Overnight in New Mexico
The three of us sat on folding chairs around the table where Dick had the microphone plugged into a tape recorder and directed toward the high-altitude evergreen forest and the sheer granitic bowl behind and above it. On the table also were three magnum revolvers and three blue enamelware cups of red wine. “I don’t expect anything the first night,” Dick McCuistion said. “Let’s forget about a watch, shall we?” The sound was the familiar half-human howl, beginning with a whoop, sustaining itself on the exhalation, and lasting three and a half minutes by my watch. It was a cry such as a man — a nine-foot-tall one — could produce; a headvoice bonded to a deep chest tone.
