Call her? Nope. Not an option. Trinidad Goodner doesn’t talk on the phone. Oh, she has a phone. It lives right there in her kitchen. But its only job is to serve as a tiny beacon of light when moonless skies make her hundred-year-old ranch house as black as the bottom of her grandmother’s cast iron skillet. Trinidad Goodner doesn’t use her phone. That skillet gets a lot of use, though. She has told me of days when the brandings brought fifteen hungry men to help her husband and sons work calves over a couple of days. She said that her skillet and Dutch ovens never had a chance to cool down. She would leave the sorting pens a bit early, covered in all manner of bovine biology, and go back to the house to start up the next meal.
But I digress. The Bay Area was my home and a great place to earn a living, but after forty-nine years of hard work and good luck, retiring to a slower-paced, one-horse-town in New Mexico finally was my reality. And this town was custom-made for me - gorgeous mountains, a mild climate, reddish soil that all New –Agers love, and a backward bunch of Bible-thumping ranch families being slowly edged-out by an enlightened group of big city artists looking for a new life. It was my destiny. So I joined the adventure. After cashing in on an inflated real estate market, I traded my Jaguar and my third husband in on a more practical Porsche Cayenne. And thus began my journey to the hinterlands of Dry Creek, New Mexico! I was so hip, so daring, so down-right edgy! My friends were dubious to say the least. They all made me promise to call when I arrived. So eastward I went on that late July day.
And I did call them – right after I made my first stop in my new town at the café for a cup of something that I hoped would resemble a deep French roast. The coffee offering at Jo’s Cup-A-Joe Café was not even close. But that wasn’t my main concern right at that moment. The obligatory clanging brass bell at the top rail of the wood door blurted out my arrival, and for reasons I did not know at the time, every head craned in my direction. Clearly, I was not from around here! But equally foreign, from my perspective, was most everyone seated at the counter. One person in particular, though, captivated my attention. This individual did not look back to see who had interrupted the tranquility of the café. She sat on the edge of the booth so that the big gun holstered to her hip would point freely down toward the floor, thereby posing no danger of piercing the faded pink vinyl. Her head was covered with an ancient dusty brown cowboy hat, but two grey braids cascaded from underneath in a statement of unquestionable femininity. Her right boot was cracked and old and caked up to the ankle in dry mud, some of which was being left behind on the worn linoleum floor of Jo’s Cup-A-Joe Café.
In that very moment a gruff female voice yelled out, “Hey, Trinidad!! Bring your gun out back here. Gotta a snake that needs shot.” Instantly but calmly Trinidad Goodner rose up from the table and smoothly headed for the kitchen. I never saw her face, but I know there was a steely determination in it – the kind that comes from doing a job habitually without really thinking about its effect. Within an instant I heard two shots that broke my heart! All I could envision was a poor, helpless snake dying in the parking lot at the hand of this cowgirl bully! This was the kind of confrontation I was trained for. I would force her to explain her actions – even to the entire restaurant! This was one of the reasons I had come to this backward town. It needed new thinking, a modern perspective, a gentler and kinder approach to life. It would become the perfect peaceful refuge for my retirement. But first, just a little renovating was necessary. As quickly as she had gone, she came back in, but this time I could see the face that was attached to all the rest of her. Her eyes were bright blue. I’d seen that color before when one of my friends purchased tinted contacts from her eye doctor. Somehow I knew Trinidad Goodner’s eye color, however, was not the result of a man-made product. Her face was tanned and devoid of any make-up except for the bright orange lipstick she was wearing. What?! Lipstick? Bully cowgirls don’t wear lipstick, do they? When her eyes met mine, I was transfixed by the kindness deep within them. She stopped her talking and laughing with Jo when she realized I was staring at her. It was then that she said, “Hi there” as she walked back to her booth. When all I could see was her muddy boot and her hat, my mission came back to me. With resolve I strode to her table. She looked up from the book she was reading and said, “Can I help you?” “No,” I said, “it is I who am here to help you.” “You just murdered a living being!” I could feel the eyes of the rest of the place fixed on the back of my head. But I was not deterred. “You’ve got a lot to learn, Ms., Ms…” She stood up and stuck out her hand. “Trinidad Goodner and I’m glad to meet you.” She was actually smiling! The kindness in her eyes never flinched! “Sit down here, why don’t you. Let me buy you a cup of coffee and we’ll talk about it.” In my past experiences, this was the part where the shouting began. The other side would start proclaiming its doctrines. Our side would hurl back our stuff, and the protest would commence. Oddly, Trinidad Goodner’s invitation compelled me to do as she had offered. I don’t know exactly why, but I did indeed sit down.
“What’ll you have?” she asked. When I didn’t respond because I was still reeling from her completely unexpected response to me, she called to Jo and said, “Another cup of coffee please, Sugar.” She turned back to me and said, “You know my name, but I’m at a bit of a disadvantage.”
Was I really here conversing with the enemy?! Even still, I answered her. “Margorie DuPont, but my name doesn’t really matter. What is important is that you apparently just don’t see the error of your ways in killing that snake!”
“All right,” she said, “Why don’t you explain to me the error in preventing a source of danger that is bent on harm from carousing around threatening man and beast. If you had it in your power to stop a train wreck before it happened, would you?”
“Well, of course I would. But that’s just a potential accident. I would not have to murder some living, breathing thing in order to prevent an accident,” I said.
“I see your point,” saidTrinidad Goodner. “But what if that train wreck was about to happen because a terrorist was plotting it? What if you held the rifle that could put the bullet in the head of the terrorist that was about to murder everyone on the train? Would you not pull the trigger?”
“I, I’m not sure.” I said this very unsteadily. I was confused at her question. I guess if my grandmother were on the train, I would probably not have to think very long before at least trying to kill the terrorist. But what if no one I knew was on the train? What would I do then?
Before I could say anything more, Trinidad Goodner said, “You know what, Marge? I don’t enjoy killing things. But if a calf needs to be protected from a rattlesnake, I am going to do my best to stand in the gap and do the defending. I took this wisdom from my grand daddy. He had just killed a rattler with a shovel. I was only five years old at the time, and I was heart-broken at seeing its headless body. I couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t hurting anything when my big strong grand daddy came along and cut short its life! I grew angry with him. How could he be so cruel?! I vowed to never kill a critter that was weaker than I was. Well, he could tell I was angry with him. He came into my room that night and told me details of calves he had seen who had been bitten by rattlesnakes. He said they had died slow and painful deaths as their breathing was cut off due to swelling at the bite site. The calves’ mamas were sometimes nearby mourning their dead calves as their own milk bags grew swollen and painful from a lack of being nursed. He talked about his own good dog that had suffered horribly from an infected snake bite. Then he told me why the Widow Smith was a widow. Clive Smith was on his way to coffee one crisp fall morning. He stopped his truck in order to see if the snake that was lying across his ranch road was a bull snake or a rattler. Once he discerned that it was a rattlesnake, he turned to go back and get a shovel from his truck bed. As he turned around, the snake struck him high up on the back of his thigh. He said that Clive didn’t go to the hospital right away because he was in the middle of weaning calves. That snake bite ended up costing Clive his life. My grand daddy said, ‘So if it is in my power to kill a rattlesnake, even if he’s not bothering anybody at the time, I will do it, because if I don’t, he’s sure to cause trouble for me or for somebody else farther on down the road.’”
“Wait a minute” I said. “Why didn’t Clive just run the snake over with his truck? If he’s going to kill the snake, why worry about what kind of snake it is?”
“That’s just it” said Trinidad Goodner. “There are a lot of snakes that work with us, not against us. Bull snakes are not venomous, and they feed on mice, pack rats, and sometimes they even are able to get a prairie dog or two. There is no reason to stop them. They aren’t a danger. Anybody out here in this country would be a fool to do anything but encourage a bull snake along the way. Conversely, it would be foolish not to embrace the wise words of someone who has had more experience with such matters as snakes. I’m grateful that God gave me the good sense to listen to my grand daddy that night.”
Before I had a chance to respond, Trinidad Goodner got up, picked up her book, put ten dollars on the table and left Jo’s Cup-A-Joe Café.
“Fools think their way is right, but the wise listen to others.” Proverbs 12:15 (NLT)
“When I agree with Christ Jesus that I need His saving work, I avail myself to His protective veil. Simultaneously the errant and proud blindness that once kept me from God’s grace is miraculously swept away so that I may now grow in the knowledge of my Lord and Savior. The snow has to blow off of the pasture before the seeds can flourish in the summer sun.” Trinidad Goodner