Random scary story!?! prt 2 The Yellow Ranch

El Rancho Amarillo spanned hundreds of acres, tall dark fields dotted with distant porch lights and the shining backs of cattle, an adobe home nesting like a brown pearl at its center. The house has stood for over seventy years, sighing and shifting mud walls into muddier earth. The land originally belonged to his grandmother’s family while the house was designed by Arturo Lobato’s paternal grandfather, Francisco Torres Lobato, the adobe bricks molded by the hands of his two small daughters. When Tasha first heard this story, she felt the house was built, in some way, piece by piece, by its women, and she wondered why Arturo hadn’t mentioned any of their names. She had accepted the invitation to visit El Rancho Amarillo after Professor Arturo Lobato, Distinguished R. F. Morley Chair of Architecture at Cornell University, delivered a guest lecture on her campus. Tasha was a first-year MFA student at the University of Colorado, studying photography and multimodal narratives. Attend at least one art talk outside your discipline, stated her Ideation in Photo Representation syllabus. She had no interest in architecture, but the talk fit her Thursday schedule and on that mild spring morning as Arturo Lobato took the stage in that small black auditorium, standing erect with a potbelly above pressed denim, Tasha was surprised to find him handsome. He spoke on indigenous architecture and the historical significance of building with earth, noting that his theoretical work was profoundly influenced by his childhood in an isolated alpine valley of Southern Colorado, a portion of the state which had once been Mexico. Tasha wiped her fingers along her jeans until, meekly, she raised her hand, wanting to know more about this valley.

“San Luis,” Arturo said swiftly.

“It’s just, my own grandma was born there. A town called Saguarita.”

“Ah,” he said, “you’re a Manita.”

Afterward, students descended the auditorium stairs, they rushed the exists in backpack mass, Tasha among them when she felt a shock—a hand around her wrist, the dampness of touch, gold wedding ring, brown leather watchband, and those white-flecked nailbeds that people often said were a sign of some deficiency.

“I’d love to learn about your background.” It was Arturo, vivid. “Shall we get coffee?”

Tasha peered upward, keeping her eyes halfway hidden beneath clumped-mascara. “Now?”

Arturo ordered their drinks, paid, and selected their seats—outside, away from others, cherry blossoms blowing through the air. What was she was studying? Could he see her work? What a fine eye for detail. She should have applied to the ivies, a shoo-in. Tasha lowered her gaze as she smiled, felt warmth in his attention. They stayed on the patio a long while as violet-blue dusk seeped into the brick road. Tasha searched her iPhone photos for a Día de los Muertos altar, paper marigolds and brass baby shoes, an installation on the cement floor of a Denver gallery named Redline. “For my Grandma Luisa,” she finally said, revealing her screen to Arturo and leaning forward. “She left the San Luis Valley in the 1960s.”

“We could be cousins,” Arturo teased. “But I’m not related to any Espinosas. Not that I know of, at least.” He scooted his chair close. He smelled of pine. “Do you know much about the Valley?”

Tasha shrugged in a kind of shame. When her grandmother was still alive, she had emphysema and an old Southern Colorado Spanish accent, making it difficult for Tasha to understand her tales of that dreamlike region to the south. “Not really,” she said. “But I’ve wanted to visit.”

Arturo’s invitation was presented then, as if awaiting its summons. “You’ll get to see where you come from,” he suggested. “Or at least some of you.”