News From Ron and Kathy Bird__
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Ron and Kathy Bird
and the Vilisar, see these
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Expert German-English translation available; business and finance our specialty.
Sachverständige Deutsch-Englische Ãbersetzung; Geschäft und Finanz unser Spezialgebiet.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
STRANGE VISITORS IN THE NIGHT
Friday, 09 September 2005
Bob and Levi, his six-year-old son, showed up unexpectedly about 2230 last night. Cindy drove to Colorado with Eli (four years old) and will pick up Tanner, her 10-year-old daughter, in Phoenix on the way back in a couple of weeks. In addition to Levi, Bob also had the two Chihuahua dogs with him.
Kathy has already gone to bed in the guest house last night while I had stay up to read in the living room of the ranch house. About 2230 I finally close my book (“Stiffed; The Betrayal of American Man” by Susan Faludi. Great read!) and put out the lights. While crossing the small open space toward the roofed walkway to the guest house, I stop in the fathomless darkness to look at the stars. Well, it’s not completely dark; although the moon has already set I can actually just make out the curve of the river and the black outlines of the mountains in the distance. The constellations are easily picked out and many a star shines or planet winks down at me. There is not a single artificial light anywhere around the huge, mountain-encircled valley. I contemplate just how far away the rest of the world is, how immense our isolation is here. Not just the stars so far away but the whole of humanity. This is not a frightening at all. Just a meditative thought.
Suddenly I see a flashlight, maybe two - there along the road that comes up from the river-ford! My hair stands on end. There shouldn’t be anyone at all here. Simon went to bed long ago in the bunkhouse. Then I hear voices as well, one seems to be a female. The flashlight or flashlights seem to be moving through the trees and approaching the guesthouse and corral. Without turning on my own flashlight I hurry to the end of the walkway where there is a big slatted gate to bar the ranch animals from getting into the feed stores. I wait and hear the voices drawing nearer but at present out of sight from me behind the guest house. When the light comes into view again they are only about twenty-five yards away from me on the other side of the gate. The darkness is palpable.
I call out, “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Bob, with Levi.”
I am relieved and feel a little embarrassed.
“We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow,” I say, relieved, as they come closer and are illuminated by their own light.
“I had to come back tonight to pick up Simon. He has to appear in court as a witness tomorrow morning at 1000 in Chihuahua. We’ll have to leave by 0400 or even earlier.”
I notice that Bob’s blue jeans are soaked from about the hips down. Levi, six years old, is in shorts and sandals. He looks pretty wet too.
“What happened to you guys?” I ask.
“The river is up pretty high and I didn’t fancy trying it in the pickup and finding myself stuck in the middle in the dark. So we waded across. I carried Levi.”
We move inside the ranch house and I offer to make some tea for them. Neither Bob nor Levi seem particularly excited or find it in any way unusual that they should drive that atrocious fifteen-mile road in the dark, ford a river, and walk a mile in the darkness. Bob has some sort of criminal case going on in court having to do with rustling (really!) and he only just found out that Simon has to be there in the morning as a witness or the case against the accused will be dismissed. Chihuahua is a few hundred kilometres from Yepachic and Yepachic, as loyal readers will already know, is almost two hours away on a miserable and currently almost impassable, washed-out gravel road.
Bob starts looking for some documents that he needs for the case. Levi meanwhile is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, full of questions about this and that around the house. My ant-repellent efforts – “peacekeeping” as they are now called in Iraq interests Levi avidly (I spread black pepper around the area where I saw them). He finds the fly-traps I made by putting a little honey and an apple core in one bottle and some sugar water in another pretty riveting as well; I poked holes in the tops so the flies can get in but cannot get back out again. Finally, I say goodnight to the two of them and leave them to go to bed in the guest house. Levi is still going strong.
In the darkness shortly before 0500, when Macbeth the orange rooster is well into his pre-dawn recital under our window, I hear Bob, Levi and now Simon getting ready to leave. Simon must have been surprised to be dragged out of his sleep to face fording the river and being jarred for two hours on the washed-out road and all before breakfast. But a cowboy is a cowboy and off they go.
“When will you be back?” I call after them. “Can you buy groceries?”
“Back tomorrow, Saturday,” Bob returns. “I’ll buy the groceries. Just email the list. I’ll pick up the message in town.”
I remember that I had wanted to tell him that the phone is not working in case he needs to call through. But they are out of range. I watch the lights bobbing through the trees for a while and then go back to bed. I think about staying up to see if I can spot them and their lights when they are crossing the river. But I fall asleep and only wake up when Macbeth is getting into full stride. In the distance I hear the pickup growling up the first hill away from the ford so they are already across and starting the slow drive out.
I asked Bob last night if as everyone had been expecting there were any signs that the mining company had begun to build a proper road. That was supposed to have begun this week. But he said there weren’t even any signs of heavy road-grading equipment let alone actual work being done.
“In all the six years we’ve been here I have never seen the road in worse condition than it is now. We had a lot of rain last winter, in January and February. So the road was a mess even before the rainy season started this summer. It’s really bad!”
I drift off to sleep again, waking to the realisation that we were alone on the ranch.
ANOTHER VISITOR, ANOTHER HORSEMAN
Friday, 09 September 2005
Well, not quite alone. Between 1600 and 1700, as dark rain clouds were forming up over the mountains to the south and east of us, the dogs set up a hullabaloo. They are great distant early-warning systems (actually, when I think about it, they didn’t let out a peep last night when Bob and Levi showed up. Were they even around? Or did they just recognise them and then remain quiet?) If they hear or smell somebody coming, they all start in. Greta, the Springer spaniel (I think), is usually the first. The others just start barking even without knowing what’s going on yet. I have come to realise that there must be someone coming if they start barking and keep it up for more than 15 seconds. I always head out to the corral area to check.
This time it’s one of the Pima cowboys, Israel. We met him earlier this week so we know him. He is just sitting on his horse and has not advanced through the metal gate into the open area between the buildings and the corral. I wonder to myself if he is afraid of the dogs; Cindy said that most of the Pima Indians are terrified of dogs, Tank especially because he is so big and looks so ferocious.
I greet Israel and ask him to ride on in. We have some difficulty communicating. He asks if Simon is around but I tell him he is away until tomorrow at the earliest. He tells me he is looking for some food for himself and the team (Jose-Luis and Roberto besides Israel himself) who are riding the perimeter, preparing the mesa upland pasture to receive cattle and living “campamento (camped out)”. We invite him in and load him up with dried-pinto beans, apples, coffee, peanut butter, cheese, eggs, a cabbage, and a loaf of bread that we had just baked. Everything gets loaded into a gunny sack. I follow him, his spurs jingling, down the covered walkway and out to his horse where I hand up the gunny sack once he has mounted.
“It’s going to rain hard,” he says in Spanish and waves southwards to the mountains as he rides out the gate and down toward the river past the pigsty.
I spent a lot of time getting blogs ready. Kathleen proofread. Since we had given away some of our food, I scout through cookbooks to see if we can make good use of what food we have left, mainly cabbage and apples. I come up with sweet & sour Asian soup made of cabbage and apples and a carrot. While it was cooking we drag the Indian rug out of the living room and out onto the grass where we try to shake out the sand and dust. It looks like Lawrence of Arabia. When we take it back in we leave it rolled up to the side, thinking maybe it should stay there until the rainy weather is over and we won’t be tracking in so much mud onto it. The 12 x 12-inch clay floor tiles, colorado in colour, look really good bare and are much easier to clean than a muddy rug. They just have to be swept occasionally.
After dark it begins to rain and the water starts dripping in again. What I don’t get is why it drips in different places on different days. As the wind blows the rain against the house, I suddenly realise that Cody, the herd dog, has sneaked in at some point during the evening and is lying in a corner behind a rocking chair. I shoo him out. Cody goes around the house to the screen door in the kitchen and whimpers to come in. Why doesn’t he just go to the covered walkway like the rest of the dogs? Suddenly, while I am sitting on the sofa reading, Phil, the newest dog on the ranch, slinks in from the back room into the living room, also heading to get behind some furniture. I leap up and Phil streaks back whence he came with his tail between his leg and looking guilty. The outside door in the office has been left ajar. He must have come in that way. I look under all the furniture to make sure he is not actually hiding somewhere in the house (one time I found him snoozing under the bed. Cody has a few regular hiding places; a favourite is behind the cooking range. Once I found Tank behind our bed in the guest house; he gave himself away because of his pong). I feel like Clyde Beatty, the animal tamer, around here! The two Chihuahuas, dry inside, yap at the bigger dogs outside in the damp. Building up diplomatic brownie points, no doubt. The cats have learned to find shelter at night when they get tossed out of the house. Now, if they would only catch mice.
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