The breakfast at the little Colorado inn where we were staying had been touted as the best in town, and breakfast is my favorite meal. So I was disappointed to arrive in the yellow breakfast room and find weak coffee, hard cold scrambled eggs and one finger-sized cinnamon bun. I held up the pot to show D the pale brown, transparent coffee and made a face.
"Too weak for you?" said the owner. "Hey Dolores, I bet that's the first time anyone thought your coffee was too weak."
Dolores was a thin, tough-looking woman in her late 50s or 60s, in a tank top and jeans. She had short gray and blond hair, blue eyes and no make-up, but looked as if she had been very pretty once.
"Did you make the coffee?" I asked.
"Yes," she said. "Most people think it's too strong."
I was embarrassed and explained, "I'm from Louisiana. I like it really dark, with hot milk."
"I'm from Louisiana too!" said Dolores. "Near Shreveport. How about you?" I didn't tell her that to us southern Louisianians, with our French heritage, north Louisiana is like a foreign country. But to cover my embarrassment, I asked her what she was doing up in the mountains.
"Well, this sounds sad, but that's not why I'm telling you. Two years ago in July, my son killed himself. I kept his room just how it was, and cleaned it and didn't go anywhere. This year on that day, I just said to myself, I have got to get out of here. I packed up my dog and away we went. I'd always wanted to come up here to the mountains and I just thought, now is the time."
"I'm so sorry about your son," I said.
"Yes, it's sad," she said, "but he was suffering from depression and some other problems. If it weren't for my dog I'd have gone crazy. She's a pit bull, but she's the sweetest thing. I saved her life. I found her at a breeders when she was five weeks old and they were about to cut her ears and train her for dogfights. I told them I was taking her away with me and they said that would be $500. I said, Call the cops!"
"Aren't pit bulls dangerous?" I said.
"Oh, she's not dangerous. She was bred to fight, though. When I put the choke collar on her, she's like a different dog."
"What's a choke collar?"
"It's got two little sharp studs and when you pull on it, it tells her to attack. That dog would defend me to the death."
"She's well trained?" I asked hopefully.
"Oh yes. But not in English. She answers only to commands in Comanche. My son was half Comanche."
Then she showed me the tattoo over her left breast. It was of a good-looking, dark young man. "It's my son," she said. "His ashes are mixed with the ink."
