I had to work awhile to get the face-on pose to look right. At first I drew the eyes on the sides of the grasshopper’s head, but this was incorrect; the eyes were more to the front of the face. As I sketched, I understood Chapulin wanted to be seen and remembered as he was on the big fiesta day in August when there were so many good things to eat, and he celebrated by wearing powdered turquoise all over his head and face out of regard for Tlaloc, Lord of the Rain, whose color is turquoise.
I relied on my colored pencil sketch to draw the outline of Chapulin’s portrait on the canvas. In the sketch his buckskin leggings and moccasins could be seen, but on the canvas, only his head, chest and waist fit. I was pleased with the work I’d done, so I left the portrait for the rest of the week while I worked on the manuscript.
Another week or two passed. One day I noticed one of the big “painted” grasshoppers on a datura plant outside my studio window; the grasshopper gazed in at Lord Chapulin’s portrait on the easel. I felt uneasy because I’d done no work on the portrait for a long time.
Then one morning outside my studio under the mesquite tree, Lord Chapulin himself approached me. He came straight toward me and climbed up from the ground to a sandstone bench to get closer to me. He regarded me gravely and remained motionless on the sandstone while I looked at the hues of green, the magenta pinks and reds, and the black and orange markings so I’d get them right when I painted him. Then he lost interest in me, and turned his attention to the rain lilies that stirred in the breeze.
A day or two later as I watered, I splashed a pot of purple alyssum and suddenly there was Lord Chapulin, indignant and glaring at me. Forget about your writing — complete my portrait.
That night when I went to plug in the lights under my car to ward off pack rats, in the beam of the flashlight I saw a team of brown ants struggling to carry a dead grasshopper that resembled the others, but this one was much smaller, with lighter yellow green hues on the outer wings, and light pink on the inner wings. The grasshoppers wouldn’t last much longer.
The next morning I hurried back to the portrait before I forgot the pink hue, and I repainted the dark magenta on the portrait’s inner wings with a light magenta pink — the effect was a rosy magenta. Perfect. Exactly what Chapulin desired. I knew what Chapulin desired because he communicated with certain thoughts that would cross my mind, thoughts about what he wanted for his portrait, thoughts he sent directly to me.
At one point I whited out a lot of a dark green color I didn’t like, and Chapulin’s portrait looked ghostly and I called it Ghost Grasshopper but I couldn’t leave it that way. Chapulin wanted to be portrayed as he was in life, not death. Still, the grasshopper figure all in white on the red background looked really cool.
Lord Chapulin is secretive and mysterious. Those of his kind may appear only once in eighty-four years while others return in cycles of seven or twenty-one years. When the portrait was finally completed in the last week of October, I opened the front door one morning and there was Chapulin warming himself in the sunlight on the top branches of the greasewood bush that faced the studio window where his portrait sat. I watched him for a while to figure out whether he liked the portrait, but I couldn’t be sure. So I turned back to paint the white flowers on his belt; as I touched up the green on the wings I felt such happiness and pleasure. Later when I looked out, he was gone.
I watched for Chapulin and the others whenever I watered. I even looked for dead grasshoppers, but they all were gone without a trace; carried off by the ants, scattered by the wind.
CHAPTER 35
On my walk this early October morning, two horsemen startled me. I didn’t realize I walked in such a deep meditative state as I was down the trail to the big arroyo. I really had trouble coming back down to Earth. “Oh you startled me!” I said. Horses are so large I should have heard them or seen them sooner than I did. The riders seemed a little intoxicated by the power the horses gave them. I was reminded of a phrase in my new novella: the Spaniards in the New World had “the advantages of gunpowder, horses and dogs.” I was glad I carried my ultralight five shot.38 revolver that day.
Encounters with wild beings aren’t nearly as jarring probably because I am watching for the wild creatures but not expecting humans, like the two horsemen.
Later I met up with them in the hikers’ parking lot; I’d managed to walk the same distance in the same amount of time as the horses.
I often think of Geronimo and his ragged band of women and children in their final years of resisting the U.S. troops. Five thousand of them had pursued forty or fifty Apaches, mostly women and children. The troops rode horses, while the Apaches traveled on foot. In the steep rocky terrain the horses were ineffective; they went lame and slowed the troops; if the Apaches got a horse they promptly butchered it and dried the meat. Travel on foot was the fastest way over the steep rocky trails of Sonora and Chihuahua.
Another turquoise rock washed out of the dirt in the back yard. The off-white limestone is about two inches by one half inch with odd deposits of turquoise in the moon-shaped indentations. “The end is broken off creating”—my notes are incomplete; I wonder if I can find this rock and complete the sentence. I turn to my collection of turquoise rocks. No labels, no plastic containers. Just handfuls of turquoise pebbles and rock fragments mixed with dust and paper clips on my desktop. Nothing.
Then to the other tables that I’ve covered with turquoise rocks; and from the description I wrote, I only had to pick up one other piece of rock before I spied the correct one. It is almost arrowhead-shaped with the point broken off. The off-white limestone appears pockmarked and in the tear-drop indentations in the limestone small spots of turquoise in calcite and metal salts are attached.
So I would end the unfinished sentence like this: “a resemblance to a broken arrow tip.” The white limestone also has turquoise on the other side in a sort of cheesy-crust texture but with no eye-catchers like the pockmarks or moon craters with turquoise spots.
The turquoise is quite hard to scratch with a fingernail and is not chalky. My note continues: “The limestone is some of the whitest I’ve found to contain turquoise.” Again comes the question — did it occur in the layers of whitish caliche on this hilltop or was it found elsewhere and brought up here by humans? Like the old trade beads I used to find in the back yard, like the other pieces of turquoise I had found in planters and clay pots and around the house while my broken foot healed.
On my walk this morning in the big arroyo I was thinking how delicious the cool air was, slightly moist; how when the time comes, I wanted my ashes scattered there and just at that instant I glanced down and there was a small turquoise stone.
On the past three walks, I’ve found no turquoise — pebbles or rocks. This points out how infrequent and how wonderful the discoveries of turquoise stones really are.
On the days I find no turquoise I appreciate how rare the stones are. Could they finally run out, be as exhausted and finite as other minerals have become? The next time I find a turquoise stone it will be in the big arroyo, probably in a place I’ve passed many times.
A speck of turquoise the size of a rice grain caught my eye; it was the only turquoise on a rock the size of a cantaloupe. I picked up the rock for a closer look at the speck of blue stone then I returned the rock to its resting place in its imprint in the sand.
I stopped to scrutinize the provocative shadows on the high mountain slopes of dark basalt in the shifting light; they might be caves or shafts of lost mines. In the shifting light of the desert, the wonder is that somehow it was visible at that moment but not at another.