Patch

I showed Bobby my brand new cowboy hat. It was at the end of a long day on the oil patch. I wanted to know what style or region it hailed from. Bobby was the eldest of a crew of Navajo carpenters from the rez in Arizona, a place better known for it's cowboy accouterments than any existence they might eke out there. Age wise, I too was an elder, which may be why he tolerated my company.

Most of the other weary travelers gathered around the fire in the new RV park hailed from the western United States. In general, a fair representation, yet one that paled beside the rest of the globe's great unwashed come to boom town, a presence that disturbed the peace in that high prairie's glory. Unlike any scene I'd ever witnessed, it was a collective phenomenon, peculiar for the times or whatever perceptions that colored my vision, our shared goal, and a spirit best described as friends that left well enough alone.

They had arrived at this outpost of derricks and man camps dotting wide spaces, navigating down broken roads from far flung continents, cultures and cities, lacking in their promise, left behind at the quick step on only the strength of one's hope. The town at its epi-center had grown, and from it spilled 100,000 or more of the faithful across a plain visible from outer space lit by gas flares that punctured its yellow crust.

I bought the hat in a shop in Kildeer, up the line from Dickinson near Teddy Roosevelt's old haunts. Beyond it and west a score or more miles lay the town of Rawson, a place, up until then, I'd believed no longer existed. By accident or fate I'd found it, only a granary, some small houses, a few trailers at a road sign to demarcate my vision in black and white - townspeople gathered together on a dusty street, bounded by vast oceans of sunlit wheat, overexposed and fading out of frame to a place I'd never been. The location, my grandparent's homestead and father's birthplace, until drought and Depression sent them to a city and preparation for war.

Bob sat still and eyed the prize, measuring it's weight and brim before he answered. It definitely had a distinct presence, no doubt about that, but not something I'd normally wear.

Just what I thought. Texas. Damn straight, missie, and a 10X besides. What that means is it's tall and sturdy, but can't be blocked no more. It's straw, like a working man would wear, but with a resin coating, dyed white to reflect the noon day heat. It would stand up to any weather, and fit good and snug so it wouldn't blow away nor fall off in a tumble.

Bob, on the other hand, wore a modest, black felt number, made at a time when hats were as common as belts and suspenders. It was a 4X, which means it's far more pliable, so to give with the wind and deflect a hard rain. Its vague shape had been shifted many times or most any form imaginable.

I pointed to the crow's feather tucked in mine. It molted from one of those city crows that live where I come from, found in the alley next to my door just before I started on this journey. I'd kept it, resting on the cowl of my Dodge 360 until, that very day, I'd stuck it in the band for a little bit of luck. Cocked a little to the side, it gave that hat an outlaw flair.

I confided how them crows would sometimes squawk at me in their city dialect. Sometimes I'd talk back, or ask a question directly, by tone of voice or just the way I'd look. They might then turn their heads to eye me curiously, make some raspy call to alert their fellows, or, resign themselves to clucking sounds, as though lonely or sad. 

 Neither of us spoke, our thoughts of family, and home, or not. Bob looked at the feather, and after a time declared it was medicine - it could cure cancer.

I figure that's a good thing, 'cause I've been smokin' a lot more lately, you know?


a hawk moth sips
the last bit of nectar -
Bakken and the shale