by AULT, SANDI
“But what does it mean?”
She turned back to the hearth. “A shout in time, it gets the stray animal out of the woods.”
I gave a soft snort. “Not always.”
Kerry winked at me and grinned. He grabbed a large round log from the firewood on the porch and brought it in to use as a stool, since there were only two chairs.
We ate the beans from pottery bowls and rolled the tortillas and dipped them into the soupy chile sauce that surrounded the legumes. It was a delicious, simple meal.
“I want to ask you about a Spanish word I heard,” I said to Esperanza. “Can you tell me what a ‘monito’ is?”
The old bruja held her big spoon in her fist like a small child might. She stopped midpoint between bowl and mouth, and sauce dripped from the spoon as she hesitated long enough to answer my question. “Monito—it is a little doll.” She shoved the spoonful of beans into her mouth and began macerating them with a delighted smile.
I remembered the box that had been riding shotgun in my Jeep. “Oh, that reminds me,” I said. “I tried to deliver the doll in the box that you gave me to Sister Florinda at the pueblo, but she would not accept it. She asked me if it was a joke.”
Tecolote shrugged. She made a loud slurping noise as she sipped the chile sauce from her spoon.
“I’ll bring it back to you,” I said. “I don’t have it with me today because it’s in my Jeep and we came in Kerry’s truck. But I’ll bring it next time I come.”
The old bruja stopped eating and thought for a moment, her spoon poised in midair. Then, she held it up and waved it to give emphasis to what she said next: “Instead, Mirasol, I think you should find a child who would like a doll for La Navidad.”
Kerry reached for another tortilla from the sackcloth bundle. “This is delicious,” he said. “We’ve been out in the fresh air all day, and I didn’t realize I was so hungry until now. Thank you for the meal.”
“De nada,” the old bruja said, grinning. “It will give you la fuerza for the afternoon.”
“La fuerza?” he said. “What’s that?”
“Strength,” I said. “Right?”
“Sí. You will be glad for a little extra energy today,” Esperanza said, giving a mostly toothless smile.
As we left Tecolote’s cottage, we stepped off the portal into brilliant sunlight and a relatively warm, beautiful New Mexico winter afternoon. We started down the goat path, waving our good-byes.
“Mirasol,” she called to me, waving me back.
I came back up the path.
“It is better that we do not speak about this in la casita. You do not have a monito in your possession, do you?”
“No.”
“Good, that is very good. I did not see it around you, but I wanted to be sure. Many times, over here, when the people are saying ‘monito,’ they are speaking of a witch doll.”
24
The Shower
Back at my cabin, I hooked Mountain to his chain, and I choked back tears as I did so, trying hard not to show weakness.
Kerry tried to console me. “Maybe he’ll learn something from this. Maybe he’ll learn that if he runs off, he’s going to be restrained.”
I looked at the wolf, who dropped to the ground and refused to meet my eyes. “I think he is learning to long for his freedom even more. And to hate me for depriving him of it.” I had been trying to control it, but the worry and sadness welled up in me, and I began to sob. I knelt on the ground and lifted Mountain’s muzzle, but he looked away and struggled to free his chin from my grip.
Kerry and I built a campfire near my makeshift shower at the edge of the woods. I brought a large pot and a grate to place over the fire for heating water to add to the sun-warmed water in the shower bags. I put Mountain on his long lead and bridle and we took him with us to La Petaca to get buckets full of water for the big cauldron. The wolf scampered along exploring in the woods, wandering in and out among the low limbs and brush so that I had to repeatedly disentangle him.
“What did the power company say about why you don’t have electricity?” Kerry asked as we returned to the stream for our second round of water.
“They never made it out here. I called several times, but the only time I ever got a real person on the phone was this morning, and he told me they had sent a guy out yesterday but he couldn’t tell which place was mine. I’m supposed to place a big sign up at the end of my drive where it meets the road.”
“And the FBI didn’t find any connection between your call to the power company and the guy who phoned you about the elk?”
“Apparently their sheets are all clean as a whistle at the power company. They just can’t deliver electricity.”
“But it does seem odd. You don’t know of anyone else who has that cell phone number, anyone who might have given it to anyone else?”
“It’s posted on a list on a bulletin board at the BLM. I never paid any attention to that list before, but it’s possible someone might have given it out, if asked.”
He shook his head. “I don’t get it. Whoever it was knows who you are, they know where you work, and they know what you do. I’m worried about that.”
“Yeah,” I said, stopping to work the lead out from around one of Mountain’s front legs, which had gotten lassoed in it. “Me, too.”
While the water heated, Kerry helped me make a sign for the power company and secure it with a bungee cord to the fencepost at the corner by my drive. Later, when the cauldron had come to a boil, we added steaming water to top off the sun-warmed reservoirs in the black shower bags. We raised them up—one in each of two tall ponderosa pines—via a rope over a tree limb used as a come-along. With Mountain secured by his heavy chain to a nearby tree, we undressed in the pink-gold glow of the last of the day’s sunshine and stepped onto the river stones I had placed on the ground for a shower floor and into the sheltering arms of the pine branches. We opened the valve on one of the bags and I felt the top of my head tingle, sending a telegraphic message of comfort down my spine. The luxurious sensation of warmth fanned across my back and shoulders, soothing the scrapes and bruises, radiating a delicious sense of heat over my arms and chest which spread to my lower torso and then my legs as the water flowed over my skin.
I turned my face up into the spray and felt the rain of wet warmth on my cheeks. I smelled the sharp, spicy sap of the pines, the ancient musk exuding from the moist stones, the earthy scent of damp grass and ground, and the incense of Kerry’s skin, redolent with clean sweat, maleness, and his own aromatic signature. As our hands found one another’s shoulders, a flood of red light unfurled from the orb of fire on the horizon, rippling along the contours of the land, burnishing everything with the beautiful crimson blush of the surrendering sun.
Kerry drew me to him, holding me against his chest. Our skin seemed somehow more naked for being wet. “I could stay like this forever,” he said. “This is so perfect, this moment. Right now.”
“Except for Mountain,” I said into his shoulder.
He pulled back slightly. “What did you say?”
“Except for Mountain. This is perfect for us. But he’s over there on a chain. He’s not free.”
Kerry raised his hand and held the back of my head as he looked into my eyes. His skin glowed bronze with sunset light and the tiny streams of water on his chest glimmered. “We’ll make it up to him, babe. He’s safe. That’s what matters. Now, come here.” His hand gently traced a trickle of water along my spine all the way to the round curve of my bottom.
25
Solstice
It was cold and dark when we set out for Tanoah Pueblo the next morning, Kerry in his truck, and Mountain in my Jeep with me. We had been invited to come prepare for the solstice rituals and then participate in the festivities. At the pueblo, Kerry took Mountain along when he and a few of the men went to gather up wood from the foothills of Sacred Mountain. Here in the pueblo, there was to be no using machinery, digging, chopping of wood, or excessive mo
ving about during this time of “staying still” or Quiet Time, as it was more commonly known. Kerry, a non-Indian and thus immune from these restrictions, would bring the previously stacked, cut, and dried wood back from the store-piles in the foothills by the truckload, and under the direction of the men from the pueblo—and with their help—pile it in great mounds, dotting the large dirt plaza in the center of the walled village of the pueblo. This firewood would be used for the solstice ceremonies, and to build huge bonfires on Christmas Eve for the procession.
Momma Anna had instructed me to meet her outside the church after the first morning mass, but I was early. I stood outside the low adobe churchyard wall, wrapped in a blanket my medicine teacher had given me. I waited in the cold, listening to the sound of water flowing under the ice that nearly covered the small río that ran through the center of the village. Big tissue-paper flakes of snow began to float down from the dark sky.
I heard a hinge creak, and a Tanoah man emerged from a nearby doorway, wrapped in a blanket. He stepped out onto the hard-packed earth in front of his home, holding one hand high to offer cedar to the coming sunrise. As his soft moccasins marched in place, he closed his eyes and gestured with the offering to the seven directions—first to the east and the rising sun, then to the south, the west, the north, the earth below, the sky above, and to the “Within,” holding his pinch of cedar to his heart. As he completed this ritual by sprinkling the cedar tips over the ground, he opened his eyes and saw me. He walked in my direction, but stopped a few yards away from me. We studied one another for a moment, and I recognized Sevenguns just as he discerned that it was me. “It is cold,” he said. “You want some coffee?”
“That sounds good,” I answered, emphatically. Once again, the morning had reminded me of how painfully stiff and sore I still felt from the beating I’d taken in the avalanche two days ago. The cold seemed to exacerbate the experience. “I think I have a while to wait before the early mass is over.”
“You could go on in there,” he said, pointing at the church. “Might get some Jesus.”
“No, that’s okay.” I grinned. “I was told to wait outside, so that’s what I’ll do.”
“You come to my house.” He waved an arm for me to follow him. “I leave the door open, you are just like outside. Only I got coffee and a good fire over there.”
Sevenguns spooned instant coffee into two mugs, then poured boiling water from a blue-speckled, enamelware coffeepot into them. “A man and a woman from the FBI come here,” he said, handing me one of the mugs. “They ask me, ask all the old ones here did we go to that school.”
I stared into my coffee, trying hard to be patient as I waited to see if more details would be forthcoming—and trying even harder not to ask any questions.
“They ask one thing, then another thing, then they leave me and do not come back. They can already see that I am too old and feeble to be the one who kill that woman out there.”
“I’m sure they ruled you out for other reasons. You don’t seem that old or feeble to me.”
Sevenguns smiled. “You the one talk good, now.” He got up and added some sugar to his coffee and stirred it in. He scooped another spoon of sugar and held it up with a questioning expression.
“No, thanks. This is good like it is.”
“Those FBI, they talk Rule Abeyta three time. Also Sica Blue Cloud, go her house two time. She is lot more feeble than me, but still they go there and go back a next time.”
I looked out the door at the falling snow, then back at Sevenguns. “I have been hearing a lot of stories about the school lately. You told me about being hungry there, and hunting and fishing for the staff. Others have told me about their experiences, too. I would like to know more about the kinds of things that happened at San Pedro de Arbués Indian School.”
“That one get herself killed, now everybody want to know about that place. Another day, nobody want to know about it.”
Again, I waited quietly, glancing between my coffee and the churchyard outside the door.
“You want me to talk about that time, the most sad time my life. You can see I have lot of more thing to be happy about, we can talk about them.” He looked directly at me. “I wonder why you want to know those sad story.”
I raised my eyes to meet his. “I don’t know. I feel like I was drawn right into the story of that place myself, when I had to take refuge there to survive that storm.”
He drank the last of his coffee and set the mug down. “It is the same for the children who grew up there. They are forced to be there, so they take refuge in that place so they can survive. Whatever kind of refuge they can find. Those thing that happen there leave us a lot of trouble and pain, even today. Some pain never get heal or feel much better, but we learn how to bring balance when we seek at least that same much joy.”
Just then, the church bell rang, a loud, booming peal that pierced the darkness. The doors to the church opened, and I saw a square of light stretch across the churchyard like a shadow in reverse.
I turned to Sevenguns. “It’s time for me to go,” I said, handing him my mug. “Thank you so much for the coffee.”
“Did you catch you a big cat?” he asked, taking the cup.
“Not yet.”
As I stood at the gate to the churchyard wall, I watched Sister Florinda Maez and a small, dark-haired boy in a lace collar and black robe emerge from the chapel and stand beside the door in reception. A dozen or so people came out and bid the sister good-bye. Sica Blue Cloud was the last parishioner to come out of the church, limping as she did so, leaning on her nephew Eloy’s arm. They stopped to shake the sister’s hand and to exchange the compliments of the day. Eloy glanced out into the churchyard as the two women continued to talk, then noticed me, wrapped in my blanket. He leaned his head forward as if he could not make me out, then came down the short path toward the gate. Seeing me, he chuckled a little as he said, “Jamaica? I thought that was you. What are you doing here?”
“I’m waiting on Momma Anna. Why?”
He flagged a hand. “Oh, of course you are. Of course you are. I apologize. I was just surprised to see you on this dark, cold winter morning.”
By this time, Sica had hobbled up to her nephew. She smiled. “Oh, Jamaica, I am so happy I see you. The Holy Family, they are now at my house, stay with me. You must come visit them.”
“Yes, I’ll have to bring an offering—”
“But one of our important guest,” she frowned, “they are not there.”
I started to speak, but before I could say a word, Sister Florinda Maez hurried toward us with a hand in the air, her long black tunic and scapular billowing behind her, dusting a path in the snow. “Miss Wild,” she said, “Mrs. Santana is waiting inside the sanctuary. She asked me to tell you that she would like a moment with you.”
When I stepped into the tiny chapel, the flickering flames of candles created firefly silhouettes on the whitewashed adobe walls. Only a few gas lamps hung from the vigas in the ceiling, and the corners were black, in deep shadow. I was aware of the stark contrast between light and darkness in the sanctuary, a place where the most sacred spiritual elements of two very vivid and varying cultures had fused into a host of mythic and iconic hybrids. Momma Anna stood before a bulto at the back of the nave, just a few feet from the entrance. She appeared to be speaking to it as she might a living man. I approached slowly, my blanket over my head as was the custom. My mentor looked up and nodded at me. “This my daughter,” she said to the bulto. She held her open palm in the direction of the statue and said to me, “This San Quarai. Patron saint, Tanoah Pueblo.”
“How do you do?”
Momma Anna frowned at me. “He do just fine. Him not patron saint if not do fine. You listen, not talk.” She pointed at me to enforce this last, then walked away toward the doorway of the church, leaving me in the presence of the bulto.
I looked at San Quarai, who was carved and polished from a thick cedar log, with three distinct waves of color gra
ining through the wood: blond, red, and gray. He was close to three feet tall. His body was bent, curving according to the naturally beautiful shape of the cedar limb from which he was made, making him appear to be leaning to one side in a dancelike pose of rapture. He wore a hooded cloak and held his hands up high in front of him as if to welcome the sun or the moon. He had a broad, smiling face, a small, pointy beard, a thick, protruding brow, and he looked like a Spaniard.
I listened for any message San Quarai might have for me, but all I could hear was the hissing of a nearby candle with a greasy wick. Just in case, I nodded my head slightly to the bulto to show my respect, and then I went to join my medicine teacher.
At the entry, Sister Florinda had dismissed her choirboy and was folding his robe and collar over her arm. Momma Anna was intently watching the rooftops of the main structure of the pueblo. The village priests had climbed from level to level on aspen-pole ladders up to the highest place along the back wall. They were wrapped in white blankets and stood stark against the dark western horizon. The brief snowfall was over. The world was silent, hushed by the newly fallen white blanket.
“The cacique is about to mark the solstice,” the sister said.
As if on cue, one of the priests began to call a singsong chant. Residents of the small, central part of the village opened their doors and came out of their houses onto the snow-covered, packed-earth plaza. They turned to the east and watched the light from behind the shadowy mountains begin to appear over snow-capped peaks.
I had seen a similar observance of the sunrise take place in the summer at the solstice. Of the two, the winter practice was more significant at this pueblo. The cacique, or town chief, created the calendar for ceremonies for the entire year based on the winter solstice. The medicine societies then took the cue from that calendar as to when they could perform important rituals and dances. The rhythms of the tribe were set by this day, the moment of sunrise, and the careful calculations done by the cacique and the leaders of the medicine societies, the tribal priests.
