Momo and I are creatures of habit, wandering through the peculiar tapestry of our country, mainly the desert southwest and the mountains of far West Texas. Drawn like a moth to a porchlight, time and again to the whimsical embrace of a certain town.
Marfa, Texas, stands as a solitary beacon of floating lights in the mountains amidst the vastness, nestled alongside its mysterious neighbors—Alpine and Fort Davis—forming a curious landlocked Bermuda Triangle of odd happenings in the Chihuahuan high desert. Strange lights, ghostly apparitions floating around town, young hipsters from Austin that migrated to the new Nirvana, only to find out that it costs more than they can afford to live there, and who will buy their third‑rate art and used clothing? The local folks call them “Marfa Surfers.” Either the surf is up or down, and then on to the next beach. The average shelf life for these young gypsies is around three to six months: then it’s back to Austin, where their air of weirdness is commonplace.
Each visit finds us returning to the Hotel Paisano, a historic haunt where the stars of the film “Giant” once breathed in the same desert air, their whispers still echoing through the adobe walls, reminding us of the historical stories that linger in this town.
There exists an ever-growing assembly of characters, primed to share the local tales intertwined with a potpourri of exaggerations, all while maintaining a devilish demeanor as they weave their narratives, and Planet Marfa appears to be their favored stage.
Sagebrush Sonny Toluse was my favorite from our last visit. Sporting a long white beard and a wooden leg, courtesy of a large desert dump of toxic nuclear waste from the 1945 Atom Bomb. The waste was eaten by a group of escaped Chihuahuas from a breeder in Persideo, which turned them into vicious, mutated killer mongrels, which in turn relieved him of his right leg. I believed most of it, but truthfully, he’s full of crap, but it was fun crap. I was hoping to run into him again, ply him with beer, and hear a few more stories.
As luck has it, he was at his usual seat at the end of the bar, looking much worse for wear than two years ago. The dry desert air is supposed to preserve one like an Egyptian mummy, but Sonny may be the exception. He looked as if he had been vacationing in Hell and just arrived home that day. His drinking a case of beer a day is not considered medicinal or practical, and he was smoking two cigarettes at a time with a third sitting in a classic Hotel Paisano glass ashtray, ready to be lit. I didn’t see money on the bar, so the kind young bartender likely lets him drink for free these days.
I saddled up beside him, and he remembered me:
“You’re the fella from Fort Worth who liked my stories,” he says.
“Yep, that’s me,” I reply. Mister gullible, but interested enough to listen and use what he tells me, even though much of it is a tall tale, and I do know something about that genre.
I ask the bartender to bring Sonny two beers, on me. He appears to have had more than a few already, but I can sense he is ready to orate a few of his tales. It’s then that I notice he is wearing a black patch over his left ear, and his left arm is missing: his shirt sleeve is held in place at the shoulder by a safety pin, and there is a large area of his scalp on the left side that is bare of hair. The poor man looks like a wreck, so I ask if he was in a car accident. He drinks his beer in one gulp, lights his third cigarette, and I can sense he is going to explain his ghastly appearance. Momo is sitting under a canopy, enjoying a beer, texting, and taking a few pictures. A light rain has started to fall.
Sonny wastes no time and begins his story.
He speaks in between deep draws of his cigarette and swigs of his fourth beer, ” Back about a year ago, I was driving on the highway over by El Cosmico, you know that bunch of hippies from Austin that live in those tents and trailers. There was this 1960s Fairlane station wagon with the hood up, spewing steam, and a family standing by the side of the highway, so I stopped to help. The man said they were from Minnesota and were looking to set up camp in the desert, but couldn’t afford to rent a space in El Cosmico. They were a ragged-looking bunch, three kids, all wearing boxer shorts and sneakers, long hair with fishing lures woven into it. The wife, who called herself Sassy, was cute, but kind of a smart ass. The guy, Tiberius, was really nice. I told them there’s an old abandoned campground about ten miles out that might fit their need, and it has a little pond the kids can swim in. After I put some water in their radiator, they followed me to the spot, which is way out yonder in the desert. When we got there, they were excited to see a few Yurts that were still livable, so after I got rid of the rattlesnakes, they moved right in. It was getting dark, so they asked me to stay for supper and spend the night. I had a cooler full of beer, and they fixed up some beans and weiners and sat around the campfire swapping stories. That’s when I told them about the toxic killer Chihuahuas that roamed the desert at night, and that’s why I have a wooden leg cause they chewed the other one off. They thought I was full of crap and got a big hoot over my story, which was really a warning: this place ain’t safe at night. They laughed so hard, the wife wet her shorts, and they thought I was telling a tall tale. Around midnight, we all said goodnight and hit the hay.
I ordered him two more beers and a fresh pack of cigarettes, and he continued, ” I was sleeping in my truck, and during the night I had to pee, so I hobbled a few feet away from the truck, because at night, I take my wooden leg off to give my stump a rest. That’s when the little demon Chiuauas jumped me. They had been hiding under the pickup, waiting for me. The little demons got me down, chewed off my left ear and most of my left arm, and took a good part of my scalp and hair, which was sparse already. The family woke up after the attack, piled me in the car, and drove me to the hospital over in Alpine, and the doc saved my life, cut off the rest of my arm, and sewed up what was left of my ear and scalp. I was there for a week or so, and when I returned to Marfa, the family had packed up and gone back to Minnesota. They were too weird for me anyway.” I looked at the bartender, and he gave me a smile and a nod, as if to say, It’s all true.
Notes From The Cactus Patch 