The Victory Bar
I step out of the Post Office into a bare-bone empty New Mexico afternoon─sun blaring on the red rocks, red dirt, red crumbling adobe, cold-in-the-morning and sweltering-by-mid-day trailer houses with tires stacked on top to keep the roofs from blowing off in the wind. Begin sorting through the stack of letters in my hands, when I see him. Again.
Riding up around the corner of the old Victory Bar. Past the corpses of three or four generations of cars and pickup trucks, a rotted-out Coca Cola machine (when was a Coke a nickle?), half of a wrought-iron bedstead with a cactus growing where a mattress ought to be, piles of firewood, and one dour KEEP OUT─NOTHING HERE FOR SALE sign nailed to the fence. (It crosses my mind each time I read it that if the owner just cleaned up the junk, he wouldn't have to bother.)
The approaching horseman's dingle bobs jangle with each unshod clip clop of his horse’s trot. Ewe necked, the almost too-bony gelding sticks his Roman nose up into the air, swats his stump of a tail against his shiny bay hindquarters with an annoyed thwack. Leather saddle bags are strapped to the back of the well-used saddle with baling string dangling down the horse's haunches like rivulets of bright blue water. The gelding rolls his eyes. Jigs. I think that’s what’s bothering him. The cheap nylon bridle and reins are stitched and re-stitched, knotted together in a couple of places, the ugliest mustard yellow color I can imagine.
But this is what my eyes are drawn to. Two brown and knotted hands holding the reins like there’s a hummingbird cradled in each palm. The still seat. Legs quietly draped against the dancing gelding’s sides. The intent and purpose of each step ridden.
I’m thinking you could do a rattlesnake in with the pointy-toed ostrich cowboy boots he’s wearing. They are a shabby cordovan. Maybe even defend yourself against the yellow Post Office Dog (A chow-shepherd-pit bull-who-knows-what-else mix), who sleeps all day long right in front of the door and growls at you low and menacing if you dare look at her sideways (or at all). Everyone in the valley has warned their kids not to under any circumstances try to pet her, wagging tail or not.
White pearl buttons are done all the way up to the rider’s throat where a faded bandana is tied in a knot. But what I notice most, what I love to see each time he rides by is the smile permanently plastered across his sun-wrinkled face while he sits his horse’s gaits. It’s as brilliant as daylight, punctuated by the flash of one gold tooth. The radiant smile doesn’t necessarily belong to an old man. It doesn't belong to a boy either. And it’s not for me or anyone else. It's all for himself. From the simple joy of trotting his horse down the road.
I raise my hand and wave, wondering if he’ll see me this time. Wondering if he knows I know. I’d like to tell him what seeing him and his horse over the years means to me, but that would probably ruin it. He may not even speak English, I think. But I do know that we share a common language. He touches the brim of his cowboy hat. A small, silent salute.
I smile too.
The old vaquero and his big-headed gelding are passing through the Post Office parking lot in a cloud of rolling red dust. I sure wish the Victory Bar was still open.
