Authors: Ernest Hebert
“Look at this,” the Autodidact said, showing me a picture of a platoon of Union soldiers, all of them black men. “They were Indian fighters after the Civil War. They were called Buffalo Soldiers by the Indians because their kinky hair reminded the Indians of buffalo fur.” I ran my hand over the Autodidact’s no longer completely bald head. The Autodidact was growing hair. He had about a six-thirty shadow. Coming in, the hair was as easy to see as it was to feel because it was mostly white against his shiny, tanned head.
It was late afternoon, still plenty of daylight ahead when we drove slowly down the mountains to the wide desert valley. We stopped to gas up in Carrizozo, a pleasant middling town at the base of the mountains. From the crossroads we could see a small, Spanish-style church. The Autodidact stared at for the longest time.
“I grew up with religion,” the Autodidact said. “Somewhere along the line, I lost the faith. You lose something like that, and it’s like somebody you love dies. You grieve.”
“Oh.” I was thinking about Father. He was the only person I knew well who had died, and I didn’t want to grieve for him.
“Listen, kid,” the Autodidact said, “I can’t play along with your friend Royal. He’s crazy and probably dangerous. I have to give myself up. I’ve lost Sally, the only person who’s ever meant anything to me. I can’t pretend I’m Jim Clements—I’m John LeFauve. You and I are going to look up the Clements people, and I’m going to tell them the fate of their lost kinsman. At least then, they’ll know the truth.”
“But they’re not even searching for truth,” I said, frantic and frightened.
“We don’t know that. I have a duty to the man’s memory. Once I’ve fulfilled it, I’m turning myself in.”
“Maybe they’ll believe that Xiphi killed Father,” I said.
“You need professional help, Web. I can’t do anything for you. I’ll just have to trust in the system to keep from being convicted of Joe Webster’s murder. I’ll do the time that I owe the state for the car theft and whatever else they want out of me. In the familiar environs of jail, I’ll finally be able to get going on writing my book about prison life. That book is my calling, my destiny, and here outside, in the land of freedom, I have been unable to work. Once I’m finished with the book, maybe they’ll parole me. Maybe Sally and I will have one more chance at love.”
We hopped in the truck and drove off. The desert spread out before us, promising in its vast emptiness as an untested idea. The tiny village of Valley of Fires was about thirty miles east. We knew the town was small, because while it was on the map, it didn’t appear in the population index. A few miles down the road we approached Valley of Fires State Park.
“Those Clements people, they’re probably all dead.” I said.
The Autodidact didn’t say a word. He was thinking about his duty. I was thinking that the last thing I wanted to do was to be turned over to the system. I couldn’t even expect Royal to save me, because he was leaving the country. In desperation, I asked to stop at the state park, for my learning, of course. The Autodidact hesitated, then said okay. We pulled in.
The Valley of Fires was an interesting place. It had been the site of volcanic eruptions a thousand or so years ago. The volcano didn’t build a mountain, it just puked out lava. You could still see the stuff as black rock formations and black boulders. The area wasn’t barren though. Cactus and weeds grew everywhere. From the park, which set on a plateau maybe eighty feet above the Valley of Fires, I could look out across to the purple mountains to the east. Between us and the mountains lay the Trinity Site, where the atomic bomb had been detonated. I imagined a gigantic mushroom-shaped cloud. I asked the Autodidact whether the bomb explosion made black rocks. The Autodidact said he’d read that the bomb had melted the sand and created green glass crystals, but the government had bulldozed dirt over the area.
“Let’s go,” he said, and off we drove.
Several minutes later we arrived in Valley of Fires. There wasn’t much to the town. As a matter of fact, there wasn’t any Valley of Fires at all. It was a ghost town, consisting of a few cellar holes, shacks, jeep trails, and, overhead, buzzards, big, beautiful soaring birds that only appeared ugly when they landed to peck at the eyes of dead road meat. We pulled in front of the only sound structure in town, a mobile home, and knocked on the door. No answer. Around the yard were a shed, some junk, and pretty rocks for sale. A sign said: “Rock Hounds, leave $5 to visit former lead mine, 6 miles on a dirt road into desert. T. & L. Leah, Proprietors.” We didn’t know what to do, so we just stood there.
“I guess we should have asked back in Carrizozo,” the Autodidact said. He didn’t exactly looked relieved, but he wasn’t down in the dumps either. I could see that he was secretly hoping there were no Clements folk around for him to do his duty to.
A minute later a sheriff’s car pulled up, and a deputy wearing a .44 magnum pistol on a belt holster and ten-gallon hat on his head removed himself from the cruiser. He wasn’t fat, but he had an almost perfectly round face.
“Can I help you?” The deputy looked at the Autodidact, then at me.
“Is that gun loaded?” I asked him, pointing at his hip.
“Why, sure,” the deputy said.
“Officer,” the Autodidact said, “I’m looking for a family with the name of Clements in the town of Valley of Fires.”
The deputy suddenly got a curious look on his face, and said to the Autodidact, “What’s your name?”
The Autodidact was about to speak when I blurted out, “That’s Jim Clements, and I’m his only son.”
“Jim Clements?” An amazed look spread across the face of the deputy. “Let me see your driver’s license.”
The Autodidact forked it over.
The deputy stared hard at the license, broke out into a grin, and said, “By gosh, you must be Mrs. Clements’ long-lost boy. She’s been talking about you since the day I was born and many years before. She’d say to anybody who would listen that her boy would come back. Some people said you didn’t even exist.”
“I exist,” the Autodidact said, stiff and sweaty.
The deputy grabbed the Autodidact’s hand and pumped it. “Welcome home, Jim. It’s been, how long? Almost half a century since you’ve been here?”
“Seems like only yesterday,” the Autodidact said.
“My dad lost his memory when he was about my age,” I lied. “It’s only started to come back to him. But there’s still a lot he can’t remember.”
“You poor feller, I’ve heard of cases like that,” said the deputy.
Deputy Sheriff Bob “Pie Crust” Gallagher talked a streak blue enough to shame the light on his cruiser, and we were able to piece together the story of the Clements family, as it was known to local people. Mrs. Clements had been raised on a small ranch, really just a homestead in the desert. Her father had been one of the Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Stanton. He was a light-skinned black who’d married a white woman from the local scab town, and they’d had one child, a daughter. She—the present Mrs. Clements—had gone to Missouri, married a white man, and had a child. But her husband had died or run off, or something, and she had come back to the family homestead with her son, Jim. The boy had vanished without a trace at age twelve. Some people said he’d run away, others that he’d been kidnapped and murdered, others that he’d been claimed by the desert. At any rate, he hadn’t been heard from in forty-eight years. Old Mrs. Clements lived a subsistence life on her tiny ranch in the desert, but she’d never lost hope that her boy would return to her.
We said see you later to Deputy Pie Crust and turned onto a dirt road that seemed to go off into the forever of the desert. It was three miles of bounce, bounce driving to the Clements place.
“Are you really going to tell this old woman that her only child never amounted to anything?” I said.
“We don’t know that. All we know is how he died.”
“She’ll draw her own conclusions,” I said.
“Oh, Lord, what should I do, then?” The Autodidact, desperate with duty, wasn’t talking to me. He was praying.
I put in my two cents. “Tell her he was a war hero. Tell her he wiped out half of Iraq.”
“It’s important for all concerned that the truth be told,” the Autodidact said. “Now that’s that. I don’t want to hear any more. I know what you’re driving toward. But you don’t know me. John LeFauve seems like a good man, but he’s a bad man because of his terrible temper.”
“I’ll be better off with Jim Clements.”
“I’m not Jim Clements, and you’ll be better off with the system. John LeFauve will be better off in jail, so he can have the peace and quiet to write his book. Now shut up.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Clements place wasn’t much. In fact, it was as close to nothing as you can imagine. There was a well, a shed, and a shack. Surrounded by desert for as far as the eye could see, the spread looked small, but cozy too. I wanted to live there.
Weren’t we surprised to discover that we were expected. A little old lady was waiting in the yard. She looked to be about a hundred and twenty-six. She was real rickety on her feet, and her eyes were glazed over with cataracts.
“Good day, it seems that news of our arrival has preceded us,” the Autodidact said, carefully measuring his words as he stepped out of the truck and walked toward the lady.
“Oh, you talk so beautiful, just so beautiful,” the woman said. “My boy is a cultivated man. Pie Crust called me on the CB. I know all about you losing your memory, so don’t you worry. Welcome, welcome.” She stopped and got a real serious look on her face. “You . . . you are Jim Clements, aren’t you?”
“He sure is, ma’am,” I said.
“Pie Crust told me about you?” She turned her blind eyes in my general direction.
“I’m Web, I’m your grandson,” I said.
“I think I’m going to faint with happiness,” Mrs. Clements said. “Pleased to invite you into my home. It’s not much, but you can stay as long as you like.”
Mrs. Clements turned toward the Autodidact, reaching out a hand to touch his arm. “I’m almost blind, but I can feel your shadow on my skin because you block the heat of the sun, and I can touch. Jim, let me touch you. She put her hands on the Autodidact’s face, felt it all up and down.
“You’ve had a good life, no scars, no hard lines.” She hugged the Autodidact fiercely, and spoke in words wet with tears of joy, “Oh, my son, my son.”
Royal had been right. Jim Clements had been welcomed backed to the homestead with open arms. I thought: now the Autodidact is going to lower the big truth boom and knock her for a loop.
The Autodidact said, “It’s good to be home, Ma.”
BUFFALO SOLDIER RANCH
We settled in and the summer went by and then the fall and the winter and the spring. It was a glorious, wonderful time, a time to put in memory for later Total Recall. I wore the collar for a couple of months, but soon I lost interest in Royal and his crazy dreams. I no longer felt alone; I had friends, loved ones, a life. Who needs to be watched when he’s watched over? I removed the collar from my neck and put it away. The Autodidact grew hair in the back and on the sides of his head. The Clements’ land, like Jim’s head, didn’t have much on top. The soil was poor, and it was cluttered with pretty but not very useful rocks. Mr. T. and Mrs. L. Leah, whose place we’d stopped at that first day, along with several people whose ranches strung over miles of desert, were our only neighbors.
Mrs. Clements’ property supported a goat for milking, chickens in the yard, and a garden of table vegetables and chili peppers. In addition, there were some really nice fruit trees planted eons ago by Mrs. Clements’ Buffalo Soldier father. The secret to the homestead was not what was on the surface, but what was above (the New Mexico sunshine) and what was below (water). Mrs. Clements had one of the few year-round wells in the area. The reason that the town of Valley of Fires had gone down the drain, so to speak, was the lack of water. Mrs. Clements had hung on because she could irrigate her crops. There wasn’t enough for a commercial operation, but the supply was reliable enough for the needs of a family or two.
Mrs. Clements didn’t have a television set. A battery-powered CB and radio were all she had for contact with the outside world.
My life brightened when I met a boy named Ike, who was a rancher’s son. Ike happened to come out to the Clements place shortly after Jim and I moved in. He was riding his horse, a pinto named ATV with brown and white spots that made me drool with excitement. Mrs. Clements hailed, hugged, and fed Ike. They were old friends. She introduced us, and we hit it off right away. Ike was rangy with a goose neck and knotty muscles, a responsible kid unconsciously looking for a wild friend like me to get him into trouble. Every time we wrestled it was a tie. Ike was real serious about horses and ranching. I didn’t have a horse, but I got Jim to buy me an ATV. Naturally, I named it Pinto. Ike would come by once or twice a week, and we’d take off like crazed road runners across the desert, him on his horse, me on my machine. I wasn’t allowed to go out alone. Jim and Mrs. Clements were afraid Pinto would break down and I’d be bit by a rattlesnake and die of blood poisoning and/or thirst. That sounded to me like a wonderfully romantic death.
Ike and I spent a lot of time at the lead mine. The shafts were closed off, but half a mountain of disturbed rubble lay around for the collecting. We picked rocks for the T. & L. Leahs, not only from the mine refuse but from all over the territory. They were a retired couple, supplementing their Social Security income by selling rocks and by charging rock hounds five dollars each to explore the former lead mine with hammers and educated glances. The T. & L. Leahs taught us by shape and color which ones to walk away with and which to leave behind. New Mexico has a lot of strange rocks. Near Dimmit the rocks look like porcupine quills, and near Taos like Christian crosses. And then there’s trinitite, green beady sand melted to glass by the A-bomb. After rock hunting, shooting was my favorite pastime. Ike would take me to his ranch for target practice. Everybody in his family had guns—pistols, shotguns, .22s, and high-powered rifles that we weren’t allowed to use. I liked shooting, and I bugged Jim about buying me a rifle and taking me hunting. He hemmed and hawed and got all squeamish. Killing came easy to John LeFauve; not so to Jim Clements.