The Almanac of the Dead

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  Die to save the earth.

  Mold long underwear out of plastic explosives and stroll past the U.S. Supreme Court building while the justices are hearing arguments. Bolt in the exit door and flick the switch! Turn out the lights on the High Court of the police state!

  Awa Gee believed very soon these last remaining eco-warriors would push forward with their plot to turn off the lights. From messages he had intercepted he had concluded that a good many eco-warriors had gone underground at the time their leader was assassinated. Awa Gee decided he would help the eco-warriors turn out the lights, although they might never even know Awa Gee’s contribution.

  The regional power suppliers had emergency generating plants and used sophisticated computer systems to deal with brownouts, storms, or other electric power failures by automatically rerouting power reserve supplies to black-out areas and by switching on emergency power-generating systems. But Awa Gee had already developed a protovirus to subvert all emergency switching programs in the computers of regional power-relay stations. Awa Gee’s virus would activate only during extreme voltage fluctuations such as might occur after the coordinated sabotage of key hydroelectric dams and interstate high-voltage lines across the United States. To destroy every last generator and high-voltage line would be doing the people a favor; alternating electrical current caused brain cancer and genetic mutations. Solar batteries were the wave of the future. The plan was a long shot; Awa Gee was counting on the “cost cutting” of the giant power companies to curtail or cancel auxiliary emergency systems. But if the plan worked, if the lights went out all over all at once, then the United States would never be the same again.

  DESTINY’S PATH

  MOSCA HAD INSISTED it was safe for him to drive Calabazas and Root to the holistic healers convention to hear the Barefoot Hopi. Mosca announced he wasn’t hiding or leaving town; he had some other tricks yet to play; Mosca was just getting started. The Tucson police believed Mosca had fled to Mexico; the Tucson police had ruffled some feathers and they did not want to think about the little Mexican Indian. Mosca enjoyed the stupidity of the Tucson police. To them he was a nothing, a coincidence, a sneak thief accidentally in the right place at the right time to snatch the briefcase.

  Mosca could feel his life and his fate shifting inside him; the voice in his shoulder gave good advice and strategy. Mosca wasn’t the least worried. Something was happening, and the earth would never be the same again. So far, thanks to his genius, Mosca had the white men in Tucson fighting one another—all part of the Hopi’s strategy, all part of the coordinated effort. Mosca couldn’t stop himself; on the drive to the convention he had to brag to Calabazas and Root: the Barefoot Hopi had given Mosca a sneak preview of his keynote speech. One strategy the Hopi had emphasized had been the “international coordinated effort.” The Hopi had traveled to Africa and Asia; he had been around the world to meet with indigenous tribal people. The strategy was to ensure when the time came, the United States would get no aid from foreign allies to crush the uprisings in the United States. The Hopi believed the Europeans would be too concerned about their own civil unrest and the mass human migrations north from Africa, to care what happened inside the U.S.

  In his lectures the Barefoot Hopi had emphasized the similarity between the tribal people of Africa and the tribal people of the Americas. Many in his audiences had been shocked that the Hopi dare refer, even indirectly, to the South African holocaust in which thousands of whites and Africans had died after white South Africa had refused to give back the land. The Hopi said black Africans talked about the price they had paid in blood to take back the land; the spirits had been furious and had demanded blood in retribution for the sacrileges the people had allowed against the spirits. Their lands had been reconsecrated to Ogoun and Damballah with European as well as African blood. The Hopi had got promises from a dozen African nations; if the natives of the Americas rose up, the African nations would not remain neutral. The Hopi’s plan depended upon the help of “foreign allies” in the Persian Gulf region also.

  As they pulled into the hotel parking lot, Mosca had announced he was quitting Calabazas to work with the Hopi. Calabazas had looked relieved. Root knew Calabazas hated to fire anyone; Calabazas had hired Mosca in the first place because no one else in Tucson wanted the risk. Root thought Calabazas looked tired and older since Mosca had shot the British poet. There had also been the matter of Sarita and Liria with their secret meetings and mysterious two-day treks into the desert, and the vanloads of smuggled Guatemalan refugees driven by nuns and priests. All that worry might make even a young man old before his time, but Calabazas was no colt.

  As they walked from the hotel parking lot, Mosca had asked Root to come with him and the Hopi. “Go where? Do what?” Root did not believe any of that spiritual horseshit. Mosca looked a little hurt at Root’s snippy reply. “Look, man, we use handicapped people in our army. You’re good enough for us—aren’t we good enough for you?” Mosca turned to Calabazas and ignored Root. I talked to the Hopi. The way we used to move dope—now we move supplies to the people across the border.” Calabazas laughed and shook his head. “Your Barefoot Hopi is crazy. The government will stop him.” Mosca began nodding his head excitedly. “But don’t you see? They can’t stop the Hopi because he is crazy. But a crazy man can get things done. Especially a crazy man like the Hopi.”

  Calabazas had never seen anything like the natural healing convention; hundreds of people had filled the ballroom, and all or nearly all of them were young and white. Calabazas had been surprised at the prices these so-called native healers demanded and received from white people who looked too intelligent to believe in nonsense. But of course what could be expected of people who thought they could buy a cure in a tablet? Calabazas looked over the booths in the area; he saw slow brown hands receive cash from anxious white hands. “You know, all this time we were in the wrong business,” Calabazas had finally said, nodding in the direction of a display of rock crystals and wind chimes for a hundred dollars. Root had nodded. He was beginning to see what the Hopi had in mind; holistic medicine was a worldwide phenomenon that had generated billions of dollars. The Hopi planned to make thousands of white “converts” to aid and protect the twin brothers and their followers.

  Angelita had never seen anything like it, not even at the May Day rallies they had celebrated at the Freedom School in Mexico City. She was relieved she did not actually have to address the convention but only had to say a few words, to relay the greetings from the twin brothers and their followers bound on destiny’s path north. Angelita felt the undercurrent of excitement in the audience. Were the twins right? Was the time ripe? But then came the Barefoot Hopi.

  The audience settled into its seats as the Barefoot Hopi approached the podium. He was looking closely at the audience, but the expression on the Hopi’s face was serene. “The brave liberators of the Colorado River left a farewell message,” the Barefoot Hopi said. “Here’s what they wrote: ‘Rejoice! Mountains and valleys! The mighty river runs free once more! Rejoice! We are no longer solitary beings alone and cut off. Now we are one with the earth, our mother; we are at one with the river. Now we have returned to our source, the energy of the universe. Rejoice!’ ”

  When the Hopi had finished reading, there was silence in the ballroom. The Hopi continued, “We know death awaits all living beings as part of a single continuing process. The brave eco-warriors focused all the energy of their beings to set free the river, and so they merged instantly in the explosion of water and concrete and sandstone. They are no longer solitary human souls; they are part of a single configuration of energy. Their spirits are close with us now as we all gather here. They love us and watch over us with our beloved ancestors.”

  Lecha looked around at the audience; the Hopi’s performance had been flawless. Mosca was right; the Hopi seemed to know exactly what the audience had wanted to hear. Lecha was fascinated with the Barefoot Hopi; he was as tall as he was round. He weighed over three hundred poun
ds easily, but his flesh was solid, and he moved with the energy and odd grace of a bear. Lecha guessed his age to be somewhere around forty; her information had come from Calabazas, who had heard it from Mosca. The Hopi had spent more than a year with various tribal groups all across Africa. Mosca claimed the Hopi had been meeting with African leaders to get them to send money when the people began the final struggle to retake ancestral lands in the Americas.

  The Hopi had paused to look the audience in the eyes, row by row. He cleared his throat and began, “The eco-warriors have been accused of terrorism in the cause of saving Mother Earth. So I want to talk a little about terrorism first. Poisoning our water with radioactive wastes, poisoning our air with military weapons’ wastes—those are acts of terrorism! Acts of terrorism committed by governments against their citizens all over the world. Capital punishment is terrorism practiced by the government against its citizens. United States of America, what has happened to you? What have you done to the Bill of Rights? All along we Native Americans tried to warn the rest of you; if the U.S. government kills us and robs us, what makes the rest of you think the U.S. government won’t rob and kill you too? Look around you. Police roadblocks. Police searches without warrants. Politicians and their banker pals empty the U.S. Treasury while police lock up the homeless and poor who beg for food. The U.S. government dares to outlaw the Native American Church religion. Butt out of our religion!” the Hopi’s voice boomed out. “You spiritual bankrupts! You breeders of child molesters, rapists, and mass murderers! We are increasing quietly despite your bullets and germ warfare. You destroyers can’t figure out why you haven’t wiped us out in five hundred years of blasting, burning, and slaughter. You destroyers can’t figure out what is going wrong for you. You don’t know how much the spirits of these continents despise you, how the earth hates you; now your cities burn from the sun, and millions abandon cities in the Southwest for lack of water. This is nothing! This is only the beginning!”

  The people in the audience rose to their feet simultaneously. Lecha felt the hair on her neck stand up; the people had been mesmerized by the Hopi’s voice. Affluent young whites, fearful of a poisoned planet, men and women both, had fallen in love with the strong, resonant voice which promised that all human beings belonged to the earth forever. He promised a force was gathering that would counter the destruction of earth. Lecha could tell the Hopi knew when he had a winner; she imagined the Hopi had been able to raise a great deal of money in Europe and in Asia, because even in a dirt-water town that hated brown people as Tucson did, the Barefoot Hopi already had people fumbling for their checkbooks, and he was only getting warmed up.

  “All the riches ripped from the heart of the earth will be reclaimed by the oceans and mountains. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions of enormous magnitude will devastate the accumulated wealth of the Pacific Rim. Entire coastal peninsulas will disappear under the sea; hundreds of thousands will die. The west coast of the Americas will be swept clean from Alaska to Chile in tidal waves and landslides. Drought and wildfire will rage across Europe to Asia. Only Africa will be spared because the anger of the spirits has already been appeased by the rivers of blood in the great war that freed South Africa.”

  Zeta had turned to Lecha to nod her approval of the Hopi; then Awa Gee tapped Zeta’s shoulder and began whispering excitedly in Zeta’s ear. Lecha could see that Mosca had jumped up from his chair he was so excited. Even Calabazas had sat up in his chair, wide-awake. Lecha could see the Hopi gather himself for his finale; he spread his short legs and held the podium with both hands.

  “Now on the eve of the final destruction of mankind, now when all seems hopeless and the greed of the destroyers unstoppable, now in our time of greatest peril, the twin brothers who have always helped our people, the twin brothers are on their way!”

  Lecha heard gasps all around her; the room began to buzz with excitement. The Hopi continued in an even voice, “In Africa and in the Americas too, the giant snakes, Damballah and Quetzalcoatl, have returned to the people. I have seen the snakes with my own eyes; they speak to the people of Africa, and they speak to the people of the Americas; they speak through dreams. The snakes say this: From out of the south the people are coming, like a great river flowing restless with the spirits of the dead who have been reborn again and again all over Africa and the Americas, reborn each generation more fierce and more numerous. Millions will move instinctively; unarmed and unguarded, they begin walking steadily north, following the twin brothers.”

  The Hopi paused and motioned at the big Maya Indian woman Lecha had noticed earlier. “We are privileged to have with us today Angelita La Escapía, with a message from the twin brothers.”

  As soon as the big Mayan woman reached the podium and looked out at the audience, Lecha had seen she was no ordinary envoy; in fact, Lecha saw the woman was at least as powerful as the twin brothers she claimed to serve. The Maya woman spoke calmly and clearly in Spanish, but the conference had provided no interpreter. Lecha wondered how many in the audience understood her. The message was quite simple. There was nothing to fear or to worry about. People should go about their daily routines. Because already the great shift of human populations on the continents was under way, and there was nothing human beings could do to stop it. Conflicts and collisions were inevitable, but it was best to start from scratch anyway. Nothing European in the Americas had worked very well anyway except destruction. All the people needed to remember was the twin brothers and the people from the south were coming to stop the destroyers. Converts were always welcome; Mother Earth embraced the souls of all who loved her. No fences or walls, would stop them; guns and bombs would not stop them. They had no fear of death; they were comfortable with their ancestors’ spirits. They would come by the millions.

  MEETING IN ROOM 1212

  LECHA DIDN’T CARE if she was the last one to Room 1212. She had to telephone to see how things were at the ranch. After the Barefoot Hopi’s speech, Zeta had told Lecha about Greenlee and his last joke; Lecha had felt her entire body tingle; even her scalp had prickled. Everyone had gone crazy: Mosca at Yaqui Easter, Seese at the Stage Coach, and now Zeta killing the gun dealer. Lecha spoke with Sterling and told him to tell Seese to start packing. The craziest one had been Ferro since the death of his lover. Ferro blamed the police, but he had also blamed Lecha for bringing Seese. Ferro refused to hear the truth: Jamey had been living on borrowed time, like any crooked undercover cop. No matter how many times Lecha or even Zeta had tried to talk to Ferro, to reason with him, he had exploded into a rage, screaming like a wild animal, not a human. Ferro had declared war on the Tucson police, and Zeta said no one would stop Ferro unless they killed him. Worse yet, Zeta had not been able to prevent Ferro from recruiting Awa Gee. Awa Gee refused to listen to Zeta after he learned Ferro wanted him to build car bombs. Awa Gee was even crazier than Ferro was, Zeta said. Awa Gee had babbled that the Tucson police were only a warm-up, only the beginning.

  Year by year, Zeta had watched Tucson change. The years the snowfalls had fallen short in the Colorado Rocky Mountains had left the Southwest without water. Hundreds of fancy foothills houses in Tucson stood vacant. Block after block of small businesses in Tucson had closed or gone bankrupt. Affluent young professionals had been transferred out of Arizona or recalled to the safety of Phoenix, one hundred miles farther from the Mexican border.

  The air force base in Tucson had been reopened, and military personnel were pouring into Tucson but without families. It was clear what the high command felt about the security of the U.S. border. Zeta remembered the Vietnam War and the names of the Vietnamese cities as they had fallen and the U.S.-backed forces had been forced back until at last they had been driven out of Saigon.

  Already in Tucson and southern Arizona military and government vehicles patrolled the streets, ostensibly to seize illegal immigrants; but now they stopped everyone with brown skin and demanded identification. Any white people in Tucson who were not riding in health-spa limousines with body
guards were also routinely stopped and questioned by Tucson police, who “advised” the homeless to leave town.

  There were rumors the U.S. wasn’t worried about the civil war in Mexico because the U.S. had CIA all the way to the top. Rumor had it that the Arizona governor had requested military aid not against Mexicans, but to control the thousands of homeless and destitute Americans fleeing northern winters. It did Zeta’s heart good to see the white men so nervous. She had to laugh when Mosca told her about the squads of homeless veterans and the homeless families occupying vacant condominiums in the foothills.

  When Lecha knocked on the door of Room 1212, she could hear a voice speaking English with a British accent. When Rose had opened the door, Lecha saw a blue-black African in bright yellow and red robes addressing the others seated around the room. Mosca had been sitting next to a black man in army fatigues wearing a green beret; Lecha saw by Mosca’s maniacal grin the African and the black man were probably Mosca’s guests. Zeta and Calabazas were on the sofa with the Maya woman sitting between them. Wilson Weasel Tail and the Hopi were sitting on the floor with their backs against the bed. Weasel Tail was tying knots in the shag carpet, but the Hopi was taking notes while the African talked. Rose had motioned for Lecha to sit down on the bed.

  All night long in Room 1212 they had discussed a network of tribal coalitions dedicated to the retaking of ancestral lands by indigenous people. Europeans were welcome to convert, or they might choose to return to the lands of their forebears to be close to Europe’s old ghosts. The sun was just rising over the mountains as the meeting in Room 1212 ended. Only Calabazas looked tired, and that had been because he was skeptical. When the Hopi talked about a national or even multinational prison uprising coordinated with the activities of say the eco-warriors dynamiting power plants and high-voltage lines, Calabazas had shook his head. Calabazas feared the jail and prison uprising riots were likely to deteriorate into race riots with the whites and Hispanics and others against the blacks. The Hopi had listened to Calabazas’s doubts respectfully; the Hopi smiled and shrugged his shoulders. Of course it would not be an easy task because the prisons were designed to keep inmates at war with each other. The Hopi knew he had his work cut out for him, but the Hopi also had a growing number of disciples inside and outside jails and prisons all over the United States. At that point, Clinton spoke up; Clinton said he was skeptical too, but so far he had seen homeless white men and homeless black men work together for a common cause—survival—just as black men and white men had fought side by side in Vietnam.