THE OASIS OF WEST TEXAS

BALMORHEA /// PECOS, TX

There was a moment of weightlessness, swimming in an oasis: Balmorhea certainly exists because of the natural springs.  There is also a shallow lake, a reservoir, that appears to have been poured out on the ground in a petulant act of spillage occurring perhaps yesterday.  Alongside the water there are small camping spots that may be occupied at the exchange rate of four or five dollars inserted into a mysterious door slot.  Later we met Luma Rose.  She had pendulous breasts and a luminous, toothless smile and told us that we might be her guests there.  This turned out well the next night.  I wrote a small note to the mysterious door slot informing them that we were now family, and the night wind continued skimming off the water.  A raft of snow geese appeared the second morning.  Coyotes singing.  We returned with one less vehicle because my van imploded before we got to Pecos.

The oasis itself produces a million gallons every hour.  These days the water still runs directly into the dusty dirt, long irrigation canals into town with sluice gates to divide up the weekly allotments for gardens and such.  The spring itself has changed its shape: there is a state park around it, a building or two and a parking lot with a bottled-water vending machine, and the oasis itself is a swimming pool.  Later in the season, I will imagine the crowds of people that are possible.  It will be the only cool spot along the road to Big Bend.  There are smooth-looking, flat, shy turtles and indifferent black fish.  There are probably snakes, and there are small cackling diving ducks.  In our case only one other visitor was swimming, an older man with a dignified if somewhat stiff stroke, and an upsetting habit of breathing only once or twice a minute in gulping snorts.



The pool starts shallow and turns a corner and abruptly becomes deep.  It is perpetually seventy-five degrees or so.  I stood on the bigger diving board, a satisfying concrete arrangement, and looked at a solitary mound at some distance from the foothills.  I’m not sure that elephants or water buffalo are more careful of their drinking water.

Afterwards we saw that there was an "open" sign in the Rock Shop window.  The owner is a new widow and all of the rocks remind her of her recently departed.  There is a local agate.  It’s called “Balmorhea Blue.”

Diffused sensations.  A cold night.  Trucks on the highway.  Terrible smell of burning fluids.  My friend has to drive to a gas station twice to poop.  I sat there and looked at my things and thought, “This is a completely self-referential space.  When it comes apart, it will be a little like dissolving.  That is exhilarating and terrifying.”

(Now it is time to go and meet the man to whom I may sell the van for scrap. Steel is apparently high, but high for steel is low for me.)

Friday.  Pecos is has the same weather every day.  Today I have learned that my nose registers not only the dust and dryness, but also traces of sulfur dioxide on the breeze.  The things that I have owned are more or less disassembled, sorted, discarded, scavenged, dumped.  We attempted to pawn some things but Pecos has no pawn shop.  This morning I called into the West Texas Hotline with a slightly adenoidal tale of woe and had several vaporous though sympathetic conversations.  Butter pecan milkshake for breakfast from the Dairy Mart.  All of the little businesses around here that thrive are managed by sturdy gangs of older women who laugh at me in Spanish because I claim to be able to handle their burrito.  Nobody wants to buy a brand new propane tank.  There are still no pawn shops.  The mechanic at Pecos Diesel, in whose lot we've been sleeping, is a globular fellow with a stained beard and an inscrutable slow manner.  He approaches in a golden cloud and apparently offers us work clearing out a school bus packed tight with further crap.  His assistant is the dirtiest human being I have ever seen.  The whites of his eyes, as he smiles, blinding to look at by comparison.  Best case scenario is that somebody gets a good transmission for cheap with a van attached.  Worst... the steel scrappers around here put on a grim act.  Maybe a hundred, hundred and fifty bucks.  The oldest scrapper only has one tooth, but it is as large as several regular teeth.  Everyone agrees: your van is a crummy make of diesel. Pain in the neck.  Finally somebody telephoned from out there, somewhere, with an offer.



What is going on around here?  -- Oil and natural gas.  Wayne Sparkman, the man who will crush the van if nobody wants it, says that the past two years have done strange things.  Pecos Diesel has a six-month waiting list for engine overhauls.  The population is swelling, the Economy Inn is overfull, C & T Donut and La Nortena Famous Tamales and Dairy Mart and Golden Palace Chinese and any other Kwik-Mart or taco stand are clotted with solitary men who don’t cook for themselves.  A friendly ex-con in the library admires my words per minute.  I watch fascinated over his shoulder as he attempts to get a $54,000 loan from something called givememoneynow.com for financing his theoretical gourmet beef jerky enterprise, which will have to hit the ground running as he operates out of his pastor’s living room.  I mention that he might want to be careful with unscrupulous loan websites or at least look for one with a slightly more professional name.  He thinks about this and carefully starts a new search: “Who … will … give … me … a … loan … for … beef … jerky … business.”

Pecos might be the single most difficult place for this exact make of diesel to break down.  There might be pawn shops in Carlsbad.

There are new pickup trucks on every street even as likely a third of the town is in dry disrepair.  It took three days to find the “main drag.”  Everybody is hanging out at the Wal-Mart.  Ian’s theory is that suddenly there is money where there was not, and nobody knows what to do with themselves-- James says that this reminds him of the Gulf Coast last year during the oil spill.  It’s difficult to get any kind of a loan out here, though there are empty houses everywhere.  Various drilling and banking companies (the various extractive tendencies) are fully aware that this is a hit-and-run, behave accordingly: we’ll soak you for as long as we can and then get out.  If you ever managed to get a loan, you’ll likely default on it.  The rig workers at the Economy Inn will move to the next spurt.



Sparky says: this is the desert, we’re in the desert.  There’s a give and a take.  Water is more precious than gold.  The gas companies are using town water for extraction, and there is only so much water in the ground.  When it’s gone, that’s that, you’ll have taken too much and you won’t get anything back.  The water here is highly alkaline anyway.  The post office has five feet of salt water in the basement.  But Balmorhea, they’ve got nice water down there.  They won’t let us tap into that.  We would suck it dry by noon every day.

Blamorhea and Pecos.  The oasis and these ruinous craters of the moon.  The lunar base will be a natural gas rig, alone on the sea of crisis, the sea that has become known, saturated with light.  Elsewise it will be a lonesome taco stand listening to Coast-to-coast on the interstellar AM, waiting tiredly for the earth to rise.