by Will Hobbs
“Dus-ty …,”I said reproachfully. The old girl bowed her head and hung her tail and looked away from me toward her admirers.
“My father spent a couple years convincing her to quit digging pots,” I explained.
They all broke into grins. Carlos was pulling on his beard and laughing.
“I’m not kidding,” I said, and I told them all about Dusty’s exploits in her younger days, on the big archeology project up in southwestern Colorado when I was little. My parents were part of a team that was trying to save what they could of a big site along the Dolores River before the dam was finished and the reservoir started to fill. There’s a museum on the hill above the lake today; we’ve gone back twice to visit. Half the pots on display are Dusty’s and there are a whole lot more in the basement.
“But how does she do it?” Buzz insisted.
“Ask my dad. He’s got a theory—he thinks she can smell the pigment in the black dye they used for the designs.”
Carlos still wore that grin, “Sure, Tep.”
“Where is his dad?” Mickey asked. “Let’s ask Art. I want to hear this firsthand, about Dusty, the pot-sniffing dog.”
April pointed up the field. “I saw him just a little while ago, over in the Tarahumara garbanzo beans.”
“Where’s that?”
“Over by the Aztec corn.”
I said, “Hey, don’t you guys believe me?”
Heidi was watching me close with those big eyes. “Tep’s pulling our leg. Remember when he told us about the magpie who could talk?”
I guess I had all those college kids from Ohio wondering. They don’t know me that well—I’m not any good at making things up. I’d heard from the Montoyas down the road that you could teach a magpie to talk, and I thought I’d give it a try with a young one I’d been feeding. I had to keep at it, but Maggie learned to talk just fine. Magpies are related to crows and ravens, and they’re all big talkers. Maggie used to call my name a lot, and she even had a few expressions, like What’s to eat? and Pass the salsa!
It turned out that Maggie had a fondness for bright and shiny objects, like thimbles and spoons and jewelry, especially my mother’s earrings. You couldn’t set anything down. Sometimes they’d turn up in out-of-the-way hiding places, sometimes they’d never turn up. After a while I tied Maggie by the foot with a long string I attached to a platform on top of a post.
Maggie didn’t think much of being tied. She flew away with a bunch of her kind only a month ago, just a few days before the students rolled in for the summer. The last time I saw her she was flying over the field trailing that string, and she was calling “Tepary! Tepary! Tepary!” I don’t know if it’s just because I was feeling guilty, but it sure sounded like she was scolding me the way she said it.
When my father returned from the garbanzos, he verified my story about Dusty’s illustrious career as an archeologist. He wasn’t too pleased about her having had a relapse, and gave her a good talking-to.
My dad had to decide what to do about the pitcher. The students all wanted to know what was going to happen to it. Since it was on our land it was legal to dig it up and legal to keep it, but my father wasn’t keen on people digging up artifacts unless they were part of a full-blown scientific dig that was going to do it right. It was like tearing a page out of a book. Since the pitcher was already dug, and they promised to take good care of it, Dad finally agreed it could stay in Big Pink where the students could admire it all summer.
I spent the rest of the afternoon moving some things into the Silver Bullet, and then I grabbed the Field Guide to Southwestern Mammals and climbed up into my favorite reading spot, up in the forks of the biggest cottonwood along the creek. Twenty feet off the ground, in the shade of that grandmother cottonwood, it’s cool in the hottest part of the day. The slightest breeze gets all those leaves rustling, and it’s the closest thing the Seed Farm’s got to air conditioning.
Dusty was lying down below in the center of the big tree’s shade patch, panting with her eyes closed. I turned to the field guide and quickly found the bushytailed woodrats. There was a great deal I wanted to know, and I plunged into it: “The soft, thick fur varies in color … the head has the same shape as other packrats, yet looks somewhat different owing to extremely large ears and long, silky whiskers up to four inches in length. The large, beady eyes are typical of packrats. Full-grown, these woodrats measure as much as twenty-four inches from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail. Their entire appearance, from head to handsome tail, is entirely charming.”
My mother could have written this, I thought, and read on: “The young, from two to six, are born in early summer. Compared to other small rodents, the reproductive rate is low, yet so is the death rate, due to the animal’s secretiveness and high order of intelligence.”
Intelligence, I thought. At least I’m turning into something smart.
“Their nest is a veritable fortress of sticks, rocks, bones, and often cactus, arranged to prevent entrance to unwanted visitors, which may include other woodrats. A maze of passages leads to the sleeping area, perhaps a foot in diameter, lined with soft and warm materials. Caches of food are stowed nearby. A third area serves as a rubbish heap and toilet. The woodrat’s home has a strong, musky odor, but this is not an indication of uncleanliness. The creature is quite fastidious in its habits.”
I was happy to hear that. But the next part didn’t sound good at all: “Its diet consists mainly of pine nuts, acorns, seeds, herbs, berries, fruits, and many other vegetable sources, sometimes even insects. Around a farm they can be real pests, destroying crops in their pursuit of food.”
Would that be next? I’ll be destroying our crops?
Just then my mother appeared at the base of the tree. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you, Tep.”
At first I thought it was something about me. I didn’t know whether to be scared or relieved. I looked down with my face blank and waited for what she would say.
“The good news is that they found out who the pothunters are. They turned out to be Rodney and Duke Bishop, from an infamous pothunting family in southwestern Colorado. The BLM there knows all about them. Apparently it’s well known up there that neither they nor their father has ever done anything else for a living but dig pots.”
“Did the sheriff find them?”
“Driving their pickup through Encantado—they were still here.”
“Did they have the seed pot? The medicine bundle?”
My mom was shaking her head. “That’s the bad news. They didn’t have any artifacts with them.”
“Well, that doesn’t mean anything—they must’ve stashed ’em somewhere. The sheriff or the BLM just has to find them.”
“The sheriff says he doesn’t have the manpower to be out searching the boondocks for pots. Meanwhile the Bishop brothers appear to have gone back to Colorado, but the BLM’s going to keep somebody up at Picture House a little while longer just in case.”
My mother left to pick some greens for dinner. She was going to deep-fry some squash blossoms, one of her specialties, to make me feel better.
I had a bad feeling about the night to come.
9
Dusk found me all moved into the Silver Bullet, door locked from the inside, windows closed. It was going to be a cooker in there, but I knew I had to keep those windows shut. The rat would chew or claw right through the screens.
Dusty was curled up right outside the door. I was lying on my back, on the bed, under a sheet drawn up to my chin. I was gripping the sheet with both hands, concentrating fiercely, trying by force of will not to let it happen again. “I am not a rat,” I kept repeating to myself. “I am not a rat. My name is Tepary Jones, the Human Bean. I am not a rat. I am not a rat.”
As night fell the transformation struck, and my desperate voice turned to squeaks. I was looking at my whiskers again, and small hands with white fur and claws were clutching the sheet.
This time I was going to fight it, befo
re the rat got the better of me. “My name is Tepary Jones,” I hollered. “My name is Tepary Jones!”
No matter what it took, I told myself, I was going to stay in this bed. You will sleep in this bed until the dawn comes. You are not going to scurry around this trailer all night, you are not going to scurry around this trailer all night….
It was unbearably hot and stuffy in that trailer. Lying on my back was torture. I threw off the sheet first thing. I tried curling into a ball on my side, but the rat and I were both nocturnal, and our minds were wide awake. I tried curling into a ball on my other side. All the while I was screaming with boredom. I was trapped. I’ve always hated being cooped up. I tried sleeping flat on my stomach, but I’ve never been able to do that. This is what it must have been like, I thought, when I was in the incubator, stuck in that tiny glass box. I could almost remember not being able to turn myself over….
I had to get out!
Springing out of bed, I climbed up the curtain and perched on top of the curtain rod, looking around the trailer. I tried the windows I could reach, hoping one could be budged, but they were all shut tight and locked. I jumped to the kitchen sink, then to the floor, and I looked inside the cabinets. Something smelled like food…. green pellets inside a paper box. Sniffing them carefully, I realized something wasn’t right about them, and then I remembered my father had put them in here for the deer mice. Around and around the trailer I went, trying to find anything that was interesting. There was nothing in there, nothing to eat, nothing to do. I had to find a way out. I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t help it.
Back under the sink, I checked where the pipes ran through the floor, but the cracks were all stuffed with steel wool. I had stuffed it there myself! I tried gnashing my way through the steel wool, but all those bits of metal hurt like fire. I had to quit when a piece got caught in my throat and I started gagging. At last I coughed it up.
There had to be another way. Then I realized I was looking right at it—a slight dome of pressboard flooring that had raised up when we’d had a leak several years before. The floorboard might be rotten here!
The rat’s teeth proved me right. It took some work, but finally I was free.
Dusty was waiting. She must’ve heard me chewing my way out. I approached her cautiously, then stood on two legs. Her eyes were locked onto mine. She sniffed me thoroughly, and she knew me.
I was ravenous, but I felt compelled to find shelter first. I headed up behind the trailer to the nearby rimrock, a cliff twenty feet high that runs all along the top of our shallow valley. Investigating every cranny I could find, I found a niche that felt right, and I began to drag rocks and sticks in there.
A fortress began to take shape, complete with cactus spines in the narrow runways. I didn’t have to think about the construction. The rat knew the blueprint by instinct. I watched him working through that tiny window in my mind.
Ringo was watching too, hoping and waiting for a chance to get at me. I could see his eyes shining in the dark as he paced back and forth. Dusty ran him off a couple of times, and I was able to work all night.
“How’d you sleep?” my mother asked over breakfast.
Could she tell I was exhausted?
“Not very well … ,” I replied. “It’s too hot in the Silver Bullet.” I hated saying these things that sounded true but weren’t the truth at all. An old saying my parents had taught me kept coming to mind: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”
“Why don’t you sleep under the stars?” my father suggested. “I’d sleep outside if I could get a good night’s sleep.”
“I think I will,” I agreed.
My mother glanced playfully at my dad. “Your father didn’t catch the packrat last night.”
“Oh, I’ll catch him,” my father assured her. “As far as I can tell, he wasn’t back in the house last night.”
I said, “I read in Mom’s book that they’re pretty smart.”
“He better be. He’ll be back. It’s a matter of time.”
After lunch I fetched my ground cloth and sleeping bag—not that I’d need them—and stashed them up in the rimrock, in a crack and under an overhang. Then I took a nap. I woke up late in the afternoon when I heard a car’s brakes squeak down by the house.
It was Mrs. Montoya, our neighbor from down the road. Usually she called on the phone, so I knew this was important if she wanted to talk about it in person. I ran down and heard her telling my mom about something she’d heard on the radio.
“What is it?” I interrupted. Her face was all pale.
“Hantavirus! Right in Encantado! He was only thirty-four years old!”
“He already died?” my mother ventured.
“No, but he’s on the way to the hospital in Albuquerque. They say it took forever for the helicopter to come. I wonder if he’ll even make it to the hospital. Sometimes they die on the way, you know.”
“And they seem to die when they get there too,” my mother said.
“I know! It’s awful!”
In the night, I divided my time between adding to my fortress and scavenging things to eat: jumper berries, pinyon nuts, last year’s cactus fruit, almost any sort of wildflower. Everything tasted good, I couldn’t help it. I even found myself capturing beetles and spiders.
The next morning we turned on our radio. The thirty-four-year-old man from Encantando had died in the hospital in Albuquerque. His lungs had filled with fluid and the hospital hadn’t been able to stop it.
My father, who was habitually cheerful, ate his breakfast in silence. All three of us were trapped in our thoughts. By lunch nothing had changed. The gloom held until my father came running in for his afternoon break with the news that the gourd seeds he’d planted only two days before had sprouted. “It’s unbelievable!” he said. “Gourds should take at least a week to germinate!”
I returned to the fields with my father to have a look at the new gourds from Mister K. They’d already put out the first of their ragged, specialized leaves that follow the two rounded ones that did the groundbreaking. “I thought you said they just sprouted,” I said to my father.
“They did, just this morning! I’ve never seen anything like it! No wonder Mr. K. said to go ahead and put them in the ground. Think how short their growing season must be! If you could isolate that gene, and apply it to other plants …” My father waded into gourd vines we’d planted from seed in early May and knelt down to inspect them, first the traditional varieties and then the wild gourds. He doesn’t inspect the wild ones often, because the vines of wild gourds always leave a rank smell on your trousers. “I think they might need a little side dressing,” he said.
A “side dressing” meant manure, and manure was my department. Anything having to do with manure, from cleaning out the chicken coop to applying side dressings, that’s my job. Some years ago my dad tricked me into being the Manure Specialist, and I haven’t been able to unload either the title or the job since.
“Sure thing,” I said, even though I usually kept my distance from the gourds. I needed something to feel good about.
“Hey, wait a minute,” he said, scrutinizing the vines. “Looks like we’ve got Luperini beetles again.”
I took a look myself. Here they were, those crazy little striped beetles that actually feed on the juices of wild gourds. I heard my father say once, in one of those night classes he gives the college students, that the chemicals in wild gourds are the most bitter substances known to mankind. I can attest to that. When I was younger, I took just the slightest taste, and I’ll never forget it as long as I live.
Besides Luperini beetles, the only other creature I know of that loves the gourd vines are the bees who pollinate them. I guess the flowers must smell like heaven to digger bees. The diggers appear at first light and the gourd flowers open especially early, just for them. The females spend the night underground, while the males overnight inside the flower, hugging the styles. The male looks like a drunk han
ging onto a lamp post.
According to my mother, a packrat ventures only two hundred feet away from its nest. But that very night my worst fears came true. I far exceeded that invisible limit, roaming at will through our fields. I felt safe because Dusty was at my side. Now the rat knew about all the good things to eat down there and overpowered my will to resist.
Next morning, while my father was making his run up the valley, I went to inspect the damage I’d done in the night. I was stricken by what I saw. I’d started on the Yaqui basil and the desert chia, then proceeded into the forest of amaranth greens. I’d nipped some black-eyed peas and lima beans, but none of that was very noticeable. It was the squash that was obvious, several dozen little fruits that were partially chewed or gone. The ones I’d hit—I wouldn’t be able to watch them grow! Some of those squashes would’ve reached twenty pounds.
The next few nights my depredations continued. So far my father hadn’t noticed, only because I had suddenly volunteered to hoe the squash. Three times a day he went to inspect Mr. K.’s amazing gourds. A yard long, the vines were already developing tiny flower heads. He noticed that the Luperini beetles were all gone, and he wondered what had gotten them. Birds, he guessed. He was wrong.
One night I crossed paths with a deer mouse under the dark canopy of the corn. I’d been seeing them coming and going at a distance, but this one was suddenly in my face. For an instant we stared at each other. I was terrified—all I could think of was hantavirus.
The mouse ran off before I could even move.
I puzzled all the next day how it was that my human awareness, with its dread of hantavirus, had so quickly come to the fore. What did it mean? Could my human thoughts ever win out over the rat?
The impulses of the rat continued to have their way. The rat knew where I’d hidden my sleeping bag in the rimrock. The rat found it, quickly chewed a hole in it, and proceeded to line his nest with down.