AYN FOUNDATION
(DAS MAXIMUM)
ANDY WARHOL
MARIA ZERRES
THE LAST SUPPER
SEPTEMBER ELEVEN
Brite Building, 107-109 N Highland, Marfa
Open weekends noon to 5pm or by appointment.
Please call 432.729.3315 for more information.
Green Works
ARCHITECTURAL AND CONSTRUCTION PHASE SERVICES
Adobe Restoration
Sustainable Architectural Design
Rainwater Catchment Design
Handicapped Accessible Design
Solar/Wind Energy Consulting
Mike Green, AIA, Texas License #10917
LEED Accredited Professional
646-256-8112
mike@greenworks-architecture.com
Box 97, Marfa, TX 79843
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24
Photo by Vicki Gadberry
Is it real – or just a place setting? The Oasis Filling Station once reigned along the highway near Fort
Davis as a set for Dancer, Texas Pop. 81. It has since disappeared.
Place Settings
by Melissa Crowfoot Keane
I
don’t read mystery novels.
My entire family, however,
inhales them, and years ago,
I attempted to join in their
obsession. But for me, charm-
ing place settings could never
quite overcome the creepiness
of all those dead bodies.
Recently, however, a bit of
Marfa serendipity took me
back into the world of mystery
novels. On an evening last
spring, John DeMers quizzed
me about local archeology, as
he planned to incorporate rock
art into his second Marfa-based
mystery. I was happy to answer
his questions about petro-
glyphs, but hesitated when he
offered to let me read galley
proofs of his first Chef Brett
novel, Marfa Shadows. I feared
that there would be too many
dead bodies for my sensibilities.
And I’m defensive about my
home town. I figured that some
guy from Houston wouldn’t be
able to “get” Marfa properly.
But John’s a persuasive fellow,
and I was intrigued to read a
novel set in Marfa, so I agreed.
Yes, there are a lot of
Cenizo
Second Quarter 2011
corpses in Marfa Shadows – my
suspicion proved to be correct. I
stopped counting about
halfway through the book
when the body count topped
50. But I was wrong about this
Houston food writer not being
able to capture the feel of pres-
ent-day Marfa. He got it. In
and around all the corpses,
DeMers’ descriptions of our
town rang true. As I finished
the story, I started wondering
just why his place setting felt
right to me.
I went back to the Keane
bookshelf to retrieve a copy of
Tony Hillerman’s Skinwalkers
(1988). Hillerman, of course, is
famous for his masterful use of
the Four Corners area as the
setting for his Joe Leaphorn
mysteries, and I wanted to dis-
cover his methods for myself.
After a re-read of Skinwalkers, I
could see that Hillerman’s suc-
cessful creation of place hinges
on two critical points. First, the
setting and the story are inter-
twined – that is, this particular
story could only occur in this
particular place at this particu-
lar time. Skinwalkers tosses
together high desert land-
scapes, professional archeolo-
gists, pothunters and a taste of
Navajo culture into a tale that
could only take place on the
Navajo Reservation in the late
20th century.
And Hillerman’s details are
correct. Because the details are
right, they bring the setting into
clear focus. Tri-county folks all
will recognize the night sky that
Hillerman describes in spare,
almost scientific language: “the
moon was down, and the sky
over him was an incredible daz-
zle of stars humans can see only
when high altitude, clear dry air
and an absence of ground light
combine.”
Armed with my homegrown
two-point analysis of a success-
ful place setting – intertwined
story and setting and accurate
details – I read two other mys-
tery novels set in Big Bend
country to compare with Marfa
Shadows to see how successfully
the authors conjured up our
surroundings. Each of the three
authors incorporates aspects of