Wild Sorrow

by AULT, SANDI

  I watched him as he hurried away across the plaza. “Wow. The church bell really startled him,” I said.

  Sevenguns nodded. “Many our tribe have a scar inside from that time, you know. It is not good, that school. Tanoah of many age—my father, his father—many are wounded from that time at that place. Rule Abeyta is like that. They ring a bell at that school, up in that tower there, and it mean chore time, or it mean we have to pray now, or lesson time, or it time for someone get a beating, or they make us all stand and look while they have a trial and some little child they make a decision how to punish him. That bell ring and we march, we get up, we sit down, we kneel down, that bell ring and we are like children with no soul, you know? We just do.

  “When they close that school, some people from Tanoah Pueblo tie that bell out there with big rope. We push sage up in that bell until it cannot make a sound, we tie it down so it cannot move. It must be silent so it never sing again that sad song that make children slaves.”

  I felt such sadness that my body felt heavy, and I wanted to sit down by the fire, to not move, not think. I hadn’t had much sleep, and I knew I was tired, but this story reminded me of the way I had felt in the abandoned school. After a long silence, I said, “Thank you, Grandfather, for telling me about that time.”

  He nodded.

  “I thought you said you weren’t good at talking much.”

  He smiled. “Maybe today I am good.”

  It was my turn to smile.

  “You want to catch that cat, put something that move.”

  “I was going to hang meat. The cats are starving.”

  “Cat is not raven. Cat want food that move, not food already dead.”

  You’d be surprised, I thought to myself. Then I said aloud: “This cat knows what it means to be hungry.”

  9

  The Coldfire Episode

  I went to talk with Scout and Lorena Coldfire, ranchers whose spread abutted the BLM land near the ruin and the abandoned Indian school. Scout, whose family had owned and ranched the land there for five generations, turned out to be a font of wisdom about the locale. Over coffee and some delicious homemade cookies, he told me all about the historic land disputes in that area between the Spanish and the Indians, and later the Anglos—including his ancestors.

  “That ruin out there looks just like a castle from a ways off,” he said. “You can see it from miles around, perched up high on that rim like that.”

  “That’s where the cougar had her den,” I said. “There must not be any human traffic in that area, or she wouldn’t have put the cubs there.”

  “I don’t think anyone goes out there,” Scout said. “It’s landlocked on three sides. And if someone had to come in from the west, that’d be pretty tough. It’s a long piece to the nearest road out that way. It would be days of harsh badlands hiking.”

  Lorena, who had been in the middle of baking when I arrived, returned from the kitchen with another plate of cookies fresh from the oven. “I think I’m probably the only person who goes out to that old school,” she said. “I take food and flowers to the graves of the children in the cemetery behind the school every year on the Day of the Dead. But I’ve never seen anyone else coming or going out that way, or any signs that anyone ever has.” She picked up the coffee carafe to pour me another cup and found it empty. “Just a minute,” she said. “I’ve got a fresh pot brewing.” She headed back to the kitchen.

  Scout picked up one of the warm cookies. “Well, come to think of it, someone goes out there every once in a while. I think it’s the Indians. Did you know there’s a stone staircase carved into the cliff wall right there near the ruin?”

  “You mean steps?” I said. “Or hand- and footholds?”

  “Oh, it’s real crude, just the pecked-out places to put hands and feet, like you said. It’s weathered enough, I don’t think many people know what it is.”

  “Does it go all the way down into the canyon?”

  “Sure does. I think the Indians from long ago must have carved that staircase into the rock so they could go down to get their water from the river. It has to be. I don’t know how else they’d get water up there if they didn’t.”

  “You said you’d seen signs of people out there?”

  He got up and went to a small secretary and took out a piece of paper and a pen. “Let me draw you a map.” He started sketching as he spoke. “If you go right straight out to the west from the ruin, there is a place where some big rocks sit right on the edge. Most people wouldn’t think much about it but the rocks are blocking a little pathway, and you can’t see it very easily. But if you can slip around those boulders—there’s a pretty steep grade to it—but there’s a narrow little path there that lets you down just twelve feet or so to a shelf just below the brow of the canyon rim. It’s not a wide shelf, maybe six feet at best, and it’s under a lip, so you can’t see it from up on top. But that’s where the stone staircase leads down from. And there’s two small shrines there—just little cairns of rock, but I’ve seen them decorated with offerings from time to time.”

  “What kind of offerings?”

  “Oh, you know, the usual things.”

  “Like feathers? Prayer bundles?”

  “Yeah, stuff like that.”

  Lorena came back with the coffee. “Do you have a big dog out in your car?”

  I stood and looked out the window. Mountain was standing up in the back of the Jeep, looking out one side and then the other. “He’s a wolf,” I said. “He’s been in my Jeep most of the morning. Would you mind if I let him out? I’ll put him on a lead.”

  Lorena set the carafe down. “A wolf?” She hurried for the entry and grabbed a coat from the hook by the door. “I can’t wait to see him. Come on, Scout, there’s a wolf out there!”

  Later, after Mountain had met the ranch dogs and peed on every bush and post on the ranch house lawn, I explained to the Coldfires that unless we trapped the cougars, they probably would not survive.

  “My father and grandfather would have rejoiced at the prospect,” Scout said. “Fewer mountain lions to take our beef.”

  “Are predators attacking your cattle?” I asked.

  “Not often. And I’m not my father or grandfather, either. I’m starting to get that we need to leave room for wildlife. Of course, that’s to a point. If I start losing cattle, I’m going to—”

  “Oh, we haven’t lost any for a long time. I wonder if we shouldn’t let her put out her traps for the pumas,” Lorena said.

  “What about if you do get them in your traps? Where will you release them after you’re done with them?”

  “I’m going to call the Department of Game and Fish agent for this area, Charlie Dorn. We will talk to him about that.”

  “Oh, yeah, we know Dorn. He’s a good guy. He helps me keep my ponds stocked, and he arranged for some folks to do an owl study here one time—they released a pair up in those foothills.”

  I didn’t tell the Coldfires, but now that I had been to their property, I believed the wounded cougar and her cubs were more likely to have moved there than onto the high mesas of the reservation. The Coldfire land offered safety in its wooded areas and rocky clefts where there would be sheltering caves.

  “I’m sure the cougars have left the den at the ruin permanently because of all the recent noise and activity there,” I said. “I don’t think that little family will survive if we don’t trap them and try to save them. The cubs are too young to hunt alone, and the she-lion is wounded. And she was awfully thin.”

  Lorena and Scout looked at one another. I knew we’d reached the point where I dare not be the next one to speak. When I was young—before an accident had taken his arm, and drink had taken his soul—my father, a Kansas farmer, had frequently demonstrated the principle he called “the next person who talks buys it.” When dealing on the price of a tractor or a dozen eggs, he knew that when both sides had stated their case, the next person who spoke would be the one to give up ground.

&nbs
p; “I’m just wondering: how would you get them to come to the traps?” Lorena asked.

  Cha-ching!

  I drove my Jeep cross-terrain along the Coldfire Ranch boundary where it joined the BLM Pueblo Peña parcel, looking for a good spot to set traps. I stopped near a spring that had formed a small ice pond no more than ten feet across. Sheltering berms formed a crescent shape around the seep. Although Scout Coldfire had stated that the only way the ancient Puebloans could have gotten water up to the ruin on the canyon rim was by bringing it up from the river, I recognized this place as an archaeological site. The ingenious ancient ones had learned to build check dams on plateaus to collect rain and spring snowmelt, and huge earth mounds like these to protect modest springs and encourage the scarce water to pool. They had irrigated the arid land in the most hostile places and created scarified crop fields. I knew this watering hole would be an attraction to the cougar, and since it was near to the ruin, she probably knew about it and had used it as a water source. It seemed a good place to set some traps. I was careful not to spread my scent along the ground, and I didn’t let Mountain out to do so either. I got my field glasses out of the Jeep and scoped the site.

  I heard the whine of an engine in the distance. Turning my binoculars toward the sound, I saw an ATV puttering along slowly about a mile away on BLM land, traveling in the direction of Pueblo Peña and the Indian school. I threw my field glasses in the passenger seat, fired up the Jeep’s engine, and drove. I knew the turf was too rugged for me to get far, but that ATV was barely idling along, so I hoped I could get near enough to get a better look at it before I had to turn back.

  I sped out onto the scrubland and managed to close a half mile of the gap between us before the driver of the ATV must have spotted me coming. That buggy tore into high gear and suddenly veered away from the ruin and out onto the high plains to the north. I knew from my previous day’s survey of the surroundings that the ground to the north was riddled with arroyos. But nonetheless, I gave chase, knowing full well I didn’t have the machine for it. The ATV raced across a dangerous, high-desert obstacle course, and I pursued, barreling up and down the landsliding slopes of red dirt arroyos, my Jeep taking to the air and Mountain and me along with it. We rocketed over sage-covered berms and rattled over ripple rock outcrops, the wolf jostling around in the back trying to keep from crashing into one side of the cargo area and then the other. I pushed the Jeep to its limits, calling out a litany of warnings to Mountain as I went, “Look out, buddy. Brace yourself! Get ready! No, get down. Hang on.” I talked to the Jeep, too, as we blasted up out of a gully onto a slender, soft-dirt ridge that skirted the brim of a craterlike depression. “Come on, baby! Come on!” I struggled to keep the wheels from dipping to either side and drawing us down into a roll. Mountain stood up in the back and lowered his head to look out the front window, keenly aware that we were on the hunt. We shot over the slickrock, careening at a teetering angle on the sandstone edges and ledgy slopes leading along a low white brow at the end of the canyon. Here, the river played out and panned into a wide, waterless streambed blanketed by a foot-thick base of dry quicksand. All through the chase, the ATV had barely eluded me at every turn, but now that we were down in the wash, it scooted through the silt, while my Jeep’s wheels spun, churning into the dry sand, losing traction.

  After several tries, I managed to get one wheel onto rock and the four-wheel drive gained enough purchase to propel the car slowly forward onto some rocky soil on one side of the dry gulch. But while I struggled to keep the Jeep from bogging down in the sand, the ATV raced away and out of sight around a bend.

  I pulled up onto some solid ground and got out, letting Mountain out, too. A stand of slender, bare willows stood waiting for spring, when this dry riverbed would swell with life from the snowmelt. A mile in the distance, high on the top of a vertical cliff, Pueblo Peña looked—as Scout Coldfire had said—like a castle in the air.

  10

  Latchkey ATV

  It took me the rest of the afternoon to get back. I called Roy on the Screech Owl and reported the incident with the ATV. “It’s suspicious that the ATV seemed to be headed to Pueblo Peña and then veered away when I pursued,” I said.

  “You’re right about that, especially since a vehicle like that would be the most likely means for transporting a body out there to that old school. Did you get a look at the rig, maybe get a model, an identifying plate, anything?”

  “No. I didn’t get that close. I couldn’t tell you much about the ATV, except that it seemed bigger than most. And it was so dusty, I couldn’t tell if it was dark green or black.”

  “That’s too bad. You be sure to report the incident to the FBI.”

  “I will,” I said. “I’ll call Diane as soon as we’re done.”

  “Good,” Roy said. “I just hope it wasn’t a latchkey ATV. This danged ATV issue is so rampant that the Santa Fe office has coined that term because so many kids are coming home from school and amusing themselves by tearing around on public lands on their three-and four-wheelers.”

  “I don’t think a schoolkid could drive like that.”

  I heard a sigh on the other end of the phone. “I hate to ask about your Jeep.”

  “You’ll be relieved to know that I haven’t wrecked or seriously damaged it, but there may well be some scratches and dings from the chase.”

  Roy chuckled. “Well, that’s good for you. Because I can usually count on keeping the body and auto glass shops in Taos in business just from your handiwork alone.”

  “Hey, that’s not fair!”

  “You know I’m right. Call Langstrom. You need practice using the phone.”

  I called Diane and told her about the ATV chase.

  “Tell me again about the other vehicle,” Diane said.

  “It was larger than the average ATV, I think. It had something like a cargo box on the back. Dark color. Maybe black.”

  “Those are called UTVs. They’re bigger and more powerful, sort of like a cross between a small pickup and an ATV. Did you see the driver?”

  “No,” I said. “I never got that close.”

  Knowing I would have to prime the pump for the cistern when I got home that night, I stopped at Jesse’s small market to buy some jugs of water. Just to be sure, I bought extra. I was the only customer in the store, so Jesse and I exchanged chitchat about the weather and the upcoming holidays at the register. “Hey, did you hear about that old lady who used to teach at the Indian school?” he asked.

  “I did.” I nodded, looking down into my grocery sack. “I heard about that.”

  “I knew her, you know. A little bit, anyway. She ordered her groceries from me.”

  I hesitated. Then I asked: “What was she like?”

  “Señora Morgan? She was kind of cranky, you know. She had a real nice house, though, real nice.”

  I lingered at the register, hoping for more. A silence fell between us. Finally, I said, “Anything else you can tell me about her?”

  He looked one way and then the other, as if someone might be listening in. Then he leaned over the register and said, softly, “You see, I delivered there every two weeks, always the same thing: a case of wine, four lamb chops, two pounds of sausage, two dozen eggs, a bag of potatoes, a bag of carrots, a chicken, and a roast. You must not let my wife know I told you that. Ay! She would kill me. We don’t talk about the customers. Especially if they order wine.”

  “I won’t mention it, Jesse.” I thought about Sevenguns and the story he’d told about the children getting sick and going hungry while the teachers ate all the eggs and the meat he trapped and shot.

  Jesse interrupted my thoughts. “Hey, I still got that leg joint for Mountain. If you want, I can go get it for him.”

  “That would be nice, Jesse. I have to go out to the pueblo, and he can worry on that while he’s waiting in the car.”

  Later, when Jesse had given Mountain the bone and was lowering the hatch on the back of my Jeep, he said, “I should say some
thing good so I don’t have to go to confession for talking about the dead. Señora Morgan always paid her bill right on time,” he said. He looked satisfied with himself for having paid his penance.

  “Well, that’s one good thing.”

  “And another thing. I think she was maybe a good Catholic. There was a sister at her house the last few times I took the wine and the groceries.”

  “A nun? From your church?”

  “Not from my church, no. I never met her, but I can tell you she was not from the church here in Taos. If she was from my church, I would know her.”

  11

  Deserters

  Two years ago, Momma Anna had adopted me as her student almost immediately after meeting me at an art show, and had begun instructing me in the ways of her people, which she called “Indun Way.” Initially, when I came to visit her, she talked to me very casually about the customs of her people as she cooked or made pottery or jewelry. She often enlisted my help in many of the labor-intensive tasks that she and the other women of her clan performed, such as collecting clay for making pots, making jerky, and large-scale cooking and baking for feasts. And she included me in family gatherings and some rituals, when it was not forbidden to do so by the tribe.

  When I visited her alone at her house, I often took notes in a notebook. Momma Anna had told me one time that writing things down was my way of learning. When I let her know that I had tried once before to write a book, she astonished me by encouraging me to record the stories, the recipes, and the customs she shared with me for a book about her people. This was especially surprising since she had told me about another author who had written a book about the people from three Tiwa pueblos. His book had been driven out of print, his house burned, and the Puebloans who shared information with him had been banned from their tribes. When I asked Momma Anna about this contradiction, she told me that she feared that the old ways were dying out and that many of the rites and traditions she still practiced would pass away with the elders, gradually eroding the culture and homogenizing it. The Tanoah children were torn between the world outside the pueblo and the tribal ways, and the result was that much of the life Anna Santana had once known was vanishing. Since I loved to write, my job was to attend, watch, listen, and take notes.