Indian Affairs (historical romance)

by Parris Afton Bonds

  Forewarned by Henri to prepare for the long, dusty trip to Taos, she had donned a linen duster, wide-brimmed hat with long, brown chiffon traveling veil, and patent leather Russian boots, all very fashionable. With Jeremy nodding in the back of the prairie schooner, she huddled beside Henri and stared out over the high, cold desert. In some places, sand had completely drifted across the narrow, rutted road.

  Far away mustard-colored spires of sandstone tipped a cloudless, turquoise sky. But everything else seemed bleached, pale: buff, yellow, ocher, tawny and always that eye-watering pristine white.

  Pale sand, pale sky, shimmering light. Her heartbeat became fainter, faster. It was as if she were dying more quickly rather than healing. Maybe the light-headedness that came from escaping the restrictions of Capitol Hill had colored her initial impression of the blighted land. She had to fight the urge to tell Henri to turn back. Something awaited her here in the dead desert, something more powerful than Life, and she feared it might be Death. Death waiting for her with arms wide open.

  By the time the truck was motoring recklessly along a trail that snaked through a dim canyon, her heart was galloping. Without warning the roadside dropped off a hundred feet toward the jade green Rio Grande. Her hand clutched the door handle. She assessed the prairie schooner interior, built with no thought to weight. With all the camping equipment, her steamer trunk, and its three passengers, the load was clearly far too heavy for the truck.

  Henri grinned. “Relax. I order brake lining by hundred-foot rolls.”

  Erosion had carved grotesque monstrous shapes in the mountains all around them. Stratified rocks in violent colors threatened to tumble from their precarious perches above them. The profound silence, the way the light sparkled off the tons of rushing water below . . . she experienced a dizzying loss of herself, as if her body surrendered its boundaries, flowing and mixing with the life of the small clump of Indian Paint Brush wild flowers, the millennium old volcanic rock, the infinite sky.

  The road paralleled the river through a narrow pass strewn with giant lava boulders. The river’s burbling amplified into a roar. The golden sunlight intensified as if poured through a funnel created by the mountain pass. If she turned her head just so, the multi-colored mountains appeared to shift, to waltz toward one another and dip apart again.

  A trick of the light, surely.

  How Brendon and Paul would tease her, how her father would scoff, if she tried to explain this . . . this disorienting sensation.

  The truck’s radiator boiled over just as they reached Embudo in the middle of the canyon. There squatted the station for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad’s “Chile Line,” a narrow-gauge spur. Crossing a rickety bridge over the river, they stopped before the tree-shaded stone depot. While the automobile cooled, Henri suggested she and Jeremy wait inside.

  She welcomed the delay. Fear nagged at her. Nagged that whatever it was that awaited her, it was something that had the power to redistribute every molecule of her existence.

  The station had that closed-up smell, rank with the lingering odor of bodies, food, and cigars. After weeks of abstinence, the smoke nauseated Alessandra. She began to cough.

  Shaking her head at a concerned Jeremy, she stepped back outside to be alone with the spasms. Like the shimmering sunlight, the pure, dry air filtered through her, seeming to scour her lungs of their dark, dank sickness. She risked a glance at her handkerchief. No blood.

  With water added to the radiator from a bottle Henri carried for just such purposes, the truck rattled upward out of the canyon toward Taos and the edge of the world. With each hairpin turn, she held her breath.

  “I’m sure you, too, will come under the spell of Taos,” Henri said. She knew he was only talking in order to distract her from the dizzying views. “But you have to be a little eccentric to live in Never-Never Land.”

  “That’s an interesting term, ‘Never-Never Land.’”

  “See, Alessandra, the people in Taos aren’t troubled too much by time. Oh, their bodies are. But not themselves. There’s old Long John Dunn. He owns a saloon on the plaza. Ignores the laws against gambling and considers Prohibition a sort of nuisance.”

  She listened politely. Her fingers maintained their grip on the door.

  “ . . . has the mail route, too. Much of the parcel post in Taos is made up of paintings being sent in and out by the artists.”

  In the back, Jeremy scooted over the baggage to peer from one window, where massive rocks towered high. Then he scrambled back to the other side, where rocks tumbled far below. She wished he would sit still. It would only take a shift of the baggage weight and . . . she didn’t let herself finish the thought.

  “You can’t miss old Long John. With his height and tobacco-stained handlebar mustache, he stands out like a belly dancer at the Last Supper.”

  At this last, she chuckled.

  “Glad I finally succeeded in getting a smile.”

  “Sorry.” She was more focused on the peril at hand. “My husband mentioned D. H. Lawrence, that he’s moved to Taos.”

  “Odd duck, that Englishman. When Lawrence wants to, he can be very charming, and he tells stories wonderfully well.” Henri steered the machine around a sharp U-curve before he continued. “The home Tony built for Peg – Mabel -- is like a salon for Taos’s intellectual and artistic community.”

  “Tony is Mabel -- Peg’s -- husband?”

  “Yes. He’s been banished from all tribal ceremonies for having married a white woman . . . and this whirls around him like a cloud of locusts.”

  “You, uhh, haven’t said much about yourself. What you’re doing in Never-Never Land. I don’t mean to pry, if you’d rather not.”

  His mouth wobbled into in a baleful smile. “I’m a remittance man.”

  “A what?”

  “You know about those. The second sons of prominent families sent off to out-of-the-way locales because we have no place in the scheme of things . . . “ He waggled his sandy brows in an exaggerated leer. “ . . . or because of scandals real or imagined. So, we’re expected to remain in these distant parts of the world for the rest of our lives.”

  “Ahh, so you live on remittances sent by your families. I see. No wife or children?”

  “A wife. I left her in New York.” He shrugged. “Fanny says she’s coming out one day. I doubt it. I tell her I’m coming back one day. And I doubt that, too.”

  “Why? You don’t love her?”

  “You don’t mince words, do you, Alessandra? I do love Fanny. But here . . . well, life’s not so demanding of me. I determined several years back that the words ‘responsibility’ and ‘moral duty’ would appear very seldom in my vocabulary.”

  The truck climbed a precipitous canyon wall through scary switchback after switchback. Far below telegraph poles traced the riverbed like toothpicks in hors d’oeuvres.

  When she quickly averted her gaze, Henri flashed her a sloppy grin. “Been a time or two, when I’ve seen a motorist have to back his automobile up this road. Some fuel pumps are insufficient for these steep grades.”

  “Golly, Mom, look!” Jeremy pointed below. “That bird!”

  She didn’t want to but risked another quick glance. Beneath them, a red-tail hawk spiraled silently above the chasm, catching the updrafts in its search for game.

  At last, the truck crested an immense plateau. She felt as if she were Persephone, emerging from the Underworld. Henri slowed the truck to a halt and shut off the steaming engine. Her legs numb from sitting, she climbed out awkwardly. From that viewpoint, the Rio Grande gorge cut a black zigzag . . . like an earthbound lightning bolt . . . across the plateau until the jagged line fell off the rim of the world. No trees, no hills, no houses contaminated the quiet vastness.

  Subdued by the power of nature, she stood breathless. And in that moment of supernatural quiet, her ears detected something. She canted her head, listening intently. “What is that . . . that noise?”

  Henri’s brow furrowed, then he grinne
d. “That? That’s the Taos Hum.”

  “The Taos what?

  “The Taos Hum. Taos people claim it’s the intense energy you hear vibrating.” He shrugged and grinned again. “Who knows?”

  “Damned eerie,” she murmured.

  “Mom, is this Taos?” Jeremy asked from behind her in a small voice, and she knew he must be feeling as insignificant as she. The frenetic energy of the high-altitude, the awesomeness of the landscape, were overwhelming.

  “No,” Henri said, stooping to wheel her son’s shoulders gently toward the northeast. “Over there, Jeremy. See? Nestled in the shadows of Mystery Mountain.”

  Cubed crystal houses glinted like jewels in the setting sun’s ginger light, impregnable behind ocher walls. Beyond the village, like the last citadel, a rugged range lay in repose. Waiting.

  “Mystery Mountain,” she whispered.

  “It’s sacred to the Taos Indians,” Henri said. He pointed to its summit. “Cradled high up there is Blue Lake, birthplace of the sun. Or so the Indians say. The holiest spot to them. The place where their people emerged into this world. But Man can explain it better than I . . . when and if he talks to you,” Henri added with a wry smile.

  “Man?”

  “Manuel Mondragon. The saltwater taffy’s for him.”

  “And should I care if he talks to me?”

  “Yes. He’s a drum maker and, more important, the Taos Indians’ healer. You know, their cacique, their shaman.”

  “Shaman? Oh, just swell. Like a medicine man?”

  “Mom!” Jeremy reproved, his eyes wide at her slip-up.

  “The way Tony explains it,” Henri said, “a shaman is someone who journeys to other realms of consciousness to bring back healing for the tribe.”

  “Sounds like sorcery to me,” she grumbled.

  Has it come to this? At the end of my rope I should resort to quackery?

  Henri rambled on as if to convince her. “Imagine a doctor back in Washington with the power to communicate with the living substance of every cloud, every rock, every raindrop, every lizard.”

  “Mom?” Jeremy tugged at her sleeve. “I want to go back home.”

  She wrapped her arms around the one thing, this being who gave her life its substance, who grounded her, and reminded herself she wasn’t alone. She kissed his forehead. “I know you must be homesick, kiddo. But let’s give Taos a chance. It’s not forever.”

  Just until I get well. Oh, God, let it be quickly. She feared this place. Whatever nameless essence that niggled her resolve drew her gaze ineluctably toward the terrifying beauty of that little terra-cotta village squatting in the distance.

  Her extensive reading on northern New Mexico after Dr. Silverman’s visit had painted an image of Taos as actually a trio of dusty adobe clusters: the Spanish hamlet of Rancho de Taos, the mostly Anglo town known locally as Taos Plaza, and the Indian village of Taos Pueblo.

  Taos Plaza was their destination. In the now-violet twilight, giant, denuded cottonwoods waited in the narrow, winding dirt streets. Larks and red-winged blackbirds heralded her arrival noisily. A rusty old copper Spanish bell rang out from its cupola.

  A funeral dirge or a welcoming parade?

  The truck sputtered past the plaza. Red chile ristras hung on the stout pine vigas protruding from coffee-colored adobe walls. The Stars and Stripes, waving desultorily from a pole at the plaza’s west end, was the only object to remind her she had not been transported to a foreign country.

  All the signs were printed in English and Spanish. Here a sign for Auto Gas, there one that advertised, Carne Se Venta Aqui. In a window, a placard announced Gents furnishings available at the Columbian Hotel.

  From behind her, Jeremy wrapped his arms around her neck. “Look, Mom, covered wagons! Just like in the cowboy movies.”

  A land without time.

  Henri pointed toward a knot of adobes clinging to a low hill. “That’s Peg’s compound, Los Gallos. Mere yards beyond is Indian land.”

  Fused with elements of pueblo and Spanish Colonial architecture, the rambling hacienda reminded Alessandra of a Tuscan villa. Topped by a bell-hung cupola, massive hand-carved gates opened onto a flagstone courtyard. Here, honeysuckle latticed fluid, curving walls.

  As Henri motored into the tree-shaded courtyard, pigeons took flight in a rustle of wings and gurgling protests. A squarish-set, middle-aged woman, her thick chestnut hair topped by bangs, stepped from the shadowy portal. She was dressed in shades of ribboned pink. But for all her girlish garb, her searing gaze indicated a woman of ruthless discernment and keen intellect.

  She propped a foot on the running board. “I was about to send Tony out to search for you.” Her capable hands braced on the truck door. Alessandra noted only a simple wedding band.

  Henri patted the dashboard fondly. “The old gal overheated.”

  Peg turned her wide-set eyes on Alessandra. “I warned Henri you’d be better off coming up by burro. You’d get here quicker.” Her voice had a champagne quality, light, bubbly. “Come inside. You must be exhausted.”

  The building’s interior offered warm respite. Alessandra’s pupils adjusted from the strange, incandescent twilight to the pleasant shadows of the gran sala.

  With Peg’s introductions to the many guests inside, myriad impressions lapped over Alessandra and mingled with overheard phrases of their divergent conversation.

  “. . . when an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.” A large-framed, gaunt man with pipe, white hair, and spectacles, Dr. Carl Jung was visiting from Switzerland, holding court in a corner of the room with two frumpish women, the famed writers Gertrude Stein, the other Virginia Woolf.

  At center stage, another man held the other guests attention. He was a neurotic-looking, red-bearded Abraham Lincoln with a long nose and pallid skin. “D.H. Lawrence,” Peg whispered.

  His German wife Frieda looked more like his mother. A long cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth. Her throaty voice cut back at whatever he had said, “You are all afraid of real women, dear.”

  So these were the elite, progressive international artists and thinkers.

  Tony Luhan roused himself from the armchair where he played solitaire on a card table to nod enigmatically. Jeremy pressed closer to her. Not that tall, the man had a dark, round face framed by long braids. Beneath plucked brows, his eyes were full of knowing, observant and watchful. He did not bother with speech, but his silver bracelets jangled as he went back to his card game.

  For Alessandra, Peg’s next introduction was like a snap of fingers awakening the hypnotized. “Manuel Mondragon, shaman of the Taos Pueblo,” Peg whispered. “You’ll have to fight off the women for him.”

  Suddenly Alessandra’s weariness vanished.

  Taller than six feet, the guest stood by the fireplace, an arm braced on its mantle as he listened with patient self possession to the ramblings of a thirtyish-looking blonde woman, obviously rapt by his overwhelming masculinity. Black hair hung in long braids on either side of his chiseled, subtle face. One end of a white blanket or sheet of some kind draped over his left shoulder like a toga, the other end wrapped about his torso and was knotted at his trim waist.

  Manuel Mondragon turned from the woman and looked at her. His face could never be called ordinary. Set off by high cheekbones and plucked brows, those oblique dark eyes with their dormant eyelids and the vital fire in their depths dramatized his countenance. Reluctantly, her hypercritical opinion confirmed how extraordinarily handsome, he was.

  “Man, this is Alessandra O’Quinn,” Peggy said.

  The shaman bowed his yard-wide shoulders slightly, his manner mildly condescending. “Al-ass-and-ra,” he said in slow, distinct syllables, as though evaluating her name.

  And herself.

  His voice was warm and potent as Kentucky bourbon; his gaze penetrating and unwavering. She blinked, gathering her wits, and nodded. An odd, exhilarating shiver course through her. Unfamiliar muscles buried deep in h
er belly knotted. Surely, his arresting glance saw through her. Through her pretense at civility. Clear through to her shabby, selfish soul. Her cheeks were flushing. The temperature in the crowded parlor seemed to be rising. Or maybe it was just her out-of-control body – dueling with this very in control man.

  Peg made the introduction of the woman, Lady Something-or-other, but Alessandra never heard the full name. Among Mabel’s assembled glitterati, Manuel Mondragon alone commanded her full attention. A terrible sense of inevitability accelerated her breath in her feeble lungs. Something older than woman’s intuition whispered in the back of her mind that this man had something to do with her impatience to get here. She knew now that the task to live here – and leave here – was beyond her capability. Something more powerful was at work here. She had fought throughout her life to retain her belief that desire as great as hers must beget great love. With the passing of years and her immaturity, she had come to realize the utter sham of her dream and to wonder at the childish ignorance that had inspired it. She had found a measure of contentment. Looking into the mesmerizing depths of the shaman’s eyes, she knew she had met something worse than death. Her soul’s unattainable, at least, in this world – it’s other half.

  Looking into the mesmerizing depths of the shaman’s eyes, she knew she had met something worse than death. Her soul’s unattainable, at least, in this world – it’s other half.

  Much later that night, she lay sleepless in the little log cabin’s bed, Jeremy nuzzled in dreams against her. She kissed his forehead and whispered, “Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.” They had always been her last words to him every night of his life when she turned out his bedroom light. He was afraid of the dark.

  So was she.

  In the beehive fireplace, upright sticks of piñon burned red and redolent and reassuring, and she inhaled deliriously.

  Before turning in, she had made plans with Peg to get started the next day with the repairs of the rented adobe. Alessandra focused her attention on mundane issues and plowed through problems that would need to be attended to first. Like plumbing.