Wild Penance

by Sandi Ault

Regan set the bottle she was about to uncork on the counter. “Jamaica, I’m sorry I put you on the spot out there. I didn’t know it was going to go that way when I mentioned your book.” She placed her palm on my back, patted me several times, and then began rubbing between my shoulder blades as if to comfort me. I could feel her hand quivering.

  “I want to talk to you about my book in a minute, but first-since we’re alone-let me say something real quick that I need to say.”

  She stopped rubbing and looked at me.

  “Regan, if I have ever done anything to hurt or offend you, I want to ask your forgiveness.”

  My hostess surprised me when her eyes grew moist with tears. Her lower lip trembled, and she reached out with her hand and squeezed my arm. “My dear, that is so touching. I am honored that you cared enough about me to say something like that. Of course, no forgiveness is necessary, but that is a lovely custom. Especially for Lent.”

  Before I could raise the matter of my book again, we were interrupted. “I thought I heard something about there being wine at this affair,” Andy said, leaning against the door frame at the entry to the cocina. The light behind him gave an auralike glow to his large, lean frame, his face in shadow. He tucked his thumbs into his pants pockets so that his fingers hung in front of them, and I could see two thin gold bands, one each on the fourth and fifth fingers of his right hand. I caught a faint whiff of citrusy aftershave. His hair gleamed. I stared at him, intrigued. “Regan, you’re in here keeping Jamaica all to yourself. That’s not fair.” He looked at Regan, but he came toward me. He picked up the corkscrew and wine bottle from the counter and deftly removed the cork. “Where’s your glass?” he said to me.

  “I’m having tea.”

  “Tea? You don’t care for the wine?”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Jamaica loves the local poleo,” Regan said. “I always make that for her when she comes.” She took the opened bottle of wine from her renter. “I better take this out there before all my guests get parched and go home,” she said and scurried away.

  “I hear you’re doing some kind of book about the Penitentes,” Andy said.

  “I was doing a sketchbook. My book was stolen.”

  “Stolen? How? When?” His face showed genuine concern.

  “Last week. Three guys. They went through my Jeep. I-”

  He interrupted again: “But why would they steal your book?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is they took it.”

  “Well, that’s about the lousiest thing I ever heard of. You kept a copy somewhere, I’m sure?”

  “No, I didn’t keep a copy. It was all pretty much hand-drawn and handwritten, some of it typed using an old typewriter. I lead a pretty low-tech life.”

  “Wow, that’s too bad, I’m so sorry.” He put the cork he’d been holding on the counter.

  “What brings you here to New Mexico?” I asked, eager to change the subject.

  “I’m an art dealer. I’m here on a buying trip.”

  “Well, there’s plenty of art around here. Every other house in New Mexico is a gallery.”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “Are you looking for any kind of art in particular?”

  “No, nothing in particular. I buy what I like. Perhaps you can recommend an artist, or even show me your favorite gallery?” His eyes met mine.

  I pulled my gaze away from Andy Vincent. I had felt ill at ease the whole time I’d been at this brunch, and I was also feeling the exhaustion of too much anxiety and too little sleep. After what had happened to Nora the night before, I had gone to bed with my pistol under my pillow and my shotgun on the floor beside me. I had been unable to rest, mulling over every moment I could remember from the past week, trying to make sense of the series of strange events. I wouldn’t even have come to mass today, but I had wanted to tell Regan about the book. I guess I also had hoped that the mass might distract me, maybe even inspire me to write again. Instead, with that garish life-size crucifix hanging above the altar, it had left me feeling even more off balance.

  “All this talk about your book has upset you.” Andy’s voice called me back to the present.

  “I’ve just had a hard week.”

  “Well, then maybe you need to have a little fun this afternoon!” He smiled.

  “I think I’m even too tired to have fun,” I said. I started to move around him and go toward the door.

  “Wait.” He took my elbow gently and stopped me, leaning in front of me so he could see my face. “We could get out of here-just take a drive or something. Something easy, laid-back.” His eyes revealed a hint of desperation.

  I hated to rebuff him, but my head was starting to pound. “No, thanks. I think I need to go home and get some rest,” I said, and I turned and went back to the party. He followed me.

  “Andy, did you and Jamaica get acquainted?” Regan asked, coming toward us.

  “I think Jamaica is too tired,” Andy said. “Even my considerable charms did not get her to talk much with me.” He smiled, but he looked chagrined.

  “I really am tired,” I said, “and I don’t mean to be rude, but I think I ought to go. Thank you for inviting me, Regan.” I squeezed her arm. “Mass was an extraordinary experience.” I shifted my look to Andy Vincent. “Perhaps we’ll see one another again before you go,” I said.

  “Maybe we can have dinner sometime? I am staying through the end of the month, and possibly a day or so after that.” He looked from me to Regan. “We could all have dinner.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t. Not dinner. Not for a while. I’m working nights. It was nice meeting you, Andy.”

  Regan took me by the arm and walked me toward the French doors that led out onto the patio. “You do look tired, Jamaica. Is anything wrong?” Her face showed concern.

  I took my jacket from the iron sculpture that served as a coat-rack. “We’ll have to talk another time. I had something I wanted to tell you.” I reached for the door handle. “Did you get the rosary-”

  “Rosary?” Regan paused a moment, then nodded her head. “Oh, yes, yes, I did. I do wish you would be nicer to Andy. He doesn’t know anyone here, and… Well, my dear, I must get back to my other guests. Get some rest, and we’ll talk some more next time you come.”

  When I stepped outside, Father Ximon was standing on the patio alone, looking out over the rio. I pulled on my jacket and began buttoning it against the cold.

  “Have you ever seen the eagles fish in the rio here?” he asked.

  “Yes. It’s thrilling, isn’t it?” The crisp air felt good on my head.

  “Yes… yes, it’s thrilling.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I think your book is ill-advised, Ms. Wild.”

  “Why?”

  “What exactly is your interest in the Penitentes?”

  Now I was starting to get angry. “I’m not sure that it’s any of your business, Father.”

  He drew up at this, then gave me a sardonic smile. “Well, I doubt seriously that you have a full understanding of the nature of your subject. I think the fact that you have aligned yourself with Father Medina indicates your ignorance of a salient fact. You see, the Penitentes are considered a heterodoxy by the Catholic Church.” He emphasized the word heterodoxy with a grim tone. “Father Medina seems to have a morbid fascination with that barbarous sect, some say to the detriment of his service to the Church.”

  I took a deep breath of the bracing air. “I don’t recall ‘aligning’ myself with Father Ignacio. I consulted him because he is a scholar who happens to have expertise in this area. Besides, have you read his work? He’s not advocating their religion, he’s simply recording for posterity.”

  “The Penitentes are not just a part of history, Ms. Wild. They still exist. To give them attention is to fuel their continuation. It arouses interest. It defies the Church. It is a kind of advocacy!” As he said this, his voice had become harsh and gruff. “Ignacio Medina’s desire to be a renowned scholar in this regard appears to ha
ve led him to break faith with the Church.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  He smiled as if he had just announced a small victory. “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “Let’s just say that Father Medina may be in jeopardy of losing his position as a teacher at the St. Catherine Indian School due to his extracurricular activities. And you, Miss Wild-you should be careful, too. Here in New Mexico, the Church is everything. The Church is everywhere. You don’t want to end up on the wrong side of things, I assure you. That, too, would be ill-advised.”

  21

  Unforgivable

  Once again, instead of going home to sleep, I drove to Tanoah Pueblo and sought out the company of Anna Santana. When I knocked on her door, I worried that she would be upset that I had come back before completing the lesson. But she surprised me with a warm smile. She invited me in and we went to her kitchen where I helped her to sort through a large bundle of stiff, reed-thin red willow branches, selecting one at a time and trimming off any roots and side feeders, then slowly working the straight stalks around the inner edges of a large galvanized washtub full of hot water. It took patience to do this, as we had to wait until the first section of each willow branch softened before we could push more of the length into the circular tub-not unlike putting uncooked spaghetti into a small pot, only one stick at a time. “I make basket, these,” she said with a smile. “Grandma Bird, you know my mother, she best one make basket, Tanoah Pueblo. But she only make basket next other time. Now she is done. So, I am basket maker now.”

  While she finished working the last few willow branches into the hot water to soak and soften so they would be pliable enough to weave into baskets, I made us each a cup of hot tea. When our tea was ready, Momma Anna washed her hands and once again went to get a folded blanket. She spread it on the living room floor, and we sat together on the brightly colored wool and drank our tea.

  “I am not finished with my lesson with the Old One yet,” I confessed.

  “I know,” she said.

  “Momma Anna, I have asked a couple people for forgiveness now. Both times, I felt… I don’t know… ashamed, I guess. Like I had done something terrible and I really needed forgiveness. But I don’t know what I’ve done that would make me feel that way.”

  The old Pueblo woman pressed her lips together until they almost disappeared. She seemed to be thinking about what to say to me.

  I knew to remain quiet and allow the silence to blossom between us. Sharing silence is a form of both intimacy and respect to the Tanoah, and they often measure someone they meet by how much silence the newcomer can tolerate.

  “You ask Old One,” Momma Anna said.

  I thought for a moment about this. Then, suddenly, I had another idea. “Momma Anna, if I have done anything to hurt or offend you, I ask your forgiveness.”

  The elder smiled at me, and light from the window twinkled on the surface of one of her eyes. “I forgive you,” she said. “Maybe you need forgive you.”

  I was so tired when I got to my cabin that I wedged a chair under the doorknob of my front door and hurried to change into sweats. I went directly to bed for a nap, placing my pistol under my pillow once more and the shotgun on the floor-just under the edge of the bed where I could reach it. It had been a long week full of strange events, odd hours, and little sleep. I held the Old One up between my fingers to look at it while I lay on my pillow. “What are you trying to teach me?” I said aloud, turning it this way and that, as if the answer might be on the stone itself. I tucked it in the pocket of my sweatpants and closed my eyes.

  I must have dozed off instantly. When I woke, I felt groggy and hungover, and I had drooled on my pillow. I propped myself up against the aspen log headboard, still drowsy and unable to prod myself fully awake. The sun was low outside and my cabin was in the shadow of the mountain now-I could see the fading sky out the window near my bed. The gray semidarkness inside the house made everything seem fuzzy and out of focus. Within seconds, just as if a trapdoor had opened beneath me, I dropped deep into a memory-one that had held itself in perfect waiting for a time like this, when I let down my guard:

  I am twelve. It is early spring in western Kansas; the days are growing longer and the weather warmer. A boy named Skip has been flirting with me all week at school.

  “Want to see our new foal?” he asks on the bus home.

  “I have chores to do. My dad is expecting me.”

  “You can hop off the bus with me, I’ll show you the foal, and then I can drive you home on my four-wheeler. I bet we can get you home before the bus gets to your road.”

  We have fun talking and teasing while we look at the new foal. Somehow, an hour passes before we realize it. I panic. “I have to get home. My dad will be worried.”

  We hurry to get me home, taking a cross-country path on his four-wheeler. When we drive up to my house, I tell Skip to let me off at the road. I pretend to be lighthearted, smiling and waving as he drives away, but I dread seeing my father. I know I am in trouble.

  He isn’t in the house or in the barn. I think maybe I am home free, that he is working in the fields and doesn’t know I have come home late. I change out of my school dress and into my chore clothes. I walk out to the field he has been clearing in the back forty. I see the tractor and the big green brush-hogger behind it turned on its side. I start running. I run as fast as I can, and as I draw near, I see boots and denim-clad legs sticking out from under the back of the tractor. “Daddy!” I scream. “Daddy!” The rotary mower has careened into the side of the tractor, and I have to run to the other side to see underneath. I slide into place beside his head and find that his body is pinned between the machines. He needs help.

  I look around, frantic, trying to decide what to do. And then I see it. Three feet away, like a fat blue snake, an arm lies in the dirt, a dark stain in the earth where the blood has drained from it.

  I hear the engine of the tractor, still running. The motor is making a knocking sound. A pounding sound. Someone is pounding…

  “Jamaica! Jamaica! Jamaica, are you all right?” Roy’s voice called from the other side of the door, his fist thumping demandingly on the thick wood slab. I hoisted myself out of bed feeling like I weighed a thousand pounds. I staggered to the door, removed the chair, and swung the door open.

  “Jamaica! For Christ’s sake, I’ve been banging on this door and yelling for you for five minutes! I thought we were going to have to get a medic out here. Boy, you look like you’ve been drug through a knothole. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, give me a minute. I took a nap and… I guess I wasn’t quite awake. I got up too fast. I need to sit down.” I turned and walked back to my big chair and carefully lowered myself into it. I laid my head back and looked up at the ceiling, waiting for the room to stop spinning.

  The Boss stood in the doorway. I knew he probably didn’t want to come into my cabin, but I couldn’t have stood at the door any longer, and I wasn’t sure I could get up and move now even if there was free land involved.

  “Well, your being sick kind of changes things, but I don’t really know how to sort it out yet. Jerry Padilla called me at home and said he wanted to talk with you. He couldn’t find a phone number for you, and wanted to know how to find you, said he needs to question you. I told him you didn’t have a phone, but I would have you meet him at the BLM at seventeen hundred hours. He won’t tell me what it’s about. Do you want me to tell him you’re sick and can’t come?”

  I sat up straight in the chair. “No, Boss, I’ll be fine. I’m not sick, just tired. I’ll get changed in just a second, and I’ll come.”

  When I got to the BLM, Deputy Sheriff Jerry Padilla was waiting in the lobby. I asked him to come to the employee break room with me and I started a pot of coffee.

  “Man, you look worn out. You getting any sleep?” he asked.

  “No, I haven’t had much sleep this week.”

  “Well, drinking coffee this late in the d
ay isn’t going to help.”

  “You’re probably right. My timing stinks. I’m trying to wake up so I can talk to you, but I need to go home right after this and go to bed. I guess I won’t have any coffee after all. Do you want some?”

  “Sure, I’ll have a cup. Listen, there’s a new twist. We have a positive I.D. on the body that went over the bridge on the cross on Wednesday. Hey, you probably ought to sit down, Jamaica; you don’t look so good.”

  I took a chair.

  “It’s a priest, guy we think you might know, name is Father Ignacio Medina.”

  “Father Ignacio? But-no! How can he…”

  Jerry sat quietly and didn’t speak, watching me.

  I grabbed the front of my shirt and wadded up a fistful of the cloth. “I can’t believe…” I felt short of air. “My book…”

  “This the priest that was helping you with your book?”

  I nodded my head. I felt like I should cry, anything, but I was going numb inside instead.

  Jerry continued to watch me. After a minute or so, he reached in his pocket and took out his notebook. He opened it on the table and thumbed to a page filled with writing in black ink. Then he looked up at me again. “The reason I wanted to talk to you is to find out why you were trying to reach him at the Indian school in Santa Fe on Thursday afternoon.”

  I didn’t speak.

  Jerry’s eyes studied my face, but now he looked down at the notebook. “Woman at the school says, let’s see…” He consulted his notes. “… Says you called at about one o’clock that afternoon.”

  My skin was tingling, as if my whole body had physically gone to sleep, every muscle full of pins and needles and totally unresponsive. I remembered Father Ignacio’s vigilance at our meeting, his warning: There is something going on right now. I cannot speak about it. It is not safe… You must be very careful… I swallowed hard. I wanted to feel something, but I couldn’t. Instead, I spoke, almost mechanically. “I called to get a name from him. A name that he had given me before, but I had forgotten. The name was written in my book.”