En Placitas

“McCook is part of Thoreau’s great search, and to ignore what he is looking and working for is to deny the best part of ourselves.” – John van der Zee, En Placitas Review, for Hard Row to Hoe

En Placitas, published by Desperado in Raton, New Mexico, 1996, chronicles Kendall McCook’s journey to Silva’s Saloon and a poetry night with Kell Robertson in Bernalillo, New Mexico. The long short story ends with a country dance in Eagle Nest and a long drive home to Kendall’s farm near Springer. Paperback, 46 pages.

Click below to read the review, and scroll down to read an excerpt from the story.

En Placitas – By Kendall McCook

(excerpt)

Why does a poet being paid for his work seem such a far-fetched notion in 1996 Amerika? When Kell called from Placitas — not collect — no desperation in his voice — no houses burned down — just a friendly request that I join him at Silva’s Bar in Bernalillo for a poetry reading with Larry Goodell, I was more pleased by the prospects than any night we’d shared in quite awhile. There was hope in his voice as he described the day’s physical work, and the money for paintin’ a house for ten dollars a cash hour. I told him I’d taken back the old Dodge from Johndavid — too many promises and the oil always two quads low. I’d gone to Taos mostly because I’d waited for money for a month with none apparently forthcoming. Hated like hell to leave him and Scotty afoot, but there’d been too few phone calls and too many lies. So, I told Kell I had the truck and would take it to him. I said he’d probably be rich in a month or two, and he could pay me when his pockets were overflowing.

I’d bought the ’62 Dodge Ram pickup from Tony Padilia in Clayton, my father’s next door neighbor. Tony had bought the truck from old Don Rutledge, whose ranch on the Dry Cimarron once bordered my Gran’pa Schaffer’s small stock farm. Only 70,000 miles on the odometer. Clean inside – no dents or rust – just a faded green reminder of better American times when cars required regular maintenance every working man could provide.

I picked it up one summer when The Hop was still celebrating poetry, and Fort Worth’s promise was yet alive. Kell was living mostly in peace with Betsy on Fairmount, on the edge of the poor folks arts district where new galleries and bars opened and closed with the would-be hopes of mostly starving artists. Kell and Betsy had no transportation after their little red Suburu station wagon fell apart. 8etsy never drove much in town, but in the hot Texas summer of t992, after her hours had been cut at work, she and Kell packed all their worldly goods into the bed of the old green Dodge and headed for New Mexico, chasing the rainbows over Folsom me an’ Kell drunk-dream followed to a wonderful poetry night at the Sbulet in Raton, in September of ’91.

So Kell and Betsy lived two years together in a small but peaceful Raton garage apartment, a magical place, really, until the home-made wine ran out and Kell finally quit his job at the library – when Betsy moved out scared crazy from the outlaw’s waving pistol. She kept books for the local mortuary and moved into a nice little trailer on the edge of town. Took Kell to Folsom where he chopped wood and got strong nearly freezing to death that winter.

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