SEVEN SPANISH ANGELS

Making Chili the other night, kinda falling in love one more time with the chili and the making: Chopping onion the right way, sweet-talking garlic cloves out of their clothes, bacon about to make me a star (I'm already super.)  Stir, taste, think of where to go just a little further, 'cause there's always room for improvement .  Of course: eggs.  Over easy.  Fry iron, leaf lard, brown bug-fed ovoid beauties.  Prep and time it just right and you can have hog fat smiling up at you as your diners wash up.  They'll sit down to a bowlfull but stretch them out just a tantalizing moment more--maybe say a poem--while you fry huevos up one at a time, over-just-easy-enough for frictionless release. Let that white spot slip like a tipsy woman's tongue into the meat and make union.  Sometimes it breaks.  It's not a perfect world—you're just trying to make it that way.  And you were gonna break it anyhow, so the yolk honey can make a sauce x a sauce—sauce squared—that just should not be talked about.  It should be eaten and that is all.

But while I was keeping my workspace tidy, singing too loudly for anyone's comfort but my own, I heard a certain classical guitar lick that always makes me stop for a breath, double check heart is still caged behind ribs.  

He looked down into her brown eyes and said, Say a prayer for me
She threw her arms around him whispered, God will keep us free
They could hear the riders coming he said, "This is my last fight
If they take me back to Texas they won't take me back alive"

Song has always had a hold of me somehow.  Remember hearing it as a kid and wondering what the story was.  And marveling how brave the man.  How strong the woman.  Now I admire them no less but I also swoon for how compressed the story: setting, plot, character and dramatic action in about 50 words.  Immediate emotional impact.  About the impact: more so for me now.  My wife has brown eyes.  Have made a stand or two I didn't think I'd tell about. I know how futile defiance can be, yet how unpersuasive futility . The riders are always coming.  It's true, you can hear 'em.

There were seven Spanish angels at the altar of the sun
They were praying for the lovers in the valley of the guns
When the battle stopped and the smoke cleared
There was thunder from the throne
And seven Spanish angels took another angel home

My Ray Charles phase lasting as long as my Willie Nelson phase, I might as well go ahead and call them favorites though I don't like lists.  Put the two together and you get something very fine and lovely and if you don't feel anything upon hearing these voices you must not have feelings.  I got it together pretty quickly in the kitchen--chili simmering and all.  Salad to chop.  But I was giving the words my all, trying to sound like a blind, redheaded stranger. Proud and embarrassed and intoxicated with the feeling like how from a solid place to stand you can let your heart soar.  Soar like a kite strung through the wind, humming, music for to dance.  I find such hope in the angels praying for the lovers.  Who knew angels could pray, or needed to?  Altars and valleys.  Real and metaphoric.  Dude did not go back to Texas.  Did NOT.  Salvation if no mercy.

She reached down and picked the gun up that lay smokin' in his hand
She said, Father please forgive me I can't make it without my man
And she knew the gun was empty and she knew she couldn't win
But her final prayer was answered when the rifles fired again

See, women are smarter and better in case you didn't know. She wants to go with her man but the riders won't shoot her unarmed.  So she arms herself, with an empty gun, and finds Grace and mercy. . .under fire.  Like every love story ever.  The good ones anyway. Cephalus and Procris, Romeo and Juliet, Pyramus and Thisbe, Bonnie and Clyde.  I was just about as high as the moon when the girls came in the kitchen wondering what was for dinner.

There were seven Spanish angels at the altar of the sun
They were praying for the lovers in the valley of the guns
When the battle stopped and the smoke cleared
There was thunder from the throne
And seven Spanish angels took another angel home

    Chili.  Salad.  Fixin's.  Sound good?
    Mmmm. Yeah.  Is this a sad song?
    Sad? well...I can smell the spent powder, feel dust in my throat.  And the clouds.  Angels don't come without billowing white clouds.  Meteorologists have proven the cloud/angel connection. Yes.  Yes. It's sad, but it's hopeful too.
    What's it about?
    A man and a woman.  They love each other very much.  But they are in trouble.
    Seven-year-old stares: keep talking, this sounds serious.
    The man has done something wrong.  But they are so in love, the woman and the man, she's done nothing wrong, but she loves him very very much.  Men are coming to get them and punish the man for the wrong he's done.  But the riders, they are not good men, they are corrupt.  The man knows this.  He just wants to go home with the woman.  He won't stand for the judgement of people who are corrupt.
      What's corrupt?
      Uh, bad on the inside, bad for real, even if it looks ok, looks good on the outside.
      Hmmm.  Hmmm.
So then I cue the song up again from the top and I sing it to them and talk it to them too and hit pause here and there along the way to make sure they get what's happening, even acting it out, explaining with urgency, feeling myself plunging even deeper into the story, the story subsuming me, the connection of the lovers, the universe letting them flap at loose ends and at the same time holding them tight as they need to be held.  This is the way things are: beautiful and terrifying.  The riders are coming, but you can still do what you want.  And by the time the rifles fire again my eyes are wet and I'm embarrassed as hell, like oh you big dumb sap, but I can't help it.  And the girls are right there with me.  Big raindrop tears and just stricken looks on their faces. And oh my god, what did I just do? Is this terrible or beautiful to make them cry like this?  It's both.  I think.  Now.  Judge for yourself. You should always judge for yourself.  I wrapped them up in a huge hug, heads tented together, tears mixing, let the song play out.  Long silence.  Big deep breath.
       Agnes:  that's terrible, why did you let us listen to that?  That's not appropriate.
       Adeline (sniffing):  Yeah.  Why?
        I'm sorry.  It's sad.  It's terribly sad.  But it's good too, right?
        How is it good??
        Because the riders didn't take the man back to Texas.  The woman and the man are together.  The angles came and got them.  They are still safe; they're just not here.
        Slow accepting nods.
       And it's okay to be sad when things are sad.  Happy when things are happy.  Sometimes things are both.  Count on the people who love you to help you sort that out.  That was an awesome hug, right?
      Yeah.
      C'mon, right?
      Yeah. You're right.  Another hug.
      Dad?
      Yeah?
       Is there sour cream for the chili?


C'mon help me now