Return of the Bones: Inspired by a True Native American Indian Story

by Belinda Vasquez Garcia

  He jerked his head away from her fingers.

  She climbed on the driver’s seat and slammed the door, cussing under her breath. Stubborn old man refused to ride up front with her. She hated the Pecos ruins, the most depressing place ever. Years had passed…

  She cranked up the engine to drive from the Jemez Pueblo, the eighty miles to the Pecos Pueblo. The tires wobbled along the unpaved sections of Blue Bird Mesa. She peeked at the rear view mirror and cocked her ear for any groans coming from the back. The gas pedal vibrated beneath her foot, whether to speed up her pickup towards the paved New Mexico Highway Four or slow the truck down—prolong his agony or worsen his pain while they sped along the bumps. His urgency when he mentioned Pecos made her shove her foot harder on the pedal.

  She merged onto I-25, headed north towards Santa Fe, and passed the capital. The truck climbed towards the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. A bit of snow covered the pine trees and hopefully, the truck bed and sleeping bag would keep the cool air from penetrating his bones. She should have covered his entire face with the blanket but feared smothering him.

  “We’re here, Governor.”

  She jammed her foot on the brakes and climbed out of the truck. She stood on tiptoes to see if he survived the journey.

  Almost a century nibbled away at his muscles, yet he found the strength to reach his shriveled fingers over the side and sit while she unhooked the tailgate. He unzipped the sleeping bag and with her help climbed down. He covered his shoulders with the blanket.

  “You took off your earmuffs,” she said.

  “Bah. Why would I want to silence my ears?”

  “What happened to the new hat I bought you?”

  “The wind gave the hat wings,” he said, thrusting his chin out.

  “You flung your hat away on purpose.”

  “My old hat suits me like bottle rockets.” He yanked a blackish round hat from around his back. “The sweat of my magic fills this hat. It serves me in spring when Brother Rain soaks my beaten path; in summer when Father Sun sweats my ivory tower; in fall when Brother Wind blows me contrary; and in winter when Brother Snow powders my lashes like a vintage whore.”

  She shoved the brim lower on his head and rolled her eyes at his hat that did not appear enchanted because Father Time smashed and crushed the feather. He wore this hat for more than five decades, with his head growing bigger each time he rose in pueblo status, so the hat now barely reached his forehead.

  “You are vintage wine turned to vinegar so we better wrap you good,” she said, twisting the blanket tighter around his shoulders and sniffing the wool. She knitted this blanket when a teenager with five thumbs and the patches as rough as the road between them yet, the old man cared for it all these years, and prized her gift as a most cherished possession. He never once told her he loved her. Perhaps his heart broke into so many pieces; maybe he feared getting too close in case she died before him like the rest of his family. She most resented him for the deepest dents on his cheeks that he never dragged her fingers across. These lines cast shadows of her parents’ lives. Even a wrench wouldn’t pry him open so she knew little about her mother and father.

  At five foot six, she was tall for a Native American woman and towered over him. She supported his left arm, resisting the urge to stretch her long legs while they walked.

  Dust swirled like brown ghosts around her ankles, causing her to shiver. Wind howling through the rubble chilled her to the bone. She cursed his senility and kicked the red dirt, this precious dirt he loved so much, this place filled with broken dreams. Ever since she was a small child, he drilled into her the story of how God created man in Shipapu. Man made his way up from Shipapu to the Fourth Womb of Existence, the red earth of Pecos, where Father Sun and Mother Moon smiled upon their children for the very first time. This Garden of Eden had always disappointed her, which, besides the ruins, consisted of cholla cactus, pinion trees and juniper. There was beauty only in yellow flowers on the chamisa bushes.

  What had not eroded of her inheritance included about twenty ceremonial kivas, holes deep in the earth big enough to hold a couple dozen people? No one but him could believe the spirits of the gods once dwelled below. Pecos Pueblo appeared deserted by not only the gods of the Indian but also the God of their Spanish conquerors. The jagged adobe rust-red remnants of the Spanish mission still dominated, but what remained of the Spanish Catholic Church were merely ragged pieces of adobe wall yet…yet if she closed her eyes, she heard church bells ringing. She could see Franciscan friars clothed in monks’ robes, rosary beads clanking against their knees, hoods bowed and chanting novenas as they entered the church. This was no mere church but the first cathedral in New Mexico with three spiraling towers on each side and hollow walls so thick, the Franciscans held services in not just the main church interior but between the walls where the congregation spilled over. Now, only ghosts worshipped at this site and the towers were…well she plopped down on one of the towers and crossed her knees. She clasped her gloved hands and tongue-in-cheek, blinked her eyes at him.

  “Let’s go. I’ve seen enough, Governor,” she said.

  He stared at her as if hypnotized; his eyes bugged out of his head. He clawed at her neck and whimpered. Perhaps he needed to piss but then a howl rose from so deep within his being; it seemed his very soul cried out. He dug his fingernails into her shoulders and shook her. “We must bring home the ones stolen from their graves,” he said.

  “There aren’t any marked graves here.”

  “Bah. Don’t treat me like a child, Girl,” he said, slapping her hand away.

  “You are wrong, Woman,” he roared and pounded the earth with his staff. “There are graves buried deep below this earth. Six centuries of death and of living, joys and sorrows are sifted into these ashes. Strong winds may have mixed the dirt of other pueblos with ours, but deep beneath this layer of dust our family is buried. Like dew on my heart, you have bellyached that your friends had cousins, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, and you had no one but a tired, old man. Here is your family, in the red earth of Pecos.” He scooped a handful of dirt, opened her hand and spilled the dirt into her palm. He closed her fist and squeezed.

  “Your family lived on this red earth since the year 1300. Before that time we were known as the Forked Lightning people who climbed from the arroyo to this ridge and built an impenetrable fortress. Our people were born here; they married here; they made love here; they died here. You say this is a ghost pueblo and you are right. Pecos chimes a death knell since the thief stole the others and took them far away from the land that nourished them. Tears flow from the skies for thousands ripped from the earth. Can you not feel the earth shudder like a body racked with grief? Can you not see how tears, of those left behind, moisten the earth because they mourn the missing? Can you not hear the wind sigh with longing?”

  He shoved the royal ceremonial staff into her hands and squeezed her fingers around it. “Feel your people’s pride and imagine this staff must have been something to look at in those days when the Pecos governor pounded it against the rich dirt, and his people surveyed their bounty. Now, the staff is dull and can you not see their disenchantment with their invaders?”

  He pushed the staff to her ear. “Listen to your inheritance and the cries of your people.”

  He lifted the staff to her nose. “Inhale their blood.”

  He finished his speech and the wind blew a silence across the ruins. He communed with the wind and the earth so that his emotions swirled with the pueblo remains. He appeared made from Pecos dirt, his skin reddish-brown.

  She pushed the staff back at him and he looked like he wanted to throttle her.

  “As you know, pueblo is the Spanish word for people. My Pecos Pueblo, which you scorn, is proof of a forgotten people, save what I hold in my heart. Our people were the chosen ones. Each year more of Pecos vanishes until one day there will be nothing left. Look at rings that still show upon the earth from tipis set up for trade fairs over centuries
of prosperity. Ah, my home is melting back into dirt from which it was made.”

  His eyes glowed with the delirium of peyote. He was just coming down from a high.

  “I don’t believe you about the stolen corpses; how could you possibly know?”

  “I know,” he said, thumping his chest with his fist.

  “But Pecos was a ghost pueblo sixty-two years before your birth,” she said.

  “I was thirteen winters old when I watched thousands unearthed from the rich soil that nurtured them. I wondered if I knew any of the skeletons. My father? My grandparents? My great-grandparents? Mother? Brothers and sisters? We no longer lived at Pecos then, but always we returned to be buried where our roots were planted. Like a coward, I hid behind a tree and watched the grave robbers. I told myself as the last of our people, I had a duty to survive. I stood over there.” He teetered on tobacco-stained khakis and pointed with a shaky finger to a ridge lined with trees. One tree appeared to wilt compared to others. He squeezed his eyes shut and spasms racked his body.

  Surely his tears will petrify into more wrinkles.

  “With my death you are the last of the Pecos. A heavy burden falls upon your shoulders. Promise me, you will bring the bones home.”

  He jabbed an imploring finger at her and the scar on her forehead throbbed. At the age of seven, a rattlesnake slithered across her bed, locked eyes with her, jerked its head back, opened its fangs, and marked her right above her nose. She always rubbed her scar when nervous and jumpy, and Grandfather hissed at her so that poison snaked through her veins. She dug her fingernails into her palms; she could strike out just as hurtful.

  “I feel nothing for old bones and a pueblo abandoned a century and a half ago. What do I care for roots, when I may be the last branch to fall? Our tree’s dry, Governor. Live with it,” she drawled.

  He thumped his heart with his fist and accused her of being hollow. He preached as unforgiving as the rain, snow and wind that ravaged the family pueblo for one hundred and sixty-one years. Even her husband Steve could not fill the cracks in her heart. She let Grandfather down so many times and put more wrinkles on his face. All her life he was old, but her earliest memory of him was with grey hair. His head whitened because of her. Now she could not promise to look for some ancient skeletons he claimed stolen from Pecos. He sent goose bumps across her spine when he spoke about missing bones.

  “I see I have not touched you, Granddaughter, by bringing you to Pecos. I raised you since four days old, but failed to teach you about your ancestors. You were born with a spirit as wild as the Río Grande rapids, and I am not a patient man. In vain, I tried to make you appreciate the bond of one’s blood. How do I get through to you that Pecos is our home?”

  He clenched her hand and shocked her with his strength but then he always blew in like a force of nature; even old as he was, his eyes shone with invincibility.

  “Look with your heart, not your eyes, and see that our pueblo’s spirit yet lives. Even Moctezuma could not crush the heart of a people,” he said.

  “He answered to Montezuma,” she said, yanking at her wrist but he stubbornly held on, like all the other Pueblo Indians who insisted the legend was true.

  He could tell by her eyes that she really did not believe and he flung her wrist from him.

  “Look around you and see the proof of Moctezuma’s curse,” he said, sweeping his hand across the earth.

  “How many times must I tell you that Moctezuma was a witch born at the ancient Pose Uingge Pueblo in New Mexico? After he grew up, he traveled to the Pecos Pueblo where he changed his name to Montezuma and ruled. Under Montezuma, Pecos flourished and became overpopulated so he decided to form other New Mexico pueblos with the surplus. He then flew on an eagle south and founded more pueblos in New Mexico and then the great Mexico City. Before he left Pecos, he lit a fire at the Altar of the Sun. He demanded twelve virgins tend the fire, so that Pecos would prosper until his return. The people promised him they would keep the fire lit and wait for him to come back to them.”

  “Yes and Montezuma never returned to Pecos because the virgins who tended the fire fell asleep one balmy night and let the fire die out. The pueblo then burned less brightly, weakening with each passing year, until the day the flame was snuffed out and just ashes remained of Pecos. Blah-blah-blah,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “Look around you at the wreckage and see this is no legend but truth.”

  Her shoulders sagged and the wind pushed against her. How ironic the bloody earth of Pecos appeared so healthy and able to nurture life while she appeared so pale and lifeless. It seemed as if the people’s blood flowed in the earth, turning the dirt a rich red in color, while in her own veins weak blood circulated.

  “Governor, if you’re so concerned about my being the last then I should try harder to conceive instead of trying to find some old bones no one cares about except you,” she said with a resentful voice. She turned her back to him and wiped her damp eyes. She squeezed her waist with her elbows and held back her memories but her losses seeped through her brain like a sponge soaked with afterbirth. Her first baby she miscarried in her first trimester. The second, a little girl, was miscarried in her second trimester. The third flowed watery blood that burst from her womb at two months. The fourth kicked vigorously at six months, then stilled a week later. The fifth baby, a girl, delivered stillborn. The sixth, a boy, breathed for four days, the same amount of time her father lived after her birth. The seventh, she never even told Steve about her pregnancy; ditto for her eighth attempt. The ninth was lost at seven weeks, a year ago. She and Steve were so heartbroken, they reconciled to a childless marriage, unknown to Grandfather. False hope would only shatter her fragilely mended heart, and she no longer had the strength or time to heal.

  He surprised her when he let the blanket drop from his frail shoulders.

  Her teeth clinked in her mouth like piano keys because the

  cowardly sun darted behind the mountains as if sensing the tension between them. She bent to pick up the blanket.

  “Leave it,” he said.

  “Old man, you’re going to get sick from your passion for these missing bones. If the bones mean so much to you, why didn’t you find them?”

  “I could never make my way in the white man’s world.”

  “But your powers…surely…”

  “If I, born in 1901, am so out of place in the white man’s world then our bones, some centuries old, are even more lost. The people do not answer when I cry out to them. Our family circle is broken. You must find the bones so the people can be one again. If we must die out, then let us all join together.”

  “You want me to search for a bunch of skeletons, people dead and buried long before my birth, most before you were born? I have no idea where to even begin to look. Their bones may have scattered to the four corners of the world. Dust blows across the tracks of time and buries a cold trail. Which corner of the world shall I probe first, Governor?”

  “You’re a sly girl; find a way to bring the missing bones home with this NAPGRA.”

  “It’s NAGPRA but I can’t just up and quit my job to seek skeletons you claim stolen from Pecos.”

  “Perhaps this will help.” He opened his burlap sack and handed her what looked like an old leather case.

  She peeked inside the case filled with papers.

  “I snuck down from my hiding place and took these papers that belonged to the grave robber. I cannot read but perhaps the thief left a clue to help you recover the bones.”

  “Why did you never speak about any of this before today?”

  “I remained silent because I feared they would come for us, too. You would have listened with the wooden ears of the Kachina dolls you collect. My death has crawled slowly as a desert box turtle, but perhaps when my spirit leaves my body’s shell, you will listen like Big Ears Kachina and want to learn more about your people.”

  “Don’t speak as if you’re already dead. These haunted ruins give me the jitt
ers. I can feel the ghosts stirring and it makes me afraid.”

  “Never say the ghosts of Pecos frighten you. If after death, I drift in like the morning fog for a heart-to-heart in my sweat lodge, will you be scared?”

  ”No, I would not be panic-stricken at your ghost. You are my grandfather; why would you spook me?”

  He must have known she lied because he looked even wilder. His face reddened and he clenched his fists.

  He terrified her in life with his meanness. He never struck her but he had such a temper. He screamed at her when she first blundered across his rattlesnake den. He shook her until her teeth clattered. He barked at her to stay away from his beehives. Later, when older and wiser, she realized he only worried about her, but his presence commanded, and she cast a shadow under his feet. Well, she refused to make any effort for some old bones and if his ghost stalked her, then she would close her eyes to him. Pecos ravaged him all his life. This place of ruin would not wreck what little grasp of happiness she forged with Steve.

  “I promise,” she said in a flat voice merely to calm him so they could leave this land that chilled her blood.

  She despised him for coercing her, and he knew it. He pleaded with his eyes for her to search for the bones, and cursed her with his lips. The threat in his voice had been real. He was most considerate friend to Masawkatsina so he possessed the means to haunt her in death, even more than he haunted her in life, if she did not find the bones.

  Her only defense against his magic was a defiant look. Make him think he did not make her hands sweat. Look at the ground, so he could not see her eyes water. Take a deep breath so he did not hear her heart thumping. Yet, the ruins spun around her and made her dizzy. She stumbled, fell, and clawed the dirt at something flat and hard. What…the…yuck…a petrified toe attached to an ancient sandal.

  “Don’t touch the toe else the owner will follow in your footsteps,” he said, jerking the sandal from her hand.