This Red Rock |
Louise Blaydon
2
This Red Rock
MAGDALENA, according to the guidebook I picked up from
the library last spring, is an incorporated village in Socorro
County, New Mexico: perennially mild, of considerable
historic interest, and set at an elevation of 6,548 feet. It
marks the trail"s end of the old Socorro Magdalena railroad,
neighbors the abandoned mining town of Kelly, and, with a
population of 1,200, is most definitely the kind of place
where everyone knows each other. It"s also—as, again, I
worked out from the guidebook—the closest town to my
Uncle Frank"s ranch, and, therefore, the place I was making
for. That was the plan, anyway.
Not, please note, that it was actually
my
plan.
My
plan,
if I"d had my way, would have been to hang out lazy and free
around San Diego all summer, no doubt eschewing the
library in favor of the attractions of the beach, the parks,
and my friends in cosmopolitan downtown. San Diego is an
awesome
place to go to school, whoever you are, but when
you"re a guy who grew up as the lone homo in a small town
in Arizona, my
God
, but you appreciate it. I remember
driving out here with a few friends as a rising senior in high
school—we took a trip just before school started up,
checking out the colleges we were thinking about applying
to—and falling in love with the place the second we entered
the city limits. Where I come from, everything is red dirt and
dust. The idea of a city whose freeways were lined with
trees—well, they might as well have been paved with gold,
that"s all I"m saying. We scooted around town for a couple
This Red Rock |
Louise Blaydon
3
hours in Jimmy Romero"s little convertible, I remember,
winding up, naturally, in the university district. I was half-
euphoric already, even before I caught sight of the shock-
haired waitress and the rainbow beaded band around her
wrist. After that, I was sold. The guys, of course, thought I
had a crush on the waitress; the waitress, on the other
hand, knew exactly what was going down, and winked at me
as we left. I guess you must see a lot of kids like I was then,
in those kooky little cafés downtown, wide-eyed and weirdly
liberated at their first glimpse of an actual, real-life,
out
person. Guess she recognized the way I was gaping at her,
not like I wanted her, but like I kind of wanted to
be
her.
I wanted to be her all the way back to Arizona. Hell, I
wanted it all the way through senior year. The thought of
being free to be unashamed like that—to pierce one ear and
dye my hair and hang out in coffee bars in red chucks,
discoursing on philosophy—was what got me through my
SATs and my college applications, and the hell that was AP
French. When I drove back to San Diego in my own little car
a year after that first time, I felt like I"d won something
monumental and indescribable. I was gonna make friends I
didn"t have to lie to; I was gonna
be
there in the Pride
parade. I was gonna lie around in the park on sunny days,
talking to sailors and reading Nietzsche and looking
educated and beautiful. San Diego was where I was gonna be
me.
I don"t have to tell you it didn"t exactly
pan out that way.
I mean, the dreams we dream about the big wide world never
do. But the things that were most important to me, the
essence
of what I wanted, I got, and it really was San Diego
that let me do that. I"m myself, when I"m there, dressing the
This Red Rock |
Louise Blaydon
4
way I feel comfortable, hanging out with guys I genuinely
like, whom my mother would, no doubt, despise. In San
Diego, I can stretch in the sun and say honestly, “Yes,
this
is
the real Alex Arzano.” I"ve never really felt that, anywhere
else I"ve been.
You probably understand, then, why the idea of being
shipped off to the wilds of New Mexico didn"t exactly fill me
with joy.
Thing is, the Southwest is in my blood. Much as I hate
to admit it when I"m sitting cross-legged in some beat poetry
joint where the air is sweet with weed, that"s what we"ve been
since Grandfather Arzano stepped off the boat from Calabria:
Southwesterners. I was born under the shadow of that red
rock and, sitting there declaiming my T.S. Eliot, it was there
where my ghost strode behind me, where my fear showed in
a handful of dust. The Southwest is in me—
is
me—but it"s
my
past.
I didn"t want
to be stalked by the shadow of my
rural childhood.
And so, I argued: “Mama, can"t I just stay here?”
But she was adamant. “Alex, honey, Francesco is paying
your fees. The least you can do is help him out a little over
the summer. He doesn"t have any obligation to you, you
know. Any time he liked, he could cut off your money at the
source.”
And boy, if
that
didn"t sober me up real quick. Leaving
San Diego for a summer didn"t exactly appeal, but the idea of
having to leave it forever, disconsolate and without a degree,
was insupportable. If Magdalena for the summer meant San
Diego for the next two years, then dammit, I would just have
to trip out down to Magdalena. I"d seen the ranch a couple
This Red Rock |
Louise Blaydon
5
times before as a kid; I knew it smelled like cows and shit
and was run almost entirely in Spanish. I was under no
illusions about it being an easy ride—my Uncle Frank has
never been the sort for that—but hell, it was still a better
deal than the potential alternative.
End of semester, I waved farewell to my buddies, slung
my crap into the trunk of my little Fiesta, and filled her up,
ready for a long, long drive.
Coulda been worse. At least I didn"t look Anglo.
TO MITIGATE my plight, I packed about half a trunk full of
Dylan CDs, all sonorous nasals and sentences swallowing
their own tails. “„Señor",” I crooned with him, into the wind,
“„señor, can you tell me where we"re heading? Lincoln County
Road or Armageddon?"” and I"d never quite seen the truth in
that beauty, before. I didn"t anticipate much comfort, the
way I was bound. I guess it made the long road just a little
shorter; to feel that there was somebody on it with me,
somebody who had been this way himself. Once, I even
thought I caught him singing just for me—“and I"ll pray for
Magdalena as we ride”—and the misconception warmed me
for a whole turn around the CD, before the track came round
again and I realized that Magdalena was only his girl, and he
was
playing
for her all the way to Durango. Well, I wasn"t
headed anywhere near Durango, and I sure as hell didn"t
have a girl. I liked my mishearing a whole lot better. In my
head, as I drove through the desert, the words were as I first
heard them, hopeful and apposite. Pray for me, señor. Pray
for us.
This Red Rock |
Louise Blaydon
6
In New Mexico, things fall away. The farther I struck
toward the state line, the cleaner the roadside verges were,
the fewer the billboards stark against the sky. I always forget
just how much sky there
is
down there in the southwest,
until I drive back out there again and it"s all I can see. You
can go all day under its azure vastness, bright and fierce as
some strange water-metal, and then in the evening it"s like
it"s all erased and repainted, all massed red clouds gilt-edged
on a purple plain. I"m getting a little lyrical here, I know, but
New Mexico sky is something to be lyrical
about.
If I were
really a poet, I"d paint that sky in words.
It awed me, that great vista, as evening fell and my
peppy little car chugged on across the sun-dried earth to the
Magdalena Mountains. I guess I started to see some possible
benefits, in those last few hours of my sticky three-day drive,
of all this beauty for a hedonist like me. But as the ranch
finally swam into view, its stiff-poled fences and its disparate
cows amassed in sullen little clumps, I forgot whatever it was
that had started to move me. This would be a summer of
sweat and dirt and shit, resentment on my part and
irritation on Frank"s. As I turned onto the dirt track that led
me down to the house, my face was set, my mouth a little
down-turned. I am many things, but I"m sure as hell no
cowboy.
Frank was quite obviously of the same opinion. We"re
Italian, and that means we don"t hold with any of that “no
touching” crap other families pull with their sons and
nephews, so he pulled me toward him and hugged me hard
when he saw me, but I didn"t miss the flicker of doubt under
his smile as he pulled away. He was looking at my chucks,
pristine and alien in the dirt. “How are you,
grissino
?” he
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Louise Blaydon
7
asked, in his dark copper voice. He gave me that nickname
when I was a kid, when I was all height and no muscle. It
means, for want of a better definition, “bread stick.” I
couldn"t help hearing, in his use of it now, an undertone of
“think you can stick this?”
To be perfectly honest, I was far from sure myself. But
the last thing I wanted was for Frank to think badly of me.
He"s a tough guy, my Uncle Frank, but he"s a fair one, and
he was certainly a hell of a lot more judicious than my father
was when I came out in my freshman year of college. Given
that Dad is a businessman making the occasional commute
to a decent-sized city, and Frank is a rancher who never
leaves his home on the range, you"d have been forgiven for
expecting the opposite outcome. But as it was, my dad is still
coming to terms with things—although I know he will,
eventually—whereas Frank didn"t even seem to need time to
think. He just clapped me on the shoulder, ruffled my hair,
and said, “Cchhh, I knew that,
grissino
.” The fact that he
was so great about it was what made me particularly eager,
suddenly, to impress him, when I saw that doubt in his eyes.
He knew I was queer, and he didn"t give a damn, but he also,
I could tell, thought it meant I wouldn"t be up to much in the
way of ranch work.
“I"m great,” I told him, and suddenly, I meant it, or,
goddamn, I meant to mean it. I put on my best eager-beaver
smile, and tried to un-tilt the natural stance of my hips. I"m