First thing in the morning I called the university in Flagstaff and read them the number Ernesto carved into the garden wall stone, and the woman asked me to repeat it twice, and then she said, maam, that is a registered archaeological site number, and that land is protected by law, please do not let anyone disturb it.
The resort developer had dusted the red dirt off his white Porsche and told me they were building a luxury spa around me, that my five acres were where the villas go, that the county commissioners were on his side, that the little mud house was coming down next year.
He did not know what the professor from Flagstaff found behind our house in 1981.
The rock formations behind our adobe are a registered archaeological site, documented by the university in 1981, and Ernesto carved the official site number into the garden wall so it could never be lost, which means the land around our house is legally protected antiquity that no resort can bulldoze.
Ernesto made our adobe bricks by hand, one summer, on five acres of red rock and juniper, and he always said the rocks behind the house were older than any deed in Arizona. In 1981 the professor came and photographed them for three days, and afterward Ernesto quietly carved the site number into the flat stone of the garden wall, and never told me what it meant, only that it mattered.
A registered archaeological site is protected under state and federal antiquities law. The developers villas could not be built on it, and even the ground around it fell under protections that fouled his whole resort plan. The county commissioners he bragged about cannot vote away federal antiquities law.
The university sent someone out, confirmed the site, and flagged it with the state, and they were not pleased to hear a developer was planning to bulldoze it.
When the developer drove his Porsche back up my dirt road, I did not argue. I handed him the site registration and I said, you got red dust on your car again. My husband recorded this as a protected archaeological site in 1981. Its antiquity. You cannot build villas on it, and the county cannot help you, because this is federal law now. Your best view in the valley is a protected ruin, and it always will be.
He looked at that paper and did not complain about the dust this time. The resort was built well away from my five acres, which sit protected in the middle of it.
That little mud house is coming down, he had said. It is not. I grow Ernestos mothers chiles from Chihuahua in the garden by the carved stone, and the rocks behind the house stand older than any deed in Arizona, exactly as he always told me, protected forever by a number he carved so it would never be forgotten.