Drama on the Compound

[We live in a small rented adobe house with a tiny apartment on the south end where our landlord lives. His other house is the one in the snow picture below, seen through our kitchen window. Both structures are situated on a steeply-sloped acre of sagebrush, juniper, and piñon that faces roughly east, with a large acequia at the bottom of the hill, hence the "compound..."]

Today was the day the weather turned around and bit us on the ass.

After seeming to give up completely [see previous post], the storm finally got itself together and basically shut down Taos. This afternoon we had moderately heavy snow with strong winds and considerable drifting. As I write this, it’s barely 20 degrees, heading down to the low teens.

There isn’t all that much snow, maybe a foot or more where it piled up a bit, but when it freezes on the roads, that’s plenty, thank you very much. The local road crews dumped so much salt or whatever it is that the slush turned red. Unfortunately, when it gets as cold as it is now, salt doesn’t work, and you’d pretty much have to be insane to try to drive anywhere. I had an errand, actually, so I had to go out, but that was before it got as bad as it is now. My obligation and the weather itself got in the way of picture-taking, but the sun will probably be out tomorrow, and I will be too.

What I had to do is relevant to this post, however. Our 74-year-old landlord needed a ride to the hospital to have his feet attended to (don’t ask — it’s far too disturbing for me to even describe). He’s the dearest soul that ever was, and also the frailest, most physically afflicted person I’ve ever known. He’s always sick, 12 months of the year, from one thing or another. He smokes constantly, and yes, he uses oxygen. His lungs are shot, half a kidney is gone, he suffers from sciatica, allergies, constant colds, you name it. And now he has bronchitis! It’s worse than that, I fear, because he’s so short of breath. To me that means fluid in the lungs, and you know where that leads. Anyway, our neighbor was scheduled to take him to Holy Cross for his appointment, but her husband managed to get a flight out of Chicago after all, so she had to take off this afternoon — in the snow — to drive to Albuquerque, and I was next in line.

We got to the hospital all right and even made it home afterwards, but the poor guy never looked so terrible. I was half afraid he’d die on me on the way back. Now, I know a lot of you are thinking, “take that poor man to emergency and have his blood oxygen checked!” But of course, that was precisely where we’d come from, and he’s well known to the doctors there. I doubt anyone checked out anything but his feet this time, and even if they had, what could they have done, and would he really be any better off now if they had? When he had his kidney operation earlier this fall, they kept him in the hospital for a full two weeks longer than expected because he was just too frail to be released, and those of us who know him thought he wouldn’t be coming home at all. That’s how bad he was. Yet today, I swear the man was worse.

Between the storm and the landlord, the afternoon was pretty intense. After I’d helped him back into his apartment, where he obviously wanted to be (rejecting all assistance), I had the bright idea that I should leave the ’89 Dodge parked up on the road instead of at the bottom of a sloping driveway. In case we needed to be insane and go somewhere, you understand. My manly duty to have the vehicle free, and all that. To my great surprise, however, the Dodge wanted no part of backing out.

I spent a good 30 minutes trying to get up the hill. I could make it a couple of car lengths easily enough, but then the Dodge would swing hard to the left and into the sagebrush. I must have tried this a dozen times, and all it ever did was swing left at the exact same spot. This was infuriating, but I didn’t want to get out, trudge through the snow to find the kitty litter, and try again. But by this point the snow had turned to solid ice, and I was having trouble getting the car lined up straight between attempts or even stopped before crashing into my truck. All very crazy, sure: a know-it-all guy, his wife’s car, a lot of snow, and what can you do. Thankfully, at some point I got scared and went and got the kitty litter, which actually did the trick (amazing stuff): now the Dodge would get two-thirds of the way up instead of just halfway and was sliding in a completely different place. Har. Progress of a sort.

The third or fourth time I tried this, I built up enough speed to get the car turned 90 degrees on the icy slope, leaving me nowhere to go but forward into fresh snow in the little side driveway that the neighbors used. Aha! The Dodge didn’t mind a foot of actual snow, as opposed to icy slush, so I gunned it in reverse, let it slip of its own accord enough to make the turn, then clawed my way to the top of the drive through more unpacked powder all the way to the road. Whew! I determined that wherever I’d ended up was a great place to park, and that’s where the car is now. In the morning the snowplow will probably wall it in, but I can dig it out. At least it’s on semi-level ground.

About this time the neighbor who’d left to go pick up her husband in Albuquerque pulled into the driveway in her 4WD Nissan truck. The husband’s flight out of Chicago was cancelled because of other cancellations, due to the Denver airport being shut down, and he’d managed to reach her when she came out of the Rio Grande canyon just north of Española. (There’s about a 20-mile stretch where you can’t always use your cell phone.) She was spiffed up in a way to lift any man’s spirits, wearing very different clothes than she’d had on earlier that day hauling wood in for her morning fire. I told her about the landlord, and we commiserated about that while she stood there getting her bare head covered white with snow.

Back in the house, a different neighbor (also 74 years old) called to tell me to look outside at the birds in the tall cottonwood trees down by the acequia. I glance out the window into the gloom and couldn’t believe all the magpies! There must have been 50 or 60 of them. She told me that earlier that afternoon, while the landlord and I were at the hospital, there’d been a huge flock of ravens in the same trees. “They kept taking off, circling D_____’s place, then landing back in the cottonwoods,” she said. (Around here we pay attention to ravens.) She told me she’d had experience with ravens announcing death before, presaging someone being called. She didn’t need to say so, though. Been there, done that.

The gentlest guy I’ve ever had for a landlord is right next door, just the other side of 18 inches of hard adobe bedroom wall in fact, and I hope he makes it to the new year. (That would be the winter solstice, more or less tomorrow.) I don’t really know what else to say, except that I have a strong sense of everything being proper, in its place, and utterly unknowable. A man could die tonight just 15 feet from where we lay our heads — or I could have a stroke and die next door to HIM!

We don’t consider this nearly enough, yet it’s in our faces every day.

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