Sliding into bed next to me she whispered in my ear “are you asleep”? I struggled to pull myself back to wakefulness, and as I began to sit up I could hear the rain washing against the bedroom windows. Without warning the night’s dark flashed a startling bluish white outline of someone standing next to the window outside in the rain and thunder. I went to turn to the soft voice that had awakened me from my formless dreams when another crash shook the souls of the house and surrounding canyons.
Suddenly, but gently she wrapped her warm arms over my shoulders to the confusion of the storm’s terror, and then again whispered “I’m scared, will everything be all right?” Slowly, I leaned back into my pillow and looked for the gentle but frightened voice that sat next to me in the now pitch black room. I said “It’s ok, can you get back to sleep?” I waited for a response, however nothing was said in reply but the rumbling of thunder over the New Mexico Jemez Mountain range, and the clatter of window panes.
The outside door to the back bedroom broke open to the force of the winds that flew down the Galinas Mesa in the wintertime. I leaped from the bed to try and catch the door before the rain flooded the slippery brushstone floor I had labored so hard to put in last summer. I slammed the door shut and looked out the window only to see the Santa Fe River breaching her snowy banks. This only happened every 15 or 20 years up here in the high dessert, another foot and I would have to move the horses and hope that the cattle made it to higher ground. I could see my breathe as I exhaled in frustration.
Another flash of lightning lit the entire night sky to where I could see that there was no other person in the bedroom with me. The walls shuddered under the strain of the howling winds and thunderous crashes. I added another blanket to my back and then put on my pants and boots to go search for …….for the woman that was sitting next to me in my bed only a few minutes earlier. I fuzzily, but instinctively went to check the bathroom and then the kitchen for the woman that shared my bed, that shared my home. I had to make myself sit down on the storage bench next to the empty and bitterly cold fireplace to think for a moment.
Now I was fully awake, remembering the times before, and the times before that when I would hear her voice next to my ear, gently, softly. She had left years ago telling me that this life was too hard, too lonely for her to bear. She would say that she would never bring children into this always to hot or too cold brutal environment of cows, sheep, and horses. She would say that living with the rattle snakes was the easiest part of surviving here. I didn’t believe her. I was always too busy working, building our ranch but eventually she left, went to Denver over 15 winters or so ago. The last time the swollen Santa Fe washed over her banks.
I haven’t seen her since.
