The Tooth of Time

by Sue Henry

  It is, I found, a town, not a city, and retains, with pride and a sense of humor, its historic reputation as a more than slightly eccentric but serious art center. At 6,952 feet, nestled up against the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the west, it boasts one of the best ski areas in the country, and I was surprised to learn that the winter temperatures and snowfall are very close to what I am used to in my rather temperate part of Alaska. It made me feel more at home than anywhere else I had been in the Southwest.

  Leaning back, I looked around my motor home as I sipped my tea, still happy that I had bought it a couple of years earlier, when I decided to take off, for part of the year at least, from the cozy house in which I have spent so many years in Alaska, drive down the Alaska Highway, and see some of the rest of the world for a change. This gypsy lifestyle satisfies and pleases me, much to the chagrin of my Boston-based daughter, Carol, and her social-climbing attorney husband, Philip, on the one hand, and to the delight of my West Coast son, Joe, and his live-in girlfriend, Sharon, on the other. The Minnie Winnie provides me with the kind of leisurely travel I enjoy, allowing me to stop where and when I please. A nomadic existence almost always raises my spirits. I love to be on the road to someplace new, seeing things and meeting folks as I come to them. The company of Stretch makes it easy, for few can resist a dachshund with such an irrepressible personality.

  Every time I am forced to fly I am reminded just how much I dislike it these days, especially given the security hassles and the planes packed to capacity. They don’t even feed their captive audiences anymore. I suppose I should have long ago developed the trancelike forbearance and endurance of many of us Alaskans, who are almost forced to fly if we want to go anywhere else in the world. But to me, air travel is simply a torturous way to get from one place to another in the shortest possible amount of time and I try my best to sleep through it.

  I may, however, have left this travel thing a bit late. For, unlike many Alaskan snowbirds, who have adapted themselves to spending the winters in warmer climes and migrating north for the warmer months, when the calendar grows thin and has only a page or two left, wherever I am I instinctively begin to think of heading north to settle comfortably into my cozy log house with a cheerful fire in the woodstove for the cold season. I like winter, with its icy, crystalline beauty and the stark contrast of snow on the spruce. In Homer, on the edge of the ocean, it seldom gets really cold, as it does in much of the rest of the state. We get our share of snow, but not the extreme temperatures of Fairbanks, for instance, to say nothing of Nome or Barrow.

  But so long as it suits me and I’m able, I intend to continue exploring both the downhill side of middle age and whatever catches my fancy on the road. I felt excited and optimistic about beginning to explore Taos the next day, including Weaving Southwest, where I decided I would start.

  Leaving the tourist material spread out on the table, I took care of the remains of dinner for the two of us and made an early night of it.

  I had no way of knowing that the new adventure could and would be much different than I anticipated, that it would turn into one of those times when you can’t seem to control much and life hands you, and those around you, lemon after lemon.

  FOUR

  WITH MY BASE OF OPERATIONS ESTABLISHED AND having no set schedule or commitments, I slept in a bit the next morning and got up cheerfully anticipating a day of exploration in another new and unknown place. Spreading out the detailed map I had picked up the day before from the tourism people, I studied it as I ate breakfast and found a number of places that caught my interest and sparked anticipation. On my drive through town the day before my appreciation of Taos had grown, as much for its feeling of history and attractive appearance as for the casual friendliness of the few people I had met.

  Though I love my motor home, I was glad to have the compact Ford I had rented, which would make it easier to get through the narrow streets of the older part of downtown and would, I knew, make it possible to park on them later, a feat that would have been unachievable in my thirty-foot rig. So, just after ten o’clock, with Stretch in his basket—which I had transferred from the Winnebago to the passenger seat beside me—I was feeling pleased to have appropriate transportation as I pulled up in front of Weaving Southwest, my first stop of the day.

  The door stood open at one side of the shop’s large front window. The bright, reflected morning sun made it impossible to see through the glass, so, with Stretch on his leash, I walked in, removed my sunglasses, and stood blinking a bit as my eyes adjusted to the shade of the interior.

  The long, large room was divided into three sections, front to rear, and to my surprise, having expected a clerk or two at most, I found seven or eight people. They were all busily occupied in taking down, arranging, or hanging colorful rugs and tapestries, mostly on the walls of the front section, which I could now see was set up as a display gallery. The space was full of their cheerful conversation, and no one seemed to notice me for a moment or two, as I stood watching and wondering what was going on. It made me jump when a voice spoke suddenly from just behind and below me to the right.

  “Can I help you with something?”

  I whirled and looked down to find a woman sitting on the floor almost at my feet; coming in half blind from the transition from bright sunlight into shade, I hadn’t noticed her. In each hand she was holding a piece of finished wood, one short, the other longer, and she offered up a friendly, slightly apologetic smile to accompany her question.

  “Sorry,” she added, laying down the pieces of wood and standing up to hold out a now empty hand. “Didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Pat Dozier, owner, manager, and general doer-of-whatever-needs-doing-next—not necessarily in that order. What seems to need doing at the moment is to put together this supposedly ‘easy-to-assemble’ bench. It was obviously not such a great idea to tackle this without reading the instructions, I might add.”

  Standing, Pat and I were about the same height. She had dark brown hair that was graying slightly at the temples, dark eyes, a quick, infectious smile—a laugh to match, I was soon to learn—and an energetic voice and way of moving. She was comfortably dressed in a denim shirt, jeans, and sandals.

  “Maxie McNabb,” I offered with my hand, smiling back. “And this is Stretch. I hope you don’t mind my bringing him in.”

  Stretch, sitting at my feet and hearing his name mentioned, was looking up at her, assuming approval.

  “Not at all,” she assured me. “Hi, Stretch.”

  Sometimes I’m almost sure he smiles.

  “I’m that woman from Alaska who keeps calling to order—and sometimes exchange—your yarn.”

  “I remember.” Pat nodded. “You replaced green for blue knitting yarn to make Cheryl Oberle’s ruana from the Handpaint Country book. Did the replacement color we sent work okay?”

  “It did, beautifully, and I brought the shawl with me on this trip and wear it frequently on chilly evenings. I love the yarn colors, and I found some beads that worked well, but they aren’t the same as Cheryl’s.”

  “Oh, I wish you’d been here last week,” Pat told me. “She was here—teaching a Knitaway workshop at the San Geronimo Lodge. I know she’d have loved to see how it turned out.”

  It was disappointing news, for I would have liked to meet Cheryl, a designer and much-in-demand instructor of knitting, whose yarns, designs, and color selections I very much admired.

  “What I really need now is more of your yarn, which—besides wanting to visit Weaving Southwest—is why I came in. I’d like to make another shawl for a friend.”

  “Well, you’ve come to the source. Let’s go to the back and you can see all the colors before you decide this time.”

  Waving an arm toward the back of the shop, she turned and we walked together past a woman behind a counter on the left, then through a center section full of books and all kinds of things weavers require in their work. I was reminded that the main focus of this shop and its people and patrons was not kn
itting after all, but weaving. It does seem natural, though, that people in the cold northern parts of the world knit warm clothing—especially sweaters and socks—while those in the warm south are more inclined to weave rugs and tapestries.

  All my life, and especially through the cold and dark of winters in Alaska, I have worked in textile crafts—knitting, crochet, needlework, but never weaving, so I didn’t recognize many of the items I saw on shelves, or in baskets, attractively, temptingly displayed. I could identify a spinning wheel when we passed one, and several varieties of large and small looms. Without stopping I could see that there were long metal needles and flat wooden ones, what looked like shuttles in an assortment of sizes, combs for tightening the weft of the wool as it was woven back and forth over a warp—a couple of terms I was sure of—and a chart that showed a whole rainbow of the colors of available dyes.

  But I forgot about all of these when we reached the back of the shop with its walls of floor-to-ceiling shelves bearing hand-dyed wools in a shock of so many magnificent, rich, and glowing colors and textures that I stood speechless with the idea that I should be required to make a choice.

  Choose? I could hardly breathe at the opulence—let alone select one over another.

  “One of each?” I finally suggested to Pat, and turned to find her watching my reaction with another grin.

  “You and almost everyone who comes in here for the first time,” she told me. “I’ll make it easier for you. Most of these are weaving yarns. The knitting ones that you’ll want are over there.”

  She pointed to some tall corner shelves.

  I could not resist going straight to the nearest and burying my hands to the wrists in the soft, springy texture of large skeins in several shades of red.

  This immediate reaction drew from Pat that infectious laughter that I mentioned earlier.

  “Everyone wants to touch,” she told me. “You’re not the first person who seemed to want to crawl right in and snuggle up.”

  In ten minutes I had narrowed my selections from everything in sight to a harmoniously colorful assortment with names like Log Wood, Copper, Butterscotch, Mojave Mauve, and Ragtime, with a hint of Slate Teal as an accent. The textures varied from Worsted to Jumbo Loop, Mohair Loop, Brushed Mohair, and Thick ’n Thin. Having my own pattern, needles, and beads back in the Winnebago, I was all set, and I knew my friend Carol, who had long admired my ruana, would be pleased with my decisions.

  Happily satisfied, I helped carry the yarns I had chosen to the counter, where I handed Pat a credit card and she started to package up the material for the project, which I intended to start almost immediately.

  “This is Mary Ann,” she said, nodding toward the pleasant woman we had passed earlier, who was still at the counter. “She works here with me.”

  I said hello and was about to ask her if she was a weaver when my attention was attracted by a call from across the room.

  “Bettye, would you hand me that piece?” asked a slender blond woman from her perch on a ladder. She had just hung up a bright red tapestry with a yellow line zigzagging through it.

  “Here you go.” A woman stepped over to hand up another of two, similar in size and color, which lay on the floor, evidently part of the set of three.

  “Thanks. I’ll help with that big one of yours when I finish these.”

  “Do all these people work here?” I asked, making my first real assessment of the work in progress. It seemed an abundance of clerks for the size of the shop.

  “Oh, no.” Mary Ann smiled. “There are just four of us who actually work here. Right, Pat?”

  “Right. Mary Ann, Terra, Kelly, and me, of course. The others are helping to mount a show that starts day after tomorrow—Friday. They’re weavers who have work in it and are here to help hang the rugs and tapestries. Come and I’ll introduce you.”

  We made a tour of the room as I met them all, which gave me an opportunity to take a look at the weavings they were hanging, gorgeous in color and design, every one unique.

  “And this is Bettye Sullivan,” Pat said, pausing beside the woman who had handed up the piece to the weaver on the ladder. “She and her husband, Alex, are both weavers and dye our yarns for us as well.”

  Bettye was an attractive gray-haired woman with a hundred-watt smile that made you want to smile in return. Behind the glasses she was wearing, her eyes looked as blue as the shirt she had on.

  “You create all those wonderful colors?” I questioned, impressed. “They’re fabulous. I’d love to see how it’s done.”

  “Well, come out to the mesa on a day when I have some to do and I’ll be glad to show you,” she offered. “I dye in large batches, in big hot-water tanks, but not every day. I should have a series of reds to do next week. Would you like to come then?”

  “I would, very much, thanks. Shall I check here with Pat to know when and where?”

  “Yes, and I’ll leave you a map. I think it’ll probably be—”

  She stopped abruptly, interrupted by the voice of a short, round woman, who had come hurrying in the front door and seemed to be peering out from a halo of too much crinkly reddish blond hair. She was calling out urgently, “Where’s Pat? Is Pat here?”

  At the sound of her shrill, excited voice, everyone hesitated with what they were doing and turned to see what was happening.

  The woman glanced around, spotted Pat, and trotted across to where we stood.

  “Have you heard?” she asked. “About Shirley?”

  “What about Shirley?” Pat asked, frowning. “Is it Shirley Morgan, you mean, Connie? She didn’t come in for her lesson Wednesday, so I haven’t seen her since last week.”

  From the frown and tone of her question, my intuition told me, she did not particularly appreciate the woman in front of her—or her demand for attention.

  It seemed disruptive and offensive to have Connie thrust herself into the pleasant, creative atmosphere of the gallery—making herself significant with what was obviously a sharp bit of gossip. It was clear that she had news of some kind that she felt was momentous and that—whatever it was—to her satisfaction, it wasn’t good. She took a deep breath before speaking, drawing the moment out, full of self-importance, pleased to be first with whatever she had to tell.

  “Yes, that Shirley,” she said. Another deep breath, then she leaned forward to almost whisper conspiratorially, “She tried to kill herself last night.”

  “What?”

  Giving up the secretive attempt, Connie straightened and raised her voice again. “She did! She attempted suicide. But her neighbor in the other side of the duplex found her and called nine-one-one. She’s in the hospital—probably on the psycho ward.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Pat told her flatly. But I noticed that her frown had now become an expression of concern that mixed with her irritation.

  “Well—it’s true. She closed the garage, got in the car, and let it run till the place filled up with carbon monoxide. If the neighbor hadn’t heard the engine running and come to see, she would have died.”

  “When?”

  “Like I said, last night—sometime pretty late, I think.”

  As she talked, the others in the room slowly gathered in a silent circle around us, listening closely.

  “Is she going to be all right?” one of them asked.

  “Who knows? All I know is that they took her to the hospital in an ambulance. The stupid people at the hospital won’t tell you anything unless you’re a relative.”

  My opinion, which I kept to myself, was that had the hospital people known just how the information that Connie had apparently tried to obtain would be circulated they would have simply hung up on her. Maybe they had. I hoped they had, for I could tell she was without a doubt a born scandalmonger.

  Evidently Pat was thinking along the same lines.

  She scowled at Connie. “I don’t blame them,” she said. “Who else have you told?”

  “Hardly anyone. I knew you’d want to know, so I
came here—practically first.”

  “Well, don’t. If it’s true . . .”

  “Of course it’s true.”

  “If it is, then spreading it around to everybody in town will just make things worse for Shirley. Can’t you just keep it to—Oh, never mind. It’s ridiculous to try to close the barn door when the horse is already gone.”

  I knew she was right about that—and that Connie had already told anyone and everyone who would listen, with no regard for the possible adverse consequences of the rumors she so insensitively conveyed. As Pat turned to me, Connie was glancing with sullen resentment at the members of the work crew, who were all going back to what they had been doing, several with disgusted looks in her direction. Having heard Pat’s comment, none of them were about to ask further questions.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Our shop production weaver, Kelly, and I have been giving Shirley weaving lessons for the last three weeks. We had one scheduled for this afternoon, so I need to let Kelly know it’s been canceled.”

  “I’ll go and get out of your way,” I told her, picking up my package of yarns. “This is all I need for now anyway. I’ll come back to see you and the show this weekend.”

  “Oh, don’t go,” she said. “I thought you might like to join me for lunch. It’ll only take me a minute to make the call, and then we can go. Please?”

  A little hesitantly, I agreed. “If you’re sure—with a show to get ready for and now this about your friend Shirley.”

  “I’m sure, and I’d really like it,” she told me, and I could see she meant it.

  I just wish now that we’d been as sure of a few things later on as she was of lunch that day.