Great White Northern New Mexico

Wild-on-End
by Johanna DeBiase

“I could do without all this sagebrush,” the Kansas man makes small-talk. He does not see the open sky, the rising mesas, the stretching rolls of hill persuading mountain peaks, the deep water gashes and bubbling springs. He will always be a tourist. I am grateful I broke down so close to home.“Los Colonias,” I direct him, “you can drop me at this corner.”

“I’ll take you all the way,” he offers with a soft twang, “it’s no problem.” I glimpse into the truck bed at broken elk limbs. “I went hunting with my son last week,” he explains.

“I’m a newcomer too,” I tell him. I think of where I came from, the sub-arctic snow prairies and glacier embedded ridge lines, time moving only as fast as the river would take it. But this is not Alaska. Now I walk in tumbleweeds with sandals on, snack on pinon, explore the back roads and only bring a coat if I’ll be out after dark. “This is good,” I point to my road head,“That’s my house over there.”

Warmed by thoughts of my highway solar adobe I think, I am generated by the sun, but do not say it out loud; there are enough hippies on this mesa to create the illusion of crazy without my help. Yet, he’s told me already(only takes a few miles for a man to open up to a strange woman) he misses Kansas, that’s his true home. I close the heavy door to his truck and run the dirt road back to my house past pueblo land where the sagebrush goes on for miles and think, There could never be too much.

Bastard

by Charles Clayton

It never was very good, not even in California where it was warm. Well, it was good there for awhile, before the drinking got bad. A house, a son, a baby daughter, a used but solid Buick in the driveway, palm trees in the front yard, oranges in the back, steady work at the track.

Then he hit her one too many times and she left. Took the kids and fled for Colorado, for the shelter of family and mountains. He sobered up, tied up some loose ends, and made his way towards that icebox of a town, swearing to her and himself that things had changed. Worked for her brother, rented from her father, started drinking with her cousins and before too long the walls were closing in again. Only now it was 50 below. Too cold for hope.

He got his wages and left town with the clothes on his back and a twelve pack of Budweiser in the passenger seat, headed south to New Mexico, Arizona, anywhere but this frozen valley. No need for goodbyes. It won't take her long to figure out what happened. Crack open a beer. Hit the gas. The edge of town. Keep going. Don't look. Keep your eye on the road. GODDAMN IT, DON'T LOOK!

Slow down for one last look at that godforsaken tin trailer. And there's the kid in his blue snowsuit, up on a snowbank. Waving. At his dad. For the last time.

The Tragic Packing List of Two Alaskan Teenagers on Their First Roadtrip to the Lower 48 (Fairbanks to Santa Fe in January)

by Eric Mack

* Flashlight
* Beef Jerky
* Turkey Jurkey
* Fritos
* iPod
* Alascom Cell Phone (unusable in the lower 48)
* Fleece / Parkas / gloves / hats (to be ditched somewhere south of San Francisco)
* Billy Joel CD (for ironic purposes)
* Red Bull
* Maker's Mark
* Beef Jerky
* Ramen noodles
* Empty 2-liter of Mountain Dew (water bottle)
* Empty 2-liter of DIET Mountain Dew (pee bottle)
* Empty 2-liter of Coke (after the MT. Dew bottles got mixed up)
* 5 gallon gas can (leaking)
* Leatherman utility tool
* Sunscreen (60 SPF)
* Carhartt pants
* Carhartt button shirt
* Pilot Bread
* Smoked salmon jerky
* Rand McNally Atlas (1992 edition)
* 1 Bag containing 4 McDonalds hamburgers purchased day before trip (phone numbers of all friends in Lower 48 written on outside)