Sacred Ground

by Barbara Wood

  Explaining to Angela about leaving a gift for the First Mother, Teresa buried the crucifix in a bed of petals. In her fever and illness, it did not occur to her that her act was symbolic as well, that she had buried her new religion in the bosom of the old.

  Removing the spirit-stone from around her neck, she placed it around Angela’s. Then she knelt before the child, and, taking her by the shoulders, said, “Your name is Marimi. You are no longer Angela. I am going to take you to a village where the people have not heard of the Spanish god who instructs his people to steal land belonging to others. You will be raised in the ways of the Topaa and the First Mother.”

  She laid her hand along the girl’s cheek, this angel who had been given to her by a saint, and said, “My precious daughter, you are a special and chosen one. The sickness that you sometimes feel in your head is not an affliction but a gift, and someday you will come to understand this. But before that time—”

  Teresa suddenly coughed and doubled over with the pain.

  “Mama!” the child cried.

  Teresa held her breath until the pain subsided. The ride from the new plaza had weakened her. She had not realized she was so ill. “Listen to what I have to say, my daughter. Your new name is Marimi, do you understand? You are no longer Angela, for that is the name of the Christian strangers who do not belong here. You are Marimi and you will be the new Keeper of the Cave. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Say it, daughter. Tell me your name.”

  “I am Marimi, Mama.”

  “Good… And now we will go. There are villages west of here where the intruders have never walked. We will be safe there. The soldiers will never find us.”

  But when Teresa turned toward the cave entrance, her legs suddenly gave way and she collapsed to the earthen floor. “I can go no farther,” she said breathlessly. “Marimi, listen to me carefully. You must get help. Go down the canyon and turn toward the sea. Can you do that?”

  The child nodded solemnly.

  “There is a village… some of our people still live there. Tell them that I am in this cave, the cave of the First Mother, and that I am ill. Say it for me, my child. Let me know that you understand.”

  Angela repeated the instructions and Teresa settled back against the wall. “They will have medicines. They will restore my health. And then we will live among our own people. Go now, child. To the sea. To the village. And bring them back. I will wait.”

  The little girl scrambled down the canyon, intent upon her errand, but in time she became lost. Whichever way she turned, there were more canyons, more rocks, and no sea, no village. She started to cry.

  Suddenly a half-naked man appeared before her, his hair long and matted, his skin burnt red from the sun, his expression wild.

  Angela turned and ran, but she was boxed in. The wild man stood between her and the opening of the canyon.

  He towered over her, staring down at her with a bewildered expression, emaciated, with scars and sores on his dirty body and only a tattered length of cloth around his loins. But he had intelligent green eyes and after a moment a kind of light dawned in them. “Why are you crying, my child?”

  His voice was surprisingly gentle, which made her stop crying. “My mama is sick and I can’t find the village.”

  He blinked. And then he looked around. “Where is she?”

  “In the cave.”

  The man stood stock-still. The cave. He remembered a cave… had it been years ago or only yesterday? The cave where he had experienced his rapture and he had been touched by the Hand of God, and since which he had walked daily with Jesus in these mountains.

  He frowned as he looked more closely at the girl. The hairline, the shape of her eyes, the fullness of her lip. Teresa!

  And something else. A small mole on the right side of her jaw. His own mother… his mind struggled with the memories he had long put aside. And a sister. The same mole.

  “Do not cry, little one,” he said, smiling now to reveal broken teeth. “I know where your mama is. I know the cave. We will help her. We will make her well.” He stretched down a gnarled hand and Angela took it.

  “Stop!” cried a voice suddenly, echoing off the canyon walls.

  Angela and the wild man turned to see a Spanish officer at the base of the canyon. “Let her go!” he commanded.

  Brother Felipe took a step forward, hands outstretched, ready to explain. But the trigger was quicker, and the musket ball hit him square in the heart, knocking him off his feet.

  Angela started to scream. Lorenzo rushed up and swept her into his arms to hurry her away from the sight of the dead man. When he was out of the canyon and back where his horse was tethered, he put the girl down and tried to soothe her. “He cannot hurt you, little one. The wild man is gone.”

  She fell silent and stared at him. “¿Habla Español?” he said.

  She nodded. And then she started crying for her mother.

  A beautiful child, he thought, intrigued by the way the widow’s peak on her forehead gave her face a charming heart shape. Almost the age of his own daughter when she died.

  Her clothes indicated she was a Mission Indian. Runaways? “¿Cómo te llamas?” he asked.

  “I have to go to my mama,” she replied in Spanish. “She’s sick.”

  “Sick?” He looked around the canyon, growing dark now with long shadows and a chill in the air. So the mother had absconded with her daughter and come to these hills to hide from the Fathers. And she was sick. When night came on, the woman would be defenseless against the mountain lions and grizzly bears that lived in these mountains.

  An idea began to form in Lorenzo’s mind. “I will take you to your mama if you tell me your name,” he said with a smile.

  She rubbed fists in her eyes. Her head was starting to hurt. Mama had told her something about her name, but she couldn’t remember. So she said, “Angela.”

  He put the girl on his horse and she rode silently for a while in his arms, but when she saw that they were riding away from the mountains, she began to scream and call again for her mama, so Lorenzo put his hand over her mouth, spurring his horse to go faster, knowing that in time she would forget, being so young, especially once his wife welcomed her as her own daughter and smothered her with love.

  As he galloped across the plain, away from the mountains and the sea, the child pinned and silent in his arms, and thinking how Luisa was going to come out of her mourning and accept him into her bed again, Lorenzo decided that the day’s hunting had gone well indeed.

  Chapter Nine

  “He went crazy after his wife died, you know.”

  Erica spun around, startled. Ginny Dimarco was wearing a hard smile beneath hard eyes. She had followed Erica out onto the pool deck, away from the noisy guests and the Gypsy Kings singing “Hotel California” through enormous stereo speakers. Despite the cold night air, a few guests were swimming in the heated pool. But the beach beyond the deck was dark and deserted.

  Erica knew that Jared Black had been invited to the cocktail party at the Dimarcos’ beach house and that he had declined. She suspected that Ginny Dimarco was now resorting to the revenge of the stood-up hostess: spiteful gossip about the offending guest— especially as the guest was the head of the Native American Heritage Commission and the hostess, a wealthy socialite patron of the arts, was on a personal crusade to create an Indian museum with her name attached to it.

  Five minutes earlier, inside the Dimarcos’ fabulous Malibu beach house that was a showcase for Pueblo pottery, West Coast basketry, Zuni fetishes, kachina dolls, Eskimo totem poles, and Kwakiutl masks, Ginny had cornered Erica, her eyes strangely feverish. “What is it like to be working with Jared Black again?”

  Erica hadn’t wanted to come to the Dimarcos’ party, but Sam had reminded her that it was good PR and important to make nice to the rich people who funded their grants. So Erica had put on her only cocktail dress— a plain black number with spaghetti straps— and combed her hair
up in some semblance of salon style. The high heels and nylons felt strange after weeks spent in socks and work boots. “I’m not working with him.”

  “Fighting with him then.” A sharp, brittle laugh. And then, Ginny’s eyes fast on Erica and a pause before adding, “It’s unfortunate Mr. Black had a previous engagement tonight. There are people here who would have liked to meet him. Important people.” Erica caught a flicker of hostility in Ginny’s eyes. “The invitation went out weeks ago,” Mrs. Dimarco had added, her tone full of meaning.

  Erica knew she was expected to fill in the missing information, the excuse Jared had for this unforgivable slight. She wondered if in fact Ginny had used Jared’s name as a draw, if there were guests who had come with the intention of meeting and mingling and hoping to make connections in Sacramento. While Erica had struggled to curb her tongue— she was tempted to say that Jared was back at the camp watching I Love Lucy reruns on TV— another guest had interrupted to tell Ginny what a fabulous party it was. Erica had seized the opportunity to escape out onto the pool deck to fill her lungs with fresh ocean air and get away from the talk and gossip of the party, to be alone and try to make sense of her jumbled emotions.

  Jared had been slowly invading her thoughts and her dreams, whispering to her: What you see is not who I really am. Erica needed to fathom this growing preoccupation with Jared, to find its roots and understand it. But her hostess, like a predator, had followed her out. “You do know he went crazy after his wife died?” she repeated now, raptorial eyes watching Erica.

  Why this relentless attack? Erica wondered. And then it occurred to her that Ginny was hoping Erica would go back to the camp with tales to tell, to let the rude Commissioner know what an unforgivable faux pas he had committed.

  “Right after the funeral,” Ginny continued, as if Erica had prompted her for more, “he vanished. His family launched a manhunt, they were frantic. Well, I don’t suppose they really thought he would commit suicide, but there was speculation.”

  Erica blinked at the woman. Jared? Suicide?

  “You didn’t know?”

  “I was in Europe.”

  “Well it was simply one of the major stories of the day, how Jared disappeared and the police couldn’t find him. It was only by accident that a team of marine biologists found him four months later on one of the Channel Islands. He had gone native. They found him completely naked and fishing in a lagoon with a spear. His hair was long and he’d grown a beard and he was as brown as a nut, they said.”

  Dark figures were starting to materialize now on the dunes— families arriving in droves to park on the shoulder of the Pacific Coast Highway and launch themselves onto the beach with flashlights and sacks for the annual grunion run. Erica, her mind filled with the image of a forlorn figure alone among driftwood and sandpipers and kelp, was only vaguely aware of them.

  “They had to chase him,” Ginny went on, seeing how she had captivated her guest, and relishing it, “and then he hid in some caves. They actually tracked him like an animal. The way they finally caught him was by waiting until nightfall and they saw the light from his campfire.”

  Erica rediscovered the glass of wine in her hand and took a long sip, her eyes set out to the far horizon where stars met ocean. She was suddenly consumed with a burning fury.

  “There was a big news brouhaha, of course,” Ginny continued, “when the biologists brought him home. The senior Black demanded a psychiatric evaluation, he even wanted to put his son in an institution for observation. But Jared simply cut his hair, shaved off the beard, and went back to work as if nothing had happened. But still, it isn’t normal, is it? Certainly a man is supposed to grieve after a wife dies, but to go to such extremes?” She laughed and the diamonds at her throat flashed with moonlight. “I should hardly expect my Wade to become an aboriginal simply because I had died!”

  Erica’s grip tightened around her glass. She wanted to throw her wine into the woman’s face. Instead she forced her attention on the campfires that were now flaring up along the beach.

  Grunion are a species of coastal fish, eight inches long with small mouths and no teeth. Every year, from March to August, they make nocturnal spawning runs on Southern California beaches— thousands of grunion riding the waves with the females frantically burrowing into the wet sand, laying their eggs while males circle and fertilize them. Afterward, they all ride the waves back into the sea until the next run. Unless, of course, they are seized first by the humans waiting at the surf’s edge to snap up the unsuspecting grunion with their bare hands and throw them into sacks.

  Erica had been on grunion hunts before, had held the flashlight or the sack, and had then sat at the midnight barbecue and happily feasted on the hapless spawners. Tonight, however, the spectacle filled her with inexplicable sadness.

  He went crazy. Erica imagined the shrine Jared must have constructed to his wife in the bedroom of his RV. It would consist of Netsuya’s portrait and fresh flowers that he changed every day, maybe even candles. Jared would talk to Netsuya every night before retiring and she would be the first person he spoke to in the morning.

  Erica put her hand to her chest. She suddenly couldn’t breathe. Yards away, foamy breakers crashed onto the shore, and a pair of children, running along the beach, their squeals like the cries of gulls, swung flashlights. A beam of bright light stabbed Erica’s eyes.

  The blinding sunlight of the wild and windswept Channel Islands.

  In the next instant, something slammed against her chest, like an invisible shock wave. She gasped.

  “Look at that,” Ginny said with a brittle laugh. “The grunion don’t stand a chance.” She shook her head. “Where else but in Southern California would the fish throw themselves ashore? One doesn’t even need a fishing rod! No wonder our Indians were so unwarlike.”

  Erica stared at her. Then she set her glass down on a patio table, excused herself, and went inside.

  She pushed her way through well-dressed people and waiters in red jackets offering trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres, plunged blindly through, feeling a pressure grow around her heart. She found Sam, convinced him she needed to leave, and when he gave her the car keys, saying he could catch a lift back to the camp later, Erica was out of the Dimarco house and speeding away on the Pacific Coast Highway faster than the tide that was bringing the doomed fish to shore.

  * * *

  Erica sat for a long moment after she killed the engine and the headlights. Resting her perspiring forehead on the steering wheel, she closed her eyes and tried to examine herself internally.

  What had happened out on the Dimarcos’ pool deck? Was it a heart attack? A panic attack? The pain was still there, behind her breastbone, aching, catching her breath short. “They found him on one of the Channel Islands, naked and spear fishing….”

  Erica felt an overwhelming impulse to cry. But the tears wouldn’t come. As she drew in slow breaths, trying to restore herself, she felt the heaviness settle in her chest, as though something new had lodged there. It was dark and ponderous, like an unwanted bird that had come to roost, its fusty wings tucked in for the long haul.

  Erica managed to get out of the car and head for the lighted compound, her bare skin rising in bumps. The moon played peekaboo through the overhead branches, an eye watching Erica, like the eyes of ghosts she imagined inhabited the Topanga woodland. She looked over at Jared’s RV. It was dark. He had not yet returned from his nightly escape to God knew where. And if he were here, what would she say to him?

  When she neared her tent she saw that the doorway flap wasn’t secured the way she had left it earlier.

  Entering cautiously, she turned on the light and looked around. Her first concern was for the find she had made that afternoon at Level IV. But the object was still there, exactly as she had left it on her worktable. Checking her metal file cabinet, she found it still locked. Since she didn’t keep money or jewelry in her tent, she couldn’t imagine why anyone would have broken in. And yet she was
certain someone had been there.

  Then she saw it. On her pillow.

  It was an ordinary handax, found in any hardware store, except that it had been wrapped with strips of rawhide and decorated with feathers to make it look like an Indian tomahawk. Erica knew what it meant.

  It was a declaration of war.

  She began to shake. Someone had violated her privacy, just as Ginny Dimarco had violated Jared’s. For a moment, Erica literally saw red. Then she flung herself back out into the cold night and, heedless of the fact that she was still in cocktail dress and high heels, marched across the compound to the cafeteria tent, tomahawk in her fist. The Indians weren’t in their usual corner playing darts, as if they had known she would be coming after them. Going back outside, she saw them at the edge of the camp, illuminated by a campfire, a circle of warriors throwing darts at the board nailed to a tree.

  As she approached, she saw a giant of a man, his graying hair in long Indian braids, dominating the game. He wasn’t familiar to her. He wore a nylon bomber jacket with a fierce Asian tiger embroidered on the back and beneath it, in crimson-and-yellow letters: Vietnam, June 1966. When he turned, Erica saw the military insignia of a flaming spear on one shoulder, labeled, 199th Infantry Brigade. He had a thick browridge and a heavy jaw, his stance was aggressive and his smile a sneer, as he said, “Well well, if it isn’t our friend the anthropologist.”

  “Who are you?” she demanded, going up to him. Despite her heels, he was still a head taller than Erica. “You’re not one of our crew.”

  He brought a beer can to his lips and took a long drink, his narrowed eyes fixed on her.

  Erica held up the tomahawk. “Is this yours?”

  Running a big hand across his mouth, the giant said, “You know? I remember when I was growing up on the reservation, you white bitches would come from the nearby university and spend the summer studying us.”