A Door by Any Other Color
High on the faraway pinions tickling my nostrils and the vaccine fresh in my shoulder, Ruby’s blinker flashing north toward higher ground, I barely even felt the jolt of contact. So, when I slipped to ground from cab and turned to youthful eyes watery with remorse, I couldn’t help myself. “It’s OK,” I said. “No harm, no foul.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
I was. You see, in that tiny moment of meeting her gaze, worlds had played out before my eyes. I’d seen the pine forests I was cruising toward, boughs giddy with breeze. For a second winter of the pandemic, I’d roosted among gold and umber deserts, climbing ridges to study the patterns of growth that coiled from mesquite and palo verde nurses. I’d lingered too long. The sun’s rays, once an ember warming my bones, had ignited. And Ruby the van’s lack of AC was making me, of an afternoon, wild for relief. I’d seen, too (or imagined I had) the young girl’s fear, the inevitable confrontation with her parents. Hadn’t they told her not to text and drive? I’d seen moments in my own youthful recklessness when I’d been set free from disaster by the whim of a stranger. “I’m sure.”
“Thank you.” She beamed.
It was when I stopped to refill my water tanks that the extent of the rear-end damage became apparent. My back barn doors would never again open. And, no surprise, pulling the cover off the bike hanging from the spare tire mount had revealed a front wheel tacoed beyond repair.
Resign hit me like the smack of a bumper. I’d come to Tucson for the shot in my arm. This metropolis would also be my best shot at junkyards to comb for a ruby-colored door. More importantly, Debbie and Al were here, nestling momentarily in the nearby Catalina foothills. Higher ground would have to wait.
If I were telling these tales in chronological order, I’d tell you about the first time, or even the second, I was aided by this duo—who pulled newbies and solo travelers in among the skirts of their RV like baby saguaros, offering the nitrogen-enriched soil of knowledge garnered over nearly three decades living off grid by boat and then land and the comfort of water stored in root systems and protection in seasoned boughs, a network of companionship. I’m not so attached to time, though. And the door is the story I want to tell today.
“Come,” Debbie replied, when I texted my dilemma. “You’ll be just in time for sunset cocktail hour.”
“Aw.” Al’s eyes brightened when he saw the gnarled shape of my spare tire mount / bike rack. “I have just the tool.”
And we sipped and sighed, watching the sun mount the clouds till they spilled tangerine-coral-peach and unfurled themselves across skies that know no end.
The third scrapyard I visited held my ruby ticket—though I’d thought it might be saffron. “Sure, we’ll pull it for ya.” I warmed instantly to the hints of mirth and kindness on the other end of the line. “I do think the yellow one might be in better shape. But you can choose when you get here.”
“What do you think, Ruby girl?” I asked. “Fancy a golden rump?”
Though Al had sent me with the tools to remove the door from whatever abandoned Ford Econoline I could find, it had been with some relief that I’d found nothing worth attempting the job at either of the two ginormous you-pull yards, whose straight lines of abandoned shells I’d spent the morning traipsing up and down.
Inside the empty lobby of Catalina Auto Recycling, I wiped a drip of sweat from my temple and wriggled into a seat near the fan pushing conditioned air with the force of a goddess.
“Holly?” a voice inquired too soon.
“That’s me,” I agreed.
“Bill’ll be up in a minute to take ya out to the yard.”
“No hurry,” I said.
Bill was a large, genial guide to all things salvaged. I trailed him through shelves of kitsch and tools and other wonders categorized by a patchwork of latticed dividers I had half a mind to try and understand and out into the roaring sun. We went to the red van first. “She’s a little banged up,” he warned. “But we gotta give her a look.”
I circled the van. Sunk comfortably into deflated tires in a sort-of tucked away mid-lot nook, this Ruby doppelgänger seemed to have found a decent place to retire.
“She belonged to a church group. They’d take her on outings.” Bill’s cheer quickly shifted when he saw my face taking in the dent on her side. “Nobody was hurt,” he said solemnly. “It’s just the van was totaled by insurance.”
Studying his face, I chose to believe him.
Seeing the windows in the rear barn doors were holes where glass had once been, Bill said, “Well, we had to try,” and turned to lead me toward the yellow van in entirely different part of the yard.
“Wait,” I said. Months earlier (much to my repair confidence), I’d removed and resealed Ruby’s windows. I could swap the glass from the old door myself. “I’ll take this one.”
“As you wish!” I don’t think Bill really said this. I’m not sure if Bill was his name. But he was tall and blond of mustache. And I like the idea of him saying this before deftly removing the church van door and hefting it onto a shoulder as if it he could easily schlepp ten more.
Al and I set to work the next day. The sun was still easing into its summery afternoon rage when we got the tire off and attached the jack by which Al winched that dent right out of the rack. By the time we’d separated the old door from its hinges and then its glass, sealed and re-windowed the church door, set it in place, and whacked it with a sledgehammer a few times to get it as even as it’d get (sand and light slips in through a small misalignment to this day), the fiery star that gives us life was nearly over its fit and had once more set sights on billowy clouds and ragged peaks.
As we three raised our glasses to a job well done and to friendship and to the vagabond of it all, I thought of the ironwoods that can live for up to 1,500 years in this desert and whose influence persists far beyond their time. Their canopies shelter some 500 desert dwellers, half of their recipients plant, half animal. They can survive drought. And they bloom lavender midsummer when no one else does, providing rare nutrients for feathered residents like the northern mockingbird, the black-tailed gnatcatcher, and the ash-throated flycatcher and countless insects alike. When life has left them, they resist the microorganisms and other beings (saprophytes) that feed on organic matter and make themselves toxic to termites, continuing to shelter those who survive among extremes.1
I toasted my luck at having been in a forest a year earlier to meet this duo, now trio. Zuni—a shy Alsatian Debbie and Al had found hungry and wary and alone and promptly invited into their decked-out fifth wheel—had since joined them. I thought how privileged I was to find souls like these as I rolled. I thought of the way the two of them had roamed together for years and what they must have endured on a small ship amid a vast ocean and then cruising dry land. I toasted all who, like them, had rolled before me along the roads I now traveled.
Watch Al and me show off our butts go!
This post is part of a the monthly Ask and Give series—where I or a guest poster—send you a story about how people show up for each other. I think it’s important we remember how often that happens. Have a story you want to share? Hit me up here. Have a request for the nearly 700 strong community here or something you want to share? Hit us up on this chat.
“Plant of the Month: Ironwood—the Desert’s Oldest Nurse,” Water Use It Wisely, July 11, 2019, https://wateruseitwisely.com/blog/plant-of-the-month-ironwood-the-deserts-oldest-nurse-plants-for-birds-part-3/.
You're pulling all my levers, Holly - desertscapes, DIY repair, ecology. Rather fascinated by the ironwood tree - I was more familiar with an Asian variety also called ironwood, but a completely different genus/species. The wood doesn't float? Cool... ;)
I am yearning to get my own travel vehicle.