Back on the road, it wasn’t ten minutes until we came to a vast three-storied, man-made, mud-brick structure, with rows of cutouts for windows. It looked deserted. Air compressed in my chest, and I shivered.
“Indian apartments,” Tess said. “We call them the Adobe Flats. What do you see in them?”
“Sorrow, despair.”
She nodded. “Decades ago, many families lived in them. Children starved. Women were old at fifteen. Men laid around and died of peyote poisoning. Many claim they hear the ghosts of those who lived there when they pass by.”
I was glad to circle away from the haunted, mud-brick structure.
19
Stucco homes with Spanish tile hip roofs lined the reservation’s upscale street. There wasn’t a soul walking, sitting, or standing. “It is the time of day for introspection,” Tess said. “And learning. Our children are studying now.” She pointed out a mansion sitting well back from the street, surrounded by a six-foot security fence. I caught the movement of big dogs, or wolves. “The home of my aunt and uncle,” she said.
Casino money, I thought. Like diamond merchants, they needed their fences and guard dogs.
We came to a street of small shops: a newspaper stand, a convenience store, a used-book emporium. “This must be downtown, the business district,” I said.
Grinning, she said, “Our rez is a thousand acres. Next to it is the main rez, where we can go for groceries, gas, and the post office. But mostly, everyone goes to Palm Springs to shop. Or for real shopping, Los Angeles or Phoenix.”
We both laughed. Tess was a shopper. But I wouldn’t travel more than ten minutes from my home or office to buy anything, and she must have gleaned this about me.
After the last stop sign, the asphalt streets gave way to unpaved roads. The houses were squalid adobe with poorly thatched roofs. “We still have poor people,” Tess said. “They seem to prefer not to enrich themselves, so we leave them to be as they’d like.”
It was nearly dark when three dark men came running from a house and got into an old car. Tess cried, “Those crazies.”
We had traveled on for several minutes through cairns and cactus when a wood cabin on stilts emerged. She pulled up to a front porch that spanned the small house. “The Moon Lodge,” she said.
Getting out of the Jeep, I rubbed my arms. “Cold now.”
Tess handed me a soft, long-sleeved leather jacket that zipped at the waist, and we walked up the steps. A teenage girl opened the door. Inside the cabin, it was almost pitch dark. After several blinks, I made out people—girls—squatting. Older women sat on benches lining two walls. They didn’t seem to notice our entrance; they were watching what went on in the middle of the dark, hot room.
Tess hugged the girl who opened the door, and whispered, “You have blossomed well, my cousin.” She turned to me. “I want you to meet Windla, and Windla, I want you to meet Dru.”
Windla’s smile was as warm as her cousin’s. “Dru. I like your name.”
“Thank you. I like yours.”
Windla closed the door, and immediately I began to sweat. I rubbed my neck. All the cabin windows were closed. An upright barrel stove burned in the corner. Tess whispered, “I will not introduce you at this time. My aunt is saying the moon ritual for her son’s daughter.”
“Moon ritual?”
“On a girl’s first moon, she must remain on her back on a bed of herbs until the next moon phase. She is the moon maiden.”
We sat on a bench near the door. It was hot as hell, and I wanted to crack it open. I reached my arms back to remove the jacket and caught the sleeve on a nail in the wall. I felt the rip with my fingers, and a scrap came off in my hand. Horrified, I showed it to Tess. She shook her head as if to say, no matter. I got the jacket off and laid it beside me on the bench. I put the scrap in my shirt pocket.
The moon maiden lay on a brush pile on a dirt floor in the middle of the one-room cabin. She had on a plain white long gown. She writhed as Tess’s aunt ran her hands two inches above her body—from head to toe, back and forth. With each pass, the woman’s hands would pause where the moon maiden’s legs ended and her torso began. The medicine woman’s eyes were closed and her head moved rhythmically to her incantations in what I assumed was an ancient tongue. My eyes roamed to the squatting girls, who sat silent and enchanted. That’s when I saw one who looked like she didn’t belong. Her skin glowed milky white. Her black hair lay askew atop her head. She was very young and appeared very scared. I turned to say something to Tess, but she laid her palm on my hand. I felt a bite, and then looked down. The onyx stone in her ring had twisted toward her palm. One of the prongs had pricked the back of my hand. She whispered, “I am so sorry.”
I rubbed my hand. “S’all right.” I looked at the moon maiden. “Can she eat or drink?” The words seemed to hover in the back of my head.
“Only warm water,” Tess said. “Cold water causes cramps. She can eat no salt or hard food. Only mush.”
A long white bone lay at the moon maiden’s right hand. I asked, “Wass that for?” My tongue felt thick as I said the words. My eyes went to the young pale girl. My vision blurred.
Tess answered, “It is a buffalo leg bone. If she has an itch, she can scratch with that. She cannot touch herself.”
Tess’s aunt raised both her hands to the ceiling. The squatting girls rose from the floor. The white-skinned girl seemed at a loss and looked to Windla for guidance. Tess said, “The girls will dance around the maiden, and sing of their first moon.”
Tess’s aunt brought out a tambourine. The girls joined hands and circled the moon maiden, chanting and dancing. The small girl’s lips moved, but she obviously didn’t know the words, and when she stumbled she looked at Windla.
The young girl’s face turned orange. All things around me began to glow. Black balls floated in front of my eyes. I rubbed them and green came into the orange. I was hot—on fire. Vomit flared up my esophagus. I slipped sideways. A woman’s voice came from another land. “Dru! What’s the matter? Dru!” She moved to catch me, but I fell from the bench and everything went black.
20
My lips felt thick, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. My eyeballs were on fire. I couldn’t shift my body for the pain in my bones and muscles. Hot deep inside, yet I shivered in the darkness. I moved my head and glimpsed a star through a small opening.
Cave. I’m in a cave.
I heard voices, one above the others, strange and guttural. “Ahct, ahct, dyun, myun, wyck.” Then a series of “Oweeeeees.” And laughter.
I knew the acrid smell. Marijuana.
I’m dreaming, or I’m dead and in limbo. So hot, so terribly hot. I’m in hell. Oh dear mama, send the priest. I’ll be good. I’ll say rosary for every decade. Our Father, Who art in heaven . . . . My lips slurred the lines. Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . . pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Hot water slipped down my temples.
“She’s awake.”
Who are these people?
A hand raised my head. A light blinded me. “Helth . . .” my lips and tongue tried to speak. “Pleath . . .”
I felt a prick in my right wrist, and then my mind fled again.
* * * * *
Somebody threw ice water on me.
“Dru, Dru, Hurry,” the voice said.
“Whoth . . . ?”
A pulling at my arm, but I couldn’t move. My body felt like an iron beam.
“Come, hurry.”
“Wherth . . . ?”
“It’s Tess. We must hurry from here.”
Tess? “Canth . . .”
“You must.”
She hovered above me, straddling, bending, pulling my shoulders. I tried, oh how I tried, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t. Finally, she had me sitting, but she hadn’t the strength to lift me. She pulled me along a rough floor, then down steep steps. Every thump shot excruciating pain along my nerve path
s until it became so unbearable I wanted to die.
“Listen,” she said urgently, “I hear in the distance. They will be here soon.” She dragged me outside. The cold air stung my lungs. She propped me against a wall. “Let your hands walk you up the wall.” She sat and showed me how, and I tried. I seemed to gather some strength. “Good, you’re moving up. Keep going up. No! Don’t fall. We must hurry.”
I was upright, but I stumbled. The wall held me up. “Legth, canth . . .”
“Quick!” she said, and threw her strong arms around my waist.
Her Jeep was near, but oh so far away for my immobile feet. Over the hood I saw pinpoint lights glow in the distance. I knew if I didn’t get to the Jeep I would die. I didn’t want to die here, like this. Lurching like a diver off a cliff, I got control of my feet and staggered toward the Jeep. With my last step, I banged my head on the plastic window. She opened the door and rammed me inside. She ran to the driver’s side and revved the Jeep, hurtling us into the night.
Fear strengthened my aching sinews, and I rotated my shoulders and head to look behind me. Twin lights drawing closer. Looking ahead again, I saw only darkness. She hadn’t turned on the headlights.
“Where to?” I asked, aware of a powerful thirst.
“We’ll go in circles. I can’t brush the tire tracks, but that might confuse them.”
“Who them?” My words sounded like they came from another galaxy.
“I don’t know.”
“Whhy?”
“They came to the lodge and took you away. You were ill.”
“Where?”
“You don’t’ remember?”
“I—no—Dar-canyon.”
“Dartagnan? What about him?”
“Park—oasith—rock pool.” I shook my head and slouched against the side door, my knees jammed against my chest.
“At Moon Lodge you passed out. My aunt called for help. They came from town to take you to the hospital. But you never reached it. Dartagnan went there. We started searching.”
I willed myself to remember, but nothing . . .
She went on, “I thought about where you could be. The Adobe Flats came to mind. Nothing good happens there.”
“You are—who?”
“Tess.”
“Teth?”
“Yes.”
“Member—men—hear voithez.”
“They are after us now.”
“Why?”
“Because something’s happening—somebody’s—some malign spirit has invaded our land.”
“Huh?”
“I have dreams of strangers who come into our midst and steal our souls.”
“Soulths?”
“You have been drugged. Datura. It is confusing. Your speech will get better.”
“I ate . . . what?”
“Or drank.”
My head lolled against the glass, and I saw a woman in my mind, laughing, drinking tea, telling about the boo—boo tree. We were in a place that was hot with stones and palm trees and pocket animals. Suddenly the lights behind us got brighter, and I raised up.
“Stay down,” Tess said and jerked the wheel left.
Something hit the back of the Jeep. My head banged the window. Tess shouted, “Bastard!” The Jeep bucked. Its tires spun in the sand.
Whoosh! The explosion thrust the Jeep forward. “Out!” she shouted. “Out!” As she jammed the brakes, I fumbled for the door handle. I got it open and rolled face down onto the desert floor. Lifting my head, I felt the flames and dragged myself to my knees. My arms held my shoulders up, but my head lolled to the ground. I crawled. I paused to let my eyes roam over the strange land, now lit by fire. Ahead thorn scrub—trees and bushes. I crawled through my agony, collapsing twice. The second time, I couldn’t raise my body. Smoke and effort stung my eyes as sweat flowed from my forehead down my temples and neck. With my elbows, I belly-dragged myself into the scrub and, clenching my teeth again in pain, rolled over to see what was happening behind me.
In the light of the burning Jeep, I saw people running and screaming. Was one of them the woman who called herself Tess? I wished with every living fiber in my body that I could jump from this hiding place and help her, but my legs wouldn’t move. My cheek brushed something prickly.
The shrieks sounded closer, curdling the night. I lifted and looked out from my cover. The woman—Tess—broke from the shadows of the fire, free of the men. She shouted over the fire’s crackle and roar, and over the men’s voices, as she ran flinging her arms above her head. The men tried to catch her. In that instant, I knew that she was obliterating my trail. They caught her when she was no more than a few yards from where I lay in the thorn scrub. Had they just looked down . . . .
They yanked her away, toward the burning Jeep. Although she cursed them, there was something oddly intimate in her voice—and their laughter. She called one of them Ro-all.
“Ro-all, stop! Stop this fucking minute!”
She knows who they are.
Tess and the men disappeared behind the Jeep, into the shadows of the night and the flames. I was afraid for her, but she knew who they were, and maybe she knew what she was doing. The jeep burned into the night, finally burning itself to a glow. I rolled onto my back and elbowed myself onto my butt. I must find water. I got to my knees, and that’s when the last of the embers died, leaving me in a pit of darkness. The night never lightened, there was no moon, nor stars, only the blackness of a devil night. I would have to sleep and wake in the morning and find water. I crawled deeper into the scrub and fell forward on something that moved. “Ouch.”
I wished I were with Tess, wherever she was.
I’d dozed for just a moment. That’s all it seemed—just a moment. When I opened my eyes, a fierce light flashed above me, and I stared into a mass of roiling anger. The fearful storm from the west. In the next instant, an explosion rocked the sizzling atmosphere. I struggled to rise. Intolerable pain racked my arm. I lay back and touched it—swollen and hard as stone. Whatever happened to my arm, I knew it needed help. Struggling to sit, swallowing against the misery in my hard, hot limb, I surveyed the scattered rocks on which I’d lain. A slippery swell of horror filled my gut. I wasn’t in thorn scrub. Where was I? Had I awakened and moved in the night?
Fear propelled me to my feet, and wind lashed my hair across my face. The ground shook to the incessant rumbling overhead. I couldn’t tell west from east, but I had to get away from here. Wind-whipped, I stumbled into the storm. I turned away. Then away again. No matter which way I turned I was headlong into wind and rain. In the shards of lightning, I saw the stone cairn. High ground.
Rain-blinded, blood hammered in my veins. I tried to climb, but I needed both hands and arms to hoist my aching body. Forcing my injured arm upward, I couldn’t close my fist. The wind tore at my tortured body and my dying soul. Seconds later, a wash of water moved my feet. I clung to the face of the rock. The water rose to my knees. Then my waist. The force was too strong. It ripped me from the cairn, thumped and swirled me into a downward spiral, and then slung me headlong down a steep cliff. People popped into my head, one after the other. A handsome man with dimples. A hawkish-looking woman. A man who said he was my fiancé. A French twit. A little girl who didn’t look like an Indian.
And then nothing.
21
I woke from oblivion thinking, So hot. So hurt.
Voices. Children. Close by. And shadows hovering. On my back, limbs splayed, like on a cross.
“Mama,” a child called, “This is the coolest play yet. Look at the rips in her shirt.”
Play?
I could turn my head. Adults hurried forward, toward me.
A man said, “They make these reenactments so real. Bet she’s the miner’s wife who got scalped for the gold.”
“I don’t know, Troy,” the woman said. “She’s got all her hair. She’s wearing shorts, not old-timey clothes. And where’s everybody else in this play?”
A shadow loomed closer. “Hol
y Christ!” the man said. “She’s for real. She’s injured.”
“She got lost looking for the gold mine,” a kid cried out. “And there it is. She almost made it.”
The gold mine?
The man’s face hovered closer. “Let’s get her up.” He touched my cheek. “Can you stand?” He was close enough for me to smell his yeasty breath.
“Look at her arm, Troy,” the woman cried. “And her bruises. We better call for help.”
“You can try nine one one,” the man said. He touched my neck; his hand felt wooden. “Can you talk?”
My tongue stuck to my lips. “Bluhhh.”
“You’re wounded and dehydrated,” he said. “I’m a dentist, but I know that much. Stay brave, we’ll see to you.”
Stay brave.
“Troy, I got through,” the woman shouted. “They’re coming.”
“Help is on the way, Miss,” he said. “Good thing we decided to hike off the trail and see the old mine.”
Good thing. Yes.
Eventually men in green came and put me on a board, and strapped me down as if I were going to jump up and run away. They spoke, they asked questions, but all I could say was, “Bluhhh.” They seemed to know me, and what happened, but my head knew nothing but pain.
Inside the ambulance, an Indian woman put a wet rag over my face and bathed my cheeks and lips. “Sun,” she said, “much too much sun.” I rolled my eyes back to see a man with a needle. My heart froze. Didn’t I know him? A cop? I tried to struggle, but the woman said, “Quiet. You need fluids.” The needle went into my arm and for the millionth time I lost my mind.
22
I was climbing a thousand spiral steps. It was agonizing, and I wanted to go back down—down, down, down into a black world where I wasn’t thirsty. Or wrapped in pain.
“Awake,” a far-off voice said.
Slim shivers of light came through my lashes. A cold hand touched my cheek. “Christ, she’s hot,” a woman said. The bed jiggled. A blurred image hovered in my half-open eyes. I saw a skinny dark-eyed woman. She took my hand. She said, “It’s Portia. Can you remember?”
The Last Temptation Page 10
