fellow in an ill-fitting red blazer. To be precise, I should call it a cherry-colored blazer. Cherry and silver are the official colors of the university. Because the blazer had “D. H. Lawrence Ranch” embroidered on the pocket over the seal of the University of New Mexico, I assumed he was Don Canon, the staff member I had talked to about the arrangements.

  I created my memory walk while the faces and names were fresh in my mind. Except it wasn’t a walk, it was a drive across the country. I pictured Benthrop in California, a phony playing at being an intellectual. Winant was in Arizona, on the lookout for illegal aliens who might be headed for Vegas to work in the casinos. Betty was in New Mexico for which I was thankful. Saunders was a tall Texan, and so on. I went over the list several times and wondered if it would work. After all, enchiladas and tacos were a lot easier to remember than a bunch of strangers.

  20

  Susannah had been meeting the same people I had but in a different sequence, and she joined me as Wron walked away.

  “Geez, I can see why things got a little confused. I tried to tell people we were friends and you didn’t just pick me up at the Museum like a stray cat, but they weren’t listening. Maybe it’s because they’re dignitaries.”

  “Well, at least most of them seem friendly, unlike California and Arizona.”

  “California and Arizona?”

  “Benthrop and Winant.”

  “Oh, your memory walk thing.”

  Don Canon (West Virginia) came over to welcome us. “I’m sorry the phones are not working. I suppose it’s the weather. Also, you need to know the Conference Center is completely non-smoking. If you have to smoke, you’ll have to go outside. Be aware there is a steep cliff just to the west of the parking area. There’s a guard rail, but it might be covered with snow by now.”

  “Do the electric lines ever go down in a storm like the phone lines have?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  He was so organized when we spoke about the arrangements that I was surprised by his uncertainty about the electricity. It made me nervous.

  Saunders, the retired judge, overheard my questions and told me he read in the brochure he received with his invitation that the Ranch had its own electric generator, so even if the grid went down because of the storm, we wouldn’t be affected. He also said he noticed there was plenty of firewood, so at least the big room would be warm although the bedrooms might get a bit cold at night.

  Betty joined us, and Susannah seized the opportunity to set the record straight. “Thanks for introducing us to everyone,” she said. “I guess I didn’t mention that I’ve known Hubie for... well, it seems forever.”

  “I know just how you feel. Even though I met him for the first time tonight, he seems like an old friend. It must be a gift he has.”

  “But I really mean it,” Susannah insisted.

  “Of course you do. Oh, try some of this bean dip. It’s absolutely fabulous.”

  Susannah shrugged and walked away. All the states were standing around chatting, and California and Arizona (Benthrop and Winant) had returned to the foyer where they were cloistered in conversation, whispering to each other in a conspiratorial manner.

  Betty saw me looking in their direction and said, “What a pair!”

  “How was Benthrop’s talk?” I asked.

  “Dreadful. You were wise to skip it. But Winant loved it. They’ve become inseparable since that talk.”

  “What do you do, Betty?”

  “Mostly charity work. My husband left me a ton of money, and I enjoy giving some of it away.” She edged a little closer, “But I’m no angel. I spend quite a lot of it having fun.”

  I resisted the temptation to ask what kind of fun for fear of where the conversation might lead. She had long lean limbs and a trim waist. I don’t know why I thought she was in her mid fifties. As I got a better look at her, I began to think she was closer to my age. O.K., I’m not all that far from fifty myself.

  She asked me what my talk would be about, and I told her I was planning to show pictures of old Indian pots and talk about how they were made.

  “Benthrop should love your talk. He says white civilization has self-destructed, and we are in the early stages of the next phase in the development of the human psyche where people of color will be in their ascendancy.”

  “How did that come up in a lecture on
Lawrence?”

  “He said Lawrence was the harbinger of the end of white supremacy. Why do you suppose he would say that?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t pretend to understand literature, but from the little bit I’ve read of Lawrence, I wouldn’t have said he was the harbinger of anything unless it was the decline of punctuation.”

  “I read Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” she volunteered.

  “And?”

  “It made me think about hiring a gardener.”

  I laughed and she held out her glass to me. “Vodka rocks,” she said and went off to the ladies room.

  I fixed her drink and another one for myself. I took a few sips while Betty was gone. She came back refreshed, and I handed her a drink about which the same thing could be said.

  Her posture was perfect and her walk graceful. It occurred to me that she was actually probably younger than me.

  I was staring at her remarkably taut skin, wide mouth and supple lips. Did I mention her makeup was expertly applied?

  She leaned in to me and asked, “Do you know that all the rooms are taken?”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “I figured that,” she said. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have brought the damsel in distress.”

  I had just finished my third Old Granddad, which I guess made the last one my great, great granddad, so I wasn’t sure who the damsel in distress was. I figured out it was Susannah just as Betty asked me where the damsel was planning to sleep, and I answered “with me” without thinking of how that sounded. Betty kissed me on the cheek, wished me sweet dreams and disappeared.

  21

  “Hubie, are you asleep?”

  “Yes,” I replied. I guess it goes without saying that I lied.

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because I drove for six hours, walked through deep snow for three miles, and drank an entire genealogy of bourbon.” Then I remembered something else. “On an empty stomach.”

  “Me too.”

  “You didn’t drive for six hours or walk through deep snow for three miles.”

  “I drove the last three miles and those were the most challenging.”

  “You didn’t drink any bourbon.”

  “I had wine and that was also on an empty stomach.”

  “O.K.,” I relented. “You can be asleep, too.”

  “I don’t want to be asleep, Hubie. I want to ask you something.”

  I rolled over to face the bed. The floor was hard, but at least I had my 500-thread-count sheets and my own goose-down pillow. Susannah had volunteered to take the floor because it was my room and she was the interloper, but she’s taller than I am and came closer to matching the length of the single bed in the tiny room we were occupying, so I insisted that she take the bed. Plus – and I didn’t say this to her – I’m at that age where I have to get up at least once in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and I didn’t want to have to step over her as I headed down the hall.

  There were halls on two opposite sides of the large center room, one on the east and one on the west. We were on the west side that had small bedrooms and a communal bathroom at each end of the hall. The east hall had larger rooms with private baths. At the back of the large room to the north was a storage room for tables, chairs, and other equipment on the left and on the right a commercial kitchen with stainless steel preparation tables, a walk-in freezer and a commercial range. There were three entrances into the kitchen, a large passageway from the main room, a smaller passageway from the east hall, and a service entrance on the back wall.

  “What do you want to ask me?”

  “Why are you here, Hubie?”

  “Is that a philosophical question, Suze? Because I’m really too tired to deal with a question like that.”

  “No, Hubie, it’s not a philosophical question. I don’t mean why are you here as in ‘what is your purpose in life?’ I mean why are you in this room when you could be with Betty?”

  “Huh?”

  “I saw the way you were looking at her there at the end, Hubie.”

  “That wasn’t me staring at her. That was my Old Granddad.”

  “Come on, Hubie, she’s not that old.”

  “It was a joke, Suze. I don’t know how old she is. She seemed to be getting younger as the night wore on, and I remembered an old joke about how women in a bar start to look better as closing time approaches, and I think this was a version of that phenomenon.”

  “Well, she was obviously coming on to you, Hubie, and I’m just wondering why you didn’t react?”

  “Umm. Well, see, the thing is, she asked me where you would be sleeping and, uh...”

  “Oh, jeez, don’t tell me you told her I’d be sleeping with you.”

  “I didn’t mean it the way it came out. I meant that you’d be in the room – like you are now.”

  “Well, there’s another thing we’ve got to straighten out in the morning. When you explain at the start of your presentation that you sell pots as a business and you’re not simply selling off your legacy, maybe you can add that we’re just friends.”

  “I don’t know, Suze. Don’t you think it would be a little awkward for me to announce out of the blue that we’re not sleeping together?”

  “Hmm. I see what you mean. If you say we’re just friends, everyone will wonder why you said it, and they’ll assume just the opposite.” She sighed. “Oh well, it doesn’t matter what they think. We’ll never see them again, and it’s not like there’s some guy I’m interested in here, so who cares if they think I’m your girlfriend?”

  “You didn’t like any of the men here?”

  “They’re all too old, Hubie. I guess donors are usually old. It must take a lifetime to accumulate enough money to give away.”

  “I think it’s more that people don’t start thinking about what to do with their money until they get old.”

  She gave a brief laugh. “You mean when they finally realize they can’t take it with them when they go?”

  “I think they’ve known all along they can’t take it with them when they go. I suspect what spurs their generosity is the realization of how soon they’ll be making the journey. But Glover and Patel aren’t very old.”

  “Glover is married. You’ve seen his wife on those car ads... but you don’t watch television and you don’t follow sports. Howard Glover was an All-Pro fullback in the National Football League. After he retired, he came back to New Mexico and started buying car dealerships. His wife is gorgeous, but she’s awful on television.”

  “UNM had a player good enough to play as a pro?”

  “He didn’t play at UNM. He played at New Mexico State.”

  “They play football?”

  “Not so’s you’d notice.”

  “What about Patel?”

  “He is sort of cute. His hair style gives him a sort of geeky look, and his skin is beautiful. His accent is also adorable. How old do you think he is, Hubie?”

  “I don’t know. Your age, maybe a little older.”

  “He’s probably married. Anyway, remember I vowed not to try so hard? I’m just going to enjoy the weekend and see what happens.”

  Fateful words, as it turned out.

  I waited until Susannah was asleep and tiptoed out of the room with my clothes. I put them on in the empty hall and went outside. I came back in with more clothes from the emergency supply I keep in the Bronco and with the box with the pot in it. I crept silently back into the room, removed the pot from the box and placed it on the desk. Then I put the clothes from the Bronco over the clothes I already had on, three layers in all, a knit hat under the hood of a parka, cotton gloves inside a bigger pair of leather ones, and large snow boots over insulated socks. I placed the box – empty now except for the peanuts – in a backpack, placed my flashlight in my parka and left the building.

  22

  Forty minutes later I reached the cabin where D. H. Lawrence had lived.

  It was up the road where I had spotted tire track
s as we had driven in earlier that night, but the tracks were no longer visible. It took me forty minutes to walk there because the snow was three feet deep, so I had to ease one leg down until it touched ground and then move it around until I found firm footing. Then I’d pull the other leg up out of the snow – no mean feat – and poke it down into the snow, and repeat the process over and over. It was hard work, and I had to stop every few minutes to catch my breath. The good news was that the air wasn’t that cold, perhaps in the high twenties, and my top half was sweating under the parka, the coat, and the sweater. Indeed, I unzipped the parka after the first twenty minutes.

  The bottom half of me was fairing less well. Despite having on long underwear and thick cotton pants, I felt like I was freezing. The snow clung to my legs, and I was becoming numb all the way up to an area where no man ever wants to be numb. The thought of frostbite crossed my mind and I picked up the pace. My top half was sweltering and my bottom half was freezing, but like the man with his head in the refrigerator and his feet in the stove, I was just right on average.

  The first thing I saw was the tree. I had read what Lawrence had written about it. “The big pine tree in front of the house, standing still and unconcerned and alive...the overshadowing tree whose green top one never looks at...One goes out of the door and the tree-trunk is there, like a guardian angel. The tree-trunk, the long work table and the fence!”

  The tree was failing its role as a guardian. The door to the cabin was unlocked. I stepped inside, switched on my flashlight and looked at a scene from the 1920’s. There were two oil lamps and an inexpertly made adobe fireplace, but no oil and no wood, so no light and no heat. There were tin plates, a cast iron skillet, earthenware jugs, and an old cross-saw. The bedsprings were un-upholstered, not because the fabric had rotted away with age but because they used to make bedsprings that way. There were some old black and white photos of Lawrence, Frieda, and The Brett, as she was called.