A Salty Piece of Land

  I turned Mr. Twain toward town, the land of cheese grits and huevos rancheros. I scratched at my good-luck charm and began to sing to my horse as we rode:

  And if I were like lightning

  I wouldn’t need no sneakers

  I’d come and go wherever I would please

  And I’d scare ’em by the shade tree

  And I’d scare ’em by the light pole

  But I would not scare my pony on my boat out on the sea

  13

  Grandma Ghost

  I headed up Main Street to La Cocina Café. As I sat finishing my breakfast on the tiny round plaza at the end of the main street of Punta Margarita, an old woman strolled to the far side of the circle. She carried a small canvas stool and an easel. She made several trips around the fountain and finally settled on a view of the church. Then she unfolded her gear, sat, and pulled a large sketch pad from her canvas bag.

  She was obviously American, but she was no tourist. She had that weathered look of a real traveler, and of course the fact that she was painting caught my eye. She wore a long khaki skirt and a blue work shirt with a bleached-out, wide-brim hat that hid her face.

  I sipped the final wash of coffee in my mug and watched her hands as she turned the parchment in her grip from a blank page into a work of art. She moved almost in slow motion as she stopped sketching, turned to look at me, and smiled, connecting through my eyes to the tropical soul that lived inside me.

  If the visit the night before from Johnny Red Dust hadn’t been enough, the old lady painting in the square had reminded me that I was not the first Mars family member to run away to the tropics. That title went to my almost great-grandmother—Sarah Sawyer Mars—better known to her great-grandchildren as “Grandma Ghost.”

  I think what connects some people to the art they like is not wishing they could paint it but rather wanting to be in the scene that the artist has painted. I know that traditionally cowboys are not known as collectors of art, but I can’t help it; it runs in my family, and it started with Grandma Ghost.

  Art had connected me to the tropics long before I bought St. Barbara at the flea market or took off my cowboy boots and sank my bare feet into a sandy beach for the first time. I might have sold my truck, my trailer, and most of the keepsakes I had accumulated over the years after my exodus from Wyoming, but my pony and my two paintings came with me.

  I have already told the story of The Patron Saint of Lightning. This is the story of the other piece of the Tully Mars art collection. The painting is called Heart of the Andes, and it was created by the great American landscape artist Frederic Edwin Church. Church was a member of what they call the Hudson River School, and when he was not traveling to the ends of the earth for inspiration, he made his home along the river. Although I call it a painting, my Church is actually a black-and-white engraving. The original hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where I saw it as a teenager on a high school graduation field trip. Its beauty simply wore out my brain and my body as I stood and drank it in until they closed the museum.

  Besides being a painter, Frederic E. Church was kind of like the George Strait or the Dale Earnhardt of his day. Back before the Civil War, when visual art and books and live music was it for entertainment, people actually followed the careers of painters like they do NASCAR drivers and country music stars today. Church was not only a painter but an explorer. He had been drawn from the comfort of his home and studio along the banks of the Hudson River to the jungles of South America after reading the book Cosmos, written by the legendary German explorer Alexander von Humboldt.

  Church was bowled over by von Humboldt’s description of the tropics and wrote to the explorer, offering his services as an illustrator. That is how Mr. Church went to South America with von Humboldt.

  Now remember, this was before cameras and Photoshop, when only painters and sculptors could record striking visual images. Church set up his easel in the jungle and started to paint those mysterious landscapes of South America, attempting to capture the beauty of the tropics and acquaint people with parts of the world they would never see. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Waterfalls, volcanoes, and dense jungle scenes came to life on his stretched canvas, and when he brought these visions home, the art critics in New York City had to give Mr. Church’s works a new name. They called them “heroic landscape paintings,” and that is just what they were.

  Heart of the Andes had inspired my lust for the tropics long before I ever came here. I know cowboys are supposed to be into Western art like those sculptures by Frederic Remington and that picture of Custer being scalped at the Battle of Little Bighorn that hangs in bars all over the West with the Budweiser logo on the bottom, but it didn’t work out that way for me. Grandma Ghost had seen to that.

  Heart of the Andes was completed in 1859 and put on exhibition in Church’s Greenwich Village gallery on the island of Manhattan. Crowds flocked to the gallery. It was art and entertainment all rolled up into one.

  Among the visitors to the Tenth Street Studio Building in April of 1859 were Jubal and Sarah Sawyer Mars, my great-grandparents.

  The way the story goes, the newlyweds had journeyed from East Tennessee to New York on business. Jubal ran a successful fleet of steamboats on the Tennessee River and had many business connections in New York. Sarah had willingly left the coast for the Cumberland Mountains as part of her marital obligations, and she assumed she would, like most wives of the day, make the geographic transition that often accompanied marriage. But Sarah Sawyer Mars was no mountain woman. She was a belle from the coastal metropolis of Charleston, and her roots were firmly attached to the low-country lifestyle. She soon became very depressed with her new surroundings.

  Jubal had thought that the trip to New York would “do her good,” and he had a surprise for her. The talk of the town that spring was a painting by the famous artist Frederic Church, and Jubal had put aside his business meetings to take his wife to view it. Afterward, they would have dinner at one of New York’s finest restaurants.

  They set out that evening for the one-picture, paid-admission special exhibition and eventually found the studio. Nailed to a tree out front was a sign with these words in big red letters: HEART OF THE ANDES. Jubal and Sarah dropped two quarters into the till, signed up to purchase a black-and-white engraving of the painting, joined a line of nearly a thousand interested New Yorkers, and waited patiently, as Southerners would, to view the painting.

  Finally they got to the benches arranged in front of the painting and took a seat. The picture was encased in a dark wooden structure and adorned with draperies, and it looked like a window that opened to reveal not just a landscape but a complete condensation of South America in a single image. The painting was brightly lit by gaslights while the rest of the room was left dark. Dried palm fronds that Church had actually brought back from South America hung overhead and transformed the room into a tropical setting.

  Well, it sure as hell worked on my almost great-grandmother, for when the usher motioned for her and my great-grandfather to vacate the bench, Sarah Sawyer Mars wouldn’t leave. She refused all requests, overtures, and finally commands to leave by my great-grandfather, the gallery manager, and even the artist himself, and she had to be physically carried out on the bench by the police. During this whole ordeal, she said not a word but just stared at the painting.

  Jubal Mars accompanied his wife in the police wagon and sat beside her on the bench on the way back to the hotel. When they arrived, Sarah shocked them all again by calmly rising from the bench, taking my great-grandfather’s arm, and stepping out of the paddy wagon. Then she asked if they might have a cup of tea.

  They went to bed that night, and the next morning, my almost great-grandmother was gone. She had left a note describing her feelings about what the painting had done to her, and she couldn’t help it, but she was going to the tropics, where she felt her destiny was calling her. She said that the painting had not only captured a scene but also show
n her a window into the world where she felt she belonged. Sarah Sawyer Mars had walked into that painting, and she never came back.

  My great-grandfather was in shock for a while, but he returned home to Tennessee, went off to war, survived, went west to Wyoming when the Civil War finally ended, and remarried. My almost great-grandmother disappeared into the jungles of South America.

  Stories of her adventures and exploits were whispered at family reunions. She had run off with a painter to Paris. She had gone crazy and died of a fever in the Amazon. She had been murdered by pirates. My memories of my real great-grandmother were of a kind and loving woman who took care of her family and had never left the county in which she was born. “Grandma Ghost” was a forbidden subject in our house, but of course tales were told and retold by children and adults alike in the corners of parlors or around campfires in the mountains, but it was me who really discovered her secret.

  One summer at a family reunion at my great-grandfather’s ranch, my hellion cousins and I were rummaging through his attic when my cousin Baxter accidentally spilled the contents of an old cedar box out onto the floor. As we scrambled to clean up the mess, I picked up a faded yellow envelope with the words SARAH SAWYER MARS—DO NOT OPEN written across the front. I jammed the letter into my pocket.

  Later that night, I snuck back into the attic by myself and unsealed the envelope. Out dropped a stack of ancient sepia photos. I quickly unbound them. The top one was of a young woman standing on a beach with a letter in her hand. She was about to drop it into a wooden mailbox. Two giant tortoises watched her from a distance. On the back of the photo were scrawled these words: SARAH SAWYER MARS, POST OFFICE BAY, GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS, 1859. The rest of the photos told the story. She had sailed from New York to Panama, crossed the isthmus by train, and continued on by ship to Ecuador. She had disembarked at Guayaquil and then made her way up the river to Quito, following the path of Frederic Church to the Valley of the Volcanoes. In the last photo, she is painting next to a mountain trail with the volcano behind her.

  Grandma Ghost was a ghost no more. Along with the photos was an envelope, wrapped with a faded blue ribbon, which held a long-dead flower. It was addressed to THE DESCENDANTS OF JUBAL MARS. I slit open the envelope with my Swiss Army knife, pulled out the letter, sat back in an old rocking chair with my Boy Scout flashlight, and began reading.

  The letter started with a quotation from Alexander von Humboldt. It read, “Why may we not be justified in hoping that landscape painting may hereafter bloom with new and yet unknown beauty, when highly gifted artists shall often pass the narrow bound of the Mediterranean, and shall seize, with the first freshness of a pure youthful mind, the living image of manifold beauty and grandeur in the humid mountain valleys of the tropical world?”

  The letter continued:

  Dear Family,

  As I lie here in the cool of the late afternoon, staring for the millionth time at the conical summit of Urubamba aglow in the twilight, it seemed the fitting moment to write down those words of von Humboldt that inspired me so long ago. This is Sarah Mars Menendez, known to some of you as “Grandma Ghost.” I hope I haven’t haunted you too much. I promise not to do so in the next life, either. I am about to leave this world, and it is time to make amends. Oftentimes I have wondered what might have been, if I had done the proper thing and returned to Tennessee from New York with Jubal and had only stared at this wonderful engraving with regrets. But lying here now, listening to the music of the birds out my window and seeing the landscape that I have come to love so much here in the Valley of the Volcanoes, I know that I may not have done the proper thing, but I did the right thing for me.

  I apologize if I have caused you harm. I know that Jubal was a fine father, and I heard wonderful things about Bessie. They have honored the Mars family name with great pride and lasting heritage. I die with no family. Sadly, that was part of the price of my ticket to freedom, but I have no regrets. What I did learn in my leaving was that there are far more roads on which you may traverse life’s paths than those that seem to have been preordained for you by others. Of course there are times when I wonder what could have been. But I chose my path, and that is that. I have found a home, and I will die happy here in the jungle and be buried near the river, which gives life to this region. In looking back, I know it was the kindness of Jubal that led to what I am sure was a much unforeseen outcome.

  There will always be those who feel more comfortable not venturing from the warmth of the hearth, but there are those who prefer to look out the window and wonder what is beyond the horizon. There is no beauty like that which overtakes us by accident. This picture was the accident that diverted me from the well-traveled path and onto a bumpier, but more interesting, route. Maybe up there in America, there is another Mars son or daughter who feels the urge to fly like I did, who sees life not as a flickering candle but as a torch that can illuminate an undiscovered world. If so, then take this gift and do with it what you will. Hang it up and dream of what it is, or use it as a map to take you there. And if you do decide to wander, please leave a tiny bit of room in your heart for me. For if I live in your hearts, I really have not died.

  Love,

  Sarah Mars Menendez

  Otavalo, Ecuador

  February 10, 1931

  “What painting?” I whispered to myself. I tore that attic apart until I found what I was looking for. It was a wooden crate buried beneath a stack of storm shutters and baling wire with shipping labels still attached that indicated it had come from Otavalo, Ecuador. I had found the treasure.

  I remember the exotic fragrances that still lingered as I pried the crate open and lifted out the mahogany frame. I don’t know if it was the jungle view from Frederic Church’s hand or the words of Sarah Sawyer Mars Menendez, but I knew I was where I was now because of one or the other. The vision of Mr. Church had done its job. His work had ignited my senses and spoken to my heart. And as for Grandma Ghost, what is a picture without the story of how you came to love or acquire it? The same sentiments that had glued her to that bench in Greenwich Village nearly a hundred fifty years ago had led me to this plastic chair on a sandy street in the village of Punta Margarita.

  The silence of the moment was shattered by the unmistakable sounds of radial airplane engines. Willie Singer was taking off for Mérida. A few seconds later, the pink plane zoomed over me at treetop level. I instinctively waved, as most people do when they see a low-flying plane going somewhere, but it wasn’t Willie Singer who waved back. It was Donna Kay. I realized that she was heading off to her new life, just as Grandma Ghost had done.

  I watched the plane disappear behind the coconut palms, figuring Willie Singer must be enjoying the view from the pilot’s seat, and somehow I felt certain our paths would cross again. I finished my coffee, paid my bill, tucked my letter back into the safe confines of my waterproof pouch, and walked my horse to the little plaza, where the artist watched me approach and smiled. I looked down at the sketch, which had captured the church and the morning perfectly.

  “That is a beautiful piece of work, ma’am,” I said.

  “Want to be in it?” she asked with a smile.

  “I already am.”

  14

  Everybody Out of the Pool

  The morning that Donna Kay flew away with Willie, it so happened that the weather gods produced a fishing day we hadn’t seen in these parts in quite a while. The tides coincided perfectly with the cooler part of the morning, and Ix-Nay had come back from the biosphere flats with a report that the semiannual hatching of red-back calico crabs, the favorite food of hungry permit, was under way.

  All these events were relayed to me by Bucky, and he came down to the corral to meet me. That is when I told him that Donna Kay had left on the seaplane and that I wouldn’t be fishing. He’d known Willie was going to Mérida to look for something he needed for his trip around the world, but he was stunned by the news about Donna Kay. He seemed to want to stay and comfort me, but I could te
ll he was also extremely excited about what looked to be a great fishing day. I told him he should get going.

  “Why don’t you take the Jeep and drive up to Cancún and chill out for a few days?” he said. “Ix-Nay and I can handle Sammy Raye.”

  “You have customers. Don’t worry about me. But I’ll think about it,” I said as I hosed Mr. Twain down with freshwater.

  The silence of the morning was then suddenly broken by Sammy Raye as he bolted out the door of the lodge with Del Mundo right on his heels. “You have got to call that fabric guy in Morocco,” Del Mundo hissed.

  “I am going fishing, bitch,” Sammy snarled back. Then they spotted us, and the catfight ended. Del Mundo went back inside, and Sammy Raye put on his happy face. He walked toward us and began to whistle the theme from Gilligan’s Island. He was covered from head to toe in what looked to be a tailor-made muslin outfit with a fishing bag on one shoulder and his brand-spanking-new fly rods hanging over the other. He wore a long-billed fishing hat, and his nose, ears, and mouth were smeared with thick sunblock. He looked more like a circus clown than a fisherman as he stopped at the corral.

  “You knew she was leaving?” I asked.

  “Not until she woke me up this morning and asked if Willie could drop her in Cancún.”

  “Did she say anything else?”

  “Only that she believed your story. Well, we have to catch the tide, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “See you this evening.” He started to walk off, then turned and, in a very sincere tone, said, “Tully, it is the best thing for both of you.”

  “I suppose it is.” I sighed.

  Then Sammy Raye patted my shoulder and waddled on down to the end of the dock, reconnecting to the spirit of the morning and shouting, “Que tal, amigos?” to the smiling guides.