The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid (7 page)
Read The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid Online
Authors: J Michael Orenduff
“He told you that?”
I laughed. “I didn’t know him. I just knew about him because he was famous for eating wild plants.
When I was a kid, he
was often
a guest on
So
nny and Cher or the Tonight Show.”
“Eating wild plants got you on television in those days?”
“The back to nature thing was just getting popular, and he had this sort of rustic persona. I remember
when Sonny and Cher awarded him a
wooden
pla
q
ue, he took a bite of it.”
“Is that how you broke your tooth, trying to eat wood?”
“Nope. P
iñon nuts
, which are harder than wood.”
“And the sunburn?”
“My hat disappeared. Maybe it
blew away
“My size="+0" face="Palatino Linotype"> during the night
. Or maybe Geronimo ate it. He was
hungry
enough to do so.
”
“And you got the black eye and skinned nose when you tried to walk and drink at the same time.”
I admitted it.
Susannah doesn’t have classes on Friday night, which was a good thing since my
cliff dwelling
narrative was taking longer than the
3182 alliterative l
ines of
Beowulf
.
I waved Angie over and asked for a large glass of ice water.
I still felt dehydrated. And I wanted to limit my alcohol intake. Two margaritas w
ere
en
ough for a man in my condition.
Susannah asked for more salsa then turned to me.
“Are you going to tell me what finally happened, or do you want me to piece together the story by your appearance
?
Your lips
are
scabs. Your nose
is glowing like a stop light.
You have a black eye and a broken tooth
. You have a cast on your ankle
, and
yo
u’ve been squinting all evening.
”
“And those are my best features.”
I sipped some water while she laughed. “
Oddly enough, the first thing I did after the fall was check the shard. I had it in my shirt pocket. It was so long that it stuck out, so I couldn’t button the pocket. I was relieved to see it wasn’t broken.”
“I’m not surprised
you checked the shard before
you checked
your ankle. You treat that stuff like it’s holy.”
“May Kotyypebe it is.
But this one is strange.”
“How so?”
“I’m not sure exactly. Something about the design.”
“Like you think you’ve seen it before?”
“No. What bothers me is that I
haven’t
seen it before. But
I don’t know why that bothers me.
It’s not like I know every design ever made by ancient potters.”
“Maybe it will come to you when you try to make a copy based on the shard.”
I suspected she was right. That often happens.
“
I
finally
managed to stand up. But when I put weight on
the
bad ankle, I collapsed again. The pain was
severe
.
I knew I wasn’t going to be able to walk.
I tried to convince Geronimo to go for help, but he didn’t understand.”
“Why am I not surprised? Then what?”
“I started thinking about dying.”
“
Wow,” she said slowly, drawing the word out
into two syllables
like she really meant it.
“
Were you scared?”
“Not at first. I didn’t want to die, of course, but I figured I was luckier than most people. I had great parents and a happy childhood. I’ve had good health and good friends. And dying of thirst is not gruesome or painful. I told myself
there are lots of
worse ways to go. Then I looked up and
thought I was headed for one of those worse ways. A guy was walking towards me with a
hunting bow
in his right hand and a bloody dead body thrown over his left shoulder.”
“
Let m Knotgn="juse guess. He also had war paint
on his face
and feathers in his hair. The dehydration
was causing you to
hallucinate.”
“He wasn’t wearing a headdress, just a wide-brimmed hat. He knew better than to go out in the New Mexico sun without a hat because he was a doctor.”
“And the bloody guy was
one of his patients
?”
“No,
when they got closer, I
realized
he was
part of an
e
lk.
Or
it
was
part
of
an
elk. The doctor had killed it and was hauling it back to
a
Jeep. His name is Fred Koelher.
He
checked to make sure I didn’t ne
ed immediate attention then
dropped the elk piece a
nd
jogged away. He
returned a few minutes later
in the Jeep
with his guide
, a
hulking man with dark eyes
whom he introduced as
Alonso
Castillo
Maldonado
.
”
“
Koehler
gave
you the
first, last and middle names
of his guide
? That’s sort of formal when you
’
r
e
meeting out in the wild
,
isn’t it?
”
“
He didn’t give me
a
middle name because
the guide didn’t have one
.
‘Castillo’ and ‘Maldonado’ are his two last names.”
“Two things can’t both be last, Hubert.”
I thought about that for a few seconds.
“You’re right. In Spanish they’
re called
apellidos
, what
I guess
we
would call
‘
appellations
’ or ‘surnames’
. It’s the way people have traditionally been named in Spain, and the tradition came here with the
conquistadores
. A person’s first
apellido
is his father’s name.”
“Shouldn’t you say ‘his or hers’?”
“I said ‘his’ because the person we happen to be discussing is a man.
But women are actually more important in the Spanish naming system. The second surname comes from the mother, the third from the paternal grandmother, the fourth from the maternal grandmother, the fifth from the—“
“Okay, I get it. All the names except the first on
e
come from women. How many can they have?”
“
I guess since they expelled the Moslem invaders, they can have only one woman.”
“Sheesh. How many
names
?”
“So far as I k KSo +0" face=now,
the sky’s the limit
for
ap
e
l
lidos
. M
ost people
t
hese days just use two.
So the doctor should have introduced the guide as
Alonso Castillo
. But he probably didn’t know that and was just trying to be polite.
”
“
Shouldn’t
he have introduced him as Alonso
Maldonado?”
“No, when you address someone, you always use the first last name.”
“Nothing can be a
first
last name. If it’s really last, then it’s the
only
last name.”
“Right again. I should have said the first
apellido
.
Guess where Castillo lives?”
“In Maldonado?”
“That’s a good one. No
,
he lives in
La Reina. Some coincidence, right?”
“There are no coincidences, Hubert.”
“So you always say.
”
“
And
even if there were coincidences, that wouldn’t be one.
”
I didn’t argue the point.
I didn’t even understand it.
“They
lifted me in
Dr. Koehler
took me
from there
to Albuquerque in his rental car.”
“Rental car?”
“Yeah,
he
lives
back east
, but he comes out here every year to hunt elk.
That’s probably why he didn’t
unders
t
and
the Spanish naming custom.
”
“Hunting elk makes you misunderstand
Spanish names
?
”
I made no reply.
“
Anyway
,” she said, “
y
ou were right about being luckier than most people. There you
were
in the middle of nowhere, miles from a road and on the verge of death, and a doctor comes along and takes you home. I guess he put that cast on your ankle, too.”