The healer Alma Weston lived in far West Texas—in a place of magenta shaded mountains, wide grasslands, and rocky desert full of yucca, prickly pear, and ocotillo.
Her house sat just off a dirt road in the tiny, half-deserted town of Valentine, about fifty miles west of Alpine. She lived in the three-room place with cement floors, old space heaters, a blackened gas stove, and soot stained walls.
The man always enjoyed visiting the healer. Beds were tucked everywhere in inconspicuous corners, and the space—in spite of its appearance—radiated a warm and welcoming ambience.
Not much was left of the city of Valentine. Up and down the many unpaved roads were abandoned houses, some with collapsed roofs and walls. Nearly all the stores in the tiny business district were closed for good.
The Santa Fe Railroad passed through on its way to El Paso, and in 1975, when the man came to be treated by the Anglo woman healer in an area predominantly Mexican-American, the workers on the railroad were required to disembark and sleep the night, in dormitories provided by the railroad. This requirement—now no longer practiced—kept a small grocery store on the highway in business and helped keep the town going. Houses in good condition were cheap, and one time the man met the wife of a member from the famous rock band the Eagles. The couple had a lovely place with a large, lush garden. She worked for Del Monte Company that was attempting vegetable farming in the area, and didn't seem troubled by the isolation or the loneliness.
The healer was a woman in her seventies. She always kept her white hair covered with a handkerchief. Despite her age, she would stay up all night treating high school boys who had been injured in football games. She never asked for money but would accept gifts or cash. One time an older man—presumably a grandfather—left three chickens in a small coop. The man saw a high school football quarterback, carried in with a badly injured back, walk upright the next morning out the door and into the waiting car.
She wasn't the first healer the man had met. When living in San Angelo—north and east in central West Texas—he'd met his good friend Jorge Chappa's father and been inside his converted garage office where the walls were covered with shelves full of herbs. Jorge had told the man many stories of his father's amazing healings.
The women the man always travelled with from El Paso viewed the healer as a great and wise woman. They hung on to every word she uttered, and often discussed what she'd said on the ride back to El Paso. Alma Weston was a role model for these feminists in an era when roles of women were changing rapidly and new role models were difficult to find. The man was not sure why they worshipped the healer, since Alma had told him that her marriage had been a disaster and she'd never loved her rancher husband. Perhaps that part of Alma's life seemed less important because marriage was not foremost on the minds of this era's feminists.
Both of the man's parents were medical doctors—his mother an anesthesiologist and his father a pathologist. His mother had graduated as the only woman in her medical school class from the University of Minnesota. Raised in a scientific family, the man remained skeptical even as he tried to stay open-minded.
All the man knew was he'd had these pains for a long time. They sometimes came on as severe pains. He was willing to give the healer a try, since the doctors who had run barium tests could find nothing wrong with either his stomach or intestines.
"It won't work for you if you don't believe," willowy Eliza, his photographer friend from El Paso, stressed over and over. Eliza was into things New Age. She went to a New Age psychiatrist once a week and was involved at the moment in "ballooning." All the man knew was it had something to do with imagining your future goals in terms of your fantasies.
If Alma's treatment works for me, I will believe," the man replied, "but I do think magic's made up of techniques. It's not a religion and does not demand belief."
The man had made the long drive through the desert from El Paso three times. He had made the trip because he'd fallen in love with one of the feminist women, the brilliant Courtney, who wished to write a book on the healer. The man was courting Courtney and felt one way to win her was to show interest in what she was doing. He'd always been healthy, perhaps because of his propensity for sleep, which made for a strong immune system. Maybe that's why he took little interest in alternative health. Ah but how he loved to sleep. He had the ability to fall asleep anywhere and he did so, especially during movies. Perhaps he could earn a bit of big money producing workshops on sleep as healing and therapy? A good nap always put one's problems in perspective. Dreams sometimes gave you answers.
This was his first time he'd attempted treatment by an alternative healer. The healer sat in a chair by a window. The man sat in a similar chair across the narrow room. These chairs, covered with old blankets, were dusty but well made and looked like they went back to the 1940's.
The healer looked tired. The man wondered if dealing with three visitors for two days in a row was beginning to wear her down.
She spread out her palms while resting her hands on the arms of the chair. She said she was concentrating, but to him it looked as if she were daydreaming.
After a few minutes the healer said pink rays of light were coming off her palms and were directed at his stomach. The man squinted his eyes but couldn't make out pink rays.
"Should I lift up my shirt?" the man asked.
"No," Alma said. "Little men travel down the light rays. They get under your shirt and are now massaging your stomach with healing hands."
The man did feel a warm spot developing on his belly.
In his mind he could see his doctor father rolling on the floor and laughing.
The man lifted up his shirt anyway. In a minute or two his stomach began to feel warm and he could feel a kneading.
The healer was eclectic in technique. She used herbs from the Mexican-American/Indian traditions, and had taken courses by correspondence in acupressure and other healing methods. Years earlier she had lived at Indian Hot Springs along the Rio Grande, and there she used not only the waters but the mud and moss around each of the twenty-three springs for healing her many patients who stayed there at the lodge. After the Second World War and the big drought of the fifties her patients had dropped off slowly and she'd had to sell the place.
Alma had long tough nails and when she acupressured the man's naked feet, after shutting down her light beams, she did find points of pain. She told him the points of pain were connected to his liver and that might be the source of his stomach pain. She pushed on the points with her sharp nails and the man almost shouted from the sudden pain.
His two women friends had gone over to the store hoping to find something nutritious to cook and eat. No restaurants remained open in Valentine, and besides, the three of them had little money.
"Sorry we didn't get anything for you," Courtney said when they returned. "We weren't sure what you wanted."
