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Until 1960, all of us in Arroyo Grande were ignorant of electricity and automobiles, were unaware of plastic, steel, or homogenization, hadn’t been exposed to vaccines, x-rays or Freud, weren’t acquainted with Shakespeare or Hemingway, had never listened to Gershwin or Mozart, couldn’t have imagined Les Demoiselles D’Avignon or Starry Night, didn’t know what JFK, DNA, SOS, IBM, CIA or RBI stood for, were uninformed of the existence of George or Booker T. Washington and assumed that England, France, Spain, and Portugal were still the most powerful nations on earth. We used sassafras roots as toothpaste, made paper from pulp and colored it with plant dyes, played the lute and the lyre, and used percussion instruments made from animal skins. And we never went to sleep without our parents saying, “Then all shall sit under their vines and under their fig trees and none shall make them afraid.”
This is what I wrote in 1962, word for word, as the beginning of the essay part of my application to be admitted to the University of Taos (commonly referred to as UT), close to the Colorado border. It came out of an assignment from a creative writing project in our remote, small school, in which we were asked to re-imagine our family’s history in the form of an introduction to a novel. The part about the vines and fig trees wasn’t fiction. That’s what my parents, Aarón and Raquel Toledano, and seven other families who together comprise the entire village of Arroyo Grande—the Ávilas, Córdobas, Pontevedres, Gironas, Alicantes, Lisboas and Firenzes—say each night as the kids are put to bed.
There was more than a kernel of truth at the heart of this fiction, so to disguise it, I resorted to hyperbole, which found favor with the admissions office, who published the essay along with my photo in the UT newspaper on the day I registered, as an illustration of achievement from a member of the incoming class. It caused a sensation, especially since it included a picture of me with a scruffy red and blond streaked beard, grey marble eyes, and wearing a colorful Navajo shawl.
Waiting on line, I heard an echo of a muted howl that was picked up by a few others around me. It became a chorus of soft bays that I figured was some sort of musical conversation, one of many things I was going to have to pick up on if I wanted to fit in seamlessly. Within a few minutes, they were interspersed with shorter yelps, the cacophony similar to the sounds of the red wolves I’d hear late at night when I slept outdoors in Arroyo Grande. After a bit, the student closest to me tapped me gently on the shoulder and said, “Lobo rojo, lobo rojo.”
Red wolf, red wolf. From then on, I was sometimes addressed as lobo rojo—unless someone turned out to be my friend, in which case he or she pronounced Jacobo with the J as H sound, Hacobo, the typical way in Spanish, notwithstanding the fact that it should’ve been said with a ‘ja’ sound, as in Jake.
Eight families had lived in Arroyo Grande in the west-central part of New Mexico since 1677, having arrived there after a five year sojourn that began in Constantinople and worked its way to Mexico. At the outset, they put down roots far from others, and only in 1867 when a Navajo Indian group set up camp a few miles away did they begin to assimilate. They thrived in the high altitude and benefited from the remoteness of their existence; the community had never been breached by plagues of war, disease or fear. Their seclusion contributed to their self-reliance, and was something that was handed down and practiced without aforethought. Food, water, clothing, shelter, entertainment and medicine were omnipresent. They’d opted to preserve a segregated way of life as a method of community survival. Initially interacting with the Navajos, and then later trading with settlers, ranchers, and prospectors who’d traveled down the Rio Grande, they gradually become acculturated into the American way of life by the nineteen thirties.
Not that they were fully integrated.
There were no telephones or electricity or paved roads. None of that was a hardship. Several ancient cars and trucks were used within the village (not that anyone had a driver’s license), there were no prohibitions against using modern conveniences such as battery-powered tools and radios, and we’d accumulated so many books that a library was built right off the central plaza. No one had a social security card, registered to vote, or served on juries. The truth is that Arroyo Grande legally didn’t exist. You couldn’t find it on a map, there were no records in the county archives, and we buried our dead without permits, up on a hill, from which you could see both the mountains to the west and the Rio Grande to the east.
My father ran the general store, which was constructed at the easternmost part of the village nearest the road the WPA had built in 1936 in order to enable trucks and personnel carriers to have unfettered access to a new army base that was being built on the western side of the river, where the higher elevation would preclude flooding in the spring, when the heavy melt would flow south and cut off communities, sometimes for up to several weeks at a time.
The store was universally called The Trading Post, especially after Joseph Deschene, who was commonly referred to as Navajo Joe, opened an Indian boutique within it, where he sold blankets, other woolen goods, carved figurines, and silver jewelry to tourists, army personnel from the base, and then to new-age seekers who increasingly flocked to remote parts of New Mexico to align with nature and seek out those spirits that welcomed their embrace.
The arms that the founders of our village had brought with them hundreds of years earlier—unused muskets, lead balls, and knives of assorted lengths and shapes—testaments to the great victory of the community’s isolation, were prominently displayed in alcoves in the back, perched above the two massive fireplaces on the opposing side walls, and hung down from massive hand-hewed rafters that supported the ceilings.
My father enjoyed greeting customers in an effusive manner, finagling them to tell their stories to a perfect stranger. He was adept at using the anecdotes he’d just heard to then steer someone to an item that hadn’t been in consideration when the person had walked into the store.
Aarón Toledano was an imposing figure, the tallest person in Arroyo Grande. He moved with a grace that was uncommon for someone of his height. Although one would say his hair was red, it was more appropriately defined as reddish. If you looked at him straight on, you’d notice streaks of different red hues forming a rainbow-like impression that culminated in the bun that knotted it all together, a common style worn by many of the adult men. His beard was long and full, and his moustache hung down over his upper lip, concealing his smile, which had the unintended effect of some not being able to determine his mien, not a disadvantage when he acted as the unofficial leader of Arroyo Grande.
After dinner on Friday nights, my father would tell stories to me, my older sister Débora and my younger sister Nohemi. We’d sit, legs crossed, with our backs to the great fire, listening to him raise and lower his voice, watching him standing, walking around the room, hearing the wood crackling, seeing ashes floating in space, noticing shadows flickering in an otherwise darkened room. When the stories got too scary, Nohemi would crawl inside her blanket, roll to where she was touching my legs, and peek out, turtle-like, only when there was a pause for a transition from one scene to another. When she was really petrified, we’d hear a loud uuuuuuuuuum, uuuuuuuuuum and would see the blanket move up and down, side to side, which wouldn’t annoy anyone except the cat who’d settled in for a snooze in one of our laps.
The stories would all start out the same way: a group of three children, one boy and two girls, all related, would sneak out of their house at night, go into the woods and dig up dirt, clay, and loam, and fashion the materials into a person twice the size of a normal man. The giant creature would spring to life as they poured hot coals over it, then the children would throw water to cool the figure, and watch it form hair, eyes, fingernails, and toes. The children would stick twigs into the head and then blow air into the space when they pulled the twigs out, giving life to the creature—or Holyman—as my father called it. Then the children would reveal to the Holyman the terrible situation that they were in, and how the Holyman should seek revenge on those who’d harmed them. The stories always took place on a cold windy night filled with danger in the fields, woods, and alleys. The children would be pursued by pirates and wizards, then would be assaulted with words, and attacked with weapons. They’d be forced to admit crimes that they hadn’t committed, sins they weren’t guilty of, and made to believe that they’d never see their parents again or witness the sun to rise that very day.
Then–the Holyman to the rescue!
The creature who couldn’t talk, but who could see and hear, would materialize from the shadows and instantly spring into action, absorb taunts and insults, fend off musket balls, knives, and lances, retrieve those strapped to the rack, tied to the stake, shackled by chains attached to horses, or hoist up those who had their heads forced under water, in which case he’d breathe life back into the child, knowing that the very air that he blew would empty his own lungs, and cause his own death. In the end, he’d always die, without a sigh or trace of any emotion, and simply melt back into the earth to be recalled again, on another Friday night. Then we’d go to bed, to dream of the Holyman who’d always be there for us when we’d need him most.
The first time I decided to write and illustrate a story was after one of these Friday nights, when I did my best to recreate the evening in what would now be called the style of a graphic novel, but back then was simply referred to as a comic or funny book. I’d sketch a cell, in which I tried to capture both the imagination of what my father had been describing as well as the scene itself, with my sisters in rapt attention, or huddled under a blanket, or drinking some lemon-flavored water with a burék, a pastry filled with cheese and eggplant, a favorite late-night snack. By the time I was sixteen, I had a large notebook filled with these pages, so it was natural that I’d call upon this ability to compose and draw as part of the college application.
On the day I left Arroyo Grande for the UT, Navajo Joe handed me a going away gift. More colorful than what I had seen than anything that he’d displayed at The Trading Post, it was an intricately woven shawl with a large opening, through which I poked my head, spread my arms wide and pirouetted around so that everyone else could see the appreciation I felt and the honor I acknowledged. He motioned for me to accompany him and we walked down to the water’s edge.
We could see unusually far up and downstream, past a sharp bend in the shoreline, cinched at the tip by a large rock promontory jutting out into the river like an exclamation point, as if to indicate the presence of the Navajo village directly up the hill to the west.
He pointed to a ring of large stones that appeared to be a map of the constellations we’d see in the wintertime. He didn’t say anything, just moved his head slowly around the stones, nodding, encouraging me to do the same, silently leading me to take it in, to understand the simplicity of the representation. I can’t say I understood what it all meant at the time, but later, on a return trip, it served as a beacon to two bedraggled, wearied young men who were just learning about the circle of life.
At the bottom of the hill, the land leveled out as if in a gesture to enable the Rio Grande to change course without offering resistance, a symbiosis of land and water that reflected the ageless history of time. I stood there, mute, absorbing the sights and smells, a minute that was both singular and intimate. A few minutes later, it was time to say goodbye. I hugged him, making sure I didn’t catch either his long black hair that was twisted into a braid that went half-way down his back, or the pendant that he wore around his neck—a five pointed metallic object in the shape of a star—that could cause you to blink if it caught the sun just so.
