Aztec Odyssey

by Jay C. LaBarge

  The brothers reached their hotel in Farmington later in the afternoon, checked in, and asked where the best local places to eat were. It had always been a family quest to never eat chain food, and always find the kind of places off the beaten path the tourists never went but the locals called home. Experience taught that there was never any better barometer for the quality of the food or the fun factor of the entertainment. Charlie wasn’t up for Mexican, never was, and Nick joked that his constitution was too delicate, damn that city living. Off to the Spare Rib BBQ Company they went, and it was even better than they both expected. After a great meal of gorging on ribs, beans, coleslaw and corn bread, and having downed a couple cold frosty ones, the brothers were in rare form. Having been through so much lately, they were enjoying blowing off a little steam.

  Nick eyed a bottle of his Dad’s favorite bourbon whiskey, Blanton’s, on the back-bar shelf, and Charlie caught the look in his eye and said, “Oh no, here we go.”

  Shot glasses in hand, Nick toasted, “To Al and Josie, who both left us far too soon, but gave us so very much, and truly showed us how to love and live. You will be forever missed.” As Nick raised the shot glass to the heavens, he caught a glimpse of a dark haired, dark eyed beauty across the room, who briefly returned his gaze and raised her own shot glass back at him. With a brief clink of glasses, Nick and Charlie toasted a heartfelt Santé, and downed their shots.

  Suddenly the lights dimmed and with a blast of sound so loud you could feel it in your gut, a band in the far corner started playing through the smoke of a fog machine, their light show suddenly illuminating the bar. It was a bluesy cover of Hold On, I’m Coming, and conversation became almost impossible.

  Nick yelled to Charlie, “I feel like I’m listening to blues at Kingston Mines back in Chicago. Dad would have loved this!” Which of course led to a few more beers and another shot or two. The band caught the vibe of the crowd, and slowly worked them up until everyone was belting out the words to songs they all knew, ending their set with a rousing rendition of Soul Man.

  The brothers made room at the bar for a couple of the band members who came by looking thirsty, bought them a drink, and started chatting with them earnestly about blues in general and their band in specific.

  The musicians were all Native Americans, and the leader introduced himself as Bidzii. His buddy joked that it was Navajo for “Strong One, so don’t take it too seriously.” Bidzii, a genuinely carved specimen who was aptly named, playfully pushed him away, and explained they really played for the joy of it, and banged around the edges of various reservations, enjoying a strong regional following. The next thing he knew, Nick found himself trotting out to his pickup and grabbing his old Fender guitar for a little impromptu jamming. Enjoying himself immensely playing in the background for the second set, Nick found Bidzii giving him a nod at the midpoint of Dear Mr. Fantasy, and Nick seamlessly took over the guitar lead and joined in the vocals. Now the crowd was not only singing along but dancing too and erupted into a loud ovation right before the song ended.

  “Name your song white boy,” Bidzii told him.

  Nick replied, “Sweet Home, Chicago,” his choice immediately getting the whole band smiling, as it was the quintessential blues song to feature each doing his own improvised solo. Nick rocked out on lead guitar and vocals, completely lost in the music, his troubles fading for the moment. As they finished the set with Spirits in The Night, Nick smiled out at Charlie, who was dancing by himself with a beer bottle in each hand, obviously caught up in the communal mood of hedonism at the Spare Rib BBQ Company, outside of Chaco Canyon, on a crystal-clear Friday night.

  Nick carefully drove back to the hotel, having stopped drinking as he played the second and third sets with his new friends in the band. Charlie sat with happily glazed eyes on the ride, humming one of the tunes and playing drums on the dashboard. He obviously didn’t get to unplug very often, Nick thought, realizing Charlie was fighting his own demons with this whole situation too.

  “Hey numb nuts, tomorrow is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and I’m getting up early to photograph it. Should be pretty cool out here to see in the desert, think you want to join me?” Nick asked.

  “Yeah, sure, wake me up when you want to go,” Charlie dreamily replied, as he did a big finish to the song in his head on the dashboard.

  Well before sunrise, Nick was up, making sure he had all the equipment he needed for this once in a lifetime photo shoot. The weather looked like it was going to be perfect, but that seemed to be the norm around here.

  “Hey Chuckles, grab your gear and move your rear,” he said, giving Charlie a hard shake for good measure. He smiled in saying it, as that had been their dad’s favorite rallying cry on many a trip.

  “Oh my freaking head, do you have a mute button? I’m tapping out, too many last night,” came the not so surprising announcement from Charlie.

  “Ah, me thinks my big brother haveth a tiny set of balls. You stay here and play with them and nurse your little headache, and I’ll bravely venture out into the darkness and unknown by meself!” Nick teased and slammed the door several times on the way out, just to make sure the latch wasn’t sticking and the mute button wasn’t on.

  Having done his homework well beforehand, Nick knew exactly where to drive and park, and where to hike for the perfect view of a summer solstice sunrise. He was initially surprised at the number of vehicles already there, but then he remembered Bidzii had told him the summer solstice was a significant event to the Native Americans in the area, which is why the bar was so packed, and why they decided to play there last night. Fajada Butte, located within Chaco Canyon, was his destination, and was known for having solar markings for the solstices and equinoxes. It also had a number of small dwellings dating from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. Nick turned off the headlights and got out of the pickup, and as his eyes adjusted he saw that a lot of people had slept in their vehicles out here.

  Not at the luxurious Rim Rock Lodge, like me and my brother with the soft city hands, he thought. He put on a headband with a headlamp, slung a backpack over his shoulders, put in one ear bud connected to his phone, hit random play on his tunes, and started trekking toward the butte to find the ideal vantage point.

  The pitch darkness began to fade, with a slight brightening over the eastern horizon, revealing a sublime vista. Nick double-checked his equipment, deciding to use a tripod again for longer exposures. Despite a fair number of other people about, his spot was isolated, he had framed the butte to maximize the sun rising next to and then over it, with some cacti nearby to break up the horizon. A sense of anticipation hung in the silent and cool pre-dawn air. Once the sun finally broke the plane of the horizon, it appeared to rise quickly, an illusion aided by the lack of any clouds to give it perspective. Nick heard native singing carried in the wind around him. He was enchanted by it, all the while being engrossed in shooting away. How many others had been at this very spot, looking at this exact view, on this very day of the year, for untold centuries? All in this timeless place, in a timeless time.

  With the sun now well above the horizon, Nick knew he had a couple hours to kill until the three large stone slabs on top of the butte would funnel the sunlight onto a famous petroglyph on a cliff wall, exactly bisecting it only on this one day of the year. This was a shot he was excited to get and was playing out the best angle and approach in his mind. He reached into his backpack, pulled out a thermos filled with coffee and a granola bar, and leaned back to enjoy the view. As he did so he heard a loud humph, a deep sort of releasing breath, and saw a large dog had lain down right beside him, which then proceeded to put his massive head directly in his lap.

  “Well, hello there, big guy. What’s your name?” he rhetorically asked, instinctively stroking deep behind its ears. He enjoyed the moment, sipping on his coffee, quietly soaking in the view, but when he tried to lean over to grab his granola bar, he got nudged until he gave up on it and resumed stroking with his free
hand. He took another sip of his coffee and a longer look at the head in his lap and saw this was no ordinary dog. Too big, head and coat looked like a husky but all white, but something more feral about it, a deep underlying strength.

  “Well, if you’re not going to tell me, I’ll just have to call you—” Nick was just about to make up a name, when he heard someone shuffling in back of him.

  “Nanook. His name is Nanook. It’s an Inuit name, meaning polar bear. Well, more exactly, master of bears,” said a soft female voice. Nick still had one ear bud in and one out, and a new song came on. Indigenous, a Native American blues band Nick had latched onto, had started playing This Place I Know, an ode to the broken promises and challenges all too familiar around the reservations.

  She crouched down and put the other loose ear bud in her own ear, above her gently tinkling silver and turquoise earring, and laughed then started humming. “I can see I’m going to have a hard time not liking you.”

  Nick turned over his shoulder and looked at her, and realized he had seen her last night, that she had raised a shot glass up from across the room to him. Dark hair, dark eyes, bronzed skin, a beautiful Amerindian if ever there was one. She took the ear bud out and stood, smiling down at him. Nick stood, or tried to stand, but Nanook wasn’t letting him up, not until she clicked her tongue and he lifted his head.

  “Hello, I’m Nick. I believe I saw you last night, across the room at the bar,” he awkwardly stammered.

  “Oh, I know who you are, Nick LaBounty. I know all about you.”

  Chapter 14 – Morning, June 20

  You have me a quite a disadvantage,” Nick said and smiled, after regaining at least some of his composure.

  Having such a large dog hold him in place with a head that seemed like it should have been on a horse had thrown him off his game. He just wasn’t feeling quite as debonair as he wanted to come across.

  “Well, first off, for some reason my wolf likes you. Well he’s not all wolf, but mostly. At least the good parts. The rest are husky. To be honest with you, Nanook doesn’t like too many men, especially Bilagáana, I mean white people.

  “He’s an impressive animal, where did you get him?” Nick inquired.

  “He was a gift to my people at a Tribal Council gathering of clans from all over the Americas. And my people gave him to me, for some work I had been doing, sort of as my bodyguard.”

  Nick laughed as Nanook came up behind him, nuzzled his head between his legs and started walking right through him, like he wanted to take him for a ride. Nick hopped on one foot and sidestepped him, but Nanook simply reared up, put a massive paw on each of his shoulders, gave him a deep sniff in the ear with no ear bud, and followed up with a wet chin to forehead lick. She started laughing so hard she doubled over, losing her composure too, unable to even tell Nanook to get down. Finally catching her breath, she snapped her fingers and pointed down.

  “I’ve never seen him do that with anyone, white or Indian. You must be the wolf whisperer, or just smell like bacon.”

  Nick staggered backward, caught himself, and self-consciously tried to smooth his hair but ended up rubbing a sticky ear.

  “And why exactly is it you’re going to have a hard time not liking me?” Nick asked, finally able to look directly at her. She was immediately beguiling to him, with a slightly exotic accent he couldn’t quite place, like someone who speaks many languages but English isn’t native to them. She was definitely 100% Native American, with dark, almost black eyes, and tall for her race with a lithe, athletic figure. Nanook had to outweigh her by at least 50 pounds, no wonder he was the bodyguard.

  “Oh, maybe it is because anyone who plays Indigenous, my all-time favorite band, on their headphones at sunrise on the solstice is OK with me. Did you know they were all Nakota? Their music struck a nerve with tribes across the country, one of the first Indian bands to make it in the white man’s world. And of course they had to make their mark with the blues, because they touched on all our struggles.”

  “My dad was a huge blues fan, and I grew up with it. I actually saw Indigenous play outdoors at Millennium Park in Chicago when I was young, and got hooked. My dad said their lead guitarist was the Native American version of Carlos Santana. The more I learned about music over the years, the more I realized he was absolutely right. As they say: long live rock!”

  Nanook sat down next to Nick, shimmying over until he was positioned directly on one of his shoes. “Interesting, he is marking you in every way possible,” she observed as Nick reached down absent mindedly and gently rubbed him. “I liked your little performance last night. You obviously grew up around music and know your way around a stage. My brother thought you were quite good, even had a little rhythm for a white boy,” she teased.

  “Ah, so that’s how you know my name. I have to tell you, I had a ball playing with Bidzii and his buddies. We got to know each other a bit between sets, great guy. Jams the blues and likes bourbon too, my kind of wing man.”

  “Yeah, well don’t get too cocky. I didn’t think you were too bad either, but you’re no Clapton.”

  Nick looked at her and smiled. “So, you’re Navajo too then. Tell me, does this mysterious creature who raised her glass to me last night have a name?” Nick inquired with a raised, slightly sticky eyebrow.

  “Altsoba, but my friends call me Soba. Pleased to meet you Nick LaBounty,” she replied, taking an offered cup of coffee from him.

  “Nice to meet you too, Soba. I heard what Bidzii means, what about your name?”

  “You’ll laugh, but it means ‘at war.’ Turns out it wasn’t so far off, the way my life has played out. I guess that’s why I ended up with this big hunk of canine following me around,” she replied.

  Soba sat and pulled her knees up under her chin, sipped on the coffee, and quietly admired the view. Nick took a couple of tries to finally get his foot out from under Nanook, then sat as well, the dog between them. Nanook stretched out and lay down, put his head heavily back on Nick’s lap, and grunted and nudged until he got Nick to resume his deep tissue, behind the ear massage.

  Soba looked down at the dog, shook her head and said, “You’re just so needy,” then glanced at Nick with her piercingly dark eyes and smiled.

  They sat in silence, watching the other hikers pack up and scurry off to other places, and saw an eagle and a couple of falcons riding the thermal updrafts surrounding the butte. Nick had a hundred questions he wanted to ask her, was eager to get to know her better, but he didn’t want to break the calm, peaceful aura that had settled around them. Not just yet. Finally, he couldn’t stand it any longer and was about to speak when she beat him to it by a beat. “So what brings two outlanders to Chaco Canyon on the summer solstice? One who obviously can’t dance, and one who has some magical spell on my wolf?”

  Nick paused before answering, thinking he could get lost in the pools of those deep, dark eyes. “It’s a long story, but one quick part of it is my brother and I came to scatter the ashes of our parents this evening. We were all here as a family in our youth, and my dad found it a sacred place, for a lot of reasons. What about you? What brings you here? Why do you need such a large, furry bodyguard?”

  “Hmm,” Soba thought. “That’s a long story too, but the short answer is I am here because of the solstice, because I am a medicine woman, a shaman to my people, and because we too find this place sacred.” With that she slowly got up, stretched, handed him back an empty cup and held his hand briefly for a moment, and then said, “Goodbye for now, Nick LaBounty.”

  Turning on her heel she walked briskly away, clicking her tongue once. Nanook cocked an ear and then immediately got up, looked at her leaving, then looked back at Nick, wagging his tail. He gave the side of Nick’s face a quick tongue bath, and then bounded happily after her. Without looking back Altsoba smiled inwardly, this unpretentious Bilagáana was growing on her. Nick watched her drift into the distance, grabbed the bottom of his shirt and wiped the side of his face with it and thought, Did tha
t all really just happen?

  Nick sat there for a while, contemplating everything that had transpired, getting his mind around it, while looking out into the timeless beauty that surrounded him. Glancing at his watch, he finally gathered his things, careful to leave no trash behind. Having been trained so meticulously by his father, he picked up even what he hadn’t brought in. Over to Fajada Butte itself he meandered, working his way up to the petroglyph on a cliff wall, where he found a small crowd likewise waiting for the sun to hit it just right. His camera lens was so powerful he didn’t need to be in front and found a comfortable place in the shade to get the postcard shot he had in his mind, along with a quick video clip. After a night of drinking he carefully kept himself hydrated, consciously sipping on the water bladder in his backpack.

  He looked at his watch and then through the camera lens and started shooting away. An audible gasp came from those gathered, as a distinct shaft of light formed on the petroglyph, and then quickly moved like an arrow shot through the center of it.

  Ingenious minds to create that in any time or place, especially with the primitive tools they had, Nick thought, inspired at what he had just seen. He worked his way back down, glancing at the pueblos built into the sides of the butte, and wandered over to see the remains of one of the strategically located Kivas, large structures partially built into the ground, used for religious ceremonies and oriented on a celestial axis.

  On the floor of the Kiva and astride the fire pit was a small hole that Nick knew was called a Sipapu, which was a symbolic passageway to the underworld. It was believed that as the first ancient peoples had emerged from it they changed from lizard-like beings into humans who split into the various tribes. The Anasazi, more commonly known as the Pueblo Indians, who built this and all of the surrounding complexes, definitely had the archeologist in him firmly impressed.