by Will Hobbs
“Some roots.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, there were a lot of little pouches. I don’t know what was in them.”
“Herbs would be in a few of them. There might be something in the pouches that would help your mother. The people in those days, they used to get this same sickness that keeps you from breathing.”
My father’s mind was racing. “Is it an herb that we’d have around here? Maybe we grow it on the farm!”
Cricket shook his head. “It’s all gone. People stopped growing it.”
I could barely speak, I was so struck by the old man’s words. I was remembering something the pothunters had said. I blurted out, “I think they hid the medicine man’s basket up around Picture House!”
My father didn’t even stop to ask me why I thought this was true. He could see I was pretty certain.
My mother suddenly sat up straight and looked at Cricket, as if for the first time. “I just figured it out. You know too much about plants to be just anybody. You are Mr. K.! You’ve come to see us at last!”
Cricket nodded, and then said, “Yes, I’ve come to visit at last.”
My dad was taken completely by surprise. He looked at my mother, then back at me. “Cricket is Mr. K!”
“I’ve gotta hurry,” I said, heading for the door. “I’ve got to get to Picture House.”
My father’s eyes blazed with fear and hope. “Run like a deer, Tep!”
My mother motioned me back with the wave of a finger. She had me lean close, and then she kissed me on the cheek. With a whisper, she said, “I’ll be here, Tepary.”
19
The sun was dropping fast. With Dusty at my side, I ran. I ran with my heart in my throat, terrified that my task was impossible. By the time I arrived at Picture House, my transformation had struck me down midstride. I picked myself up and climbed onto Dusty’s back.
The miniature city was glowing a faint orange, reflecting the last traces of the sunset.
Where would the pothunters have hidden the basket? I struggled to remember the night when all of this had started. After I’d thrown the blazing tumbleweed over the edge of the cliff, we’d waited on top. After a short while the flashlight of the pothunters had appeared below as they left in the direction of Enchanted Mesa. If they had stopped soon after to hide the artifacts, I would have noticed. They had kept going. They must have hidden the basket and the seed pot fairly close to Picture House, before I first saw the beam.
I made my best guess about the spot where that flashlight had first appeared. I intended to search from that spot back to Picture House. The basket and the pot should be hidden somewhere close to that route.
By the light of a quarter moon I started searching, but the rat’s superior night vision didn’t promise to be much help in this hopeless tangle of boulders and junipers, pinyons and oak brush, yucca and cactus and more boulders. The pot and the medicine bundle could be anywhere!
I scurried around and around, more desperate by the moment. What were my chances of coming across the basket!
I was sick with dread as I hurried my way toward the ruin, hoping against hope. Dusty was crisscrossing my path, nose down like a bloodhound. I realized she was my only hope. “Help me, Dusty!” I hollered. “Find that seed jar! This is the most important one ever! The basket will be with the pot! Find that pot, Dusty, please find it!”
We’d almost worked our way back to Picture House, and I was all in a panic when Dusty crawled underneath a slab in the rockfall that leaned back against the cliff close to the wall of pictures. When she came out, then stuck her nose back in, I knew Old Faithful had come through for me again.
I crawled in and found the seed jar there with its black-on-white lines, the one I was looking for. And here, next to it, was the basket.
I peered over the edge of the basket and looked in. The contents were gone! The stone pipe, the porcupine’s teeth, the roots, and especially the pouches, all gone. In their place, small rocks and sticks! I rustled through them and found not even one pouch.
Packrats!
Suddenly I heard voices, and I darted out of there. I led Dusty to a hiding place close by. The bright light of a lantern was heading our way.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d know their voices anywhere. I hurried to the top of one of the big slabs where I could see.
The pothunters were kneeling, and the bearded one—Duke—was reaching under the slab where their plunder was hidden. “Still under here,” he reported.
Their socks were showing through the holes in their boots. Beside them lay two shovels and a pick.
“Hey, look at this! Nothing but sticks and rocks!”
“Packrats!” Rodney cried. “Man, we are having nothing but rotten luck with packrats!”
“This basket is only a basket without all that medicine man’s stuff!”
“I know! We’ve been ripped off by packrats!”
From far above, the owl called hoo, hoo-hoo-hoo, hoo-oo, hoo-oo.
The pothunters stood still as statues. Again came the call of the owl.
“Spooky,” said Duke, who wasn’t the one I remembered being superstitious.
“You know, Duke,” said his brother, seeing his opportunity, “I just don’t have a good feeling about digging tonight. We’ve had rotten luck here…. I still think we shouldn’t have come back for the basket even if it is so valuable. We still have to get a tow truck! What if that kid saw something?”
Duke was pulling on his beard and looking around like he wanted to kill someone. “Shut up! That kid didn’t see anything! Everything’s too well hid and you know it!”
He looked around as if he were being watched, and now his eyes fixed on the dance plaza. A coyote stood in the open there, staring. It looked to me like the coyote was staring at me, not them. In the reflected light of the lantern, the coyote’s eyes seemed ablaze.
Duke pulled his pistol and blasted away at the coyote, once, twice. The coyote just stood there. Duke paused to get another look. The coyote yawned, then walked away slowly out of the light.
“That was too strange,” I heard Rodney say as I was hastening down the backside of the slab. I wanted to get down there fast and add to the confusion. I ran out into the open and bit one of them on the toes before he ever saw me coming, bit the other one before he could react, then bit the first one again. I had those guys jumping! Never did I expect the gun to go off, but that’s what it did, with a colossal explosion that sent me leaping for cover.
“I’ve shot myself in the foot!” Duke roared. Then he screamed and cursed, and cursed some more, and screamed again.
From hiding, I watched his brother remove what was left of the tip of the boot, then tear strips from his shirt and improvise a bandage.
They left with Duke hopping on one leg, hanging onto his brother’s side. They took only the flashlight, leaving behind the lantern, two shovels and a pick, the seed jar and the basket.
They weren’t heading back to Enchanted Mesa and their dead truck. They were staggering toward Encantado, and they had an awful long way to go. Dusty and I watched their flashlight disappear as I realized what I had to do next.
I already knew where the closest nest was; I’d been partway in there before.
Behind the leaning slab I found the big mound of sticks, bones, and rocks. I had to find those pouches, no matter what. It was up to me.
It didn’t matter if I was terrified. I was going in there, and I wasn’t going to be run out. No matter what it took, I was going to find those pouches.
Inside, I threaded my way farther than I’d gone before. I found a nest, but it was abandoned. I continued through the barest of passages among the cactus spines. Then I heard drumming deep inside the maze. They could hear or smell me coming.
I came to a second nest. This one was lined with grasses and feathers. No sign of the pouches, but I didn’t expect them here. They’d be in the food cache or in the midden.
In front of me a pair of
eyes glowed, then a second pair and a third. The drumming was furious, deafening. I kept moving forward, out of the tunnel and into the next chamber where they awaited me.
They leapt on me, squeaking and clawing and gnashing. But I was on fire, and I fought back. I fought with tooth and claw and rage. I was fighting for my mother’s life. Tumbling, scratching, clawing, biting, squeaking with fury, I fought them back.
More rats arrived. I don’t know how many. White-hot, I fought them, too. Suddenly they backed off, all of them, looking at me with the fear of the unknown. I rushed them, bellowing with all my might, and they turned and ran.
I tried to calm myself and my thundering heart. Quickly I began sniffing and looking around. In a corner of the packrats’ cache, on top of a pile of pinyon nuts, I found the small buckskin bundles, ten of them. I couldn’t remember how many there had been. Did I have them all? I’d better investigate the rest of the rat runs, make sure I had them all.
In the trash dump, one of the rats I’d fought was waiting for me. I drummed furiously with a hind leg and the rat disappeared. No more pouches, but as I glanced around the walls, I noticed the set of porcupine teeth, and then a smooth piece of bone sticking out, just barely.
Eagle-wing bone.
The flute was wedged in there tight, but I pulled it free.
Eleven trips outside, and I had my prizes. Dusty sniffed them approvingly. Now to get all those pouches home … how were Dusty and I going to carry them? She’d never been one to carry things in her mouth, not even a stick. Maybe I could train her to carry the basket … there just wasn’t time. I had to carry the basket myself. But for that I would need human hands.
The flute’s the answer, I thought. I only needed to play a few certain notes on it, if only I could learnthem. I hurried to the picture wall.
The bighorn sheep and the spirits, the bird-headed people and the bear tracks were gleaming in the moonlight. But they didn’t hold the answer. Cricket had said the answer was in the spirals.
Here they were, in between the two Kokopellis: the two spirals side-by-side that had once reminded me of the eyes of an owl. The spirals were the clue. How could the spirals possibly be the clue?
I saw nothing but two spirals ringed by corn.
The corn … the eyes of the owl …
The owl? I asked myself. Could that be it? The spirals contain the message, Cricket had said, and the spirals are the eyes of the owl!
I had to try. If ever I was going to try, it had to be now.
I held the flute sideways against my face, hoping to imitate the owl with the flute: hoo, hoo-hoo-hoo, hoo-oo, hoo-oo!
My first try produced nothing close to the correct rhythm. I kept trying, over and over again. At last I put the notes together in the right timing, producing the call of the nesting great horned owl of Picture House.
At that moment, I was myself again.
Dusty’s eyes went huge.
I gathered up the pouches, placed them in the basket, snatched up the flute and the seed jar, and took off sprinting in the moonlight. We knew the way by heart.
20
As my mother held tight to my hands, she craned her neck to see the ancient buckskin pouches I had brought. Her breathing was far worse. Standing at the big table, my father had his pocket knife out and was cutting the ancient yucca cords that bound them at their necks. Cricket was gently opening them up.
My mother started coughing and then gasping for breath. When that subsided, she laughed low and painfully and motioned me closer. I leaned close to hear what she would say.
“Like when you were in the incubator,” she whispered.
“Fight for every breath,” I encouraged her.
“This one!” Cricket cried, and I hurried to the table. He was pointing to the dried and perfectly preserved leaves of a plant I’d never seen before, rolled tightly around each other.
“Boil a little water,” Cricket said. “We’ll make some tea.”
I returned to my mother’s side, where her hand rested on Dusty’s head.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “Cricket’s found the right one.”
“Good,” she whispered. “I want to try this ancient medicine.”
I was dead tired but I made myself promise I wouldn’t go to sleep. My mother took a cup of tea when it was ready, and then she waited a while, and then she took another cup.
I looked around and Cricket was gone, but shortly thereafter the music of the flute filled the room. My father looked around, mystified. This time all three of us were hearing it. My dad didn’t speak, other than through his eyes, which were suddenly filled with hope.
I looked atop the bookcase. The bright green insect was playing his flute, wings raised and vibrating faster than the eye could see.
The flute played on through the night. The rattling in my mother’s chest gradually subsided, and she wheezed for breath less often. We sat with her as she fell asleep. As the first hint of dawn was showing outside, she woke. My father gave her a third cup of the ancient remedy, and she drank it readily. Her fever had broken. Her breathing, though ragged, had improved.
“What happened to the music?” my mother wondered, and then we noticed that the notes of the flute had died out like a wind subsiding, so gently we hadn’t noticed its passing.
In the blinding light of the sunrise, I thought I saw someone in the field. “It’s Cricket,” my father said, and when I looked again, I glimpsed the old man walking away with his gunnysack over his back, disappearing into the corn.
My mother sat up in bed. “I’m going to be okay,” she said. “I want to see Cricket. I’m afraid he’s leaving.”
“He’s already gone,” I told her.
“Run and see if you can find him, Tep. I want to thank him.”
Dusty at my side, I made my way through our fields and toward the sunrise. On all sides, the rarest food crops in the Americas were growing in a riot of leaf, tendril, and flower. I thought I heard a few notes from the flute. I paused and strained to catch them. The flute was faint, yet unmistakeable: it spoke of the wind and rippling water, the stars, the wings of birds, seeds sprouting, plants growing, life renewing endlessly.
My hopes soared that I at least might say goodbye. I did catch one more glimpse. I saw Kokopelli’s silhouette, playing the flute, as he disappeared into the rising sun.
I made my way toward my patch of Picture House corn, hoping he’d visited there and given it his special attention. I had a feeling I wouldn’t find bare ground.
Every last kernel had germinated. Those first leafy shoots were waving green as can be in a sudden gust of wind blowing back toward the south. I went back into the cabin, and I told them Cricket was gone. I also told them about the Picture House corn.
“Well, I’ll be a Manure Specialist!” my father declared.
“And I’ll be the boss,” I reminded him.
My father stayed close to my mother. I visited her study in the basement. There was something I wanted to look up. I found a section on the flute player in Rock Art of the Great Southwest:
When the human beings came into this world, through a hole in the sky of the previous one, they were accompanied by two insect people.
Two of them, I thought.
These were two special insect people, special beings with great powers and extraordinary courage. Shortly after the human beings had emerged into this world, they were climbing a mountain, and when they reached the top they met a great bird, an eagle. One of the insect people, acting as a spokesman, asked the eagle for permission to live in this world. The eagle answered that it might be possible, but first they must be tested.
The eagle held two arrows. “Step closer,” he told the insect people, and the two did so. “Keep your eyes open as I pierce them,” the eagle ordered, and he stabbed with great force, stopping the arrow points at the last instant. The two insect people, on behalf of the human beings, did not blink.
“I can see you are people of substance,” the eagle observed. “
But the final test is much more difficult, and you will not pass it, I believe.”
“We are ready,” replied the two. At this, the eagle produced a bow, and shot the first through with an arrow. The insect person produced his flute and played a beautiful song, as if the arrow were not sticking through his body and out the other side.
“So,” said the eagle, “you are people with power, that is plain to see.” At this, he shot the second through, and now both played beautifully on their flutes, so beautifully that their bodies were healed with the magic power of their song.
The eagle now gave permission for the human beings to occupy this world.
I returned the book to its place on my mother’s bookshelf. And then I used her telephone. I made two calls, one to the BLM ranger and one to the sheriff. I told them that the Bishop brothers were headed toward Encantado, and I told them where to find their truck and the artifacts nearby. I also told them that we had the seed jar and the medicine bundle.
But I didn’t tell them about the flute. I couldn’t tell anyone about the flute. Someone would surely blow on it, as I had.
The summer advanced with hot days and little rain. My mother’s health returned and she set to work summarizing the results of her research. As boss of the farm for the rest of the season, I was making sure our crops were especially well fertilized.
Sometimes at night, lying awake, I’d find myself missing my adventures, remembering almost with fondness my furry body and my handsome, bushy tail. What I missed most was riding bareback on Dusty, the wind in my whiskers. But I didn’t miss any of it enough to want to try that flute again. Packrats live a risky life and that’s for sure.
Our crops were going to far outproduce our best previous year. We would have our hands full when the time came for threshing, sifting, winnowing, and drying all those seeds. They would include the seeds of a new sweet gourd. In a few years we’d have enough to offer them through our catalog.
My father would often remark, as he watched the ravens flying low across our fields, how strange it was that they seemed to have quit raiding us.
