Continue with Part 2
Outside of my studio window, a violent storm offered very little assistance. The large thunderstorm clouds filled the sky. Whatever light might have shone from the moon or stars had been totally blocked allowing only the blackest of night to shine into the window. The devilish howling wind added no light, but added to the atmosphere by whipping a tree limb dangerously close to the studio window.
My safe and warm studio that I often retreated was no longer comfortable. Sittings in my large leather recliner, I could barely make out the black outline of the end table and the distant bookcases. The flickering light that broke the blackness wasn't even enough for me to see the visitor in the distant chair.
He had become very insistent over the last week. From the very first contact with him, I felt his deep anger. I had no interest in talking with someone with such deep hate. However, he continued to request an interview. Each morning that I awoke, he was calling. Each meal that I sat down to eat was with his company. Overall, he had become a most irritating individual. Soon, I felt angry rise within me at just the thought of him.
So I agreed to meet and hear his story with the understanding that he would go away afterwards. Even then, I had not expected to be listening over the midnight stroke of the clock on a stormy night in a dark room. It did not matter. I was ready for this stranger to tell his story and leave my life. Taking a deep breath, I spoke my words with as much confidence as I could muster.
"Hello, " I said. "Where would you like to begin?"
His European accented voice, cultured and articulate, answered from the shadows.
"Thank you for seeing me. You are a gentleman of my own heart. From the looks of all these books and from what I have seen, I know that you are a scholar of the highest caliber. You do not know dear Sir. You do not know how long that I have waited for this moment. As soon as I saw you, I knew that you were the one. Thank you for seeing me."
I smiled a little
"You are welcome. And thank you for your compliments. I am just a writer that likes to touch people."
"Yes that you are, Sir. I knew immediately that you had the skill of a writer but with the spirit of a gypsy. You are far more than you realize."
I could almost sense a smile on his face and felt a shiver run down my back. The situation was very uncomfortable. Talking into the darkness, I saw nothing. I listened to the voice in the darkness and assumed that my visitor was still in the chair. He continued.
"Maybe some day you will understand exactly who you are? For now, know that you are the one, for this time and place, for this story, there is no one else. You are the one. It is important that you understand the story that I am going to tell you. You must not just hear it. You must be it. Do you understand?"
"Yes, I will try," I answered the darkness. "I will do my best, but please realize that I can only do my best. I am not anything special like a priest or psychic or anything."
A laughter echoed from the room. It was a haunting genuine laugh that seem to drill down to my bones. It was as if he was laughing at how innocent or ignorant that I was. When the laughter stopped, he answered.
"Sir, you will be perfect."
"Where would you like to begin?"
"There is so much to say," he began. "I don't know where to start. The most important thing for you to know about me is that I am a good man. I believe that you should always do what is right, no matter how much it hurts. All my life, I believed that God rewarded hard work. As long as you do what is right and work hard, then rewards would follow."
I nodded my understanding. It was a strong Puritan philosophy that lead to much of the early American work ethnic.
"Well, I want that known up front. I am not a slacker. No matter how hunger that I was, I would never steal any of the food that I was being charged to protect. My word is my bond. Sir, I know how important honor is to you."
I nodded again. He continued.
"We are very much alike in that way. It just did not work out the way it was suppose to. I had always believed that if you do what is right, then you will always be blessed. I was cursed instead. "
"Cursed?" I asked.
"I am not from this country. I was born in a small town in Spain. There was no opportunity there to speak of. The World War was all around us. My father was a trader of goods. If you remember your history, there was not a lot of trading going on around that time. The U-boats sunk everything they could find. Anyway, as soon as I could, I came to America."
I smiled. Pouring myself a glass of soda, I watched as the soda foamed and quickly filled the glass. His laughter echoed from the other side of the room.
"You may be a genius my distinguished gentleman, but you have something to learn about pouring liquid drinks. Sir, tilt your glass toward you. Now, instead of pouring the liquid directly in, pour it into the side of the glass and let it run down the glass to join the rest of the liquid. You will have less problems."
I looked into the darkness with fire in my eyes. Not knowing exactly how to respond to his advice. I decided to try it. Sure enough, the coke did not foam up nearly as bad as before. I smile and nodded.
"We must hurry, " he says. "I do not have much time. I can feel the wind starting to blow."
"Okay, so what did you do in the land of opportunity?"
"Land of Opportunity, ha, " he said. "I laugh at the term. I remember hearing that phrase over and over."
"What happened next?"
"I meet Big Bob," he said. "He was a supervisor of a bat guano mining operation in Slaughter Canyon Cave. You remember it right?"
The statement was followed by a laugh. I was starting to get used to that echo laughter, well as much as I could get used to it.
"Yes of course" I answered. "You worked in that cave?"
I had just returned from a cave tour to that very cave. It was a nice cave with huge rooms that stretched two or three hundred feet tall. Well known for the extensive bat guano deposits that were mined during the early part of the century. It was amazing that I was talking to one of the very men that mined that cave. I leaned forward to get a glimpse of what had to be a old man in my room. New interest arose inside of me.
"Yes, I worked that mine for two years," he continued. Big Bob told me how that bat guano was the future gold mines. You heard all the stories that those tour guides tell you. Well Big Bob thought that it was all true. This was the perfect fertilizer he would say. It will make trees and crops grow so well that they would keep coming back to us. And we could charge more and more. And if I stayed with him, he would make me a partner and I would be as rich as he was."
There was a moment of silence. I could almost feel the anger building from the other side of the room.
"All I got was robbed of everything that I cared about," he said.
The room was quiet for a full minute. I waited for his next statement. I expected an outburst of angry.
"Well for two years, I worked between twelve and eighteen hour a day. I usually got one day off a week. On my off time, I meet the most beautiful lady this world has ever seen, Loretta. My sweet Loretta."
I wrote down the name of Loretta. I felt a bit of irritation that I could barely see my notebook in the dark. I could tell that Loretta was important to him. However, I was interested in the mining that he had done. It was so exciting to get to talk to an actually miner that had worked in the New Mexico Caves. I decided to let him lead and waited.
"My Loretta was a lovely woman even if short by your standards. From head to toe, she was not even five foot. To me, she was a small package of love, joy, and delight. I can still remember hearing her sing songs early in the morning. I would wake up in my tiny shack of a house to hear her voice. There were some times that I was even late for work because I lost track of the time."
"She sounds like a very pretty girl?"
"She was. She was the most important thing to me. The times when I held her against my chest and ran my hands through that jet black hair were incredible. They were moments of peace and harmony. We merge together in a way that I could never describe. She was my princess, and I was her prince. Even though I was only a poor immigrant who was mining bat poop for a living, she was proud of me. She made me feel like the king of her world. God, she knew how to make me feel so good about myself."
I grinned at the reference of bat guano as bat poop. It was an accurate description nevertheless. He continued.
"Our love grew and grew. Every time that we were together, I could feel the magnetism between us. And when she touched me, it made me feel so privileged and special. Eventually I decided that I should try to kiss her. It was on a walk through Walnut Canyon. That day is frozen in my brain. I faced her and slipped my arms around her waist. She reacted by wrapping her arms around my neck and looking directly into my eyes."
There was a nervous laugh from the darkness. It was almost the laugh of a school aged boy. This time I did not get a shiver down my spine.
"I pulled her into me closer, I don't know when she figured out that I was going to kiss her. It was just so natural. Nearing her, it seem that her head just naturally tilted and we came together perfectly. It was a moment born in heaven. Oh my Loretta had a kiss that was magical. It filled me with a fire. I was so excited that I almost jumped up and down while we were still kissing. However, I didn't. I wasn't that stupid. I wanted all of this kiss that I could get."
"So did you marry her?" I asked.
"Oh now, you are jumping to end of my story dear Sir," he answered. "You must hear my story in order. Let me finish."
"Okay, " I answered.
"Well, the following night we meet for another walk. I knew something was up as soon as I saw her. Her eyes were dancing with excitement and anticipation. I mean they were twinkling like glass. Do you know what I mean?"
"Oh yes, " I answered. "It is usually a very good sign."
"With my Loretta, it was," he said. "She loved to tease me. It just made the excitement greater that I knew something was coming. I had to admit that I was on the edge of my seat wondering what she was going to do. She waited for an hour too. It was really killing me. She waited until we arrived at the creek. Well I call it a creek. It was one of those valley that had a creek in the rainy season but dried up most of the other times."
I nodded that I understood. We had always called them gullies
"As she moved close to me, I could smell her perfume. You have not lived until you have smelled Loretta's perfume. It is like laying in the middle of a flowering meadow on a warm summer day. She dabbed a little behind each ear and some between her ..."
He paused for a second. I decided to help him out.
"Breasts?"
"Yes," he said. "When I kissed her, I could smell it like never before. I loved her scent that night. After we kissed, she took a small package from her purse."
I waited for him to tell me what was in the package. However, he paused. I thought I might have heard sob but was not sure. Uncertain of what was happening, I waited. The embers had finally died out entirely. The room had no source of light. So we sat in the darkness. After a few minutes, he spoke up.
"When she opened her hand, I saw a simple gold band with a large amethyst gem in the center. I was so shocked. You see this was very unusually for a woman to give a man a ring. At least in my culture, it was never done. This stone was large but not cut with ridges but was rather cut to be smooth. Do you know what I mean?"
Again, I nodded. I was not a jewelry expert myself but understood the difference between a smooth rock and a not smooth rock. I had completed my rock tumbling experience as a kid.
"Well as soon as she gave it to me, I looked at her with a question look and asked her why"
"She told me that she felt something spiritual when we were together. And that she gave this ring to me to help us be even stronger. It would hold our spirits together forever and ever."
I was taken back a little.
"Was she a witch?"
He laughed.
"Your query, I can not answer for I do not know. She told me that wearing this stone would help me and take us further into love. And it did. Each night that we met and every day that we walked, I grew closer and closer to her. So that finally, when I saw her, my heart would flutter. When I had to be away from her my stomach would ache with loneliness"
I looked out the studio window. The storm seem to be lifting, at least the wind was dying down a little. The tree limb was no longer beating against the house, but it was still dark.
"Well, it was not long until Big Bob told us that he was having problem making any money from the guano. The bank was calling him and threatening to shut down the mine. It was a scary time for me. He told us that he was not going to have any money to pay us this next month, but if we would work anyway then he would pay us double next month. Well we did not have much choice. It was not like there was any other place to work around. So we agreed."
I remember the tour guides saying that no company made any long term profit from the cave. The bat guano was very old and had lost most of its potency as a fertilizer. The clients actually started refusing the shipments.
"Well, I worked longer and harder that next month than I had ever worked in my life. I remembered what Big Bob had told me about making me a partner. I decided that this was the time for my hard work efforts to be seen. If the company was in trouble, then I was going to step forward and fill the gap. I made sure that Big Bob knew that I was a hard worker. Many of the people around me were no goods. They came and did what they were told and went home. Did not even do what they were told very well. Did not even care either."
"Well Sir, like I started. I don't believe in lying. I don't believe in no cheating. I believe in honest hard work. The harder the times got, the more I saw my other workers starting to cheat the company here or there. They started saying that they were working but really they were exploring the rest of the cave. You know the more that they goofed off, the more that I worked."
"How did they react to you doing that?" I asked.
"At first, they were okay with it. They crawled back to the Christmas tree formation. I don't think you saw that when you were there. It is a wonderful rock. You should see it next time."
"I will do that," I answered and wondered how he knew what I had and had not seen in the cave.
"Well one day, I thought it had gone too far. A couple of the guys had found some really old bones of a wild horse or something. It was really old the bones had already turned to rock. They started throwing them back and forth and laughing. I was starting to get mad. We were on National Park land. There was a rule that said that we could only work if we left everything along. Running around the cave was harmless, but they were tearing apart this old animal so that no one could ever enjoy it. That was not right."
"I heard that they did find a camel's bones in that cave," I added. "That must have been what they found. You are so lucky. Do you know that?"
"Yes, I was lucky, " he answered. "I decided that they were not doing right. I was okay with them not working. Now they were also messing up our jobs as well. It was not right, and I was going to report them. Well they did not take kindly to that."
I was sitting on the edge of my seat.
"What happened?" I asked.
"When I climbed out of the back cave, they hit me some kind of pipe or board. The first stroke caught me right across the windpipe. I grabbed my throat and tried to cry out to my coworkers, but nothing would come out. The next blow exploded my right kneecap. The cowards hit my legs again and again. When they stopped, I tried to crawl for help. I was so close to the working area. If I could just get to the top of the ridge, someone might see me. However, they had done their work well, I laid as a worm at their feet. They just stood over me and laughed, playing with me as a mouse plays with a cat."
"Oh how terrible, " I said.
It was not an insincere statement either. To imagine the savageness and wickedness of those me was almost more than I could imagine. It was bad enough to physically attack, but to torture and maim for just the pleasure was almost unthinkable
"Well they were cruel and heartless. I don't know what I ever did to them. I never forget the little one looking up at the larger one and saying maybe we should play catch with his balls instead of these bones. They both laughed. "
"And no one was near?" I asked.
"No, the main work group was already wrapping up to go home for the weekend. These two were the clean up detail. They had plenty of time to stand over me and talk about how much of an ass kisser that I was. How that I deserved everything that happened to me because I made them look bad. And how that I did not care if they lost their jobs and their families went hunger."
"So how did you get out?" I asked.
He continued story as if he had never heard me.
"After a few minutes reality seem to set in, the animals seem to get scared. They decided that my death had to look like an accident or something I caused through carelessness. So, they forced a rock column over top of me covering my lower half with large rocks. The pain was incredible. I could not cry out, but my hand did flinch. To this day, I wished that I had held it steady. Because, when I moved my hand, the amethyst caught their lights and twinkled.
I sat dumbfounded as the story unfolded.
"I was in so much pain. and it was so intense that my mind was running slow. So that when I saw the large man reaching for the ring, I just couldn't move. I sat in a stupor watching the man take my ring. When that poor excuse of a man took my ring, he took more than a treasure, he took my soul. I felt my heart breaking deep inside for the ring was my connection to my Loretta. As long as I had it, I felt Loretta close to me. Afterwards, I lost all hope."
"I can feel your love for her," I added. "You are very lucky to have found your soul mate. Some people go their whole life without find a love as rare and wondrous as yours"
"As that ring that symbolized my love of Loretta disappeared into the hands of that thief, my eyes filled with tears. I closed my eyes to avoid giving them the pleasure. I listened to them in silence. One of them was bragging about what the ring would bring. The little one however was concerned and told him that he better not take that. He said everyone knows that is Loretta's ring and that if he try to sell it and he would be in jail by morning. The larger one turned and said well I sure don't want the ass-hole to have it either. I opened my eyes to see an evil look on his face."
Again the voice from the darkness paused. I waited.
"The larger man put the ring down on the ground where I could see it and stomped it. He crashed his boot down on the ring more than six times. When he stopped, I was shocked. The gold band and stone had remained intact. His stomping had only forced the ring deeper into the clay that made the path. The man was not to be denied ..Pulling the ring from the clay, he said that he would just hide it real good. He would hide it so far in the dark that no one would every find it again. I never saw exactly where he hid the ring. However, I know it could not have been too far way. It has to be in there somewhere."
"But, you have never found it?"
"No, not yet."
I nodded, and he continued.
"While he was gone, I closed my eyes and pretended to be unconscious. It was not far from reality either. I was finding it harder and harder to breath with the huge rocks that had fallen on me. The animals talked for a few minutes. They decided that I was as good as dead and figured that I would not last the night much less the weekend. So they said that they would let nature take care of me. I can remember watching them walk away. They were laughing and joking. I could even hear when they rejoined the main work crew. They had no remorse at all "
"Oh man," I said as much to myself as to my visitor.
I felt the anger rise up within that there were people out there with this little of regard for human life.
"I think that the part after the crew left was the worse for me. As they trickled out carrying their lights, the cave got darker and darker. Very soon, there was no light at all. I was in pitch blackness."
"That must have been horrible," I said.
"It was at that, very much like being buried alive. Have you ever sit in darkness, Sir?" he asked.
"Well this has been the longest, " I answered.
"Well, " he started. "When you are in total darkness, you lose track of time. You don't know whether the sun is up or down. Time seems to stand still especially when you can not move. You would be surprised how long a minute can be when you are trapped under a ton of rock in pitch black."
While he paused, I tried to imagine my arms being pinned. The bones of my leg broken and jutting through the skin. Fighting to feel my lungs for one more breath, not knowing whether it might be my last. Next, I moved the picture into pitch black darkness. I felt a shiver and thanked my God that I never had to experience it.
"The time under those rocks gave me a lot of time to think. I thought about how much that I love my sweet Loretta. You know, I never told her that I loved her. I just always thought that there would be plenty time later. I mean I was young, and she was young. I kept thinking that I should wait. You got to realize that I came from a family that never said those words. Well rarely anyway. As I laid pinned, I kicked myself a thousand times wishing that I had used any one of a thousand moments to just say it. Just to say those three little words. They are so little to say. Why didn't I say them when I had the chance?"
I looked into the darkness. I did not know what to say. I fully agreed with my visitor. Life is short. Not knowing what to do, I nodded.
Are you married?"
"No," I answered.
"Well Sir," the darkness said. "You make sure you tell you love as soon as you recognize that she is important to you. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Sir," I answered. "Rest assured that I will learn from your lesson."
The darkness that was the other side of the room was silent.
"They did not find me until the next morning. I laid pinned for twelve hours. Apparently the National Park Service was doing a review that afternoon. Big Bob wanted to be sure there was no huge violations that could end his contract. When he found me, I could barely open my eyes. They called for Loretta as soon as they could. However, I died before she arrived."
"You did what?" I asked in a almost accusing voice.
"I died," he answered.