Tocayos

First Place, adults' essays

Charles Padilla |

12/18/2008 - 12/19/08

"I want to go to Monte Aplanado," my barber said as he began to trim my hair. "My wife is going to Albuquerque tomorrow, and I have a day when I can go there."

My barber and I have many things in common. I was from Mora, as was his first wife, and my father also was a barber. Since my father's death, my barber visits were like a homecoming for me. The barbershop smells, the talk, laughter, and the rhythmic noises of both shears and clippers reminded me of my father and his shop.

My barber had often spoken about his beginnings, and he had often made a point of explaining his life philosophy. "If it isn't fun, don't do it," he would say.

He told me about what a wonderful marriage he had, of his pride in his four sons, and of all of the progress that his family had made during his second marriage.

"I owe it all to my first wife," he confided. "When she found out that she had married a cowboy and a beer drinker, she divorced me." He smiled. "I straightened out in a hell of a hurry."

I sometimes thought that this banter was the noise of a man making a trifling thing bigger, but, as he repeated it, I guessed that in some way it was indeed true. Perhaps hard knocks could turn a life around.

His comb brushed my scalp, and his shears timed with the rhythm of his comb. I felt comfortable in the chair as he talked about not having been to Monte Aplanado in 55 years. He was 82, a vibrant man, comfortable in his cowboy boots and looking much younger than his age. He had an air about himself, confident, his eyes sparkling. He seemed to radiate the knowledge and understanding of a man who had spent a lifetime around people, listening and counseling informally but adding a deep meaning to each of his customer's lives.

On his request for a map, I drew just two lines; north to Mora, turn east at the middle of town, go over the mountain and take the first right. Understanding that I was giving instructions to an old man, I wanted them to be simply understood.

"When you reach the first road to the right, just over the top of the mountain, stop, and ask the first man you meet to tell you where Monte Aplanado lies," I instructed him.

I didn't want to add more to the directions — they were simple, two roads and a right turn. He added that his wife would be Christmas shopping in Albuquerque. I felt that, as a man, he wanted to connect with his past, and although his memory was distant, he was merely wanting to be privately grateful, the divorce a dreadful experience but the outcome a wonderful family. His trip was heartfelt, and I knew this to be an important experience, a long walk backward, his acknowledgment that, after 55 years, something terrible had, indeed, led to something good.

"Men need to do this sometimes," I thought, just as sometimes they need to deal with a sentimental aspect of life. As I handed him my map, I wished him well on his journey.

Three weeks later, and now after Christmas, I dropped in for a trim. He greeted me with a broad smile.

"How was your trip?" I asked.

"I had a hell of a trip," he said, laughing.

"Did you find Monte Aplanado?" I asked a bit doubtfully.

"I did just what you said, two roads and over the mountain, and I asked the first man I met," he said.

"Who was he?" I asked.

He started his story about the day. He said that the sun was high in the morning sky, blue and cloudless, and the tall grass yellow from the fall and the early frost but still green beneath. He was driving on the roadway to the right, past the left turn and over the top of the mountain. Each field was framed by fences and headed with an orchard, its branches bare. He described a beautiful and peaceful morning where the sky was big and the sun warming the hillsides, a bit of water flowing in the ditch on the side of the road.

He told me that a man was walking along the roadway, moving eight cows from one lot to another. He walked with a long stick, using it to steer the cows from behind. Seeing the car appear ahead of his cows, and the barber emerging from it, the farmer was immediately worried about scattering the cows, but instead shouted out to the visitor, "Open the gate."

With his long stick, he pointed to a gate downhill from the road.

The barber opened the gate and stepped back, blocking the roadway and giving the cows ample room to make the turn into the new field.

The cows scattered into the orchard, stopping to eat the tall grass — the greener grass under the trees.

"I am looking for Monte Aplanado," my barber said as he turned to greet the man. He looked at him squarely and followed my instructions.

The man moving the cows was dressed in a canvas vest and an old baseball cap, his eyes squinted in the morning sun.

"You are right in downtown, metropolitan Monte Aplanado right here," was the man's reply, as he pointed in a wide circle with his stick. He smiled at his own words.

As the barber looked around, he could see the last of the abandoned homes of Monte Aplanado, adobe houses whose roofs had fallen in, adobes warming in the morning sun, giving up yet another year, long after the many families who had lived there had died or moved away.

Extending his hand, the barber said, "My name is Jose Amadeo Gallegos."

The farmer reached out his hand and smiled as he said, "My name, too, is Jose Amadeo Gallegos."

They looked at each other, happy and surprised, and were instantly bonded for all time, strangers up to then, but now no longer. One man, innocently helping to open a gate and asking for simple directions, had found his starting point in life and had found it with a stranger who shared his name. The two were tocayos, rooted together now for all of history — past and future.

It was a common practice in ancient New Mexico for the men to be named Jose and for the women to be named Maria. It was a warm and sunny morning when two men sat by the side of the road in downtown, metropolitan Monte Aplanado and reminisced about times gone by. Broken adobe houses were all that remained, but life there became vibrant and real again.

Old men, long departed, came to life again in an explanation of why a son would be named Jose or a girl Maria. It was close to Christmas, a special day, with one man looking for the beginning of his new life and one man who had never left it. Monte Aplanado welcomed back its children as if they had never left. Abandoned, it nonetheless spread its arms around two strangers with a common name.

Words sped past the morning and into the early afternoon, a Christmas gift brought by a visit to the old adobes of an ancient community. Old and long-dead parents and grandparents visited in the name of Jose, a patron saint who followed the named children for life, and with faith, just as for life, Maria held arms around her girls.

I smiled sitting in the barber chair, as Jose Amadeo Gallegos cut my hair and told me about his visit to Monte Aplanado. As I sat there, bathed in all the familiar barbershop smells and words, I thought that I did a good thing by telling this man to travel only two roads, go over the top of the mountain, take the first right, and talk to the first man he met.

Somehow, I found it comforting that in Monte Aplanado, just as in all of New Mexico, many of the men were named Jose, and many of the women Maria. Men and women named for saints but rooted in their faith, and for life.