On Lockdown In The High New Mexican Desert

October 6th, 2007 at 06:13am Keith Hemstreet 8

There was a noise at the back door.  A sudden crack.  My muscles tightened.  My heart was racing.  My mind buzzed frantically.  I looked at the clock.  It was 2:47 a.m.  I reached under the bed and grabbed the hammer I had stashed, the only decent weapon in the house.  Might I actually have to use it?  Might I have to defend myself and my family from an intruder?  This can’t be happening.

We’d come to Taos two days earlier.  Despite an elevation of 7,000 feet, Fall was just beginning in Northern New Mexico.  The high desert town still enjoyed mid-day temperatures in the upper seventies.  Aspen trees held only a faint tracing of gold.  Most trees were still perfectly green.

My wife and I have been visiting Taos for many years.  A scenic five-hour drive from Aspen, it offers a radical alternative to our glitzy mountain town.  There is an attractive grit to Taos.  A desperation, and at the same time, a contentment that meld to create a tangible energy.

Taos is populated with a diverse mix of Native Americans, immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries, painters, poets, writers, and a sprinkling of the world’s rich and famous.  The people of Taos are hard working, spiritual, highly inspired, and oftentimes, crazy.

Those of the latter sort have a madness in their eyes that you can’t ignore.  Catch a glance from one of the mad ones and you will see the lunatic’s flame burning brightly.  They have a look that says, “I do not exist in your world…I am on to something deeper, more meaningful.”  Well, it’s either that or an indication they’ve been privy to one too many peyote trips.

Whatever the source, the insane ones add significantly to the creative energy.  Walk aimlessly around the streets of Taos and you will overhear wonderful conversations, as I did our first evening in town.

“What do you do?” asked a disheveled elder to a young man with long blonde hair who looked as if he’d spent many a night sleeping in the dirt.

“I’m a starving artist,” the blonde boy said.

“Well nice to meet you Starving Artist,” the old man said.  “I’m a starving poet.  How long have you been in Taos?”

“Not long.  I’ve been traveling around the West.  Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado.  Just got here and this is where I want to be.  There is a great vibe here.  I’d like to call Taos home.”

This is what my wife and I love about the place.  The vibe.  This vibe, per se, is hard to define, but it is there, as real as the giant willow trees that whisper in the wind.

But this visit was different.  Since we’d arrived, I’d been picking up on a recurring theme, crime.  In Taos, I quickly learned, crime has become rampant.

Driving into town, I stopped at a liquor store for a bottle of wine.  Waiting in line, a woman asked the clerk if she’d had any trouble in the store.

“Sure,” the clerk said.

The woman said that she admired the girl for working at the store, paid for her wine and left.

“What was that all about?” I thought.  “We’re in modern day Taos, not cowboy era Tombstone.  This is no longer the Wild West.  What kind of trouble would she have experienced here?”

I did not ask, instead writing it off as a random, misunderstood bit of dialogue between two people.

The next observation that hinted to a rise in local crime was the alarm system that had been installed at the home where we stay.  It is the vacation home of a good friend who kindly offers it to us when it’s available.  A quaint adobe just a few blocks from the town plaza, the home had existed without an alarm system for years.  Our friends live in South Florida where everyone has an alarm.  “Maybe it’s simply in a Floridians blood to be afraid,” I thought.

That night, after we put our kids to bed, my wife and I stretched across the couch with our books.  It was quiet and peaceful, the only interruption being the faint sound of sirens in the distance.  Over the course of two hours, I counted five sirens.  That’s five too many for my taste and admittedly, it made me a bit uneasy.

The next morning I woke to a beautiful blue sky.  It was a brisk forty-four degrees as I made my way into town for coffee and a local newspaper.  Feeling perfectly at ease, relaxed, the goal of any vacation, I scanned The Taos News.  On page three was the “Blotter.”  Below, I’ve transcribed some of the Blotter’s most intriguing clips.

On Wednesday, at 9:14 a.m., a caller reported finding bloody clothing a bag containing some kind of bone in the dumpster.

That same day, at 12:33 p.m., a caller reported shots fired and someone screaming.

At 3:30 p.m., a caller claimed that he had received phone calls from a man saying he had an assault rifle and he was going to “take care” of a lot of people in Taos.

8:35 p.m., caller reports that a man was yelling at his girlfriend.  Soon after, he heard two shots fired.

Unsettling information, to say the least.

“Maybe Taos is the Wild West, after all,” I thought. After all, this is the place where, in 1847, Governor Charles Bent was assassinated by an angry mob.  Could it be that the lawless spirits of those days have returned?

“Ah, we’ll be fine,” I concluded.  “We’re staying in a nice home, in a nice area that sits adjacent to a $50 million eco-resort.”

When I returned home from my brief excursion there was a note attached to the door.

“Please leave your porch lights on all night,” it read.  “We’ve had problems -- Susie S.”  Below her name, she gave her email address.

“For Christ’s sake, Susie!” I thought.  “How about being a little more specific!  What kind of problems are we talking about?  Loitering?  Petty theft?  Armed robbery?  Rape?  A triple homicide?“

I sat down at my computer and fired off a quick email.  “Dear Susie,” I wrote.  “What sort of problems are we talking about?  Should I be concerned?”

I waited and waited, but a reply never came.

Assuming the worst, I became paranoid.  I went through each room to make sure all the windows were locked.  I lowered any blinds that offered a view of the interior and searched the drawers for some kind of weapon to defend my family against an unknown evil.

That’s when I found the hammer.  I picked it up like Bruce Willis (“Butch”) in Pulp Fiction, testing the grip, making sure I could strike a decisive blow.

“What are you doing?” my wife asked, as she noticed me taking the hammer into the bedroom.

“There’s a nail that’s sticking out of the wall that I need to pound back into place.  I don’t want anyone to get cut.”

I stepped into our bedroom, laid a few hammer blows against the wall to complete my act, and placed the bludgeoning device under our bed.

When I was a junior in college, I lived in an old brick house with four friends.  Early that fall semester, there was a string of violent robberies in our neighborhood.  Three guys wearing camouflage were breaking into homes, tying people up at gunpoint, inflicting severe beatings and leaving with anything of value.

One night, a friend was passing our house after a night class and decided to stop in for a visit.  Driving up to our home he saw the three men in camouflage standing near the side door.  He turned his high beams on them and honked the horn repeatedly.  Hardly fazed, the three men casually turned away and disappeared into the darkness.

When we heard what had almost transpired, my roommate loaded his shotgun and we set up camp on our front porch.  There we sat into the late hours of the morning, just the five of us, a shotgun and a handle of Jim Beam.  My roommate, the shotgun owner, was not one to mess with, especially after he’d ingested a respectable sum of whiskey.  As the night wore on, he grew more and more enraged.  He began pacing back and forth, shotgun in hands, yelling like a madman into dark, humid night. “Come on back, you mother fuckers!  We’re ready for you now!  Come on!  I’ll blow your goddamn heads off!”

These were good times, but I’m older now.  I have a family.  Two young girls for whom I must set an example.  I can’t afford to be stomping around like a maniac, challenging whatever villains may lurk in the night while my finger nervously taps the trigger of a high-powered shotgun.  I wish I could, I really do, but I can’t.  I don’t own a shotgun and I haven’t had one within reach since college.

Really, who needs a gun in Aspen for sake of defense?  But after this trip, I am thinking that I should have a .357 magnum stashed under the seat of my car so I can access it when I’m away on vacation, you know, in case something comes up.

There was second crack at the back door.  However, this time not as loud.

“Maybe they are trying to finesse the lock,” I thought, “afraid that a more aggressive method would make too much noise and wake the people inside.”  I decided it would be stupid to wait in bed, allowing the attackers to enter the home unchallenged.  Hammer in hand, I jumped from my bed and charged out of the room.  Running towards the back door, I thumped my feet heavily against the hardwood floors so the scumbags would hear me coming.  Half-delirious and crazed, I slammed my body into the door, like a hockey player checking a despised rival.  Then I stood behind the wall and peered through the curtains outside.  Beyond the porch light, I saw nothing.  Only darkness.

I ran through the house turning on all of the lights in the living and dining rooms.  I pulled back blinds in each room and looked outside.   I wanted to make it known to whoever was outside that there was a paranoid man inside, awake, charged with adrenaline and liable to do anything to defend himself.  Continuing my rounds, I saw no sign of anything unusual.  No footprints in the dirt.  No dark shadows.  No movement in the night.

Sometime later, I felt comfortable enough to settle back into bed.  The remainder of the night, I sat listening, waiting, watching the green numbers of the clock crawl towards morning.  I dozed on occasion, only to be jolted back to consciousness by the slightest of noises.

Finally, morning.  The New Mexican sky filled with the gorgeous light for which it is famed, a light that attracts painters and photographers from around the world.  Distinct gray clouds floated above Taos Mountain, their underbelly flushed with orange.  My daughters and wife now awake, eating breakfast, smiling, giggling.  We made it through the night without incident, lest my crazed stampede, though as far as my family was concerned, that never happened.

All is well today, but the hammer remains close, and will until we are on our way back to the safe confines of our unlocked apartment in Aspen, Colorado.

Entry Filed under: Aspen, Crime, Gun Control