Tumbleweed Clem

Clem is certainly unique in body, mind and spirit. A phantom of the high desert, except for those who see Clem's soul.

What I know of Clem would fit in a thimble. What I don't know would fill the desert.

Most of what I know comes from gossip. I did run into him once and we shared a moment. It was all Clem was willing to give.

Oldsters remember Clem's daddy being a loud drunk, with fists or his belt, always in motion toward the boy. Father beat him fierce and often. Many tried to stop Clem's dad. Several who tried were laid dead.

Women would try to give Clem a feeling of belonging by kindness. Didn't work. Fear in Clem was deeper than realms beyond the river Styx.

Clem ain't handsome. Too many beatings turned his face into a stub and his body into a constant clutch. In a rounda'bout way, Clem resembles Quasimoto. Without the hump or limp. Clem's gait is more a shuffle.

People are always leaving care packages for him at the bridge. Inside are things people think Clem could use. Consuelo's father, Migel, makes a new sheepskin coat, hat and mittens to leave by the bridge every October. Pretty sure Clem uses the old sheepskin for his bedding.

Four years ago, Darin staked a goat next to the bridge and left a small pail beside it. You can tell Clem appreciated the goat. Every day that goat is staked out in a different place around the bridge area. Clem's been seen cleaning the pail when the arroyo is churning mountain water run-off.

Clem was seen in the merchantile last Winter buying a dozen cans of white spray paint.

Owner of Teddy's Gut cafe leaves a meal for Clem at closing every night. Also a paper bag with dos Tecate. I think Teddy leaves left-over pie too. But can't swear by it.

Neda, nurse at the Whiz Bang clinic, once tended Clem. Seems he shuffled into the clinic in the middle of the night, some twenty years earlier, asking for a suture kit. Trailing blood across the rough planked floor of the clinic. Neda said she cleaned the wound and sutured him up. She said he got up, left a nickel on the counter and departed without saying a word.

I had an autistic horse once. Filly had lots of twists and turns in her noggin. None of which went anywhere. Named her Savant. I only ride rentals now.

Savant was taking me on a meander when I came across Clem a few miles outside Whiz Bang in the late Fall of 1997. He was dragging a huge stack of tumbleweeds he had twined together.

"Looks like you're gonna do some meat smok'n. Hi. My name is She of Two Spirits. You're Clem, right?" I gushed like an idiot.

"No," he said.

"No, your not Clem or no, you ain't gonna smoke meat?" I asked.

"Yes and no," he said in a short whisper.

There are normal pregnant pauses and then there is the high desert pregnant pause. What followed between us was the high desert kind.

Finally I said, "Well, it sure was nice to meet you, Clem. Have a peachy-keno day," as Savant meandered me away.

Whiz bang has an old one room community building made of stacked rock and supported by beams of red western cedar. A circular stone fireplace lies in the center of the room. A snug, safe place for children in hospice.

It was the afternoon of Christmas Eve. I had stick walked myself down to the butcher shop to buy a ribeye cut of bison and some steaming clams for next day's Christmas dinner. I saw Clem walking to and fro in front of the Hospice. Not aggitated, only the anxiousness of waiting.

Arriving home I prepared a fire to have later, took a shower, cleaned up and ate a delicious lamb steak, smothered in butter fried morel mushrooms my sister had sent me last summer from Iowa.

A glass of vino and some seasonal music completed the early evening. It was time to go to the Whiz Bang Annual Christmas Party. This year it was being held at the jail house. Plenty of room, since there were no current municipal detainees. Well, except for Clarence. He was sleeping off a toot, so wouldn't be a bother.

When I came through the back door of the jail house I expected to hear lots of Christmas cheer. I entered the silence of a tomb.

Everybody was in front of the jail house looking out the big plate glass windows. Only the Christmas lights were glowing in the room. I muzzled my way to the window and saw what was receiving so much awed attention.

Across the road from the jail was the children's hospice building. Surrounding it were dozens of different size snowmen made from tumbleweeds and spray painted white. Clem was reading aloud, The Night Before Christmas.

The Angels of the hospice had moved the children's beds to the windows so they could hear Clem tell the story in the most sweet voice I have ever heard. It was a sight that took breath away and melted the heart.

Clem, standing in the desert on Christmas Eve, gave snowmen and a story of love, to dying children.