by AULT, SANDI
Valerio smiled. “Oh, I see. You’re going to be their witness? Good! Well, just bring Mountain in and give him a drink, and he can be a witness, too! I’d like to see that wolf, I haven’t seen him since he was a pup. I’ll have my clerk look for something he can drink out of.”
“I have a dish,” I said, heading out the door to the parking lot.
Back inside, Mountain drank all the water in the collapsible dish and looked at me imploringly for more. “Sorry, buddy,” I said, “I don’t want you to bloat. You’ve already got a challenge with all that deer sausage to digest.” While Judge Valerio remarked repeatedly how big and beautiful Mountain had become, I silently prayed that the wolf wouldn’t send up a stink during the wedding ceremony as he had at the BLM.
In the small county courtroom, Mountain and I and the judge’s clerk attended the wedding of the two young people who were desperate to marry that day. As I stood next to the bride, the wolf sat beside me, attentive to Judge Valerio’s every word. At the end of the brief ceremony, the clerk and I stepped to a table to sign the certificate as witnesses.
Without warning, the bride yelled, “Get ready!” I looked up just as she tossed her bouquet directly toward me. I failed to react for an instant, then hastened to grasp for the small spray out of some vague sense of propriety. But my fingers only managed to touch the tips of a few fragile petals, and the bouquet tumbled to the floor at my feet. Mountain dodged the incoming object with a start, then sniffed at the little bunch suspiciously. Satisfied that the bundle was harmless, he dropped to the floor with a plumpf and yawned.
The newlyweds rushed away to their honeymoon supper while Judge Valerio and I exchanged a few parting pleasantries. It was dark when the wolf and I stepped out into the cold night, and the judge’s clerk locked the glass door of the courthouse lobby behind us. My Jeep was the only car in the unlit visitors’ parking lot at the back of the justice center. Colonies of mammoth cottonwoods bordered the lot on either side, their wrinkled limbs lifted up toward the stars. Remnants of last night’s windblown snow lay piled against the giant trunks at their bases. As I was loading Mountain into the cargo area in the back of the car, a white pickup swerved into the lot at too-high speed and drove around the perimeter of the parking area, bass notes booming from blown speakers in the back of the cab. I watched the truck as I lowered the hatch on the Jeep, then slowly turned to follow the vehicle as it circled me. When the pickup started its second circuit around the lot, I opened my coat and unsnapped the snug on my sidearm. The truck stopped in the next parking lane over, and the thundering bass notes ceased, too. The passenger-side window lowered. I stepped back so that I was protected by the rear corner of the Jeep, one hand on my automatic. A man waving an open, quart-sized bottle of beer yelled, “Hey, is the wedding over?”
I sat in the driver’s seat for a few minutes with my forehead against the cold steering wheel, reminding myself I hadn’t had any sleep the night before, and that anyone might have gone on the defensive in the same situation. Just as I was beginning to feel some of the adrenaline subside, a shrill, piercing peal sent a shock wave up my spine. I jumped in my seat, then froze, unable to process the meaning of this unfamiliar alert. In a moment, the sharp sound repeated and I located its source. I picked up the offender, stared into its one large eye, and registered what I saw. I inhaled, pushed the green dot, and spoke. “Resource Protection, this is Agent Wild . . .”
6
Aunties
“We’ve identified the body.” Diane’s voice sounded clipped through the cell phone’s speaker. “Agent Sterling’s going to release the name of the victim to the media. We missed the five o’clock news, but they’ll pick it up for the six in Albuquerque. The deceased was a woman named Cassie Morgan, apparently an unmarried seventy-seven-year-old with no known kin.”
“That didn’t take long.”
“No, we got lucky. Morgan’s housekeeper reported her missing just today. When we went to check for missing persons reports on an elderly white female, it was right there, a perfect match. Evidently the cleaning lady comes once a week, and Morgan’s bed had not been slept in since the last time she was there; everything was exactly as it was on the previous weekly visit. We went out to Morgan’s house, talked to the housekeeper. She was unwilling to go to the morgue and identify the body, so we obtained dental records. There was a bill from a Taos dentist in Morgan’s files.
“And listen to this: Cassie Morgan was a former matron at the Indian boarding school. The housekeeper told us that much, but she wouldn’t say more. So I called that guy at the radio station who knows all the local history—you know, the same guy who writes that column in the newspaper about the customs of northern New Mexico? He was reluctant to say much at first, but finally he told me that Cassie Morgan was remembered for depriving, humiliating, and beating the Indian children.”
“Man,” I said, more to myself than to Diane. “What a broken world this is sometimes.” I felt my spirit standing at an emotional crossroads, not knowing which way to go. On the one hand, the shocking image of Cassie Morgan’s desecrated body came up like bile, the killer’s fury still clinging to the corpse long after the abominator had left the scene. I should feel some sympathy for someone so wronged. And yet the things I had seen and sensed in the abandoned school were even more horrific to me. If the woman who died had caused the sorrows that still clung to the walls of San Pedro de Arbués Indian School, then the temptation was to feel some satisfaction at her death. This last thought caused me discomfort. I clicked off the connection without even saying good-bye.
Tired as I was, there was no way to get out of the commitment I had made to help the Tanoah women from Anna Santana’s clan make up Christmas baskets that night. Before going to the pueblo, I shopped for goods to put in the baskets at a little market on the north side of Taos. When I told Jesse, the grocer, that I wanted something special to give, he helped me pick out some small, sample-sized bags of piñon coffee.
“Where you been?” he asked, as he put the little coffee bags in a sack. “You look like you got all banged up.” He pointed at the torn sleeve of my coat.
“I was out all night tracking a mountain lion.”
“In that storm? How could you track in a storm like that?”
“I couldn’t. When the storm hit, I had to take shelter out by that ruin, Pueblo Peña.”
“Oh, that’s no good.”
“It was better than being out in the weather.”
“Yes, but do you know what Pueblo Peña means?”
“No.” I handed Jesse some cash for the purchase.
He took time to carefully count out my change from the register. As he was putting the money into my open palm, he looked up from my hand to my eyes. “It means Place of Sorrow.”
I picked up my sack. “I’d say that’s about right. Thanks, Jesse.”
“I hope you will forgive me for saying this, Señorita Wild, but you don’t look so good.”
“I’m just tired.”
“You must get some rest then, my friend. Would you like for me to get you a bone for El Lobo? I got some nice beef knuckles.”
“Thanks anyway, but Mountain doesn’t need to add to the deer sausage he stole from my boss this morning. If he eats anything more today, I won’t be able to ride home with him in a closed-up car. And it’s too cold to drive with the windows down.”
At Tanoah Pueblo, several bonfires blazed in the plaza at the center of the ancient walled village. Dark silhouettes of figures wrapped in blankets surrounded the towering fires smoking with the perfume of trementina, the spicy-smelling sap of piñon wood. Behind this scene rose the massive four-story, stair-step structure that was the oldest and most distinctive element of the pueblo. Its adobe face glowed mango-colored in the firelight against a backdrop of black mountains and deep indigo sky.
I drove past the wall and down a narrow dirt lane to the home of my medicine teacher, Anna Santana, who had instructed me from the beginning of our relationship to call
her “Momma Anna.” Nine aunties from her clan had gathered at her house that evening and were ready to begin work.
“I saw bonfires in the village,” I said, after I’d greeted Momma Anna.
“Some those men, they happy tonight,” she said. “We got work do.” She pointed at two high columns of stacked plastic laundry baskets.
And work we did. We spent over an hour filling thirty baskets with all sorts of goodies for the poor and elderly families at the pueblo. Crocheted hot pads, hand-thrown pottery Christmas ornaments, packets of elk and buffalo jerky, strings of dried chiles and garlic, sacks of candies, jars of homemade chokecherry jam, cans of peaches, and the small bags of piñon coffee I’d brought were sorted into the humble containers. When we had filled each of them more than halfway, a colorful piece of cut cloth was draped over the top, and then tied under the basket’s rim with a long piece of twine.
While we worked, the aunties chattered, mostly in Tiwa.
Yohe, one of my favorites, suddenly broke into English. “My son see on TV over at casino. He came fast my house, tell me good news.”
“What good news?” I asked.
“Tst-tst!” Momma Anna warned, wagging a finger at me—perhaps because I had just asked a question, which was considered rude among the Tanoah.
Yohe answered me, in spite of this. “Mean old teacher leave this world.”
There was a chorus of grunts from the women gathered, a ritual I had witnessed before when the women were releasing something unwanted, cleansing their spirits by breathing out repeatedly with a low, percussive unh!
Yohe went on after this: “Lot of us have many bad time, that one.”
“You mean the woman who was matron at the Indian boarding school,” I said, careful not to say the name of the deceased.
No one answered, but many of the women were nodding their heads in agreement.
Suddenly, one of the aunties answered Yohe as if I had not even spoken: “You were not there that long, Yohe. They took me there when I was five, away from my family. I had to give up my name. They called me Rebecca. They cut my hair, and if I spoke Tiwa, they washed my mouth out with chlorine and lye and it burned for days. I was there so long, I forgot what my mother and father looked like. The headmaster wouldn’t let the young ones go home for holidays because he was afraid we wouldn’t want to come back. I remember crying because I was so lonely for my family, and that mean old matron made me stand in the hallway all night. She tied my hands and feet together so if I fell asleep I would fall and hurt myself. When they finally let me come back home, I had forgotten who I was, and I didn’t even want to be at Tanoah Pueblo anymore. I didn’t want to be an Indian! I had to work hard to learn my own language again, to get to know my family. I almost left here and tried to be white because they made me hate who I was, what I am!” She began to cry, and several of the other women went to her and comforted her.
Another auntie spoke. “They never have enough food, too many mouths to feed. I hate that soupy thing they make us eat, taste like dirt water. I am hungry all time, even now, I am still hungry from that.”
One woman laughed. “Oh, at least you don’t have to sleep in same bed with stink girl.”
Yohe said, “I not sleep nobody. I wet bed. I am so lonely, afraid, I make water at night, not even know.”
The women all shook their heads and made little commiserating noises.
Yohe turned to me. “I get sick eye, they send me home. Almost go blind. They want me out so they will not get it and go blind, too.”
Momma Anna spoke. “You home this time, Yohe. That next other time gone. We all home today.”
“Not all,” Yohe muttered under her breath. “Unh.”
All the aunties helped carry the baskets from Momma Anna’s main room into a cold mudroom along the side of her kitchen. The women made approving comments about how attractive the baskets looked, and how happy they would make the recipients. Then, one by one, the ladies wrapped themselves in their blankets and went out the door, bidding one another a good night.
As I was leaving, Momma Anna made a request. “Maybe you help take basket to people, Christmas Eve.”
“Sure, I’d be glad to.”
“Many basket. Maybe you drive.”
“Yes, I’ll drive.”
“Yohe drive next other time. This time, candy cost more.”
“Oh, she’s out of gas money?”
“Not too far to walk home from here.”
“I can give her a ride. Which way did she go? I’ll go pick her up and take her home.”
“No. That Yohe’s gift. Candy, no gas.”
I got in the Jeep and turned the key in the ignition. The headlamps illuminated Momma Anna’s little adobe house with its apple tree in front, a stack of cut wood along one side. I knew that Momma Anna depended on the wood for heat and to fire her pottery, and on the apple tree for fruit. She also counted on the small, desperately tended summer garden in the back for food—which she ate fresh, and canned and dried for the cold-weather months. I had accompanied her as she gathered wild spinach and harvested piñon nuts for family meals. The men at the pueblo hunted annually to make sure that the elders had meat, and Anna Santana dried some as jerky in addition to cooking it fresh in posole and chili and stew. She made a little money from the sale of her handmade pottery, dreamcatchers, and jewelry to buy the rest of the things she needed from the market in Taos. I had been to the homes of several of the aunties involved in tonight’s Christmas basket project, and all of the women lived well below what the rest of the country would consider the level of poverty. And yet, this did not seem to affect the aunties’ willingness to give generously of whatever they had. They had saved and schemed, worked and cooked, and somehow managed to come up with bountiful Christmas baskets for those whom they perceived to be in real need.
As I drove past the village plaza again on my way out, the bonfires had burned down, but a gang of men huddled around one small fire they were keeping alive. Their shadows hovered like dark spirits on the adobe wall of the pueblo behind them. The group suddenly burst into loud laughter over something one of them had said. I saw a bottle passed between two of the men, even though alcohol was forbidden on the reservation. The recipient jumped to his feet, and his silhouette—distorted in the flickering firelight—looked more like a coyote than a man. He held up the bottle as if it were a lance or a tomahawk and his strength came from its power—and he gave a whooping war cry.
7
Bad Wolf
I was bone tired and aching as I made the forty-five-minute drive from Tanoah Pueblo to the remote cabin west of Taos where I lived. I prayed all the way that an elk or coyote wouldn’t dash in front of my car, as they were wont to do. To stay awake, I promised myself a hot shower when I got home, a warm fire in my woodstove, and then a good night’s sleep.
But it was not to be.
For the third time in as many weeks, the electricity was off at my remote little abode, which was nestled against forested foothills. I rented this place, which was almost entirely off the grid. No phone, no television reception, no Internet—and though some or all of these might be available via satellite, there were not enough residents in the area to make it worth anyone’s while to develop these services for so few. All this was fine with me. My first six years at the BLM, I had worked as a range rider, riding fence lines and patrolling the backcountry either on horseback or in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. I had learned to sleep out under the stars, travel light, and live next to nature for seven or eight months of the year.
But for a year and a half now, I’d been assigned as liaison to Tanoah Pueblo, which was nearly surrounded by BLM land. I had to interact with people every day, frequently show up dressed in a uniform. When the power went out at my cabin, that meant I lost kitchen and bathroom facilities because my water was drawn from a cistern by an electric pump. During the previous power outages, I had told myself that the situation was temporary, used an area in the woods behind my house as an open-
air latrine, roughed it until the electricity came back on. I had hauled water in buckets for washing up and for cooking from La Petaca, the shallow, icy stream above my cabin, about an eighth of a mile away in the forest. I can cope better than most with inconveniences of this nature. But this was getting old.
Since I had not been home for two days, my cabin was so cold that it was probably a good thing there was no water in the pipes. I cleaned the ash out of the woodstove, laid a new fire, and tended it until it got going. Then I grabbed the big plastic bucket, a tube to siphon, and a little ax to break the ice, and headed up the slope toward the woods and La Petaca. Mountain ran ahead of me, eager for an outing after spending so much of the day snoozing in the back of my Jeep.
I chose a good place on one side of the stream where there was solid, high ground next to a fairly deep little pocket that trout liked to frequent during the spring and summer flows. These little recesses might have been the reason for the name of this seasonal stream. La Petaca meant “tobacco pouch,” probably named for the brownish water that pooled in tiny coves on the edges of the current at the center. I squatted on the cold ground and began chipping at the ice with my ax. I could hear Mountain sniffing and snorting and snapping twigs as he explored around me. As I struck the ice with my ax, I felt a throbbing ache in my shoulder where it had slammed into the gate. My head hurt both from lack of sleep and the welt from the stirrup. I pounded the ice again and again, creating a rhythmic sound with the impact: chank, chank, chank, chank. The cadence seemed to offer momentum to my thrusts, so that all I had to think about was keeping the beat—not how the blade was barely scoring the ice, how the ice was so thick that it wasn’t breaking, how it might be that the shallow stream was frozen completely through, or even how much it hurt to strike each blow. It was only the tempo that mattered, keeping time, every crack ringing out in the night in the silent woods.
