Road Trip Day 6 (a wee bit of backtracking): Mohawk Man and the Tiny New Mexican Tavern

“Yo!” My husband yelled through the open windows of the van as we approached the only parking spot anywhere nearby, and a tiny one at that. The man standing next to the open driver’s door of his car, and consequently standing in our way within that tiny vacant spot, looked up with a defensive expression that seemed to travel from his face all the way to the tippy-top point of his spikey mohawk. There was a five second gap between him looking annoyed and recognition dawning on his face.

It is a funny business driving across the country, and then stumbling across someone you know in a parking lot. It is less funny when the meeting is planned, but a funny feeling nonetheless.

Our van seemed to blush a bit as she looked from side to side at her girth while pondering fitting into that tight space, but she did it. Nothing wrong with being a tad on the chubby side, especially when you are storing four humans, four suitcases, and some camping gear. The poor girl was a bit dirty too. She had gone on a day trip from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, and had now driven us to a tiny town for our planned meeting with the momentarily angry Mohawk Man.

The town, or at least what we saw of it, was composed of a handful of art galleries, some scattered houses, and one tavern. The backdrop of dry hills spotted with things that looked likely to cause pain in the absence of cowboy boots felt a little at odds with the colorful art galleries. Colorful metal yard art, although stationary, had an enthusiastic look-at-me feeling to it, as though each bit of fused metal would have waved enthusiastically at passersby if possible.

Our trusty chubby and dirty van looked content to have a nice rest as we closed the doors and my husband greeted Mohawk Man, a childhood friend unseen for at least a decade. We walked up to—you guessed it—the one and only tavern. There was a vague bit of unease in the air between them; there was some awkwardness at so long a gap. I wasn’t much help, because Mohawk Man is an artist.

And I Don’t Trust Artists

Sounds very unartistic, doesn’t it? What don’t I like about them, you ask? I think the word unpredictable sums it up. Unpredictability is supposed to be exciting and fun and all that, but I don’t think it is either when it is applied to morals.

A good friend of mine from high school comes to mind. She is very artsy—a mime, an actress, et cetera—and she is a nice person. But given the opportunity, I wouldn’t have put it past her to sleep with my boyfriend, or do who even knows what, not for any particular reason other than it struck her fancy. Her desire to experience something, despite my or society's disapproval, would just be self-expression to her, like just the scarlet thread she needed to accent a particular part of the tapestry of her life. Everything she might do was simply art — unpredictable, possibly immoral, but art.

Of course all artists aren’t immoral, I reminded myself as we sat down at a table. But they are often unpredictable, and that’s trouble enough.

Once settled in place, Mohawk Man looked fixedly at me. I wouldn’t call it a polite gaze, rather an unclothed one—it was a look of something like What of you, then? Despite the friendliness mingled with that probing expression, I was mentally cementing bricks together for my wall. The Great Wall of Ginny.

We made conversation; the conversation shifted away. I sat back and inhaled the ambiance of what is a tavern in a tiny town in the middle of New Mexico. It is a place with lots of TVs, but not a lot of patrons. It is a place where big shaggy dogs wander about inside, hoping you’ve dropped something good, and they nuzzle their thick musky hair to tangle between your fingers. It is a place of semi-stagnant air and bar stools that don’t look like they’ve been wiped down in twenty years, but it matters not because the waiter has a flaming red beard and a bald head, and he is giving me all of his attention. He looks a little uncertain of the men, which is great because that makes the two of us.

But blast it all, I only had my wall built up to my thighs when I forgot about it and started listening to the artist’s ghost stories and eccentric mode of living. I decided to abide that What of you? stare. Unclothed stares are much better than ones with frilly hats and designer shoes. And mohawks are somewhat becoming.

We left that night and drove back to Albuquerque through the black New Mexico nothingness of nighttime. Black nothing was readily visible in any direction just outside the headlight beams, and I hoped nothing living was planning to jump out in front of them. Well, and hopefully nothing un-living either.

“I like him,” I said to my husband. “I wouldn’t say I trust him…but I like him. He was nice.”

“He was on his best behavior,” my husband said with a smile.

I leaned against the window and looked up at the blackness above, and around. The silence in the backseat suggested the children were sound asleep. I tried to soak up the desert blackness for all the horrid dawns that come too soon, and all the horrid early-morning alarm clock ringings when all you really want to do is fall back into the blackness of a desert at midnight.

It had been a beautiful, unpredictable night.

_{And it was a lovely break from traveling state to state. Soon it would be Colorado time…}