Essays

Moseying: Living La Vida Llanero

Life at MaryNeal
May 11, 2005

“Good grief, there has been another killer bee attack. Every county in the region has had one this year.” The retired farmer lowered his paper and looked at his cronies. At 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning a half dozen retired farmers in Roscoe, Texas, wake up early, in instinctual response to the stirrings of botanic tumescence, even when no longer active in their life’s profession. Nowadays such men gather at the convenience store on the interstate. The multi-service facility, with gas pumps, car wash, hot food, and a handful of tables is what now passes for the village café on the town square. (The town’s old business district has empty buildings.)

Times are a-changing, that’s for sure, for we humans are always reinventing and adapting. The old men drank “dressed-up” coffee (Spanish Mocha and Golden Columbian) and ate chorizo burritos for breakfast. Their papas drank black coffee and ate eggs, bacon, and grits. The men kept chewing the fat about the bees.

“Two kids got stung badly – two little kids who were rescued by their neighbor. All of them got stung badly – it took over a week for them to recover.”

“On television I heard a lady who was all put out say, ‘They should do something about the bees.’ That made me laugh – acts of God and acts of nature are things the authorities can’t really do much about.”

“The bee attacks are random. I’ve seen swarms of bees and didn’t get stung.” One of 80 John Wallace’s descendants, after chatting with the young Hispanic clerk, added his two cents. The black man with the salt and pepper beard joined the other men, settling in for the morning roundtable discussion.

I finished my own chorizo burrito as daybreak revealed cloudy skies. I had seen lightning driving over from Midland. I was early for the 14th annual ranch tour at Temple and Kathy Dickson’s 69 ranch. They usually invite about 20 people. I serve as a resource person, talking about the flora, fauna, and Indian lifeways. The canyons on the ranch were popular Panateka Comanche wintering grounds. I stood up, tossed my coffee cup into the trash and returned to the car. I wanted to do some botanizing before the tour, stopping and walking along the road, admiring the prettiest patches of wildflowers on the way.

I admired the rich dark brown soil of the Roscoe farming district as I drove towards the Highland School, one of the last remaining rural consolidated schools in the state. A water well drilling rig sat in the middle of one of the smaller farm fields – there would be a house there next year. Folks have cleared the pasture west of my home place, and putting in a water well. Changes, more changes, and more changes. My father would have been resentful of the new development right next to our gate, if he was still alive. He hated seeing our neighborhood slowly fill with houses. Change bothered him more and more as he became older.

As soon as I passed the school I slowed to a crawl. After leaving Roscoe no other vehicle had been on the road. What a stupendous wildflower year! Deborah was at home, nursing a respiratory infection, and was probably still sleeping. When I stopped to check out a strip of wildflowers under a road cut, a stiff and chilly Gulf wind shoved me around. “It feels more like April,” I told myself.

“Deborah would loved to seen this – skullcap in full bloom – a hundred foot long purple pool of color. The silver leaves under the 3 inch yellow blossoms of Missouri evening primrose rimmed the edge of the skullcap. Oh, Deborah, you would have loved all the dark red Indian blanket, the white spires of milkwort, the pinkish bells of the foxglove penstemon, the yellow mounds of Englemann Daisy, the stars of the sky blue flax, and the catclaw mimosa with all of their pink and white fuzzy flowers. Oh, lordy, Girl, you are missing such beauty.” I talk to Deborah even when she is not with me!

“Oh my – this is psychedelic, with hallucinatory colors, with dream colors. The glories of the gifts of the Lord are so visceral after a decade of drought – the beauty creates an emotional impact.” I raised my arms in supplication and gratitude to the heavens, absorbing the beauty. After ten minutes of “pure-d” enjoyment, I drove on. Nary a car had yet passed me. I love the emptiness of rural roads – but then I am goofy. “Dwaddling” on country roads is a delightful and perfect vacation for me!

As I rounded the first “section line corner” curve towards the Lone Star Cement plant at MaryNeal, a man trotted out of the fencerow cedars, waving his arms. His shirt was bloody and torn. I pulled over and lowered the window.

“We had a wreck – you got a phone? We’ve been here since two in the morning. My buddy is hurt too bad to move.” The gaunt, stringy-haired 30-something “tweaker,” reeking of stale beer, was shivering uncontrollably, his long blond hair whipping in the wind. I could see the wreck on the other side of the fence, mostly hidden by the cedars – a pickup upside down, its cab mashed flat.

“Nobody has come by all night.” His voice quavered with his shivering. I wondered to myself why he had not walked the mile to the cement plant. I punched the OnStar Emergency button. Almost instantaneously I was talking to the dispatcher for the Nolan County Sheriff’s department.

“We’ve been looking for him since his cell phone went dead right after the wreck. He told us they were near the airport clear on the other side of the county. I guess he thought the flashing lights of the cement plant were airport lights.” I heard her broadcast to all of the first responder units the exact location – that new-fangled GPS technology is wonderful!

I gave the car blanket to the tweaker to take and drape over his companion. The fellow’s frantic nervousness and pathetic beer stink was disgruntling. His companion, a Hispanic man my age, was sitting and leaning against the truck, and he called out to me. “Can you call my brother – he lives down the road. Can you tell him I am okay – it just hurts if I move. I probably have a busted shoulder and busted ribs.”

The dispatcher heard his words. “I’ve already called his brother.” She went on to tell me, “His brother is a city employee that we all know and like – his brother has been up all night worrying about him. A chopper, an ambulance, a deputy, a state trooper and a wrecker are all on the way. You’ve got ten minutes before anybody shows up.”

For those ten minutes, the tweaker paced up and down the road, chain-smoking and shivering. The hurt fellow just sat and stared across the pasture. I sat in the car, chatting with the dispatcher. “Visiting Temple, huh? Came over from Midland, did you – you must have got up early. The Dickson’s place is incredible isn’t it? We called him to tell him his fence is down, just now.”

After arriving, the helicopter hovered and circled above the scene, not coming directly down. I got out of the car to wave at them, but as soon as I waved, I felt stupid. As I jerked my arms down, four vehicles of officialdom came around the bend, “hovering” to a stop, approaching the scene slowly and alertly. Each man got to work, not saying a word to me. I stood and watched for a few minutes. I left, after asking if anybody needed to talk to me, and after grabbing my blanket from the injured man just before he was maneuvered on to the stretcher.

His groans, the thump-thump of the copter’s rotor blades, and the grackle-squawk of the first responders communication devices resonated in what was otherwise a soundless landscape, soundless but for the wind whispering, “Change, change, change, change.” Sometimes change is as abrupt as a wreck, and at other times, change sneaks in unseen.