Land of Burning Heat

by Judith Van GIeson

  “Please. Call me Claire.”

  “That was my mother’s name. To me it means clarity and light,” Harold said. “I hope you can shed some light on this skeleton that came out of the darkness under Isabel Santos’s floor.”

  “I hope you can.”

  “Let’s put our heads together,” Harold said.

  A promising approach, thought Claire, as she led the way down the hall to her office listening to Harold wheezing behind her. She attributed the heavy breathing to the altitude of Albuquerque, the weight of Harold Marcus and/or a respiratory problem. When they reached her office, he sat down in the visitor’s chair and exhaled with a sigh. She went behind her desk and sat down, too. Standing next to Harold made her feel too tall, too blonde, too WASP. She could never get away from being a WASP, but her perception of her tallness and her blondness depended on who she was with. If she and Harold were going to put their heads together in any way, she preferred to do it when they were seated and she wasn’t towering over him.

  “What is the altitude here?” he asked.

  “A mile.”

  “Is that all? It feels like ten.”

  “Have you examined the skeleton yet?” she asked.

  “First, I needed to convince the Medical Investigator, Joan Bannister, that I could be of help. Usually we get involved after they contact us.”

  “Did she agree?”

  “Yes. We have advanced techniques for establishing the origin of a skeleton.” He smiled at Claire. “So I got to look at your old bones, which appear to date from the early seventeenth century. Joan has established that the person was a young male. I examined the growth plate line on the tibia and reached the same conclusion she had: the man was in his early to mid-thirties. Even if he did live on the frontier in the early seventeenth century, that’s young to die. I didn’t see any broken bones or obvious signs of warfare or foul play. We’ll need to do more work before we can establish the cause of death. Although the hair and nails have turned to dust, we found a few threads of fabric attached to the rib cage that I will examine further. It is entirely possible given the time and place of death that the man was an Indian. We can determine that through bone chemistry and by strontium testing of the tooth enamel. The teeth are in good shape and intact. Tooth enamel is formed in early childhood. It reflects the food and water consumed in youth and can tell us where a person grew up.”

  “You can tell where a person from the seventeenth century grew up just by testing tooth enamel?” Claire was incredulous.

  “We can. Once the test is completed we will know whether our young man grew up in Spain, Old Mexico, New Mexico or somewhere else.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  Harold smiled again. His enthusiasm for his work gave him the warm steady glow of a pilot light. Studying the dead took him into the darkness, but his intelligence transformed the experience. Claire was beginning to feel better than she had since Isabel died.

  “I convinced the Medical Investigator to take me out to the site,” Harold said.

  “What did you find?”

  “Nothing new. The investigators had dug extensively in the area around the body, but nothing else was uncovered. The fact that our young man was buried without a coffin may help to date his death or establish his ethnicity. Native Americans didn’t use coffins. I’ll have to do some research to establish when the settlers began using them. In the early days, they may have been too poor for wooden coffins. I understand that the settlers left in the Pueblo Revolt, but that some of them returned to their homesteads. Houses may well have been built over and over again on the same site. On the other hand, there may have been no floor or no house either when our young man was buried.”

  “Does your work ever deal with murder?” Claire asked.

  “Of course; those tend to be the most interesting cases. Forensic anthropology has made great strides in recent years,” he continued, “but sometimes we need more than forensics to make an identification. Documents and history can help.” Harold’s eyes were full of curiosity. “Enough about me,” he laughed. “Tell me what you’ve discovered.”

  Claire showed him the copy of Isabel’s note.

  “What language is that?” he asked.

  “Some say old Spanish; some say Ladino. I believe it to be Ladino.”

  “But you don’t have the original?”

  “No. The original document has vanished.”

  “That’s unfortunate because our document people could tell a great deal from the paper and the ink. Sometimes the acidic ink on these old documents eats right through the paper and turns it to lace.”

  “Isabel said she found it rolled up inside a wooden cross also buried under the floor. She told me it was very old and very dry. She copied the words down because she was afraid of moving the document and damaging it. I’m afraid that it was destroyed in the robbery or that it has fallen into the wrong hands and is not being taken care of.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Harold said with so much sympathy that Claire felt he was reaching across the desk and patting her hand. “I’ve read that some of the Jews imprisoned in South America in the sixteenth century wrote their thoughts down on corn cobs. One of them went to his death with those writings wrapped around his neck. Corn cobs have been known to last for many centuries in the right environment, but whether the writing on them would last I don’t know. If a document was hidden inside a wooden cross and buried under a floor that would help to preserve it. We are going to examine the cross from the Santos house, date it and determine its origin.

  “I’ve long been interested in the story of the Sephardim. My family is from Eastern Europe, but I grew up in Rhode Island. I used to go to the Touro Synagogue in Newport. It’s the oldest synagogue in America, built in sixteen fifty-eight by Sephardic Jews who came to New England via the Caribbean.”

  “It’s strange to think that a synagogue could be built in Newport at a time when Jews were being burned at the stake in Mexico City.”

  “They were different worlds back then, far more than a country apart. Little is known about the Inquisition in the New World. This investigation could teach us more about that dark chapter and create a wider awareness of Joaquín Rodriguez, who certainly deserves to be better known.”

  The dialogue with Harold reminded Claire how pleasant intellectual endeavor could be when there was a common purpose and ego was left outside the door. “I came across something interesting in my research,” she said. “The Santos family is descended from a man named Manuel Santos who came north with Don Juan de Oñate. It is believed that some of the people in Oñate’s expedition were crypto Jews whose names had appeared on the Inquisition lists. One of them might have brought the cross containing the last words of Joaquín Rodriguez, but Manuel Santos is also the name of a man who witnessed the execution of Joaquín Rodriguez. I have a copy of the ‘Inquisition Case’. I made one for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ve been told that Manuel Santos the Inquisitor remained in Mexico and witnessed further executions.”

  “The skeleton could be that Manuel Santos’s son.”

  “If he had a son. If that’s the case, why were the words of a Jew hidden in the house of the family of an Inquisitor?”

  “That’s for us to find out. With the cooperation of the present generation it’s easy enough to establish whether the skeleton belongs to a member of the Santos family.”

  “They’re reluctant to claim an Inquisitor as an ancestor; the latest Manuel Santos is running for state senator.”

  “Do you know anyone else in the family?”

  “I met Manuel’s brother.”

  “Would he be willing to provide DNA for testing? Can he tell you any more about the family history?”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Claire said.

  “It’s also possible that we will find no connection between the document, the cross and the bones, and that it is coincidence they ended up under the same floor. The young man who surfaced migh
t not be related to the Santos family at all.”

  “I know,” Claire said, feeling her optimism crawling out the open door.

  “This may not have any relevance to the skeleton under the floor, but it’s something I’m curious about,” Harold said. “If crypto Jews came north with Oñate what was their life like?”

  “I’m not an expert,” Claire warned, “but I’ve learned that there were times during the end of the sixteenth century and the middle of the seventeenth when the Inquisition in Mexico actively persecuted Jews. However, much of the time they seemed to be ignored. They lived in remote villages the padres seldom visited. It is believed that they kept to themselves, intermarried and went on practicing their religion in secret. They continued to speak the old language. Their diet and customs were called ‘the old ways’. As time passed and they went on practicing their religion in secret, some of the crypto Jews lost touch with why they were doing it.”

  “There’s no reason to be secret anymore, is there? Why not come forward and join a local synagogue?”

  “Actually there are a number of reasons. It is considered double jeopardy to be both Jewish and Hispanic. If you throw in being a woman, that makes it triple jeopardy. These are all groups that have felt oppressed at some time. By now some family members have become devout Catholics. Over the centuries the families have developed the habit of secrecy. Their Judaism is very private, very personal, not something they want to share with outsiders. The religion that they practice has its roots in the Middle Ages, and they may not feel connected to modern day Judaism.”

  “I’ve always felt that the oppression of one Jew should unite all Jews,” Harold said. “Over the centuries we’ve faced everything from insult to annihilation.”

  Claire remembered the insults and stereotyping when she was in high school and wondered if Harold had found it as oppressive as she had. Jewish boys were supposed to be smart, ambitious and unathletic. WASP girls were expected to be pretty, pleasant and dumb. Young women were sought after for that reason. The dumber they acted the more popular they became. They were status symbols but it was a role she hated. It was a relief to grow older and be able to develop and express her intelligence.

  “A blow against one of us should be a blow against all,” Harold said.

  It was the ideal, Claire thought, but it might not be the reality. Sometimes religions were as divided internally as they were threatened by external forces.

  “Compared to the other religions, there are so few of us,” Harold said. “There are a billion Muslims now, two billion Christians. Yet there are no more Jews in America now than there were ten years ago. Many people marry outside the religion and their children are lost. If you come across anybody in your investigations who is willing to talk about the old ways, I’d be interested in meeting with that person whether it has anything to do with the Santos investigation or not. I’m always interested in learning more about Judaism and connecting with other Jews. This is a little-known chapter back East.”

  “Of course,” Claire said.

  Harold stood up and shook Claire’s hand. “It was a pleasure meeting you. Good luck with your work.”

  “You, too.”

  “I’ll let you know what story the old bones have to tell.”

  “Thanks,” Claire said.

  She walked Harold out to the Information Desk.

  When she got back to her office she called Chuy Santos.

  She heard someone lift the receiver and pause before speaking. “Hello,” a woman said in a voice that seemed rusty from lack of use.

  “Hello,” Claire replied. “I’m looking for Chuy Santos.”

  “Oh, Chuy,” the woman answered. “Chuy’s not here. He went to the Santa Ana Casino. To collect his paycheck, he told me.”

  “My name is Claire Reynier. I work at the Center for Southwest Research at UNM. Would you ask him to call me? He has my number at work, but I’ll give you my home number, too.”

  “Of course,” the woman said, taking the number down. “I will tell him to call you the minute he gets home.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  IT WAS HOT OUTSIDE WHEN CLAIRE LEFT THE LIBRARY at five-thirty, even hotter when she got in the truck that had been baking all day in the sun, so hot she could barely touch the steering wheel. She drove across campus and was on University Boulevard before the air conditioner had cooled the cab down. Her house was stifling and full of dead air when she got home. In midsummer the days were long and full of sun. She let Nemesis out, turned on the cooler and went outdoors herself. She checked the courtyard where the datura was extending its antennae and preparing to bloom then went to her backyard to water the roses. The front of her house faced east toward the Sandia Mountains which provided a backdrop for the reflection of the setting sun and the rising of the moon, but her backyard faced the long view across the city over the Rio Grande Bosque into the vastness of the West Mesa. The weather usually came from the west and tonight thunderheads were building over Cabezon Peak. Claire couldn’t remember exactly when it had rained last, but it had been months. The ground, the people, the vegetation, even the air itself held its breath longing for rain. The prickly pear and ocotillo in the foothills were parched and layered with dust. She had the sensation she had every summer that she was waiting for something she believed would come but feared might not. The sky seemed promising tonight. The clouds were darkening and the wind was picking up.

  The clouds left their encampment on the West Mesa and marched across the valley preceded by a wind that reminded Claire of Pueblo feet thumping the earth and raising clouds of dust. It picked up speed as it climbed the Heights, leapt the fence and swirled into her backyard. The rose branches shimmied. There was a flash of lighting and a crack of thunder. The ambient light shifted from daylight to dusk. Nemesis ran for cover, but Claire stood still and waited on her back step for the smell, the taste, the joy of the rain. She wanted to hear it ping the roof. She wanted to see her wilted plants spring back to life. She wanted to feel rain run through her hair and down her face, washing away death, sadness, heat and dust. When the downpour started she would go inside, turn on Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and watch the rain dance in her courtyard.

  There was a crack of thunder. The wind paused from its dervish whirl for the moment of stillness and silence preceding the rain. Claire waited for the precipitation expecting the first drops to splatter the walk. It began with one drop, and then another. And then it ended. The clouds and wind passed right over the house and climbed the mountain, taking their gift to a higher elevation. In the mountains there would be a ground-soaking rain, but in the foothills it was over. Tonight had only been foreplay, reminding Claire that the monsoon promised rain many times before it delivered.

  She went inside feeling she’d been let down by an indifferent lover, thinking that only the parched would pin their hopes on the weather. People on the East and West Coasts didn’t sit and wait for rain. They didn’t dance in the drops when it finally came. She wondered whether she had any food in her house that could compensate for the desertion of the rain, something dark and inspiring like chocolate. She rarely had chocolate in her house because whenever she had any, she ate it immediately. She found a ripe, rich mango and peeled it. Mangos de oro, they were called in Mexico. She remembered eating one in Guanajuato impaled on a stick like a Popsicle, the fruit carved to resemble the folded petals of a flower. She cut the mango into slices and slid them into her mouth on the tip of the knife.

  She would have to water the roses now, but she put it off until morning. It was too disappointing to go back outside and see the dust on the flowers and leaves. She glanced at her answering machine and saw a blinking red light. Thinking it might be Chuy, she pushed the play button and heard John Harlan’s Texas twang.

  “Hey, Claire, John here. Looks like it’s finally gonna rain. Damn we need it, don’t we? I’m gettin’ together with Warren Isles Friday and was wonderin’ if you’d like to meet the guy. Give me a call.”

 
; She called him back and learned the meeting had been scheduled for the Tamaya Resort Hotel on the Santa Ana Pueblo north of Bernalillo.

  “He’s one of those guys who will only deal face to face and one of those Santa Feans who will only come to Albuquerque when he has to go to the airport,” John said. “But he’s a good customer and Tamaya is a beautiful place. Have you been there?”

  “Not yet.” The resort, a cooperative effort between the Santa Ana Pueblo and the Hyatt Regency Hotel chain, had opened recently to rave reviews. Claire wanted to see it, and she hoped Warren Isles might know something about the missing document, so she agreed to meet them.

  “Do you want me to pick you up?”

  “I’ll meet you there. I have some stops to make in Bernalillo.”

  “See you then,” John said.

  ******

  On the afternoon of the meeting the Interstate was clogged with traffic, giving Claire time to study a sky so clear and blue it gave the impression rain was a foreign language. She left I-25 at the Bernalillo exit and took Route 44 through the fast food strip, remembering the tranquility of Coronado Monument only a quarter mile away.

  She passed Santa Ana Star Casino and turned at the next light eventually ending up on a one-lane road about as wide as her truck, not a road she’d want to navigate after a couple of drinks. At least it was surrounded by desert that could provide an escape route. Claire smiled at the first road sign that read speed limit 24 mph and again at the next one reading 17 mph, thinking this had the subtle, offbeat quality of Indian humor. The Santa Ana land stretched from Route 44 along the banks of the Rio Grande into the Jemez Mountains.

  A magnificent stretch of Bosque was visible from the hotel. Claire passed the golf courses where water sprinklers ticked, and parked in the lot. A worker who cruised the lot in a jitney offered her a ride to the door of the sprawling building. The exterior was monumental but unexceptional. The beauty of the building became evident once Claire was inside. Every detail from the furniture, the floors, the vigas, the lights in the ceiling that resembled the skin of drums, had been carefully thought out. The artwork showed a subdued and subtle taste—Edward Curtis prints, Emmi Whitehorse paintings, photographs of Indian dancers by David Michael Kennedy, priceless Indian rugs framed and hanging on the walls. She passed through the lobby furnished like a large and elegant living room with sofas arranged around fireplaces and tables for playing board games. She entered the bar and found John Harlan nursing a Jack Daniel’s.