Invitation to Lunch

Juan sits leaning against a Ponderosa and eats his lunch, a burrito he’s bought from the Alsups early this morning. His motor grader cools from its work on the county road and he swallows a cold sip of coffee from a cup he’s carried since sunrise. The maintainer parked beside him is large, almost intimidating but I’ve watched Juan handle it like the rest of us handle a fork and knife. So I pull to the side of the road and stop. I want to thank him for his work but the first thing he does is offer me a share of his lunch. I decline and wish there was something I could do in return. He tells me to take a seat and tell him what’s been happening. I know he’s lonesome out here on the roads working by himself so I clear a space on the ground and sit. It’s the least I can do. He’s offered me lunch.

For a while we chat about unimportant matters until, for no reason I can understand, I start to talk about my dog, the cancer in his leg and how I had to put him down. Juan is silent and listens. He doesn’t say a word; he doesn’t interrupt only stares at the pine cones littering the ground. I explain that I work by myself, all except my dog who stayed beside me for ten years. Then I have to stop. I can’t say anymore or I’ll be bawling like a kid. I change the subject. I laugh and make a joke about something, something as unimportant as the breeze. Juan politely smiles at my funny story.

But then, he says he’s sorry and he understands. The dog was my friend. It‘s hard to lose a best friend. My eyes bunch up tight and then he says, “This is your last chance.”

I look up wondering what he means and he’s holding out his burrito. “It’s got onions and cheese. What do you say?”

I laugh and tell him alright if he’s going to hold a gun to my head, I’ll eat some of the damn burrito. He’s as happy as a kid as he tears the tortilla in half.

“I used to have this Blue Heeler who would ride with me on the tractor. He’d bark at the crows all day. Sometimes, it gets lonely bailing hay.” I nod in agreement and he adds, “I still miss him.”

Beside a gravel road, two men share a lunch and talk of dogs they’ve known and lost. It’s a conversation more important than the breeze. It’s a conversation between friends about friends.

 

 

Momma Knows

Winter hangs in with only hints of spring. Yesterday was seventy degrees but a foot of snow has fallen during the night and ice coats the thermometer at sunrise. So my horse complains, slowly at first but her whining is gaining momentum.

I left the warmth of the house early this morning.The trail I spent an afternoon clearing is covered again, so I break a new path to the barn where she waits, not quietly. She has heard the cabin door open and close from a quarter mile and has launched her complaints.

She’s an ancient horse, a mare nearly old enough to have carried Teddy Roosevelt up San Juan Hill. She’s spent most of her life working the range, Spanish broke, meaning no one pampered her. When still a filly, a vaquero threw a lariat over her head, tired her legs and dropped her to the ground. No time to sweet talk, just work to do. Long icicles hang off her hindquarters.

She’s been with me so long, I can understand her whinnies. My mare wants to move to Florida. She would like me to buy her a bus ticket today, if not sooner. That’s what she says. I sympathize but explain once again, “You’re a mountain horse, Momma. You don’t belong on the beach.” She doesn’t agree and complains even louder, unhappy with her place in life, and now with me.

On the day we met, I named her ‘Emergency Room’, ‘ER’ for short. In the beginning, we were not friends, not close anyway. I bought her from a distant ranch and rode her twenty miles to home, across streams and bridges, along a fast running river. A long trip can make friends or enemies. As her previous owner counted his money, he grinned and mentioned as an after-thought, “She’s not real good crossing water and hates bridges.” So I whispered in her ear on the way, trying to convince her the future would be brighter. I asked her not to send me to the emergency room, she didn’t and I was grateful.

Her name changed when I discovered her in foal. One morning before anyone awoke, she gave birth to a raunchy little colt. From that day on, I called her Momma. Her son stands close by now listening to his mother argue about Florida but he’s more interested in the sweet feed I’m pouring into the buckets. He’s content with his place in life because he’s young and doesn’t know better.

But Momma and I know.

 

The Hermit Outside my Window

 

Outside my office window is a ten-thousand foot mountain called Hermit’s Peak. In 1863, a Penitente Priest took residence in a cave at the top. To make a living, he carved little crosses out of Ponderosa pine and traded them to the locals for corn. If he had carved a lot of crosses, he could have set up a whiskey still and enjoyed himself but that’s another story.

So when I’m avoiding work, I look at the mountain and wonder about the hermit. I know he was born in Italy into a wealthy family, and after training for the Priesthood, he met a young woman and fell in love. To avoid a scandal, his family sent him to America so that he could live in a cave on top of a mountain. Seem’s reasonable.

His name was Giovanni Marsa the Agastini. But that would have been a tough name for a mountain so he changed it to Hermit.

For some unknown reason, he left his cave and migrated to Mexico where he was murdered in 1869. There’s no moral to this story. I told you I was avoiding work.

 

I know this isn’t normal…

 …but recently, I’ve been writing almost exclusively about the moon: The man in the moon, cars breaking down on the moon, bass fishing on the moon, and it goes on and on. Fortunately, I’ve posted only a few. I hope this will pass . But until it gets out of my system, bare with me.

 

The Cost of a Whore

 

I’m new at this writing thing. I recently had a submission accepted in a literary magazine. The editor sent an email with the good news along with a few suggested edits to improve the piece. No problem there, I trust authority. I looked over his recommendations and everything seemed reasonable-what do I know, I’m the writer.

And then they pulled out a shinny toy. They wanted to illustrate the cover based on my story. And it only got better. I was invited to the opening, to speak no less, my wisdom. Well…you know real quick that’s not going to fly-I don’t own a tux. So I send in my bio, the needed corrections, a permission slip to publish the piece, and politely decline the invitation .

Another week goes by and another email arrives. They love my changes but are going to cut a few more scenes to “keep the character honest”. But they don’t ask this time-because I got a cover. They own me. Am I cheap or what?

Favorite Reviews

I really disliked this the first time I read it, the second time, not so much. The satire is savage, and I guess that means the reader had better be in the right mood.

…and may God have mercy on your soul for God knows I won’t…sorry if this is harsh but have a nice day.

…but, honestly, as I read, it was so depressing that I just wanted to finish. Not sure of this one -not sure at all.

 

What’s Here

This blog contains a few of my short stories – a dissection of my mind or what remains. Some of the work has been published, some hasn’t - editors don’t just fall off turnip trucks, you know.

You are welcomed to read and hopefully enjoy any piece on this blog but please do not copy or distribute. If you do so without permission from the author, he will hunt you down with more success than the CIA has had at finding Bin Laden. He is ruthless, the author that is.

Most of the pieces are “Works in Progress” and comments would be appreciated. If you don’t have the time, I’ll understand. I know you’re busy with your own life. But I’ll still think of you as I lay in some cold wet gutter, unloved, unappreciated, and unacknowledged- a mere thin shrivel of my previous self. But don’t you worry. I’ll get by, someway or another.

 

Drop me a line at deanwestauthor @ yahoo dot com You know about replacing the dot, right?

Who is this guy?

 

Surrounded by an ungrateful pack of stray dogs, Dean West lives high in New Mexico’s Sangre De Cristo Mountains. At the age of 63, he writes short fiction, a hodgepodge of stories, ranging from his birthright in rural Texas to sailing the seas of Baja. His style is as unkempt as a Tijuana golf course yet his voice embodies a raw honesty, a candor his readers have come to expect.