Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s with five story-loving brothers, the Irish family origin myth expanded. We reasoned that our distant fathers lived along the Lee River in County Cork because we would be ‘of the Lee’ which is close to the name “O’Lay”.

When I was thirty years old I was privileged to live and work in Ireland for a year and was accepted by the Irish people pretty much as family. Having an ear for its music, my speech started sounding Irish. After leaving Ireland, for the next two years my accent persisted to the point that new acquaintances assumed I was Irish.

Ten years ago one of my brothers paid for DNA genetic testing. He scanned the results for the percent of Irish in our blood: 3%. Three percent! How could that be? Other brothers confirmed this utter disappointment with their own tests.

I consider it a bit of a cosmic Irish joke that I used to have Irish ancestry.

I wanted to be Irish, or to have famous ancestors like Abraham Lincoln or European royalty because ultimately I feel basically inadequate. I have found that those who can legitimately claim some royal ancestor feel inadequate as well, but for different reasons. Perhaps this feeling of inadequacy is a consequence of living while our industrial culture unravels. Global warming and the extinction of many many species are happening this second - and I’m not doing enough to stop it. The feeling of not being enough is as pervasive as gravity.

Intact indigenous cultures which are mythologically connected to their land have often preserved their lineages and maintained specific relationships with their ancestors and their ecosystems. Europe was once home to many indigenous peoples. As ecosystems on planet Earth unravel it’s natural for Europeans like me to search for times when we lived more in balance with other species.

In the 2000’s Joanna Macy led groups of us through practices around “Dwelling in Deep Time”. My mind opened to consider vaster time scales. Accordingly, let me call humans who lived long before history “deep ancestors” whether or not they are technically kin. What were these deep ancestors like?

I devised a thought experiment and invite you to join me.

Imagine ancestors that lived before civilization, say long before agriculture began. But notice, there are no kings or queens, emperors or empresses, because all those are products of civilization. Let us go further into the past, so far that civilized roles are irrelevant. We proceed into translucent fields of “prehistory”, which reveal themselves through fascinating science families like paleontology, anthropology, archaeology and many others. Above all, I’m suggesting that we can connect with deep ancestors not through the intellect, but through our common heart. They were people like you and me: intelligent, curious, loving, creative and adaptive.

In this thought experiment, to help stabilize our imagination think of ancestors who did not stand out. Imagine our deep ancestors as ones who did not seek fame or power, who lived and died across a thousand generations. Think of people we’re taught to dismiss as average, boring, and unprogressive.

I expected that removing who I was conditioned to want my deep ancestors to be would limit its scope. The opposite occurred: it gave my imagination freedom to shift its viewpoint. Slightly untethered, my thought experiment lifted me out of my individuality.

That was a crucial realization: our deep ancestors were communal. They communed with each other and all beings around them. Knowledge accumulated and sustained them. They developed and maintained relationships with local plants and animals, especially those that fed and clothed them, as well as with the predators that fed on them.

How could any ecosystem adapt to thousands of years of natural changes (climate, precipitation, cataclysms, etc.)? Optimally the ecosystems themselves maintained communications between its subsystems, including humans. Our deep ancestors listened, learned, and implemented feedback loops that helped keep the whole healthy and handed them down.

To counter the heavy weight of so much reductive rational thinking in this world, let me indulge in a fantasy. My heart imagines our deep ancestors living so integrally that the ecosystems they were members of attained a state of climax. Slow times of no progress gave time for learning how to live beautifully in lands they left to their children’s children’s children. They were part of something larger than themselves, and their participation was essential to sustain it.

If this was so what was the event that interrupted the prehistoric climax? How ended the primordial golden age in Eurasia? Being a nobody, a non-specialist, a non-expert, I can make my bold suggestion with minimal risk of losing anything. I posit our ‘fall from Eden’ was caused by losing connections with other forms of intelligence. Species sometimes disappeared under our watch, or even by our own hands. (Mammoths, for example.) Languages naturally drifted apart. After enough inter-species communications ceased, most European human-participant ecosystems collapsed where their ways were forgotten, eventually decaying into what we generally know as civilization.

Humans have always lived among Earthly intelligences, but there is one in particular that is gone I wish to grieve. Our Eurasian deep ancestors lived among a particular species, a strong bodied animal which had a larger brain than theirs or ours and had lived far longer in the environments they shared: Homo neanderthalis.

Neanderthals lived in the same lands as Homo sapiens for thousands of years. They were not like us. They evolved independently for hundreds of thousands of years, and manifested their own ways of living on Earth. Neanderthals left millions of unique stone tools for scraping hides and ivory spears to hunt game, but nowhere is there evidence they made weapons for war.

It is not known how much Neanderthals associated with Sapiens. It’s safe to say that minimally, since our deep ancestors and Neanderthals maintained connections with their shared ecosystems they knew the impact of each other’s actions upon it. Yet I wonder if there was love between them. We know they sometimes had sex, producing lines of mixed species mothers. (Male babies could not reproduce.) Because humans are naturally curious suggests they may have played with one another. Almost every one of us has a few Neanderthal genes.

Living near such a kind of intelligence would make a difference to the lived experience of any human. Among other positive effects, It likely normalized recognizing intelligence in other species. If so, the effect of Neanderthal neighbors may have kept our deep ancestors awake to knowing their place on Earth.

Neanderthals vanished more than 30,000 years ago. Of course it’s total speculation that Neanderthal influence had a stabilizing effect on Sapien culture, but allow me to present the possibility. Imagine, a similar but profoundly different people who shared lands with us were suddenly gone. My conjecture is that Neanderthal extinction broke our deep ancestors’ hearts and they never properly mended. They drifted westward across Europe trying to fill the emptiness Neanderthals left and eventually crossed the sea and spread across the globe. Few species remained to remind Europeans they were not the only intelligent being or even the most intelligent. My ancestors began to focus on themselves as individuals more and more, eventually bringing the present situation of human caused destruction of many other species.

Joanna Macy was sensitive to the loss of species and wrote ‘The Bestiary’ - a list of the names of beings endangered or gone extinct. The list is growing ever longer. I suggest we add ‘Homo neanderthalis’ to it and learn how to grieve them all. The eulogy is forged from admiration, not pity. It celebrates how we all emerged and shared the world together for a time. In Coming To Life Joanna and Molly Brown warn us that guilt is useless because ‘it tends to close us down’. Instead, let’s make space in our hearts, speech, and minds for the future to reimagine itself, whatever emerges.

As it turns out I’m 1% more Neanderthal than I am Irish! When I worked in Shannon, County Clare with a team of brilliant Irish engineers one of them told me of Cuiveen O’Laois, my Irish name-brother from south of Dublin. Looking back, it didn’t matter what DNA I thought I carried, I felt at home in the sincerity of the Irish welcome. These days it’s easy to forget that humans generally, naturally, get along and can even enjoy life with strangers. Although my inherited genetics turned out to be mostly English and Slovak, my fleeting Irish ancestry made for a good yarn.

References

Slimak, Ludovic (2024). The Naked Neanderthal. A New Understanding of Human Culture.
Pegasus Books.

Sykes, Rebecca Wragg (2022). Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death, and Art. Bloomsbury

Sigma.

Sahlins, Marshall (2022). The New Science of the Enchanted Universe. An Anthropology of Most of Humanity. Princeton University Press

Macy, Joanna and Brown, Molly Young (2014). Coming Back To Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects. New Society Publishers.

Basura renge

Not perceiving but receiving magic
unmeasured and looking up 
through openings wide,
I call to myself as if to a campfire.
The light filters through as words.
That it is possible to fly 
calling ever deeper through recursion,
self propagating through its own made space.
Each dimension is a deity outstretched,
pointing new directions to view.
Doesn’t matter if they don’t exist,
they already emerged 
said as a spell, performative.

And it’s strewn here
like a bubble.

-

Waltz for Jin Chan

Three toed three legged 
three toothed smile,
waltz on a tripod,
a cauldron's beguile.

Deep dove the ladle 
from cradle to grave.  
Compact.  Tetrahedral.
I am only 2/3 of you  

who enthrone wherever you sit 
to engage your third eye.  Laughing,
your crown of gold splashes everywhere
generously.

-

 l’esprit de monter les escaliers 

Head tilting towards a passing faerie forest,
I let a howling tear release.
My desire will not die with me 
but find other bodies to lease.

Fire that finds no fuel merely rests.  
One day a flame 
will glance and cabaceo
 the fire will resume its dance of tango.

The light of another sky
lingers in my head
like fog so fat and well fed
it’s hard to find eyes to look by.

Something my memory wiped:
empty space a word should go
waits like an open hand
for fruit to fall into overripe.

-

I set this and the keen to notation this week in preparation for a Sept 6th Farmers Market performance here in dear ol’ Scappoose, with Carson Lattimore on flutes.

For years I’ve lived by a walking trail that winds along the river where I live, and joins a trail built atop a logging railroad bed. Bordering farms and bird-rich wetlands, it eventually extends fifty miles into the Oregon hills. There is a coffee shop three miles in. Originally, I walked to the coffee shop as a daily morning exercise. Over hundreds of walks I’ve formed relationships with its other residents, particularly birds and trees. To keep these relationships alive, a walking practice developed itself inside me.

My unofficial stewardship of the path I walk did not develop out of intellectual urgency derived from what I know of my region’s ecological decay. Rather it has grown out of imagination and play.

When I walk alone in nature, I fearlessly entertain the notion that the world is magical and thought obstructs its sensation, and that sensation is the original way to meet it. My practice started as a combination of walking meditation which I learned from Joanna Macy in 1993, and Deep Listening which I learned from the modern composer Pauline Oliveros. The practice leaves no room for rumination because attention is full of the senses. When the mind is empty and senses are full, space for connections arise.

If you have legs, the walking part is easy. I recommend a quiet path, less travelled. When no humans are watching I love to dance down the trail in silly ways like a child. It breaks the monotony of a steady march. Be brave in tiny ways. Trespass the boundaries of your habits. Perhaps I get away with walking this way because I look to others like a harmless crazy old man. That’s okay with me.

Ears are the first sense organs formed in the womb. They brought us first evidence of another world when sounds arrived from outside our mother’s body. Similarly, hearing is the sense that opens me into a world of presence. Dzogchen teaches that sight, smell, taste and touch are equally powerful gateways to a clear mind. I’m most adept with sound.

Pauline’s Deep Listening means ‘listen to everything all the time’. It can be said simply but requires practice to accomplish. Try it: let your ears reach out into your surroundings and invite everything in. Follow each sound until it leaves you, especially sounds that persist. For example, keep listening to motors and wind while accepting all the shorter sounds.

If your mind prefers to spin stories in your head, don’t worry. The world must be what it is, including wandering minds. Denying a mental condition just makes more mental noise. Let each bubble of thought go without scolding yourself. When I’m stuck inside my head I use a trick I adapted from the WTR practice called the “Mirror Walk”. I imagine the emptiness of the universe ‘before’ the Big Bang and then open my eyes to the astonishing endlessness of what is. A primal reset, it shocks my mind enough to let my senses rush back in.

I live on a boat on a river that glides through wetlands between manmade dikes. The river is rich with salmon and sturgeon, cormorants, ducks and more. The wetlands throng with geese and cranes. This river is ancient and alive.

The water has long been unsafe to drink because of industrial pollution and run-off from farms. Only once in my life, on the Katherine River in Australia, did I have the pleasure drinking river water right from the canoe. For tens of thousands of years humans enjoyed this global gift. What is it that I take for granted now which will be gone for future generations?

My walk starts on the dike. Until this year trees on the dike offered homes for bird families and tall grasses for rodents. But those thriving volunteers were not planned by the Army Corps of Engineers, who had it all cut down, they say, for our safety. I miss their beauty and grieve when I see only stumps and slash.

Un-homed birds on powerlines wail. Wail for the suffering we have caused. My gut awakes my heart in alarm. I listen again and hear joy. How can that be? How can songs of pure joy emanate from breasts beaten down? I listen again… they are not beaten down. Birds are tough little beings that deserve respect, not pity or derision. How they survive night after night of cold rain and wind is impressive. They are bright-eyed warriors and Bodhisattvas.

It feels odd to be an invader species responsible for massive extinctions and genocide. I do not identify as a species that could end all life with its weaponry and yet has the gall to fear “wild trees” and kill “invasive plants”. Like it or not, I am an invader. I am a poor human. Pity the old white male.

The dike makes for excellent walking, with views of the sparkling river. Seven kinds of geese vee overhead, headed for their homes. Many survive hunting season. Each morning the gunfire starts early. I’m certain there are days when some geese lose no family members, gunned down for sport. The state provides more than 10,000 acres of wildlife area across the river. Terror is the price they pay to make it home.

I love the sandhill cranes and have entered a magical connection with some of them. Once one slowly circled over me calling down. I called back up. I swear we renewed loving vows we made in other lifetimes. Call it fantasy. I don’t care. Let tenuous make-believe sow ecological responsibility if that’s what it takes. I suspect such magic touches us all but usually slips off like Teflon. As I stepped away from where I stood beneath the crane I caught my rational mind stomping on its memory. That exchange was close to being erased but survived. My heart feels like a river when I hear cranes.

A mile from my gate there is a pocket of wood where “wild trees” grow elegant and tall, and the underbrush thick and various. My little city recently designated as a park. I go off trail and descend to it from the dike. I always ask for permission to enter, out loud. In my quiet state, I simply wait for a reply, sensing the bliss of leaves absorbing sunlight and roots’ deep suck of soil. Sometimes the reply is a pretty birdsong, or commentary from a crow. Sometimes I feel the area does not welcome me though I usually make an offering.

Inside I found a place by a big spherical bush where, unseen, I could make offerings. My offerings are music. Typically, I hold a tin whistle and silently listen for what music might fit in. I often improvise on Irish sean-nos airs. November through March the silence is punctured with sporadic gunfire. My whistle’s cry spreads far and wide. Curious walkers on the dike stop to see who or what is making this ‘flute music’. It echoes across the river and into the wilderness area. Lone hunters put me in their scopes not to shoot but to see where music is coming from. Ospreys circle and Bald Eagles launch from their aeries. Kingfishers scold. Playing music is my way of offering beauty back. Often, I’d turn to the flowering bush and play for it alone.

One week not long ago the scrub and underbrush fell under a bulldozer’s blade. I feel shock when I stand where my favorite bush once thrived. Now it’s a place I go to grieve. How can I stand by as the natural world is destroyed? So what - it’s not old growth but just a scrubby riverside patch. Feeling the pain, I sit with it, imagine its shape, and search for where it lodges in my body. Must progress always render me powerless? I did not stop the destruction.

I could not stop the destruction. The men who operate the machines are friendly people ‘just doing their jobs’. Apparently, the city has opted to shape this place into a standard style of park with sprawling lawn and shade trees, rather than rambling wild woods. Families of voles, moles, and nutria, of birds and foxes were killed or exiled. I’d prefer knowing they’re there to seeing pretty green grass. (While writing this essay I scanned the city’s park plan and discovered I know the VP of the parks committee. I shall contact her in the hopes she can hear their cry.)

The trail turns onto a paved railroad bed, lined with stately trees. Further along, blackberries are brutally cut back. Herbicides are sprayed to make the ground look neat and clean and cheaper to ‘maintain’. Who dares poison the source of our food so weeds don’t grow? I prefer the disorderly riot of weeds.

I listen as I cross the wetlands. As far as I can tell, all those who sing love to sing. All those who croak love to croak. All those who whisper in secret, love to whisper in secret. If it’s so quiet that nothing comes - then I become what nothing loves - and if I can, love that.

Two miles in, a local airport runs constant take-offs and landings of little planes louder than Harleys and as irritating as airborne gas-powered leaf-blowers. Maybe I’m cranky, but sunny days are so loud with noise it masks the melodies of birds, frogs’ croaked rhythms, and the ostinatos of ducks and geese. Thankfully on drab and rainy days the planes fly less and a lovely quiet hush leaves room for the whole symphony.

Further down and closer to town was a 5 acre stand of 150 foot tall Douglas Firs. It was probably a stand that was grown to be harvested. It took weeks for every grand being to be mechanically uprooted, limbs severed, and ground into chips. Even the topsoil was hauled away. The naked subsoil sits waiting to be sold as an industrial park. This is called progress, the endless maw of making money. We do not have to live this way.

Finally, I leave the trail and walk a few city blocks to the coffee shop. I drink oils from beans grown in Indonesia. Delicious and energizing, but is it worth what I pay? I’m not talking money here. I give in and look away. At my comfortable seat I open my laptop to work, thinking that all the life I met that morning, somehow I betray. I lift my cup, stare out the window and close my eyes. I recall the “Mirror Walk”. I imagine the emptiness of the universe ‘before’ the Big Bang and then open my eyes to the astonishing endlessness of what is.

It took 10 seconds to realize I’d go crazy sitting in my car hoping cell phone service would suddenly arrive. My car was dead and I could die out here too. The next town was fifty miles away and I hadn’t seen another vehicle for hours. So much for shortcuts to Phoenix. I wasn’t going to play golf today. “What the hell,” I thought: “Walk!” On a desert road, wearing bright yellow golf pants, a Midori green shirt and brand new white tennis shoes, I might as well walk down the road in a clown suit. But being so bold made me a little cheerful. “What the hell.” I kept saying out loud.

Thirst kicked in about two miles down where there was a gravel track off to the left, and a shot up sign saying ‘WILLIKIN - ONE MILE”. It wasn’t on my map. I felt a tiny bit disappointed it was going to be this easy.

Willikin consisted of two buildings. A farmhouse with holes in the roof had been painted half yellow and half red, separated roughly in a line down the center. Apparently, someone painted over the yellow part way and must have decided in the middle of the job that they didn’t like it. Two dusty Harleys hunched out front. I gave up after knocking on the storm door for five minutes.

The other structure was a weary old building with a wide wooden porch, just like in the old movies, complete with saloon doors. Tattered pieces of yellow police tape blew from the pilasters. No one bothered to remove them. I had the feeling they were left up as a kind of decoration. Feeling cocky, and since no one was watching, I made believe I was in an old western and burst through the swinging doors.

My eyes were blinded by the sudden dark. The place wasn’t empty. A man with a gravelly voice bellowed, “What the hell do you want?”

I froze. Must be the bartender, I thought. I wanted to turn around and walk in again quietly, like a normal human being. I cleared my throat and asked, “Is there a phone I can use?”

A cough exploded from a dark corner. The place seemed big all of a sudden.

The bartender was wearing white bib overalls covered with what looked like blood. I couldn’t take my eyes from it. “Is that blood?” My voice was dry and thin.

“What!” The tone of his reply was not the upward lift of a question, but had the hard stamp of NO! He looked down at himself and chuckled. “Oh, ... yeah, … forgot about that. Yup, it’s blood from that stinkin’ cow I just butchered out back.” He paused. His look of alarm suddenly changed as if he just had a great idea. “Hey. Since you’re here, might as well join us. That’s Billy and Walt’n there in the corner with their girlfriends. Serious men.” The bartender’s lips stretched into a plastic smile. “Serious about drinkin’ and jokin’ around, if ya know what I mean.” Then he leaned toward me and whispered. “Just don’t look at their women.” He burst out in a forced and nervous laugh -- and didn’t take his eyes off me. I didn’t know what to say. He turned his big head to the corner and yelled. “Billy! Walt! Come over here and meet our dinner guest!”

I heard chairs skidding a few inches across the floor. Suddenly there they were. The bartender pointed at a tall rail thin man who seemed too young to drink. “This here is Billy.” Billy had startlingly blue eyes. The other was short and grimy looking. A piece of toilet paper stuck to his boot. He kept looking at Billy.

“Hello!” I said loudly and stuck out my hand.

They didn’t say hello or shake my hand. The tall one stared at me. The short fellow kept shifting his eyes between me and his tall companion. Even my warmest smile didn’t help to break the silence. The women quickly left. I turned to look but saw only doors swinging in the glare.

Again I asked the bartender, “Is there a phone?” My heart pounded. I had to get out of there.

“Ain’t no phone here.” It was Billy who talked - slowly and thoughtfully, as if talking was something he rarely had an opportunity to do. “Have to go to Pittstown to use a phone. ‘Bout fifty-two miles. I’ll take you there, but you’ll have to wait.”

That was it, I thought - I’m gonna die. Fifty-two miles. I had no choice. Loosen up! I told myself. Maybe these are OK people. Maybe I’m frazzled from living in Vegas too long.

I asked, “Would you pour me a scotch?”

The bartender hesitated. “Sure, I s’pose so.” Billy, you got any of that whiskey left?”

The tall man looked back to the table and scowled. “Shit. Guess so.” The short guy hustled back to the table for the bottle. My eyes were adjusting to the dark. I noticed two pistols and an old radio lying there.

“Hey, I don’t mean to drink yours. I wanted to buy some of my own.” What sort of bar is this? I thought. Must not get much business.

They stared at me. The short guy was glaring. “This ain’t no bar!” He stammered, “What the fuck.”

I looked around, and then it dawned on me. It wasn’t a bar. It was an old stable with a few tables in it. I had unwittingly barged in on them. The wooden counter we stood at had thrown me off. There were no bottles on the wall, no taps, no sink, no barstools, no lights - only some tables and straw.

“I’m sorry. I thought it was.” I must have looked pale.

“You’re pretty fucking stupid,” blurted Walt, the short one.

“Now, Walt - where’s your hospitality? Here’s your drink, mister.” The bartender poured whiskey into a dirty glass. “Built this little wooden counter here. Thought someday I could make this into a real saloon. Even put on doors.” He paused. “Crazy, ain’t it? Out here? A bar?” He pulled out two more glasses, dumped straw out of them, and set them out for Walt and Billy. The man fit the part of a bartender pretty well, rotund and depressed. He brought out a box of glasses and plates and set it on a round wooden table with chairs. We followed and stood around as he brought out a box of silverware and placed it on the table. “I’ll go start the coals. You boys behave.” As the bartender left, we kicked back our whiskeys.

The drink felt good. I realized Walt and Billy were again staring at me. Not even a blink. I sat down and poured myself another glass and tried to make relaxed conversation.

“What do you guys do out here?”

No answer.

“Do you farm?”

Silence. Cold stares. Billy slowly rolled up his sleeves.

“Hey, if you two are looking for trouble... I’m not interested.” I tried to not look scared.

They looked at each other and slowly sat down across from me. Walt quickly snatched the bottle and poured themselves another. Billy kept staring without reply and slowly picked up a fork from the box of silverware and threw it at me. It clattered off the table and clanged on the floor. Then he rocked back on the two hind legs of his chair, deadpan. They waited for me to react. Well, perhaps I had too much alcohol or something: I picked up a spoon and lobbed it between them.

We began dueling with silverware. Forks and spoons and butter knives went through the air with solemnity, back and forth. They weren’t thrown hard and no one aimed for the face. We tried to land them as close to each other as possible. Ones that clanged noisily seemed the most satisfactory. I tried to return their stares but it was less effective since I had to look at both of them.

It was silly and a little fun. The silverware was terribly balanced and would not land the way I wanted. I kept saying to myself, I must be as crazy as these birds. When the box ran out we reached for ones that landed nearby and tossed those. Silverware was strewn all over the place. I couldn’t help but let out a few laughs but they remained silent.

I was starting to have a good time and thought to myself, maybe the old westerners had little games like this all the time. Maybe even guns could be used like this - you don’t aim for the other guy, you just try to scare the piss out of him, like playing chicken.

After a while, throwing silverware became old hat. They stopped and then I stopped and that awful silence returned. Billy still stared at me. Walt looked at Billy.

“What the hell...” I suggested putting the silverware away and continuing with more upscale weapons, which was crazy since I had no gun.

Walt’s jaw dropped as he glanced at Billy.

Billy stopped staring and all of a sudden looked very concerned. I just figured they’re a tad slow. Maybe the schools out here aren’t so good, bless their hearts.

The bartender brought four plates, each with a thick steak, mashed potatoes and gravy and set them before us. I dove in. I had never eaten meat so fresh. “Delicious!” I exclaimed. They all set to eating ferociously. Not another word was said.

The women didn’t reappear until we were finishing, and they brought the sheriff and one of his deputies with them. I figured they were also invited to this weird little dinner party. At last, someone to talk to, I thought. They walked straight to me. I put my fork down to shake their hands.

“Stand and put your hands behind your back,” one of them said.

“Huh?” Before I knew it, they lifted me off my chair, pushed me against a pole, and handcuffed me to it. The Sheriff shook hands with the barman. “Nice job, John.”

“No, thank the boys. They stalled him, somehow. I was out back at the grille.” He paused and bowed his head and said, “Wasn’t easy leavin’ ‘em with ‘im.” He looked at his boys and tears fell from his eyes. “Your mother would have been proud.” The boys shifted in their boots, beaming. The sheriff took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve, relieved it was so easy.

Billy spoke up. “I dunno. This has got to be the same guy. But why’s he dressed up so godawful? Clean cut and such. Looks lots different than when he was here last.”

My jaw dropped. Walt piped in. “What’dya mean Billy? The asshole just barged in and drank our whisky ‘n’ started throwin’ things, laughin’ kinda crazy like the last time. And then asks us if we wouldn’t be gettin’ out the guns. Fucker’s insane.”

I pulled against my handcuffs and protested, “But I...” and got karate chopped in the side by the deputy. I dropped to the floor.

The sheriff turned to Billy and watched him with care. Moments went by. He asked Billy, “You mean, Billy, you’re not sure this is the same man?”

“Well, sir,” Billy was twisting all around as he stood, obviously having a difficult time. “I keep lookin’ but...” He shrugged his shoulders and started to cry. Walt stomped his foot on the floor and turned away in disgust. Billy eventually raised his head and said, “No, it’s not him. No.” He looked at me with his wet face.

I felt a wave of relief and sighed. I tried to explain that my car broke down but the barman and the two boys turned without a word and walked away, their heads down. I was an accidental freak; a stranger who walked onto the scene of a tragedy. I couldn’t ask who they thought I was, but realized something terrible happened here.

The deputy lifted me off my butt and uncuffed me from the pole. To my surprise he slapped them back on immediately. When we got to their cruiser, he opened a door and pushed me in. We drove back to my car in silence. They radioed for road assistance and the sheriff opened my door and helped me get out. He unlocked the handcuffs and said, “I don’t know who you are and what you’re doing here but I suggest you don’t come back”.

When I finally got rolling I didn’t look back. I didn’t make any friends but felt lucky for the whiskey and the steak. I floored it straight for the highway with an inexcusable grin.

“Maravilla, you are under arrest!”  Young Sheriff Steve Dylan Jr. stood far too erect, his chest pushed out, straining.  This was his first real assignment.  

The musician played on.  

“Maravilla!  Pardon me, ma'am.  We've come to take you in!”

Maravilla raised her head and gravely acknowledged the Sheriff with eyes deep as the starry night - the kind you get lost in.  She had a rare beauty.  Jet black hair spilled down her back and there was a wild freshness about her.   Her soft eyes pleaded,  Just one minute more.  I must say good-bye to my sweet guitar.   

Sheriff Dylan knew her:  a famous guitarist, singer, and dancer.  Supposedly a real big shot when she went East a dozen years back.  Why would anyone leave fame to return to this god-forsaken place?  "Hell, she's an Injun", his father judged.  "Belongs with her own."  The local villagers loved her but feared her all the same - for she had become a famous healer and a bruja,  or sorceress, among them.

Dylan loved her music and heard it often as a child.  His family's maid was one of Maravilla’s cousins, who often sang Maravilla's songs.  Sheriff Dylan did not want to arrest her but was under orders from his boss, Marshal Dean Webster, who considered Maravilla’s music a threat to local peace.  

He remembered the Marshal saying,  "Stirs them up too much.  Too many songs about reservation conditions, and against fences, clearcuts and mines.  Too many songs that laugh at authority."  Dylan heard she had publicly scorned a priest. "Bring her in and scare her a little - that's all,"  the Marshal commanded, and then added, "It may be harder than you think, Sheriff Dylan.  The woman is 'sposed to be some kind of heathen witch."  

Dylan replied.  "Sir, do you really believe such things?"  

“No.”  Webster replied, but after a pause added, “But I've seen some things down here I wouldn't dare put in a report.  I'm not necessarily sayin' she's dangerous -  but take as many men as you can.”  

Dylan realized he was daydreaming.  She had begun to sing her famous “Freedom Song.’   Dylan decided to listen.  Besides, after that long ride, the men could use some rest.

At the other end of the row was the mayor’s son Giraldo, who never cared much for music.  When he was a little boy he saw how street musicians at the festivals gave his poor father headaches.   Once his father muttered they were scum to be removed from the streets.  “No better than the begging pigeons!” his father liked to say.  “Chase them all away!”  And Giraldo did.  He aimed to become the police chief so he could protect his father.

The music swirled and fell, rose and exalted, then swept into a diabolical rage.  The men were transfixed; the music played on.  Her dark voice first made them shiver, and then made them burn; made them fall in love and then want to shout.  

Evening sun warmed the wood floor.  It seemed sometimes that two guitars were playing, not one.  Surely her voice rang across the valley.  Dylan stood in reverie.  Most of the men were content to relax as long as their Sheriff was in no hurry.  Five minutes turned to fifteen, and fifteen turned to thirty.

Giraldo could not relax.  The music made his skin crawl.  He kept his eyes forward and his body tense.  Giraldo wanted to get the Sheriff’s attention but did not allow himself to break formation.  

It did not matter.  Dylan’s eyes were closed.

Giraldo coughed and shifted his weight from side to side.  He pursed his lips, shifted his gaze to a corner of the room, and tried to think of the national anthem, but he could not remember it.  Instead he saw the flowers at the window and the low sun on the Maravilla’s proud face.  Then Giraldo snapped back and focused on his duty.  He knew her reputation very well. ‘This woman,’ he thought, ‘is a sorceress, able to make me drift off like that!’  He crossed himself, and remembered mountains to the south, where he built playhouses out of willows. Abruptly, Giraldo snapped out of this trance.  ‘Why think back to so long ago, when we still lived with those half-wits in the country?  My country demands I stay awake!’  Slowly he sank into a reflective mood, the music pulling at him to weep, until his head jerked upright and he said to himself, ‘Aiee!  This is very dangerous.’  He crossed himself again, vigorously.

The guitar mocked him.  Her voice made his heart fall and rise again.  His head felt hot.  His palms were sweaty.  Giraldo tried to remember what his priest said to guard against sorcerers. He was certain this is what Maravilla was.  His mind never wandered to soft and pathetic things.  He thought of the Arizona Governor and the President of the USA; how they needed his help to purify the land.  Enraged, Giraldo stepped forward and turned to see how the posse was coping.  All of them in a stupor, just standing there, some with tears in their eyes!  Even his Sheriff stood with his head lifted and his eyes closed.  Trembling with fear, Giraldo pictured the President of the USA.  He bowed his head and prayed to God for strength and felt it given.  

Sheriff Dylan’s heart pounded in his chest.  He was sad they had to arrest this woman.  Sad that Maravilla would not stop making songs that provoked the government and put her people and the land before the great American cause.  Why did she refuse to write a song to commemorate Arizona Statehood?  Why did she tell the new Governor,  “I’d rather die than praise your lie”?

It’s getting late, Dylan decided.  Just one more minute of this pure delight and then we must return.  But he didn’t need to wait.

Two shots rang out.  The second bullet passed through the guitar and into Maravilla’s waist.  The first went through her throat.  Her voice croaked weirdly as she slumped over her guitar.  A second croak issued from a raven in the room that had gone unnoticed.  It flew out of a window, apparently startled from the blasts.

Dylan went to Maravilla.  The others turned to look at Giraldo’s pale face, whose hands trembled as the rifle nozzle smoked.  They rushed to seize him, shouting in anger and disbelief.

Gently, Dylan lifted Maravilla’s nearly severed head.  He could not look into her eyes.  His hands burned where they touched her blood.  It was so hot he had to let go.  He knew the Marshal would be storming mad.   How could he have bungled such an easy task?

Maravilla’s blood seeped into the instrument and dripped out of its new hole.

“Oh, God!  What shame!”  The Sheriff moaned and strode up to Giraldo, eyes filled with tears, and blood burning on his hands.  “Giraldo --- why?”

Giraldo swallowed and finally moved his eyes to the Sheriff’s.  “Sir.  I had to stop the evil to save you.  That sorceress had all of you under a spell.”

Dylan paused.  He had seen this kind of man before.  “No, my pitiful friend.  You, not us.  It's you who are under a spell.”

In front of him in line, astonished man found himself taken with the grain of the smooth wooden floor. Tall man saw how that gaze pointed down, as men less lucky do, and when pointed up chose the cheapest cup, as men less lucky do.

He would get the seasonal latte. Bored of looking down, and wanting it that way, like an airplane lording over sparrows he flew to a table to wait and watch.

Astonished man sipped his coffee. Complex bitters leapt downbeats of chocolate softened by chords of cushioned nut. Hot in a mug that warmed his pain, he looked out at the wet. A tea candle floated down the curb, somehow lit and alone. “Miraculous!” He beamed.

Unsurprised by the suffocating rain, unsurprised by the fly on a window pane, tall man missed what made the other brighten and thought. “Ah, he’s pro’bly drugged or drunken.”

Tiny waves rushed after the tea candle, swooning awe.

The downpour suddenly stopped, surprising all. A wedge of golden sunlight lit up the wet streets. One man fell deeper in love with life, the other’s eyes glazed over like donuts, cynically ignored, “It’s happened before.”

Of course it hasn’t and never will again.