March

March 7th 2009.
Siittin' in the Stardust Inn.
I really like this place, comfortable. Nice people at the front desk, faint scent of curry in the lobby and in the accent of the lady who checks me in.
As she takes my card, my numbers, she notices Sadie in the cab of my truck, eyes alert, ears, pointy, pointed at us as we talk and smile about her, how pretty she is, how lucky we both are. Me, I'm lucky for having found her and she's just plain lucky for bein' alive, and for finding me, I suppose.
She was tied up by a telephone wire for more than two weeks. She has a tendency to spin madly in clockwise revolutions, she'd wound that wire up tight around a pole, around her leg, that wire cut deep into her flesh. That wire had held her tight during some frigid, icy, Taos nights, no food, no shelter, no friends, a bowl of ice to slake her thirst. I mean Sadie was tied up of course, my dog, not the lady behind the counter whose voice sounded like cardamom and ginger.
The lady with the fragrant voice said her own dog, (a German Shepherd, fourteen year member of her family that had saved her husbands life, twice, once by knocking the gun out of a holdup man's hand) had been killed, hit near their home, by a Police car. The Policeman drove on by.
The traffic rolls loud, heavy, on the Interstate, at home in Taos the nights are quiet, near silent. I sit and think about the woman and her dog, her loss. The lady with the dusky skin and the sound of ginger told me that her family had given their departed pet the same respect and ceremony that they would have provided an aunt or a cousin, any loved one.
Her words, her English didn't flow well, nor easily. My perception of her words was erratic, like listening to a radio station bounce in and out as you drive through canyons.
I knew what she meant; She missed her dog. She had loved him, her German Shepherd, she had loved him, he had been killed. I wasn't fair. The Policeman drove on by.

Tomorrow Lipizzaner Stallions!