Ch. 9 Desert crossing home

Stanley watched out the window as they headed east toward the ranch. He watched the valleys appear and disappear between the numerous mountain ranges. He watched as the ground turned from vast stretches of white barren land laden with puddles and devoid of vegetation, turned to short brush and short grass, watched as the mountains grew taller and spattered with trees, watched as the sage grew large and healthy.

Stanley had been in love with nature before. He’d been in love with the great red woods of California, the vast tundra of Canada, the deep and tangled forests of the northwest, the swamps of the south. This, however, had a new and strange beauty for Stanley.

First of all it had been many years since he had lived out of the city. It was simply easier to blend in amongst the drab buildings of one of the many identical downtowns. Country life had no room for the homeless. His absence from the natural world made it seem strange. Mostly, however, he had just never experience the high desert. The mountain ranges disappeared as soon as the sprung from the valley floors. Each range seemed to be carved in its own unique way. Only a few miles apart they seemed capable of being made of entirely different rock, some teaming with water, and presumably life, others dry and starkly desolate.

Small clusters of buildings stood amongst the desert scenery, never seeming to take away from the beauty, instead adding to the overall feel. Some stood in meadows with cows grazing nearby. Others stood on top of rocky points, remnants of booms gone by.

At one of these less than numerous clusters of civilization Stanley felt the truck slow, and heard the blinker click on. The truck took a right onto a wide washboard ridden dirt road. Stanley was a bit startled that the speed of the vehicle did not dramatically reduce. Joe focused a bit more intently and the truck rattled, occasionally fish tailing slightly on the wash boards, but the speed must have remained between sixty and sixty five miles an hour. It was quite obvious Joe was completely familiar with the road, and completely confident in his ability to drive it at such a speed.
The road turned and meandered alongside a deep draw. In time the bottom of the draw turned into a growth of willows, stinging nettle and elder berry bushes. They crossed the draw, now full of clear water running from the mountain Joe and Stanley were driving toward. The draw turned into a narrow canyon that they were now driving in the bottom of. The canyon became increasingly narrow, steep and rocky. The road veered left up a ridge, obviously pushed there by a Caterpillar.

Upon cresting the ridge Stanley saw what was to become his new home. A large meadow laid in the small valley; in the middle another collection of building and corrals. A couple of pivot sprinklers sat behind the house yard, a stream ran through the middle of it all. In all directions, spotting the landscape here and there were cattle. They moved so little they seemed to be a part of the scenery more than a living thing.
As they continued their approach on the gravel road the buildings began to come into focus for Stanley. The first building was an old two story stone house, with a white porch extending out from the front door, stone obviously gathered from the surrounding terrain, hues ranging from brown to black to pink. With an old tin roof and square windows, frames peeling paint, and begging for a creepy kid to be peering out of them. The home seemed to be out of movie. Obviously the house was near a hundred years old, and well kept over the years. It very easily could have been abandoned and left to fall into disrepair.

Around the house stood huge elms, as old as the home they stood above, like watchful sentries. Stretching from all four corners of the house grew grass, of many varieties in a more natural state than a pampered one. Near the porch it had been mowed, growing taller and wilder as it stretched away, more weeds becoming apparent and then gently turning into dirt and gravel beyond the reach of the garden hose and sprinkler. Along the south edge meandered the creek bed, trickling along. Around the edges of the yard ran ditches interrupted every so often with concrete head gates, most of which were cracked and slanting.

Joe turned into the yard, past the stone house into the back yard. Behind the beautiful old stone house the grass stretched out in the same manner. A row of poplar trees fifty yard behind the house drew the boundary of the yard. Here the real ranch apparently started. A barn, faded red, and numerous other small wooden buildings were scattered around the property. A tin sided building, almost as large as the barn stood on the far southwest corner. The door was open, an old Chevy truck inside with the hood up, tires leaning on one side and various parts of other equipment scattered around the building. Obviously this was the shop. Tractors, a baler, a swather, a disc, some old trucks were parked in various places. Series of corrals stood between and among the building, each apparently having a specific use. Dogs ran everywhere.
Stanley felt he had slipped into a different world, a different time.

Behind the collection of old wood buildings there were a couple of single wide mobile homes; tin roofs, with old tires thrown on top to keep them from blowing off. The yards around these mobile homes consisted of ragged grass and some old willow trees. On the North West corner, facing the side of the main stone house stood a smaller single story home of the same design. The yard here was excellently cared for. The grass meticulously trimmed and squared, the trees trimmed, a brown wooden fence surrounding it. These seemed to be where Joe was headed.
He pulled up to the gate and shut down the truck. He looked at Hank and grinned just a bit. “Welcome to the QM Eagle ranch. Welcome home.”
This phrase struck a strange cord with Hank, and he simply nodded and reached for the door handle. The door swung open and Hanks shoes hit the gravel with a thud. He realized that this might be the only pair of Converse knock off shoes to ever touch this particular piece of ground, and he suddenly felt very out of place.

“Well come on Hank.” Hank looked up to see Joe standing on the other side of the gate, waiting for him to catch up. He chuckled at himself, realizing he had been staring at his shoes for a little too long. He grabbed his old green bag from the back of the truck and followed Joe through the gate.

“Well, this is Mi casa. Follow me around back here and I’ll show you where you’ll be staying. Like I said it ain’t much, but probably better than where you were.”

Joe and Hank turned the corner on the little stone house and stepped into the back yard. Square in the middle of the lawn was a huge weeping willow. It seemed to stand like a giant skeleton threatening to grasp anyone willing to come too near. Hank was sure it would have a different effect in the spring, but here in the long shadows of a winter afternoon it seemed somewhat daunting. Beyond the tree was a small wooden building, it too with tin siding and a tin roof.

Hank realized that this was to be his new home. It obviously was the pump house. While less than a beautiful specimen of a building, Hank didn’t cringe at all at the thought of staying there. It sure as hell beat lying on the cold ground.

“Is this me Joe?” he asked.

“Sure is Hank. Let me give you the grand tour.”

Joe opened the cracked and weathered old door and led Hank in. Upon entering you could see that indeed you were in a pump house. A red tank sat in one corner with pipes running out of it in various directions. The rest of the room was the about the size of a typical bedroom; twelve by fifteen in Hank’s estimate. The floor was of cracking concrete, the walls plywood. A baseboard heater stood along one wall. It contained two shelves with various paint cans full of junk, a couple of rakes and shovels and an aluminum baseball bat. There was one small window facing out the back, peering into the vast meadows and fields behind, the view ending at one of the purple mountains.

“I’ve got a nice cot, and a little extra bedding. We’ll put a couple lawn chairs in here, and I guess an old wire spool for a table. I’ve got an old chest of drawers too. It won’t be fancy, but comfortable I reckon.

“Like I said, Next time we get to town I’ll get you a hot plate, and maybe a mini fridge. I’ll get you some decent boots and jeans to wear for work. We’ll rig up a little sink out of the pressure tank there. Only be cold water, and it will just have to drain outside, but it will be better than nothing. You’ll have to use the bathroom over in the bunk house. You can piss round back, but I prefer if you take the rest of your business over there.

“What do you think?”

“Well Joe, I think it’ll keep my balls off of the cold ground. And today, that is a vast improvement.”
Joe laughed out loud, and Hank cracked a smile, despite his obvious attempt to keep a straight face. Joe’s gut told him that this was going to work out.