The Sheepherder
Tanto hizo el diablo con su hijo, hasta que lo hizo tuerto.
The devil had a son and the more he tried to fix him, the more he fucked him up.
My grandfather used to say this. He usually said it when he was drunk.
He would say it standing in front of the medicine cabinet that hung on the wall in the kitchen above the wash basin where he shaved his difficult reflection. Where the razor strop hung like a threat that he sometimes beat his seven children with.
If it’s not broke don’t try and fix it.
He said it at night around the campfire with his Companeros, los Gitanos, e los Comancheros when they’d drink and sing and cry and drum in the field below the Don Carlos bar where the hospital now stands.
When my grandfather lost his teeth my mother pounded silver like a bell, cut stone and shell. Set his dirty yellow teeth inside the bezel; strung them with all the other gems.
When she gave him the necklace, he cried. Then he laughed.
When I was fifteen, I wrote my grandfather’s favorite saying on the back of a bar coaster at La Cocina on the Plaza having shots and beer with Spruce and my crazy aunt. Two blocks away, Tony and his best friend Chamiso were drinking in The Killing Fields where the artist, Sandoval, keeps his horses and feed.
Tanto hizo el diablo con su hijo, hasta que lo hizo tuerto.
I keep the coaster in the top drawer of my dresser with my grandfather and his teeth: a photograph of him smiling and drinking a beer standing next to the medicine cabinet in the kitchen. The devil stands behind him, a shadow on the mud wall.
Karen Vargas is from Taos, New Mexico, and has lived all over the West. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in Epoch, Catamaran Literary Reader, Borderlore Journal, the La Palabra: The Word is a Woman series, and others. She attends the Institute of American Indian Arts in the MFA in Creative Writing program.
Header photo generated with Artbreeder and Adobe Photoshop AI tools.
