Nature at its most primal level

Tertullian's Corner

the tor foundations of European castles

"If the desert were a correlative for a philosophy, it would be Existentialism."

​​The Desert Memoirs​
Part I: Rosales

By Rosa Martha Villarreal

​My husband and I purchased some land in the Nevada high desert with the intention to make it into a “ranch.” On our land there are several ancient rock outcroppings from the volcanic activity of eons ago. I call my favorite rock formation, “Castle Rock,” because it reminds me of the tower foundations of European castles. From the top of Castle Rock, one can see the panorama of the land. This arid and harsh wilderness, so similar to the extremadura of Coahuila, nonetheless supports a diverse and hardy fauna, creatures who can sniff out the sparse natural springs and exist on the desert’s meager bounty of edible plants. As if possessed of preternatural abilities, they find shelter in the lightning storms and elude the hunters: wolves, coyotes, humans, and big cats. They are the creation of evolutionary natural selection in an unforgiving environment.

I like to think of the desert people like these intrepid and resourceful creatures who thrive on the edge of the world, exiles from the easy riches of the earth. They, like Milton’s Satan, are the masters of the geographic hell.

From Castle Rock, one can see a herd of antelope rapidly moving across the plain, or skittish horses, or the confidently serene donkeys. But the most ubiquitous animals are cattle. Our land is surrounded by the public lands of the Bureau of Land Management. Cattle graze freely and traverse into our land. We don’t mind the free fertilizer so we never press the ranchers to pay the grazing fee.

Whenever I see the cattle roaming about, I think of my maternal grandfather Pedro Apolinar. Besides farming grains on his tracts of land, my grandfather owned herds of dairy goats and sheep. Just like the cattle ranchers of Nevada, my grandfather used to take his herds out to an open, public range to a place called Rosales, south of Allende, Coahuila. The herds would stay out for long periods of time, so my grandfather would take wagon loads of supplies for the herders. On many occasions he’d take the family to camp out in the desert. Rosales was a half a day’s drive by wagon from the family home Nava. My mother would recall those memories in the manner of the myth-makers of bygone eras, stories filled with the same wonder of peoples who invented gods and tales to explain the physical universe. The Nevada desert evokes those bygone memories as though they were mine.

Salimos muy temprano en la mañana y llegamos en la tarde. Había un jacal de piedra donde nos quedábamos. La casa tenía un techo de paja, pero la mitad del techo estaba caído. En la noche hacia tanto frio que habían carámbanos en las vigas y sobre las ventanas. Yo iba y cojía los carámbanos y se los traía a mamá.
 
We’d leave [the house in Nava] very early in the morning and wouldn’t get there until well into the afternoon. There was a stone hut where we’d stay. It had a straw-thatched roof but half of it was fallen in. The nights were so cold that icicles formed on the rafters and the windows. I used to break them off and take them to mamá.

Octaviana, my mother, loved going to Rosales even though in the 1930s it was still like the desolate parts of the American West, a dangerous frontier. There, men—it was always men—who had fled the law would disappear into the wilderness, getting work (and sex) where they could. These men, untamed and unfit to live as husbands in the towns or the rancherías, were the ones my grandfather Pedro would hire as his animal herders. Yet, they all respected my grandfather because they feared him. He was taller than most Mexican men of the times and was a rough creature himself, having toughened himself since he was 14 years old when he left home to work in cattle drives and railroads in Texas where he earned the money to later buy his Coahuila ranch. A pistol was always hoisted on his hip and a rifle was always at hand. On one trip to Rosales my mother remembered a rattlesnake spooking the mules. In one swift motion, Pedro drew the pistol and shot the snake’s head off. My grandfather had no qualms taking his young wife and children among these ruffians because he was ready to kill anyone one of them as if they were rattlesnakes. He was a respected man, self-made, hard-working, He was also decent and generous with those whom he could have considered beneath his new station as a wealthy farmer. Every year, for instance, after the she-goats birthed, he would give the poorest families the cabritos, the male baby goats, as gifts. So had he enacted some frontier justice, the authorities would have never deigned to question him, let alone bring charges against him for what they would have considered defense of his family. To Octaviana, her father was like an epic giant of long-forgotten myths.​​

Group picture at the founding of the Church of Christ in Nava, Coahuila. The first Protestant church building ever in Coahuila, it has been designated a historic landmark. Pedro Apolinar, the author’s grandfather, is the tall man with the mustache; his wife, Carmen is the 4th woman from the left. The name Apolinar comes from Apolinari—the grandfather's grandfather was Italian. The building site was bought and donated by Pedro and his older brother, Jacinto.

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My grandfather had once hired a herder named Ventura Millares. Whereas all of the other herders implicitly understood that my grandfather was never to be crossed, Ventura had to be forewarned after he told my grandparents what he considered a “cute” story. I recorded my mother’s recollection:

“Les voy a contar un cuento medio chistoso,” dijo Ventura. “Una vez cuando estaba trabajando en ----, tenía una mujer. Le dije que le iba dejar algo cuando me fuera. Cuando montante mis cosas en el caballo para irme, le dije, “Ven acá para darte tu regalo.” Cuando se acerco, le corte la cara de los dos lados con mi navaja de resurar.’ Y papá le dijo, ‘Si te atreves hacerle un mal a unos de los mios, te juro que te mato.” “¡O no, jefe!” dijo Ventura. “Nunca haría eso.”

“I’m going to tell you a funny story,” said Ventura. “Once when I was working at--- (place name forgotten), I had a woman. I told her I’d give her something when I got ready to move on. When [the day came to leave and] I was done loading my horse, I told her, “Come here so I can give you your gift.” When she got close enough, I slashed both sides of her face with my razor.” Papá then said, “If you ever dare to hurt one of mine, I swear I’ll kill you.” “Oh, no, boss!” said Ventura, “I’d never do anything like that.”

But Ventura proved himself incorrigible. He almost beat a man to death in Nava. My mother’s older sister Maria saw it unfold when she was getting water from the well. Two men came crashing out of a cantina. Ventura quickly gaining the upper hand in the fight and continuing to beat the already beaten man. Maria ran inside the house. “Papá! Ventura is killing a man.” My grandfather ran out to the street, pistol in hand. Upon seeing my grandfather, Ventura started to run. “Stop Ventura, or I’ll shoot you,” yelled my grandfather, and he discharged a shot in the air.

Sometime after that incident, my grandparents went out to Rosales again to bring fresh supplies to the herders. My grandfather noticed some of the animals had separated from the herd and were wandering in the horizon. He immediately set out to retrieve them, and it wasn’t long before Ventura was facing down my grandmother. My mother recalled the moment with terror, as if she were re-living that moment. She remembered his eyes, how they shifted about, a hint of a smile forming on his lips.

“Where’s the boss?” He asked my grandmother.

“Por hay anda,”my grandmother said, meaning close-by, just out of sight.

He looked around quickly. “I don’t see him.”

“He’s here,” she said self-assuredly. She, too, had grown up in desert during the time of the Revolution when young women, especially a young white woman like herself, were the target of rapacious men, revolutionaries and federales alike.

Ventura looked around again, but my grandmother’s cool steadfastness
discouraged him. He took a step back, perhaps remembering my grandfather’s willingness to use his gun. My mother said that when he stepped back, it was as if all of his weight were going forward and he had physically hit a wall. It was unmistakable what he intended to do.
​
Like all of the transient men of the desert, Ventura was gone not long after.
​ 

Rosa Martha Villarreal in front of the runs of Castillo de Santa Croche in Spain.

***
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The Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are religions born of the desert. But for me, the desert doesn’t inspire spirituality. If the desert were a correlative for a philosophy, it would be Existentialism. It is nature at its most primal level. The landscape is not only hot and perennially swept by gusting winds, but it conceals its water. The water is there, of course, because the herds of antelope, horses and donkeys not only sustain themselves but thrive. Here and there, water bursts from the ground into small springs. But mostly the water remains concealed. My husband and I had to have a well drilled. The water, it turns out, was 128 feet below the surface. The desert’s indifferent to the desires and need of men and women, exacting only despair as evidenced by a sign on the nearby relic of the 19th century California-Oregon trail. The commemorative plaque tells of the miles and miles traveled and not a drop of water to be found. How many died? How many children perished of thirst in pursuit of their parents’ ambitions? How many animals, pushed beyond exhaustion, enslaved to the will of humans suffered this horrible end? The sadness still lingers on the trail like a heavy smoke.

Even today, straying too far from the springs and troughs can be deadly for cattle. The cowherds guide the cattle back to the ranches or natural springs or to the water troughs. Recently, a cowherd poached some water from us for his herd. He may have been drinking and delayed guiding the cows to their water source. We weren’t mad. The few humans of the desert look out for each other. Natural law prevails for good and sometimes for evil. 
​

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Pedro Apolinar Jr., about 16 years-old

Evil. The memories of the past once again conjure themselves from the rivers of time, and I see the desert of Coahuila-Texas recreate itself and impose itself on the Nevada desert. Years after Ventura Millares left my grandfather’s employ, one of my mother’s older brothers, Pedro Jr., was old enough to take the herds out to graze in the desert and supervise the herders. My grandfather would load up the wagon with food, and my uncle Pedro Jr., still a young teenager, would go out alone armed with a .22 rife and a dog for self-defense. He was camping out alone one night, asleep beneath the wagon when he was besieged by a group of bandits. They ransacked the wagon, taking the food, blankets, money, and mules, and rife and ammunition. The head bandit chambered the cartridge and put the barrel to Pedro Jr.’s head.

“Don’t kill me,” pleaded Pedro Jr.

“I’m not leaving a witness,” the bandit said, and he surely would have fired a shot had not one of his companions stepped in.

“Don’t kill, him. Look at him. He’s just a child.”

In what seemed an eternity, the bandit finally lowered the gun and the group departed, leaving Pedro Jr. stranded without food or transportation. Fortunately for my young uncle, the dog was cowering nearby and unseen by the bandits. Pedro Jr. carried a little notebook all the time to keep inventory and take notes for my grandfather. He tied a note for help on the dog’s collar and sent the dog back to my grandparents. My mother remembered when the dog staggered into the house, and my grandparents’ alarm upon seeing the loyal dog there alone. The police were alerted. By the time my grandfather retrieved my uncle and returned to town, the police had apprehended the bandits.

“Are these the men who robbed you?”
​
My uncle identified them one by one and added, “That one put the gun to my head, and this one is the one who stopped him from killing me.” 
​

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***
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My uncle returned to the desert after that experience. He could have begged off the job. My grandfather, who spoiled his children and acceded to their wishes much too often, would have surely not sent out his son if the latter were disinclined. I wish we had the benefit of my uncle’s remembrances of those times, but we never will because a few years later his mental capacities were seriously compromised by Typhoid Fever. He was again in the desert and began to feel sick. Thinking he had the flu, he stayed out too long. When he came home, my grandfather, too, thought my uncle had the flu and waited too long before taking him to the doctor. My uncle became a shell of himself. The sharpness of the mind, the desires, memories, and ambitions became disjointed. It was as if a flood had created islands in his brain. He could discern his world but only as disconnected fragments, and just like the receding flood in the desert that uncover lost towns, wagons, and skeletal remains, the fever exposed an artefact of the subconscious. When the moon was full, his normal passivity vanished, and he became transformed into a maniacal man-beast, something akin to an extinct solitary creature of the desert. The furniture would get overturned, dishes were hurled about. Although he never hurt his loved ones, he evoked their most primal fears. He became the nagual, the changeling of the Indian legends. Or were they legends? The pre-modern tribal speakers of Old English, an archaic form of German, called it weird (veird). In the modern sense, weird denotes a mocking dismissiveness. But to the people of antiquity, it signified the manifestation of an invisible world.
​
Standing under the full moon of the Nevada desert, I wonder if he sees me invading his dreams at that moment. But even in his dreams, I discover that his mind remains impenetrable. He has become like the desert that absorbed him.

​Rosa Martha Villarreal, a retired Adjunct Professor at Consumnes River College in Sacramento, California, is author of several novels important to American literature, including Doctor Magdalena, The Stillness of Love and Exile, and Chronicles of Air and Dreams, and a children's book, The Adventures of Wyglaf the Wyrm. Copyright Rosa Martha Villarreal, 2017. 

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