A small figure shuffled steadily along behind the bar and then around the counter. “Who’s that?” she called, holding her hand like a visor above her eyes, as if to shield them from the almost nonexistent light.
“Hi, Bennie.”
“Jamaica! Is that you?” She hurried to hug me. She was tiny, not five feet tall, yet strong and wiry. She felt like a child in my embrace.
“Lord, kiddo, I’m so glad you came. I really need your help. My office is a mess; let’s talk out here. Do you want something to eat? Let me get you a breakfast burrito.” She started to go back behind the counter. “Did you meet Manny?”
“No, I’m okay. I already had breakfast.”
“Manny’s our new dishwasher.” She came back and pulled out the chair opposite me at the table. “I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t shown up, especially for this weekend. He just wandered in here last night, asking for me by name, didn’t seem to know exactly what he was looking for-I don’t think he’s too bright. But I told him about the big event this weekend and how bad I needed a dishwasher. I offered him a job, and he took it, right on the spot. He just started this morning. Sit down.” She waved a hand over the table. She yelled toward the kitchen, “Manny, we got dirty dishes out here.”
I took my coat off, then my hat, ran my fingers through my flattened bangs, placed my stuff on a chair, and sat down in the one beside it.
“I was just thinking about you the other day. It seems like it’s been forever since you came by. Then, this thing happened. Kiddo, I really need your help.”
“What’s going on? What’s this ‘Woman down’ thing?”
“I’m desperate. I really need you to do something for me. I need someone who is in good shape.”
“In good shape?”
“It’s for a good cause. It’s for the wildlife rehab center.”
As we were talking, Manny shuffled out and started clearing the tables. He picked up several of the dishes in his hands and started back toward the kitchen.
“Manny, honey, bring a tub,” Bennie said. “You can get them all in one trip that way.” She turned back to me. “Now, where was I?”
“What’s for a good cause?”
“Oh, right. We need to raise money. Fast. We’ve just had so many critters to take care of, our expenses have doubled over the past two years. We need to build on; we can’t keep working out of that tiny little building.”
“What’s this got to do with me?”
“We’re doing a fund-raiser. It’s all set, we’re ready to go, and then one of the girls that was part of it has sprained her ankle. I need you to take her place.”
“Take her place at what? What does it entail?”
Manny reappeared with a large gray plastic tub and a wet rag. He loaded all the dishes and plastic cups from one table into the tub, then washed the tabletop with the rag.
“It’s a fashion show,” Bennie said. “We have a dozen girls, and we’re bringing in a great band, Ailsa Ten and the Decade-they’re from Colorado, one of the best bands in the Southwest. And we have the director of the Taos Community Theater choreographing the show.”
“A fashion show? Me?”
“I wouldn’t ask, kiddo, but I’m desperate. We were good to go until we lost one of our girls. We have to have someone take her place.”
I gave a little snort. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to do that. Unless you let me model outdoor gear.”
“Well, that’s the thing.” Bennie pursed her lips and dipped her chin. “It’s a lingerie fashion show.”
“A what?”
Having cleared the rest of the tables, Manny moved the tub to the counter and started washing the stainless steel countertop.
“Look, nobody around here is going to pay good money to see girls wearing high fashion. This is New Mexico, for goodness’ sake! We know we’ll pack the house with a show that has good-looking women modeling lingerie. It’s a sure bet we’ll make a lot of money for the rehab center.”
I put my hands on the table and started to get up. “Sorry, Bennie. I just got put on a team assignment with the Forest Service. I’m doing night rides, starting tonight.”
“Are you working Saturday night?”
I stood up and reached for my hat. “No. But I’m not the modeling kind. I don’t want to strut around in lingerie in front of a bunch of slobbering men. Sorry.”
Bennie stood up, too. “Look, Jamaica, I’m desperate. Please? I’m not asking for me; it’s for the wildlife center.”
I put my hat on, then lifted my coat. “I’ll make a donation. I left my bag in the car, but I’ll go get it and write you a check.”
Bennie put a hand on my arm. “Look, kiddo, remember that time you had me come out and trap that family of skunks that got under your cabin so you wouldn’t have to kill them? I hauled those stinkers all the way to Tres Piedras to release them in that watershed area for you. Anyone else would have poisoned them or trapped and killed them.”
I held my coat in midair. “I remember. And I’m grateful. I told you, I’ll make a donation.”
Bennie still held her hand on my arm. “And I also helped you with that bear when Game and Fish was going to have it shot,” she said.
I let out a sigh. Bennie had retired from the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish two years ago. But in the time before that, she and I had worked closely to preserve wildlife habitat on BLM land. We had shared a handful of wildlife rescues-either injured animals or orphaned young. Our most daring endeavor was when we managed to trap a bear who had been shot in the leg and transport it in a cage in the back of a pickup truck to the wildlife rehabilitation center in Española. This was a clandestine endeavor, as the director of Game and Fish had declared the bear unsalvageable and ordered it shot. I was the one who persuaded Bennie to risk losing her job to help save the animal. Bennie now served at the wildlife center on the board of directors as well as working nearly full-time as a volunteer. Running the Golden Gecko was an investment for her, but her heart still belonged to wildlife.
“You’ll only need to rehearse once, just a quick run-through on Saturday morning,” she said, knowing she had called in a debt I would have to pay.
I gave a little grunt of surrender. “I can’t believe you’re asking me to prance around in a nightie in front of a crowd.”
She winked. “I couldn’t believe it when you asked me to haul a bear down the highway from north of Taos all the way to Española in a pickup truck. That’s a hard thing to do without attracting attention, you know.”
9
My next stop was Agua Azuela, a scattering of old adobes tucked into a crevice carved between two mountains by a bubbling stream, which the Hispanic residents referred to as the río. In the village center, an ancient-looking church, poor and sad, struggled out of the lower slope of the mountain. Farther up in the hills, newer homes built by Anglos perched on lofty precipices with panoramic views. Their owners did not have to concern themselves with protection from Comanche and Apache raiders, as the original inhabitants of Agua Azuela did. The early settlers here needed to be within quick running distance of the well-fortified churchyard wall in case of attack, and so this was the sole basis for the original design of the community. There were no streets other than the one-lane dirt road that ran through the narrow canyon right up to the church. Rutted dirt drives fed off the main road back into the folds of terrain where the houses nestled. An old wooden bridge spanning the rio rumbled whenever one of the residents drove over it. An abundance of large gray-white cottonwoods and red willows lined the blue-green water for which Agua Azuela was named.
I aimed my Jeep toward the home of a friend of mine. Regan Daniels lived right on the rio in a beautiful adobe with a wall of south-facing windows. I left my Jeep at the bottom of her drive and walked up the hill to a corral-style gate. Her silver Toyota was in the open-front garage there. Neatly stacked cords of firewood stretched from the corral to the house, and an old nag stood catatonic in a patch of brush beyond a fence. I walked up a path to the kitchen entrance, grabbed the leather loop on the bottom of the old iron bell that hung beside the door, and gave it a hard shake. The sharp clanging pierced the quiet day. I shuffled my feet, looked in through the sidelight at the elegant terra-cotta tile on Regan’s cocina floor, the intricate carving on her handmade cabinets. No answer. I walked around the house and looked farther up the path toward the barn. Its doors were closed. Still higher up, beyond the barn, at the casita Regan rented to bed-and-breakfast guests, I saw a mud-covered green Land Rover with California plates. I knocked loudly on the French doors at the back of Regan’s house. No answer still. I could see the cool, dark living room within. No one in sight.