The Sirens of Oak Creek

by Robert Louis DeMayo

  I glance at the clock on the dash of my truck. I still have an hour until the lecture starts.

  You may think my restlessness stems from my inability to find a place in society, but it’s actually the opposite. I’m restless because I can’t find a place.

  I pull over, park on the road shoulder. As I get out, I pat my truck. It’s an old black Nissan with a cap over the back.

  The truck is ten years old, but dependable. I call him Heyduke, like the environmental vigilante from Ed Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang. Sometimes I ask myself what he would do in modern Sedona. And then I smile as I envision him blowing up the Crystal Palace with a bundle of dynamite.

  With all those psychics crowded into one building you might think they would see it coming—but I bet they wouldn’t.

  Heyduke is irrepressible, like me. Plucky. Scrappy. Maybe a little bit angry. Always been there when I needed him. I’ve crawled into the back to sleep there countless times and he never turned me away.

  I’m parked about a mile north of the West Fork, in a quiet part of the canyon that tourists don’t often visit. On the other side of the creek, a few hundred feet up the steep slope, I can see several caves.

  I’ve explored them too. I’ve hiked every inch of this valley.

  My restlessness knows no limits.

  I walk a few minutes along the creek, heading upstream. I can barely hear the gurgling water behind the cries of the cicadas.

  They’re desperate for the rain, too.

  Soon I arrive at a peaceful lagoon with a flat rock set in the middle of the water, and behind it stands a patina-covered pillar with a spiral petroglyph on it. All around me lay piles of stones—cairns. Many have toppled, but a few, lichen-covered and ancient, have remained standing because they’re away from the footpath.

  From the creek´s bank, I hop from one stone to the next to reach the flat rock in the water. It’s covered with a soft layer of green moss.

  I take off my shoes and submerge my feet in the water. The trees around me sway, like in one of Van Gogh’s landscapes. His artwork alone was worth my venture into painting. When I stared at his images I felt like I was seeing the very place that remained hidden to me all these years.

  As strange as that sounds, it’s one of my only clues.

  I hum as the water flows over my toes. A forgotten melody dances on my tongue but will not surface.

  A heron watches from across the lagoon.

  Soon it’s time to go. I reluctantly trudge back to Heyduke.

  How quickly time can pass when you’re in a timeless place.

  I coast down the canyon, passing the crowded parking lot for the West Fork trailhead on the right, and then Don Hoel’s tourist cabins on the left. A few miles further, behind the Junipine Inn, I can see old Bear Howard’s trail—now called the AB Young trail—zig-zagging its way up the plateau.

  Yup, I’ve hiked that one plenty of times, too.

  Some cultures created paths leading to the mountaintops, believing the dead would use them to get to a site of power. And on that trail I often wondered if I was walking alongside my mother.

  More likely, it was old man Howard, who seemed to have spent half his life traveling up and down that track. Hiking enthusiasts act like they’re exploring a new world, but all of us walk on paths that were laid down long before we were born.

  Seeing it rise above the trees makes me want to hit the trail, until I see the masses of tourists at Slide Rock State Park. They crowd around the small trickle that runs through the park, careful not to slip on the slick rock that lines the water.

  A few miles down the road I pull over and gas up at Garland´s. I run inside and grab a ham and cheese sandwich. My hunger has suddenly surfaced, and I know without sustenance it’ll gnaw at me throughout the lecture.

  Across the street, a sign marks a historic location: Indian Gardens, where J.J. Thompson and his young wife, Margaret, built the first cabin in Oak Creek Canyon back in 1876.

  I would give anything to go back in time to when they lived here. Less than a dozen people, no crystal crunchers, no tourists—sounds perfect.

  Most people I know would much prefer to be led rather than explore. To be told where they can go, and where they cannot. They’d rather have a clear path than a wilderness. And I think of those early settlers, more concerned with survival than paying the bills, and I envy them.

  Back on the road, I think about the two lectures. The first one, starting in about ten minutes, is given by a National Geographic photographer, Martin Gray, on sacred sites.

  I’m a skeptic by nature, but my mother once claimed to have visited a sacred site. For my mother’s sake, I want to believe there are some special places out there.

  The second lecture is scheduled for tomorrow. This Mexican Professor, Carlos DeNiza, believes he has located a lost Aztec treasure—here, in Sedona! The New Agers really attract a lot of wackos. Tim gives me these assignments even though he knows he’ll have extra work damping down my cynicism.

  I continue down the canyon, driving a little faster because my stop has made me late. On the way I gobble down my sandwich.

  I wish I’d stayed in Flag. Or at the peaceful lagoon.

  But Tim knows I need the cash. And so do I.

  Martin Gray appeared beyond his years at thirty-four. Not that he looked old; it was quite the opposite. His short brown hair and mustache didn’t really set him apart from other men his age—it was his eyes.

  A quick perusal of a bio Tim had given me outlined his vast experiences with so-called sacred sites. Gray had seen a lot of the world, and those experiences rippled through his soft brown eyes, and his expression, as he gazed over a crowd of about fifty.

  He began his lecture on the minute, and I had barely sat down when he stuck the first slide into the projector.

  The image showed a beautiful valley, with remarkable shafts of sunlight illuminating a peaceful bend in the river.

  “Throughout the world, ancient peoples discovered certain places of power, perhaps a spring, or a cave, or a mountain. These places had a mysterious power, a numinosity, a spirit,” Gray said.

  An image of a rock art panel followed. Gray looked up at his slide. “Sometimes they marked them with petroglyphs, pictographs or piles of stones, so that they might be seen by others. There is a definite field of energy that saturates and surrounds these sacred places.”

  I thought of the quiet place I had just left, and the small cairns stacked all around the lagoon. Interested, I perked up as Gray continued in a self-assured voice.

  “Many of these sites are located at places with measurable geophysical anomalies—the so-called earth energies—such as localized magnetism, geothermal activity, and the presence of underground water.

  “For reasons still not fully understood, these energies fluctuate in radiant intensity according to the cyclic influences of the sun and moon. Those periods were then used by ancient peoples for healing, spiritual and oracular purposes.”

  A man in the front row with shoulder-length black hair and round, black-rimmed glasses stood up and asked, “How do you feel man has affected these special places?”

  Gray nodded. “Human intent,” he said, making eye contact with the man, and then turning to his audience.

  “The force of human intention, and the effect that it has upon the amplification of the power of the sacred site, accumulates over time. The energy transference at the power places goes both ways: earth to human and human to earth.”

  The man nodded and sat down, apparently satisfied with the answer, but I was still mystified.

  I raised my hand and Gray glanced at me. “Yes, Miss?”

  I asked, “What if a sacred site is lost, and all you have are legends? Can we really know much about a sacred place through only old stories?”

  He began, “The legends and myths of sacred sites are in fact metaphors, or messages, indicating the magical power of these places. These tales are extremely important because they function as indicators
of the distinctive power of a place.”

  I pondered his answer, but before he could move on, I asked a follow-up question. “So, you’re saying it’s all about the places, not the characters in the legends?”

  Gray’s eyes sparkled as he considered my question.

  “I’m not really saying that,” he replied. “What I’m proposing is that the legendary material associated with a place may show specific ways that certain power places will—or did—affect human beings.”

  I drifted into thought for a few minutes, weighing his words, and when I glanced up Gray was thanking everyone for coming.

  When the lecture was over, I snapped a few pictures of Gray answering last-minute questions, and returned to my truck.

  On the drive from Sedona to Rimrock, I watched the sun set on the far side of the Verde Valley, beyond Sycamore Canyon. The sky was still cloudless, and the sunset colors unexceptional for it, but it still soothed me.

  Perched on the side of Mingus Mountain, Jerome winked at me in the twilight.

  I followed route 179 until it ran into Interstate 17, where I drove south a few miles before taking the Rimrock exit.

  Ten minutes later I parked Heyduke at my place. Saan’s old place.

  Behind the house, Wet Beaver Creek trickled by.

  Thick-trunked cottonwoods lined the creek and loomed over the house in the darkening gloom. I took in the freshness. Even at this time of the year there was a coolness about the yard.

  I checked on the house. Turned on the swamp cooler and opened a few windows.

  Ten minutes later it was still too hot inside, so I grabbed some ice cubes, made a large glass of lemonade, and went behind the house to sit by the water.

  There was no moon, and it didn’t take long for the stars to show and brighten, bats cutting through the night before them.

  The sacred sites lecture had my head spinning. It made me think about the past, and my mother. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep anytime soon, so I guzzled the last of my lemonade, grabbed a flashlight, and began walking up the creek.

  Only a thin line of water flowed down the riverbed, and I proceeded at a casual pace by starlight, not even turning on the flashlight.

  Eventually I reached a bend where the water pooled, and I climbed the opposite bank. I was now on the Hobby Horse Ranch. I knew the owner, and she had no problem with me traversing her land, but I still crept along quietly, not wanting to rouse her dogs.

  I walked across a small field that sloped gently toward the creek; at the high end a massive, half-dead cottonwood stood defiantly. Water flowed at its base, having traveled by ancient aqueduct from Montezuma’s Well—the name the forest service gave to the sinkhole.

  In one of old Saan’s childhood stories, she claimed that her grandmother had spoken of Apache dwellings—wickiups—that used to sit right where I was walking.

  But there was no trace of them now.

  I followed the aqueduct for about a mile, cutting through back yards and then walking alongside the road. Eventually I reached Montezuma Well, proclaimed a National Monument by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.

  A sign by the entrance read: “The label, “Montezuma” is a misnomer – the Aztec emperor Montezuma had no connection to the site or the early indigenous people that occupied the area.”

  I grinned and thought of the lecture I would attend in the morning. Professor DeNiza was suggesting just the opposite: that Montezuma, or at least his treasure, did pass through here.

  On the rim of the sinkhole I sat staring down at the dark water. The monument had closed hours ago and there was nobody around. The far side of the sinkhole was about four hundred feet away.

  Below me nothing moved. Because of the high level of arsenic in the water, not many species survived: water scorpions, leeches, and a few turtles.

  I took a few breaths, and then began to cry.

  I always did when I came here at night.

  The sinkhole was one of the last places I can remember visiting with my mother, before we moved away—before she died. And as the evening breathed around me, I sat there remembering.

  * * *

  I was ten at the time, my mother twenty-eight. Although I’d come here many times over the years, this was the first time since I’d attained her age.

  I cried again when I thought of how much more competent she seemed at this age.

  There had been a full moon the night she asked me to take a little stroll from Saan’s house.

  “Come along, Am Bear,” she said as she shook me from sleep.

  I had followed along, barely awake, until we began moving alongside the channel of running water. Then the mellifluous gurgle of water brought me around.

  I knew where we were going. But I had never been there at night.

  My mother stopped only briefly at the rim of the sinkhole, and then continued down into the well, following a series of cement steps.

  At the bottom, we crouched by the entrance to some caves. Crumbling walls outlined several Sinaguan ruins that had been built into the alcove.

  My mother’s eyes glimmered in the ghostly moonlight, and I noticed they were dilated as she said, “Sometimes when I come here alone, I can hear a young girl crying.”

  I gave her a strange glance, unsure if she was telling me something I should fear or seek. My mother was everything to me, and I treasured this time alone with her. I thought I knew her well, but then she did something astonishing.

  She sang a song.

  I’d heard her sing before, of course, but never a song like this.

  The wordless melody bounced off the walls of the sinkhole and echoed into the night. But it wasn’t just the melody that moved me: there was more to this song.

  I looked out over the trees and bushes that grew down inside the sinkhole, and suddenly I felt they were conscious—watching me. Even the swaying flowers by my feet glanced at me shyly.

  The stars above took on a new luminescence.

  My mother caught my eye, and I could see her joy that I was growing to an age when she could start to share important things with me.

  “When you get just a bit older,” she said, “I’ll teach you this song, and I’ll take you to a sacred place—a secret place—that’s hidden and nobody else knows about.”

  I remember my heart filling with excitement at her words. I was overjoyed that she found me worthy of this secret, and that we would share something “sacred”. The world seemed filled with magic and possibilities.

  But just as quickly my world crumbled.

  We moved away shortly after that night, and within a few years my mother was dead.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  The moment I set eyes on Carlos DeNiza, I knew the lecture would be the polar opposite of the one on sacred sites. Same building—The Flicker Shack—same room, probably even the same slide projector, but this guy looked to be a whole different can of worms.

  He strode into the lecture hall wearing an almost manic look of pride. Black hair, a neatly-trimmed goatee, Hispanic features—Carlos DeNiza looked well at thirty.

  Tim had supplied me with his bio as well. DeNiza was an academic, not a field archaeologist or explorer. He came from a wealthy family, too, and looked like he was used to getting his way.

  His eyes were full of confidence, but I sensed it came from something other than his good looks, or his money.

  He had a secret.

  There were about twenty people in the room, chatting loudly. Somebody had joked about the treasures of El Dorado and a shadow had crossed the professor’s features—briefly. He would not allow unbelievers to dampen his mood.

  He cleared his throat and turned on the projector.

  “Attention everyone, can I have your attention?”

  He spoke English with precision, and a note of bitterness.

  “I want to thank you all for coming. Let us begin.” He switched off the lights.

  Half of us were still standing, and a grumble went through the room. Like a few others I suddenly
found myself scrambling to find a chair.

  The professor showed the first slide; the projection of a Conquistador’s helmet.

  He smiled, showing perfect teeth, and pointed at it.

  “Your pioneers were not the first ones to explore this area, it was the Spanish,” said DeNiza. “They had a presence on these lands for hundreds of years.”

  The next slide was an old map of the Southwest.

  “New Spain was south of here. They called this area Tierra Incognita—an unknown land.”

  The next few slides showed a series of Spanish explorers. DeNiza recited the names as each new slide appeared: “Tovar, Cárdenas, Oñate, Espejo—the list goes on. They risked their lives to come to a land of brutal savages and unforgiving terrain.”

  He then asked, “Can anyone tell me why they were so tenacious?”

  DeNiza beamed. Nobody dared interrupt him.

  He flipped a large gold coin into the air and smiled as he caught it. Everyone in the room stared at the coin, mesmerized.

  “Gold!” said DeNiza.

  “Not just a small amount of gold, mind you,” he added. “This was a place of riches.”

  He inhaled slowly as he scanned the room. “It was a place with treasures that could drive weak men insane.”

  He turned back to the projector. The next few slides showed drawings and paintings of old mines and ruins.

  “The seven cities of Cibola, where the streets were lined with gold,” he said and clicked to the next slide. “The lost Coconino gold mine, the lost Dutchman’s mine. These are just a few, but if you live in Arizona you are familiar with tales of lost treasure.”

  The following slide was of a painting that depicted two Spanish explorers. It was a powerful image, their faces full of emotion. They bore a strong resemblance to DeNiza.

  “It was no different back then,” declared DeNiza. “One of my ancestors—a man named Cristóbal—followed one of these tales of riches, and that’s why I’m here today.”