The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  Calabazas had been lucky with his life; he had been born during the lull in the great war and had bought himself a safe perch. But now the war was spreading, and in a few years there would be no safe perch for anyone. Yoeme’s great war for the land was still being fought; only now it wasn’t just the Yaquis or even the Tohano O’Dom who were fighting. The war was the same war it had always been; the people were still fighting for their land. The war would go on until the people took back the land.

  Calabazas reached into the ice chest for another beer but found only melting ice and water. He went inside to get another six-pack from the refrigerator and rolled himself a fat joint to smoke outside. He had not stayed up all night for years, not since he had worked across the border. But tonight he was wide-awake. He could not stop thinking about Mexico. Rumors and conflicting reports came from village couriers, and from Salvadorian and Guatemalan refugees. Mexico was chaos. The Mexican economy had collapsed, and fleeing government officials had stripped the National Treasury for their getaway. The army and police had not been paid for weeks. Battles had broken out between the Federal police and the local police. The citizens were fighting both the army and the federal police. Fighting between the Citizens’ army and the Mexican army had cut off the Federal District from deliveries and food supplies. Electrical power lines and water-main lines to the center of the city had been dynamited. Thousands in Mexico City were starving each day, but Mexico’s president had refused the people emergency food. The Mexican air force had opened fire on thousands of squatters rioting for food at the entrance to the city’s main dump. Hundreds of squatters, women and children, had died as army bulldozers had leveled miles and miles of shanties and burned lean-tos. Within hours of the big fire at the city dump, hundreds of thousands of rats had swarmed through Mexico City, where starving people in the streets had caught the rats and roasted them. There were rumors of bubonic plague and of cholera.

  The army and police had seized food and livestock so the Yaquis and other people once more headed for the high mountains where they had fled during the last revolution. In their mountain strongholds the people had already begun the vigil; the people were praying the white men would kill off one another completely. All the people had to do was be patient and wait. Five hundred years, or five lifetimes, were nothing to people who had already lived in the Americas for twenty or thirty thousand years. The prophecies said gradually all traces of Europeans in America would disappear and, at last, the people would retake the land.

  The old-time people had warned that Mother Earth would punish those who defiled and despoiled her. Fierce, hot winds would drive away the rain clouds; irrigation wells would go dry; all the plants and animals would disappear. Only a few humans would survive. Calabazas knew the story by heart, but he was not sure if he believed it anymore.

  DEAD BRITISH POET AT YAQUI EASTER DANCE

  THE SPIRIT VOICE in Mosca’s right shoulder groaned and creaked odd messages. Mosca had not been the same since he had discovered the spirit voice in his right shoulder. Root did not ridicule Mosca because he had heard Mosca’s shoulder make creaking or popping sounds even when Mosca had not moved. Root didn’t think the spirit voice could be any crazier than Mosca was himself; the spirit voice might even be an improvement. The spirit voice had told Mosca to get Sonny Blue and his brother and cousin. So Mosca had spent the day at the racetrack, consulting his paid informants in the shade of the grandstand.

  Sonny Blue and Bingo had brought two strippers from the Stage Coach to watch Angelo’s filly race. They had made a high-profile arrival in a red Testarossa followed by a Lincoln. Mosca’s spies had taken in everything. Sonny Blue and Bingo had been laughing, bragging to the strippers about “being met” at the airstrip near Yuma. The people behind Sonny and Bingo were so big that a special code had been radioed to the Border Patrol and state police advising them to ask no further questions and to let them go. The authorities had not even opened the back of Greenlee’s truck or touched a single suitcase. “They think they own this town,” Mosca told Root with a big grin. “Those Italian boys are crazy.” Mosca’s spies had got a great deal of information, and he had plans in his mind already. Root had nothing to worry about; Mosca wanted to work on this alone.

  Mosca refused to admit he had done anything wrong. The confusion and crowds of tourists milling with Yaqui men and old Yaqui women on lawn chairs had been exactly what Mosca had counted on for his strike. A great tactician took advantage of the unexpected; Mosca’s spies knew Sonny Blue’s big buyers from New York had been warned about doing business in Tucson. The New Yorkers had demanded a crowded public place for the meeting. Oddly enough, the New Yorkers had specified the Yaqui Easter Dance as the meeting place because they wanted to see real Indians.

  The British poet had been much taller than the other spectators at the Yaqui Easter deer dance, and Mosca’s bullets had gone high and missed just about everyone. The bullets had missed children, and anyone seated or kneeling. Mosca said it was the white man’s own fault the bullet had got him between the eyes; the poet had been too tall, and he had been impolite to stand in front of all the other spectators when really, he should have stood far at the back where he belonged. The bullet wouldn’t have found him back there.

  What a sight! Here was the British poet lying dead in the dirt under the big ramada of freshly cut cottonwood boughs, and the poet’s three ugly girlfriends all were hysterical and crying. The cops pointed guns at the sobbing women as if they had shot the poet, and not the gunman, who witnesses said was small, thin, and wore a Yaqui pharisee mask, a cowboy shirt, blue jeans, and beat-up cowboy boots. The stupidity of Tucson’s police was amazing. They had immediately suspected the victim—the dead tourist—because he had carried a British passport and lived at a Santa Fe address. Tucson police generally worked on the assumption that victims somehow deserved what they had got; the police task was to determine exactly how the poet had earned a bullet between the eyes. The easy and most reliable assumption for Tucson police had been that the Santa Fe quartet were smuggling cocaine to the rich artists.

  The dead poet had immediately been forgotten because the Tucson police now had the three sobbing women. The report of a short, dark Indian male seen leaving the area with a handgun, did not interest the police as long as they had three attractive women to interrogate. By the time the dead man’s three female companions had been cleared of all suspicion, the trail of the gunman was cold. Mosca’s excuse for his bad aim with the pistol had been the mask; the bullet had whizzed over the short wop’s head into the poet standing a few feet behind him. Sonny Blue had known instantly the bullet was intended for him, and Sonny had panicked and both had pulled out pistols. Bingo was already running and pushing and stumbling through the crowd. The New Yorkers had tried to follow.

  The crowd watching the all-night deer dance had not been alarmed at the sound of shots because all evening Yaqui children had been lighting firecrackers. If Bingo and Sonny had not panicked, if they and their New Yorker pals had remained calm, the Tucson police might never have noticed them in the crowd. Mosca’s years of experience with police had shown him cops were like sharks or stupid fish that respond only to sudden movement.

  After he had fired the shot, Mosca had casually tucked the 9mm in his pants under his T-shirt, then coolly moved through the crowd to the attaché case Sonny Blue had dropped. Mosca picked up the case and walked in leisurely mannner until he reached the darkness in the church parking lot, where he removed the mask and tossed it in the back of a parked pickup truck. He didn’t mean any disrespect to the mask or to the deer spirit, but this was war. The 9mm had a date with old man Santa Cruz River, but Mosca had stayed around in the parking lot to watch the police have fun with Sonny Blue and Bingo.

  The New Yorkers had been lucky enough to be arrested in the deer dance ramada surrounded with hundreds of witnesses. But Sonny Blue and Bingo had been caught in the dark parking lot. Mosca had watched the undercover cops take turns kicking Sonny Blue and Bingo b
etween the legs and in the belly and face. Mosca had heard the cracks and thuds, Bingo’s groans, and Sonny’s muffled profanity.

  Mosca thought it was funny. The cops had got their wires crossed. Max Blue had paid off the police chief, and in return the police had mashed Sonny’s balls and had knocked out two of Bingo’s front teeth. Mosca had waved the attaché case above his head with both hands. “Finders keepers!” he said; he was triumphant. The attaché case was full of New York money.

  Calabazas has told Mosca before that he had not expected Mosca to last six weeks, let alone six years in the smuggling business. Mosca always laughs and shakes his head, fully in agreement. He is sincere too. Because Mosca may refuse to admit he has done anything stupid, but Mosca is as surprised as Calabazas about his own survival. As far as Root has been able to figure, Mosca counts survival as the absolute proof. And here he is again, Root thinks. Everything done wrong, the worst possible sequence of events—but Mosca gets away with everything: the money, even the shooting. Because Sonny Blue had stepped right in the trap, panicked after the shooting.

  Although things might have gone better, Mosca had been hurt that Calabazas had called him “loco” when almost everything had gone exactly as planned; and now Mosca would begin phase two, which was “drop a dime,” dial 911 and leave the names of Bingo and Sonny Blue. When Calabazas saw the results, he would understand that the shooting at Yaqui Easter marked the beginning of the end for Max, Sonny, and Bingo. Blow away your Blues! Mosca was counting on maximum trouble and misunderstanding between the Tucson police and old man Blue and his ass-wipe sons. Whatever the “arrangements” were between Max Blue and the Tucson PD, shooting tourists from Santa Fe hadn’t been one of them.

  Mosca had been so delighted he had even done a little victory dance before he got in his truck. None of it would have been possible if Sonny Blue had not frozen with panic. Everyone had seen the “Italian stallions” with their pistols pulled after the tall tourist fell dead. Calabazas was getting old and soft; his mind was coming unstrung almost like a white man’s. In time, Calabazas would see the genius of Mosca’s plan.

  TUCSON POLICE BRUTALITY

  SONNY COULD FEEL his chest tighten and his heart pound when he remembered them swarming over him with .45 automatics shoved hard against both ears and the top of his head. They had smiled as they’d kicked him in the balls, then in the back; and then they had kicked him in the stomach and in the balls again. Sonny had been on the ground puking when a pig in uniform walked up and kicked him in the side of the head. The cops were talking about the briefcases and who had grabbed what; a suspect had been seen fleeing with a briefcase.

  Sonny had let the waves of nausea and pounding pain in his ear and head drive his anger harder and deeper; he wouldn’t just get mad, he would get even. If it took the rest of his life, he was going to fight his own little war with the pigs; and his father would never have to know about it. Fuck the million-dollar payoffs to the Tucson pigs. Fuck all the money! What difference did money make if pigs were all over your ass every time you stepped out the door? What good was anything if the pigs beat you up whenever they felt like it?

  Sonny had taken the worst beating because too many curious people had gathered before the undercover cops could start beating Bingo. People standing nearby had helped pull the undercover cops off Bingo, but there had been no one to pull the pigs off Sonny. Sonny had been trapped on the far side of the car in the darkness.

  Max had promised that the undercover officers and cops in uniform who had kicked Sonny would get what was coming to them. Max had asked Sonny to trust him, to leave the matter in his hands. Angelo and Bingo had both tried to calm Sonny, and to remind him everything was okay, and there had been no arrests except for the New Yorkers caught with the cocaine. But Angelo saw the reassurances had only made Sonny Blue more furious, so Angelo and Bingo kept quiet. They would have to leave Sonny alone for a while, and they would meet the shipments for Mr. B. as scheduled. Angelo and Bingo had even talked to Max Blue alone, to ask if Max could send Sonny on a Caribbean vacation for a while. Because all Sonny had wanted to talk about had been ideal assassination weapons and schemes for getting the undercover cops or the pigs in uniform. Sonny had bought detailed information as well as the names and home addresses of undercover police from the county attorney’s office computer. Angelo noticed Max got pale when he learned that Sonny had already got the cops’ work schedules. The three of them were silent for a moment, then Max had excused himself. Sonny Blue refused the offer of a Caribbean vacation.

  Angelo had noticed a change in Bingo since the cops had jumped them; Bingo seemed happier and more confident about himself. Bingo told Angelo he had always been scared of pain—terrified of being slugged and kicked. But now that Bingo had been hit and kicked by the pigs, he was no longer afraid. He had imagined the pain and the humiliation to be far worse than they had actually been. Of course the big Yaqui Indian women had dragged the undercover pigs off him; the cops had been disgraced by the three-hundred-pound women.

  Max Blue was angry at the Tucson police over the missing briefcase full of cash, not because they had kicked the shit out of Sonny Blue. Sonny had needed the beating; Bingo too. Max had been surprised at how angry Sonny Blue was; Max didn’t want Sonny to do something stupid. The Tucson police had their days numbered anyway. Once a U.S. border crisis alert began, Tucson and the entire Mexican border area would be placed under the jurisdiction of the military police or Federal marshalls. Large amounts of cash made the pigs piss their pants. “National security” flights and shipments had been hijacked and stolen by local police in Miami and Baton Rouge. That had been Mr. B.’s reason for hiring Max Blue and for the relocation of his operations in Tucson.

  When the senator and Max played golf alone, Max received his “national security briefing.” The senator served on the select committee on National Security. The senator had invaluable sources to leaks at the highest levels. The senator had already been deeded ten acres of prime commercial property in future downtown Venice, Arizona.

  The senator claimed the CIA had bought members of the Mexican aristocracy fifty years ago, and it was only a matter of time before the Mexican president and his cabinet would request U.S. military aid and intervention to prevent the antigovernment forces from taking Mexico City. How could the senator be certain of the events to come in Mexico? Their mutual friend, Mr. B. Mr. B. had been working for more than ten years against the communists in Mexico and Guatemala.

  AMBITIONS

  MAX PLAYED ALONE on the back eighteen holes after the judge and the police chief had gone. With each stroke he was driving away the stink of the judge and the police chief. He loved to watch the arc of the ball and the way wind currents held the ball aloft perfectly suspended as if time no longer existed. Max enjoyed the collision of the fairways and greens with the desert boulders, cactus, and shrubs. Desert mesquite and paloverde trees along the edges of the fairway grew tall from the golf course water. Some players were disturbed by the desert setting, and before they left the clubhouse, they would ask Max about rattlesnakes and coyotes. Max had never walked into the desert from the fairway. The desert meant danger and death, but he did not mind that they were close by. The whole thrill of the game was to follow the little ball on its hazardous journey from hole to hole safely. Max feared nothing as long as the sky was open, high overhead and no low, gray clouds of overcast closed overhead like a coffin lid.

  Max had laughed at what Tucsonians called “rainstorms”; compared to New Jersey’s gray, suffocating overcast with rain for days on end, even Tucson’s violent summer thunderstorms were trifles. The sun was almost always shining or partially visible in some part of the valley even as torrential rains fell at other locations. Even downpours did not last long; Max would wait five minutes wrapped in a rain parka, then go right on playing. Max did not stop even when the wind gusted violently and rain mixed with sand stung his face; he kept his head down and swung with all his weight behind the golf club. Storms were
invigorating. When the lightning sirens were sounded, the other golfers scurried to the clubhouse for shelter; but Max loved the desert storms. Nothing compared with the first smell of rain in the dry desert air.

  Max had briefed Sonny, Bingo, and Angelo. The job was simply to count the suitcases as they were unloaded from the plane. No screwups; that had been Mr. B.’s peeve with others he had worked with in the past—real lowlifes, military and former enlisted men from Florida to Louisiana. Max doesn’t tell the boys that for an operation such as Mr. B.’s, Tucson is a minor-league pit stop. Max let Sonny, Bingo, and Angelo eat it up when Mr. B. said, “Arizona is a welcome change”; B. was a liar. B. had owned the airfield west of Tucson all through the Vietnam War. Max had been introduced to B. by the senator. The government later had got cold feet, but Max had been paid a fabulous sum anyway. The deal had been to supply professional assassins for certain “targets” in a half dozen U.S. cities.

  Max knew how Sonny and Bingo felt about the vending machine business—rancid sandwiches and video games jammed with metal slugs. Those jobs had been good experience when they first got out of school, but now Sonny especially was impatient to make money. If everything went smoothly, then Max planned to let the boys run the operation. Max looked at Sonny and Bingo and felt uneasy about the offspring, who did not resemble him or Leah. Not that he thinks Leah cheated. Sonny and Bingo are his sons, but Max saw the family resemblances; they had favored the weaker side of the family. Max remembers his older brother, Bill. Bill is written all over that kid Angelo. Max has never known what to make of the family—his family, and the business. Max feels nothing anymore for “family”—not even his own sons. Leah used to argue with Max that his feelings for people would return, that the doctors had already warned her that Max might experience temporary personality changes including anger, depression, or some memory loss. When Max looks at Leah, he tries to recall memories with feelings for Leah but there is nothing.