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CIBOLERO

During this time Castillo saw, on the neck of an Indian, a little buckle

from a sword belt, and in it was sewed a horseshoe nail. He took it from

the Indian, and we asked what it was; they said it had come from Heaven.

We further asked who had brought it, and they answered that some men,

with beards like ours, had come from Heaven to that river; that they had

horses, lances and swords, and had lanced two of them.

The Journey of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca (1542)

It’s 7:00 a.m. in Tecolote, New Mexico,

and the local news on cable

is going on about some woman high on dust

crashing into kids at a crossing. Meanwhile,

out on the edge of the high prairie,

up by I-25, the inmates are rising off

their roosts at San Miguel county jail

where the jail log reads like catechism:

Criminal Sexual Penetration in the first degree. Assault with

the intent to commit violent felony. False imprisonment.

Extortion. Unlawful taking of a motor vehicle. Conspiracy.

Burglary of a structure. Contributing to the delinquency

of a minor. Kidnapping. Conspiracy to commit Aggravated

Battery. Aggravated DWI (7th offense). Possession of

drug paraphernalia. Driving on suspended revoked license.

Probation Violation: Possession of marijuana, Possession of

Methamphetamine. Aggravated stalking. Aggravated battery

on household member, resisting, evading, violation of a

restraining order, obstructing an officer. Vehicular Homicide,

Aggravated DUI, Open Container, Reckless driving. Assault

with a deadly weapon. Assault with intent to commit a

violent felony, with intent to commit mayhem.

The key word here is “mayhem,” spreading through

the internet airwaves across the vast Llano Estacado

where mountains break into mesas and scrub,

dotted with piñon, cut by arroyos and twisty creeks

and a web of old footpaths made by ancestors.

And where the internet’s thousand channels

are offering their social contracts, so

whether you are watching from prison, or at home

in your double-wide, or in the sleep cab of your semi,

or in your townhouse at the city’s edge, or at Urgent Care,

the local laundromat, or in a bar that never closes,

wherever you are watching, you are probably just sitting

(and doing this a lot) tuned to hucksters selling

vacuum cleaners and Jesus, channel by channel:

#9012: Puppy Pooping in the House?

#9013: Thick Hair Guaranteed

#9014: Rev. Run’s Sunday Suppers

#9015: Suffer from Lower Back Pain?

Mayhem being confusion turned to violence or lassitude.

But whether in the lockup looking out,

or among the hardworking folk of the Llano

in adobe-and-stone compounds and corrals

in, say, Ojitos Frios, Tecolote, or Villanueva,

when you see the rain dropping its dark curtains

over the vast plain, some Spenglerian twinge of memory

must arrive … of the massive adobe pueblo at Pecos,

of Coronado with his armored men on horses,

or, later, as the centuries stood still and Spanish dreams collapsed,

of trading with Comanches and learning to hunt buffalo

charging bareback into the stampeding herd with lowered lance,

shoving it into a thundering beast until it stumbled and crashed down

with all its wealth of meat, tallow, bone, and hide. A barrel

of buffalo tongues for the Viceroy in Mexico. Cibolero,

Buffalo Hunter. From cíbola, Spanish for “bison,” from Zuni, tzibola.

Cibola, the city of gold that was never found.