Next on the Digital Potlatch agenda is this Horse Fly column from January, 2005. This one was written six months after my wife had moved away, and shortly before she was to fly down to Taos for Christmas.
New sheets were part of the plan, of course. There’s something being referred to in the opening that I can’t quite remember, but I’m sure it had to do with my churned-up emotions at the prospect of seeing her again after such a long time. If you were reading these pieces in sequence, you’d read this one next to learn about the visit itself. No need, though. This stands on its own.
Brown Sheets
Who knew a person could get used to panic?
The candied pretzels hissing in my stomach were a sign. The first ones had gone down easily enough, but now they popped like water on a smoking griddle. Bloody hell! I used to be able to eat this stuff, but not any more. Neither fantasy nor hope would do it for me now, and certainly not sweets. It wasn’t just the parent crimes and wasn’t only Taos, either. It wasn’t MasterCard or let-me-go, not even all that muscle wasted tensing for the blow. All those years, good God almighty.
Her openness had taken me by surprise. It shouldn’t have, but I was ready for the worst. Embarrassed, I pondered my good fortune. It felt like trying on a beautiful new shirt right after rising from the mud, and I hoped no one would notice. After mailing bills in Ranchos, I let the Ford decide to go to Wal-Mart. As I climbed up to the double-lane, a 25-year-old pale blue truck with a teetering load of piñon came crazy-fast from Talpa, ran right through the stop sign, and careened out onto U.S. 68, the inboard front wheel clawing air. I didn’t have to honk or brake and let it go, amazingly.
Ten minutes later I had the sheets.
Khaki ones, actually. I really wanted them and bought them quite spontaneously. They’re the color of WWII Army Air Corp summer uniforms, light and warm, like south Texas sunlight on the wing of a PT-17. Like luminous tanned skin, or fresh unstuccoed adobe in the clean warm light of the glorious Southwest. When I saw them in the store, I realized I hadn’t changed my sheets in way too long because I liked the purple and gold ones I had on now and didn’t like the dark blue set waiting to replace them. The light brown khaki sheets suggested adobe and earth. I thought they’d look “New Mexican,” adobe inside adobe.
That night I washed them before putting them on the bed, because they smelled a little “plastic-y” to me. The washer in the kitchen has a drain hose that that hangs down in the sink. I laid a cast-iron skillet lid on top to keep it in place and built a big fire in the wood stove, then hung a rope across the vigas for a clothesline. Everything dried quickly after that. Remarkable, I thought, this wood-fired clothes dryer. Solar, of course, the energy in the wood from water, carbon dioxide, and photons older than myself. All of it, the whole damn stew, past history itself, recycled tears and breath and sunlight. Taking an old towel, I wiped the condensation from the windows and wrung it into the sink.
Looking at the freshly turned-down sheets, I noticed once again how much they reminded me of military uniform cloth from long ago (radial engines snarling overhead; the smell of hot oil, leather, dust, and Lucky Strikes). That pleased me in an unexpected way, and it was comforting to think of sun-warmed cotton on my father’s back in tumultuous but simpler times, when he was young and vulnerable, way before the knots began to grow and harden.
I took a bath at 3:00 a.m., a necessary ritual before clean sheets, went to bed at 4:00, and slept soundly until after 11 o’clock. As I lay there in a semi-fog with a hungry waiting cat upon my shoulder, I felt I’d been sleeping on warm clean sand that soaked up sweat from hungry ghosts without a trace. Like the earth itself, infinitely forgiving and absorbing of all natural flows, self-cleansing in the sun.
Brown sheets, warm sand, adobe, and a clean blue sky. Peace will come, the earth will heal, and everyone will have a chance.
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