“Is this a cooking class?” one of them asked.
“Yeah,” said Raúl. “We’re learning how to bake pizzas in a kiln.”
“I wish I’d known about this class. My elective this semester is a stupid archery class.”
Bruce’s test piece was the first to reach the perfect temperature, perhaps because the person who set up his kiln was an expert. The other students argued that since all the clay was from the same place, we could use Bruce’s result.
“Nice try,” I said, “but you learn by doing. And anyway, there may be slight variations. You guys waded all over the river.”
“Not me,” said Aleesha. “I was right close to the shore in case I saw any shark fins.”
Everyone laughed.
Bruce said, “The only shark in that river was you,” and she stuck her tongue out at him.
Luke Carlisle was tall for his age and skinny, evidently owing to a rapid metabolism. It certainly wasn’t for lack of appetite. He ate three large pieces of pizza, all from the green chile, onion and mushroom combo. He wouldn’t touch the anchovy and olive deluxe, and I can’t say I blamed him. But Bruce and Ximena loved it.
Marlon was right. It was almost five when we left the studio, an hour over the scheduled time. But there was no class after us, so we could stay as long as we needed to. And the students seemed to enjoy it.
I saw Luke huddling with his mother. Then he approached me with a look on his face that I suspect pediatric dentists often see.
But he did a good job of reciting the speech his mother had instructed him to give.
“Thank you for inviting me here, Professor Schuze. I enjoyed seeing the studio. And thanks for the pizza.”
“You’re welcome, Luke. How was the ride on the motorcycle?”
He glanced at his mom.
“Better than being in a pottery class, right?” I said.
He nodded.
I was feeling good about the class until I saw the guy in the suit. He was grasping a clipboard with one hand and knocking on my closet/office with the other.
A suit and a clipboard. Never a good sign.
My first inclination was to leave. Maybe he was seeking one of the other vagabonds who used the adjunct office. If he had business with me, it could wait. Susannah was at Dos Hermanas.
But he had a determined knock and a humorless face, and something told me it was me he sought. Better get it out of the way now rather than worry about it all night, I figured.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Are you Hubert Schuze?”
“I am.”
“My name is William Hughes, assistant director of the Office of Compliance with the Equal Educational Opportunities Act.”
“An impressive title,” I said, and smiled at him.
He did not return my smile. “I am here to inform you that a complaint has been filed with my office by a student who alleges that you violated the Equal Educational Opportunities Act.”
He handed me a sealed envelope. “This is a copy of the complaint.”
He handed me another envelope. “This is a copy of the procedure you are to follow in responding to the charge. Please note that neither the director nor the staff of the Office of Compliance with the Equal Educational Opportunities Act forms an opinion about any allegation until all parties have completed the required procedural steps.”
It has been my experience that people say they have not formed an opinion only when they have in fact done so. Because if you really haven’t formed an opinion, there is no need to say you haven’t.
He thrust the clipboard at me. “Please sign here to acknowledge receipt of the complaint.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“You aren’t going to sign the form acknowledging receipt of a copy of the complaint?”
“I am not.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know for a fact that I have received a copy.”
“I just gave it to you.”
“You gave me an envelope. I don’t know what’s in it.”
“Open it.”
“I’m already late for an important meeting. I’ll open the envelope when I have time to do so.”
“I can’t let you keep a copy of the complaint unless you sign for it.”
“Excellent,” I said, and returned the envelope to him. “I didn’t want it to begin with.”
I turned to leave.
“Wait,” he said. “If you refuse to sign, the complaint process will go forward without your participation.”
“Also excellent. I have no desire to participate.”
“How can you know that if you don’t look at the complaint?”
“Mr. Hughes, both your suit and your clipboard are spiffy. I’m confident you can handle the complaint without my help. I really do have to leave.”
“Failure to cooperate could prejudice the outcome,” he said as I walked away.
So much for the director and staff not forming an opinion until the process was complete.
It’s only three miles from the Art Building to Old Town, but the downtown traffic is bad at rush hour, so I decided to make a bathroom stop in case I got stuck in traffic.
Luckily, I had zipped up before Ximena Sifuentes walked into the men’s room.
“You have the wrong restroom,” I said.
She looked me in the eyes, shook her head and walked past me.
“This is the men’s room,” I said to her back. But she just sneezed and headed into one of the stalls.
11
I arrived at Dos Hermanas with Desert Solitaire in one hand and a pizza box in the other. No one wanted either of the two leftover slices.
Susannah signaled Angie that I needed a margarita. Sharice was still at work, helping Dr. Batres fix poor people’s teeth.
I didn’t know Martin and Glad would be there, but I wasn’t surprised to see them, the former at the table with his Tecate at hand and the latter at the bar, no doubt ordering his usual pink gin, a drink consisting of a few ounces of gin with a dash of bitters. No ice.
Not that ice would improve it.
I was surprised to see Miss Gladys Claiborne, the owner of the west third of my adobe and the eponymous shop therein, Miss Gladys’s Gift Shop. I’d invited her to our cocktail hour dozens of times during the first years of our acquaintance and finally quit doing so because she always politely declined. I know she tipples at home on occasion, but I guessed she might not think it genteel for a widow to visit a bar. As you might imagine, gentility is important to anyone called Miss, a title she held even during her long marriage to the late Mr. Claiborne.
Although she never before joined me at Dos Hermanas, she often comes to Spirits in Clay to deliver one of her casseroles, fascinating ventures into factory-made cuisine. In the age of Whole Foods grocery stores, farm-to-table restaurants, organically grown produce and free-range chickens, Miss Gladys remains steadfast in her devotion to ingredients that can be purchased in cans, jars and plastic bags. Indeed, these are the measurements in her recipes. Mix a jar of this with a can of that, cover with a bag of grated cheese, bake and serve from the casserole dish. The stockholders at Kraft, Campbell’s and Del Monte offer daily prayers of thanks for Miss Gladys.
Although some of her casseroles are tasty, it is best not to read the nutritional labels on the component jars, cans and packages, which reveal that salt and hydrogenated oils are abundant. I don’t know what happens to oil when it is hydrogenated, but it sounds like a process for generating electricity in a dam.
I had been spared the casseroles ever since she and Gladwyn became … I don’t know what to call it. Friends? Companions? An item?
Glad raves about Miss Gladys’s casseroles. Of course, he comes from England, the land of spotted dick, toad-i
n-the-hole, Cullen skink and bloaters. There’s also one called bubble and squeak, which sounds like what happens to you if you eat any of those.
The last dish on that list sounds like what happens to you when you eat any of the other ones.
Gladys’s blues eyes sparkled. “I can tell by that look on your face, Mr. Schuze, that you are shocked to see me here.”
“That’s not shock you see. It’s delight. And since you have finally consented to join my circle of drinking buddies, I hope you will call me Hubie.”
“Thank you, Mr. Schuze,” she said, and we all laughed.
I offered to buy her a drink.
“Gladwyn is ordering my favorite—bourbon and branch.”
“What sort of branch would that be, Miss Gladys? Olive?”
“Now, don’t tell me that you don’t know what branch water is. It comes straight from the limestone over which any quality distillery sits. Bourbon is too strong for me to drink straight, so I like a little water in it. Mr. Claiborne always said adding anything except branch water adulterates the bourbon.” She blushed. “I think he used that word just to agitate me.”
“And where would you get branch water in New Mexico?”
“At the Don Quixote Distillery,” said Glad as he handed the bourbon and branch to Miss Gladys. “They tell me water from the Frijoles Mesa seeps through basalt on its way to the Rio Grande. Fortunately, the distillery gets it before it enters the river. I can’t imagine what whiskey made from Rio Grande water would taste like.”
“Probably like gin made from the water of the Thames,” I said, and he chuckled.
“How was your class?” Susannah asked.
“Bizarre as usual. It started with Aleesha announcing she was attending under protest.”
“Did you ask her what that means?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t want to know.”
“Makes sense,” said Martin.
“But I think I found out anyway. After class, a guy in a suit showed up carrying a clipboard.”
“Not a good sign, kemosabe,” said Martin. “An official, no doubt.”
“Right. The assistant director of something with a name like Bureau of Men in Suits Who Make Sure We Provide Equal Opportunity Education.”
“And you figure his visit was prompted by Aleesha,” Susannah said, “and that’s why she was attending class under protest.”
“That would be my guess.”
She continued, “You do something to upset her?”
“I took away her cell phone.”
“You took away everyone’s cell phone. You’re an equal-opportunity cell phone taker.”
“Maybe I did something else to upset her without knowing it. My nontraditional student, Carly, said she couldn’t stay after class to test fire her clay because she had to pick up her son from day care. So I asked if her husband could pick him up instead, and she burst into tears.”
“Oh, no. Let me guess. She’s a single mom, right?”
“Not quite. She said the divorce isn’t final yet. So if I’m insensitive enough to upset Carly, maybe I also upset Aleesha without knowing it.”
“I have always found you to be a sensitive person,” said Miss Gladys.
“Thank you. I try to be.” Angie arrived with my margarita, and I took a sip. “There was another weird thing that happened. I was in the men’s room when one of my female students came in.”
Susannah laughed. “That’s easy to do. You’re in dire need of a restroom and don’t pay attention to whether the icon has pants or a skirt. The next thing you know, you’re in the men’s room. The urinals are the tip-off.”
“Evidently, they weren’t a tip-off to her. I told her she was in the wrong restroom, and she shook her head as if I was the one who got it wrong.”
“Oh my God,” said Susannah. “She’s probably transgender.”
“I don’t think so. She wears very girly clothes.”
“Jeez, Hubert. Don’t you know about LGBs and such?”
“I do, in fact. I was just reading about them in Desert Solitaire.”
Her brow furrowed as her head tilted. “Edward Abbey wrote about LGBs?”
“Yeah.” I pulled the book from my pocket and read: “They flitted around Arches National Monument, where he worked as a park ranger.”
“Hmm. I would have thought them more likely to frequent urban settings.”
“Pigeons, maybe. But not little gray birds.”
“Little gray birds?”
“Right.” I thumbed to page seventeen and read. “‘What the ornithologist terms l.g.b.’s—little gray birds—they flit about from point to point on noiseless wings, their origins obscure.’” I looked up. Everyone except Miss Gladys was laughing.
Susannah said, “LGB stands for lesbian, gay and bisexual, Hubie.”
“Oh. Well, Ximena may be lesbian for all I know, but I already told you why she probably isn’t transgender.”
“That’s because you’re confusing transgender with transvestite.”
“They’re not the same?”
“No. A transgender person is a woman trapped in a man’s body or a man trapped in a woman’s body.”
“When I was thirteen, I would have given all my allowance money to be trapped in a woman’s body,” I quipped.
“I don’t understand any of this,” said Miss Gladys.
“You’re better off not understanding it, dear,” said Glad.
Dear?
I guess that answered my question as to whether Gladwyn and Miss Gladys were friends, companions or an item.
“There are no transgender people in my tribe,” said Martin.
“Sure there are,” said Susannah, “just like there are gay men in ranching communities like Willard, but they stay in the closet because they don’t want to be outcasts.”
“Transgenders are not outcasts in my tribe. We are all transgender.”
“You just said there aren’t any.”
He nodded. “It amounts to the same thing. Since we are all transgender, no one is transgender.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said.
“Sure it does. Legend tells us we were created when Mother Earth mated with Father Moon. Our bodies are male or female, but our spirits are half woman and half man because they came from Mother Earth and Father Moon. No one cares if a young boy plays with a doll or a young girl plays with a spear. But if they do it too much, their mother may gently scold them. When I would draw pictures for hours, my mother would say, ‘You are listening too much to Mother Earth. Go outside and listen to Father Moon.’ But we children all knew we had both sides and could express them both. So we are all transgender. And since we are all that way, no one sees it. You would only be labeled different in my tribe if you weren’t transgender, if somehow you never showed your Mother Earth spirit or your Father Moon spirit.”
There followed a silence as we each considered his explanation.
Susannah was the first to speak. “I like that legend. The world would be a better place if more men listened to their Mother Earth side.”
“Why?” I asked, just to challenge her.
“Because women do everything better than men. If we could get more men to do things like women, we wouldn’t have to carry the whole load by ourselves.”
“There are some things men do better than women,” I said.
She challenged me. “Name a couple.”
“Burning things down and growing beards.”
“Hear, hear,” said Glad.
After our bar session ended, Glad pulled me aside. “I don’t wish to be impertinent, Hubie. But as a bloke who’s been around longer than yourself, I have to tell you that some folk may consider it odd that you are having cocktails with Susannah and Sharice isn’t here.�
��
“That’s because she’s working tonight.”
“You miss my point. It isn’t that Sharice is absent. It is that she and you are in a domestic relationship and yet you are having cocktails with another woman.”
“Susannah isn’t another woman. She’s a friend.”
“So you say. But appearance and reality often diverge.”
He was right about that. Susannah’s younger brothers seem to believe she and I are a couple. At least, I think they do. Susannah says I’ve simply misconstrued their words.
I appreciated Glad’s concern but had weightier matters to worry about. Like whether violating the Equal Education Opportunity Act (commonly called EEO) could get me fired.
Or land me in jail.
12
Octavius Seepu cut an impressive figure in a buckskin shirt with turquoise buttons. His red headcloth was knotted at one side, its two ends falling over his left ear, each trailing a feather.
His broad face was the color of Chinle Cliffs and about as animated.
He grasped a pot between gnarled hands and raised it above his head. I had no idea what he was going to do with it, but I did recognize it. After Octavius had agreed to speak to my class, Martin asked me to make a quick-and-dirty Anasazi fake. It was now being lofted by Octavius.
“Okamo te leka o keowaa te nilil.”
My students were wide-eyed and—for once—completely silent.
Martin translated for his uncle. “He has asked the ancient potters for permission to copy their work.”
“Pi ah olleko te wah.”
“They have granted it,” Martin translated.
Octavius raised the pot even higher. He loosed his fingers. The pot hitting the concrete floor was followed by the sharp crack of shattering clay and a collective gasp from the students.
“Te kio te mato, ne rah tao.”
“Those who accept a piece of this pot may make a new one.”
The Pot Thief Who Studied Edward Abbey Page 7