Mojado

by R. Allen Chappell

  Charlie asked if he could borrow her phone, and she brought it to him on a twenty-five-foot cord. She was proud of this latest modern affectation and liked to keep it with her as she did her chores around the house. She thought it rude to make people wait past the second ring. Clyde was forever tripping over the cord and swore he would throw the whole thing out in the yard… but he knew better than to try it.

  Sue answered on the first ring, and it took Charlie awhile to explain why he hadn’t gotten in touch before now. And, why he hadn’t been around the radio in his truck for several days either. After he told her how much he missed her, they talked about little Joseph Wiley and what he had been up to. She mentioned that Lucy Tallwoman had been by several times, wanting to know if Sue had heard anything. She hadn’t heard from Anita as yet, but like Lucy, the woman didn’t have a phone, and Sue thought it likely she had gotten used to Harley being gone. Sue’s tone turned more serious when she told him Samuel Shorthair had called the house and left a message for Charlie to get in touch as soon as he got back—something about information he might like to know. Charlie told her that since it was so late, the three of them would spend the night at Annie’s and go back up for his truck and trailer in the morning. Thomas, he said, was worried about the horses and thought they ought to locate them and get them back off the mountain. Sue didn’t sound too happy about this but knew Charlie was only doing what he felt called to do. She told him she would call his office for him first thing in the morning, but then he said not to bother, as he would radio in when he was back at his truck. He didn’t think the office would be open before then anyway.

  Harley and Thomas stood close by, listening to the phone conversation. They grinned when Charlie told Sue he loved her. Even Aunt Annie wasn’t used to that kind of talk in public and looked away so as not to embarrass him. When he hung up, Charlie turned to Thomas and asked if he wanted Aunt Annie to look at his head or just have Clyde take him into the clinic.

  Aunt Annie snorted, “Clinic? For what?” She was known to be as good a vet as there was in the county, and seemed offended that anyone might turn down her services.

  Thomas quickly agreed. “She can take a shot at it if she wants to. I don’t think I need the clinic.”

  Annie smiled when he said “shot” and took him into the kitchen, where she unwrapped the now filthy bandage and held his head to one side to catch the light. “Well now, that’s a mess. Charlie, get me some water and one of those clean tea towels from the cupboard. Harley, look in the icebox and bring me that new bottle of Combiotic… and a syringe. The syringes are in that box on top—the big horse sized ones—he’s going to need a pretty good jolt.” Thomas frowned at this and looked at Charlie, who shook his head and shrugged. After cleaning the wound and plastering it with antibiotic cream, Annie re-bandaged it and snapped the little metal top off the injectable. When she started pulling a good dose of it into the syringe, Thomas stood up and started rolling up his sleeve. Annie shook her head and waved a finger in front of his nose. “Drop ’em,” she told him. “If I pumped this much juice into your arm, you wouldn’t be able to use it for a week. I need a bigger muscle, and you know where that is.”

  Again, Thomas looked to Charlie and started to protest, but thought better of it when he saw the look on Annie’s face.

  “You’ll need another of these tomorrow too,” she said, “So you better get used to it. Maybe it’ll learn you to stay outta’ trouble.” She’d known Thomas since he was a boy and wasn’t about to cut him any slack. Harley stood grinning in the corner and nodded encouragement to each of them in turn.

  The next morning dawned cool and cloudy with the essence of wet mesquite pulled up by the frontal system out of Mexico. When Thomas and Charlie came in from the spare bedroom, Harley—who had slept on the couch—had breakfast well underway. Thomas stood rubbing his hip, and glowered at Harley Ponyboy when he laughed.

  Clyde was out refueling Annie’s truck from the pump on the fifty-gallon drum by the tool shed, and by the time he came back in, Thomas had taken his second injection, this time like a man, and was already wolfing down a huge breakfast. He obviously felt much better. Still, Annie warned, he really should have a third shot the next day, should he be back their way. The night spent in a real bed had been good for all of them, and the generous breakfast Annie made available had them feeling like new men.

  Annie looked askance at their clothing. “You boys should let me wash those duds for you before you go. They look about due.” Charlie agreed about the state of their clothes but said they hadn’t time and gave his Aunt Annie a kiss on the cheek before gathering up the food she had prepared for them and heading out to the truck. He had borrowed two rifles from his aunt the night before… and a considerable amount of ammunition. That way all three of them could be armed. There might come a reckoning, he thought, and he wanted them to be ready for it.

  15

  The Spell

  Luca Tarango was not a man to give his trust lightly, but there was something about this “bruja,” this witch-woman, that he connected with. Nearly every village in Mexico had its own version of a witch, and it was the rare person who had not taken advantage of their services, though few wanted it known. A considerable amount of people’s lives was thus spent conjecturing: whether or not a spell had been put on them, or if not, should they have one put against someone else. The evidence of these goings-on could be as minor as a sick goat, or as serious as a death in the family, and virtually nothing bad happened without it being laid at the door of a witch. Luca’s own father had once paid a bruja to conjure up a spell against a woman who refused to pay for the adobes used in the repair of her house. His father had been disappointed when several days passed and nothing untoward happened to the woman. Come to find out, the woman had not known about the spell, but when the information was passed along to her, she immediately fell ill and suffered for weeks, before having a spell of her own put against his father, who when informed about it, fell seriously ill himself. And so it went, back and forth, until it became a way of life for some people—a source of entertainment for the entire village—but one that might indeed have deadly consequences.

  These Navajo must be the same as his own people when it came to witches, Luca thought… and he was right.

  The woman brought him a tea of red willow bark—the inner bark—mixed with some secret herb he couldn’t identify. In only a short while he felt better, but very, very tired. She told him he should sleep and showed him to the hut, where there was a bed consisting of sheepskins and blankets. He knew it would be pointless, dangerous even, to continue his journey until the searchers quit coming in such droves. He decided this was as good a place to hide as any, at least, for the time being. As he drifted off to sleep, he seemed to remember the witch whispering something, but he couldn’t quite make out what it was. Tressa now seemed very far away.

  The witch had gone to the top of the canyon and there in the cedars built a little fire, no more than a few dry twigs, invisible, should one be more than a few feet from it. From her medicine pouch she took a pinch of purple sage and placed it atop the little blaze, where it smoldered a bit before releasing a tiny plume of smoke—no larger than a pencil it was—which lasted only a half-minute or so. But it was enough to wash her face in, and she wafted the smoke over herself with both hands in a cleansing ritual as old as time itself. Thus she cleared her mind of all but her immediate objective. At last those people who had pushed her mother from her own land, her own home, would pay the price for their cruel and haughty treatment. That those interlopers were of her father’s people made no difference. And neither did her father’s being one of them matter… No, he most of all would feel the heavy hand of her redemption.

  When they first came to the upper San Juan and pretended to be friends to the Piute, the Navajo family settled themselves on a poor section of ground along the barrens of the river, all rock and sand, but even then her grandfather had warned that these Dineè, as he called them, we
re renegades and not to be trusted. Why would they come from the rich lands they claimed were their old home to settle in this desolate area of poor grass and little water, a land where even the Piute, who were born to hard times, had a miserable time of it. They must be on the run from someone or something in their own country, her grandfather said. Only a few good places, right on the river, had enough water to grow anything and the Piutes had held these plots since time beyond memory. Some had filtered in from the Great Basin, well before the Navajo. Now the Navajo wanted it, and while it took place before Margaret was born, the effect of it changed her life forever.

  It did not take the newcomers long to move nearer and nearer to Margaret’s family, until finally they were on the very boundary of the property and could be seen doing their morning business. There were two older boys in the group and several older men as well. The old grandmother and mother were seldom seen, kept to themselves, and did not come to visit, as was proper for ladies to do.

  Though he was already an old man, Margaret’s grandfather, as head of the clan, took it upon himself to ride to the trading post and inform the trader of what was happening. The trader, he told the family, would intercede for them with the authorities. It was only a few weeks later that her grandfather disappeared, never to be seen again. After that the renegade Navajos did pretty much as they pleased, and Margaret’s mother and her mother’s sister were forced through intimidation to “marry” the Navajo boys. Once the girls were pregnant, the outliers claimed they were now family, and when the government man finally made his way to those far reaches to investigate, he was assured by the head man of the Navajos that everything was fine and that they were all one big family now. It was not long after Margaret was born that her mother saddled a horse in the dead of night and, strapping her new daughter in a cradleboard, left that place for good. It was now only a lonesome country filled with bad memories.

  Later, down in the towns, Margaret’s mother remarried, but the new husband was little better than the first and was known to abuse her and her daughter “frightfully,” in the words of the trader at Kiabito. When Margaret was only eighteen, her mother and stepfather both died when the man, drunk at the time, drove their car off a high embankment and into San Juan River. She left Margaret a hogan, a few sheep and goats, and knowledge of medicine taught her by her Piute mother. Soon after, she was blamed for the first time of witchcraft, ostracized by the entire community, and after a while came to believe it herself. Slowly then, she built a reputation for powers beyond those of most healers. She learned how to use people’s superstitions against them. She also learned an inherent distrust of men in general and never married. Most men who might have made suitable husbands listened to the talk and were afraid of her. One day, she knew, just the right person would come along—a merciless person who was not afraid, one strong enough to lay waste to those people on the upper San Juan.

  Luca woke from his sleep and went to the blanket that served as a door and looked out. He saw it was almost sundown and the woman was at the fire preparing food and quietly singing some repetitious song, or chant. He felt better than he had in many days and knew it was mostly because of this woman and her medicine. When she looked up, she did not smile but indicated a place by the fire, and he went there and sat down on a section of log that had been dragged there while he slept. It had a folded sheepskin on it, and he could see the woman had gone to some trouble to fix it. The pot held a sort of stew, and while it was made of nothing he recognized, it had a pleasant smell to it and bubbled nicely in the pot. There were also tortillas warming on a flat stone, and he wondered once again how the woman got her supplies. He suspected it must be a long way to town, and that meant someone was bringing them to her.

  He felt no particular gratitude toward this woman for the things she had done, as he knew they had been done for a reason, and eventually he would come to know what was required of him, and what he should do about it. He was a man who always paid his debts, be they for good or evil, and he would repay this one too, assuming the cost was not too dear.

  “How did you sleep?” she asked, knowing full well that he had slept like the potion decreed he should sleep, but wanting to hear him say it. That was important.

  “I sleep all right… I don’ dream so many bad things, like sometimes.”

  She poured a cup of coffee from the pot and brought it around to him. “There is no cream or sugar — no leche, o asucar,” …She used up a good portion of her small supply of Spanish to make sure he understood.

  He nodded. He seldom took milk or sugar in his coffee but did not say this, as he wanted her to think the lack of these things was an inconvenience, and thus figured less gratitude would be required on his part. He considered it best to play the game as she contrived it, and give nothing away.

  In olden times when an Indian gave a gift it was with the expectation that one would be given in return, hopefully a better one. And while the giver might then protest, in the end they would take the return present and be satisfied. Should one not have a better gift to give, he might just mention that he had the person in mind for a certain thing and that it would be worth waiting for. Things were not so different even now, and Luca reached over to where his pack leaned against the end of the log, pulled it to him, and emptied his food on the dry grass, pushing it toward her, canned goods mostly, from the sheep camp, and with the odd packet or two of left over freeze-dried in the mix. It was not so hard to get food in this country that a man could not pay what he owed. Thus the man and woman revealed themselves, one to the other, but only bit-by-bit.

  The woman filled his bowl from the pot, put a spoon in it, and passed it across with only a glance at the things he’d offered. But she was pleased, nonetheless, and showed it as she caught his eye and smiled. Things were going quite well in her opinion.

  “How you get you food out here?” This was the second time he had asked the question, and now wanted to hear her answer. Though it was pretty obvious someone was bringing her things, it would be good to know how and when this happened. If he were to be there a while, it might save them both some unpleasantness.

  She tilted her head to one side and looked long and hard at him before answering. “The trader sends an old man, his helper, every two weeks. Sometimes he don’t come when he’s supposed to, but mostly he does… when his truck don’t break down.”

  He nodded at this, as though satisfied with the information—he tucked away the part about the truck. The stew was good, whatever it was, but he politely refused another helping, saying he was not used to eating large amounts and was full. The woman disappeared inside the hogan, and when she came back, she brought a hard black twist of traditional tobacco. He had not thought it available in this country, though it still could be had in Mexico if you knew where to find it. The woman used the tobacco in various little ceremonies, she said, just as people had for many thousands of years.

  He could not help but show his pleasure as she handed him the tobacco and a small packet of papers. He crumbled a bit from the end of the twist into a little line on a paper and rolled it, licking the edge. When he took a burning twig from the fire and lit the end, smoke rolled from the corners of his mouth, and he laughed outright and was happy. He sat back and inhaled and a great contentment fell over him as he sat at his place by the fire, in a land so distant, his uncles would wonder at the daring of it all. He had only a few dollars left of the money those uncles provided him at the start of his journey, and he pulled this out and placed it on the little pile of canned goods. It occurred to him that he should have taken the money from the dead mojados in the wrecked van that night, but it would not have been very much, probably, and what little they had would have been sewn into their clothing; there had not been time for that. Even the coyotero had left the bulk of the money he’d collected in the hands of his brother, before leaving Mexico. He’d made it obvious, too, that he handed over that money—one could not be too careful in this business. There were always one or two ch
ancy characters in every bunch.

  In any case, Luca Tarango did not steal from the dead. That was not his line of work.

  While he was thinking these things the Witch Woman came close and plucked at his shirt, saying she had something to tell him and whispered in his ear that she knew a very powerful charm… something no one else had knowledge of.

  “What is that?” Luca asked innocently.

  He could barely make out the words as she mouthed them. “I can make you invisible,” she said, and looked this way and that before going on. “I have a crystal I found only this spring. It is what brought me the dreams that foretold your coming.” She looked to the heavens, where the stars were beginning to show, and seemed for a moment to be lost in the discovery of them. She spoke again, but only when she was satisfied he understood the enormity of the thing and could fully grasp its implications. “With the magic of this crystal and the spell I will teach you, no one will be able to see you, even in full daylight. You will, at last, be able to do what is in you to do… and no one will know.” She brought forth a small violet-hued crystal and held it to the heavens, stared through it at the stars, smiled, and then began speaking in a tongue he didn’t know. With wild supplication she called upon whatever deities she served, and when she finished, she passed him the crystal and spoke in a near normal voice, “An old Piute woman taught me this charm—it will only work once, so you must use it only in case of desperate need.”

  This was nearly beyond his comprehension, and his eyes grew wide at the very thought of such witchery. She spent a long time repeating the few words of the incantation and made sure he could say them just so, and in exact order. She showed him how to hold the crystal in the proper way and press it tight against his breast. When finally she thought he had it, he watched as she backed away from the fire to go alone to that secret place where she prayed and did—he knew not what. He put the crystal in his pocket and thought he felt a certain heat from it, and that feeling returned each time the crystal came into his thoughts. And while the woman still did not have what she needed from him, he now had all he needed from her, and he thought about this long and hard before making his final decision. It was Tressa that played on his mind.