in front of us? On the canvas six young Catholic girls, dressed in white dresses, were holding hands with each other, and dancing in a circle on a street in New York City. Marta gestured toward the painting and told us that the girls were celebrating their confirmation day, and that the tenement buildings in the background stood "waiting to reclaim the girls."
Carol watched Marta standing with her hands clasped in front of her, explaining the art on the canvas and describing how it would look when finished. Petite, with short curly, dark hair and large liquid brown eyes, Marta observed that carol was studying her rather than the painting and she laughed up at Carol, and said with an embarrassed smile, "I remember that when I was about seven or eight my favorite activity was to play art class. I would take some blocks of wood - oh, about twelve of them, and arrange them around a statue of Venus that my mother had. I would pin some hair on every block and lay a small pad of paper and a pencil by each one. Then lying on the carpet by each block of wood, I'd draw the statue from their different vantage points and not only draw the pictures but act out each 'pupil' differently as I drew.
"My first oil painting came later; it was of two women, interposed on each other. I used somber colors and called the painting Withered Belles. (The two women in the painting were my mother (the perfect stage mom) and I. We sold it to one of my mother's friends and I don't know its whereabouts.) I'd like to have it back....it was in blues and reds. I painted it when I was eighteen and it was sold while I was doing a Broadway show."
Even though I felt like our tour of the ghost town was getting too dark and damp for my liking, what with Marta painting herself as a ghost, dead people from the sixteenth century, slum life, and now the two withered belles, I smiled back at Marta and slowly shook my head at her, wondering how she could see herself withered at eighteen when she was still energetic so many years later. (Marta was 74 at the time!)
I don't know if she understood my gesture, she just turned to look out of the window and said, "I chose to live in this area, not only for its beauty but because as an artist I need solitude - and plenty of it.” I didn't say anything but I was beginning to understand that when a person has too much solitude in the midst of a ghost town their life is not apt to be a happy one.
We all took some time for solitude between our tour of Death Valley Junction and Marta's performance on Saturday night. And in all that time nothing happened to give be a good excuse to miss the show, so I dusted off my blue jeans, washed my shirt, and combed my beard, thinking of how uncomfortable I would be at a ballet performance. I expected that it would be as somber as our tour.
Then the curtains opened at 7 P.M. and we were treated to an hour of brightly colored costumes, lively music, and comedy as Marta, and her sidekick Tom, acted out humorous sketches of real happenings in the life of Death Valley Junction. I was amazed at the change in Marta and very relieved to see that it was a comical presentation. I didn't understand what all the leg lifting and body spinning was about, but I enjoyed the humor!
I guess that Tom must be a very good natured fellow to allow Marta to dress him up in skirts and petticoats, like a little girl would dress up her pet cat; and then to cheerfully cavort with Marta over the stage in awkward dance steps in the likeness of a bobbing cork on a turbid pond, with a great many curtsies fore and aft. I felt the back of my neck and my ears redden in embarrassment for him in his long curly wigs, but he sure hid his chagrin well.
Marta came onto the stage after the show to sort of sew things up. She curtsied and stood demurely with her hands clasped in front of her tutu as she answered questions from the audience. She kept her head turned down and slightly to the left, fluttered her eyelashes and flirted coquettishly, while I squirmed!
Some folks would say that I haven't any spit and polish because I admit to being uncomfortable at the ballet performed there in the Amargosa Opera House. They would say that I haven't any class and am socially inferior, but I'd not be in Tom's boots, um ... slippers, for anything!
CHAPTER FOUR
Those wild horses and our burros diminished some our bed of hay by the time we exited Death Valley Junction and pointed our wagon tongue to the north headed for Beatty, Nevada across the Amargosa Desert.
Carol led out this time, leading the team as before and the donkeys started out well. I took my pocket watch from my vest pocket and placed it on the wagon seat beside me as I drove. By timing our progress between mile markers I soon saw that we were taking thirty minutes to complete every mile. In other words, our wagon was moving at two miles an hour. It was something of a shock for me to realize that we were moving more slowly than an average adult can walk; which is three miles an hour. Or what was called a league the distance a man walked in the time it takes the sun to move the distance between you index finger and little finger when your arm is at its full extension..
Even the two mile an hour pace threatened not to hold after I climbed off the seat to relieve Carol at the head of the team, I picked up the lead rope and six little burros put on their brakes!
I tugged and yelled and advised Carol on how she should get them going to no avail. In fact, the only effects I achieved were negative. The burros scrunched further back into their traces to get away from my loud commands and Carol got mad at me for yelling at her in the same tone of voice I was using on the burros.
When Carol got mad at me she looped the lines over the dash of the wagon, without my permission, and came out to the head of the burros. Now, I got mad at her for leaving the lines on such a busy highway and I threw down the lead rope around the hames and stomped back to the wagon seat to "drive 'em from behind!"
The burros lined out and took up the march with Carol walking in front uninhibited from the encumbering lead rope and me driving from the wagon seat; and for the remainder of our journey I was never again able to pick up a lead rope and lead them forward as a team. They let me know that day in the Amargosa Desert and the succeeding days that my place was in the back. Carols place was out front if she picked up the driving lines they would promptly stop.
That's how we worked out our pattern for travel. My main view from then on was the back of Carol out in front; (I could see why the burros liked her there. I like to watch her action myself.) Followed by twelve of long shaggy ears in six green halters, each pair of ears would snap back at the mention of each burro’s name.
Those twelve ears were fascinating to watch as all of one accord they would turn backwards to listen to my commands, or pitch forward to trace the whereabouts of tourists or jack rabbits (depending on which of the critters we disturbed.) I shouldn't have said twelve turned in one accord, for it was only eleven. The right ear of Beef would turn slowly in erratic circles independently of the other eleven ears! We've chuckled over that comical ear many a time. You might not agree that an out of control ear is funny but moving at such a slow pace we began to find delight in small, seemingly inconsequential things.
We tried to buy hay at the Ponderosa Dairy near the town of Amargosa Valley but they only had it available in one ton bales, which of course were much too big for us to manage. They did however, suggest that we get our hay at Funeral Mountain Ranch which was only a day’s travel away, and they took us on board their truck scales and weighed us. All together we weighed 5,920 pounds!
As we pulled out of the dairy on our way to Funeral Mountain Ranch a car pulled up alongside and kept to our pace for a moment. A young woman leaned out of the passenger window and asked, "Are you traveling?"
"If you call two miles an hour traveling," I replied.
"No," she sputtered, "I mean are you going somewhere?"
I just nodded my head at her.
She smiled and waved, crowing, "I thought so!"
The next afternoon at Funeral Mountain Ranch we tried again to buy hay. The owner wanted to make us a gift of oat hay. I explained that I really appreciated his generosity but that in my opinion oat hay didn't have enough octane for hard-working animals, and again asked about buying alfalfa. He invited us to spend the night there and told us that David, the ranch foreman, would see that the team was fed that night if I'd put off buying the hay until morning. It was late and I agreed.
As David led off to