The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  Sometime in the night Alegría had felt the bus turn off the pavement to a gravel road. At dawn the bus stopped, and Alegría saw four men standing by a pickup truck. One of them was Mario, who appeared to be angry and shouting at the others. Alegría washed up in the ladies’ closet-size toilet; as she combed her hair, she imagined how good a shower would feel. She heard someone vomit in the other bus toilet and decided fresh air and a walk might help.

  Mario the travel agent was all smiles as Alegría stepped down from the bus steps; he snapped his fingers at one of the men near the pickup, and instantly Alegría had a paper cup full of hot coffee. She could feel cool breezes stir as the sun climbed over the horizon; Alegría shivered. She was not accustomed to the dryness of the air or the chill of the desert night. Jungle was either moist or moister; either warm or warmer. The jungle was lush, its vegetation seemed to promise all-around protection and plenty; the desert was all distance and exposure and emptiness—dry, gray foothills ascended flat, blue mountain ranges that ended in jagged peaks.

  Mario’s deluxe luxury tours. Mario handed out paper cups filled from quart tins of orange and pineapple juice. The bus hostesses served coffee boiled over the campfire by the truck. The Salvadorians were sick with hangovers and asked for medicine. Mario had produced a large bottle of aspirin, but apologized for his helpers, who had remembered cups, sugar, orange juice, coffee, pineapple juice—everything but the breakfast pastries. That was all right because they had plenty of coffee and juice for everyone.

  A SHORT WALK

  ALEGRÍA LOOKED around to see if she could locate any indication of the international border. The foothills were scattered with dark volcanic rocks the size of fists, yet the underlying ground was curiously hard and white, volcanic ash packed hard as concrete. The Salvadorian women pretended to be afraid to step from the bus to the hard gray desert in their high heels and party dresses, but they had already seen how easily Alegría had walked in the desert in her high heels.

  Mario instructed everyone to remove their purses and other carry-on items from the tour bus, which was due back in the city. While his assistants refilled cups with juice or coffee, the travel agent explained that the sumptuous new motor homes bought expressly for this tour had had minor difficulty negotiating a steep ravine down the road. Fortunately this would be no problem at all because they would simply walk a short distance where they would find the motor homes and drivers waiting for them on the U.S. side of the border. The group would be reunited with their luggage and other belongings, and the motor homes would then depart, but in five different directions, with one bound for San Diego, another for Los Angeles, and the others to Phoenix, Tucson, and El Paso.

  After the tour bus had disappeared, the only sound had been the men arguing behind the pickup truck. Mario acknowledged the men with a smile and wave of his hand; Indian guides—no one knew the desert better. Nowadays they didn’t want to work; they only wanted money. The travel agent glanced at the sun still low in the eastern sky but already heating the dry air. Time to get under way; otherwise they would keep the drivers in the motor homes waiting with the engines and air conditioners running needlessly. He nodded to the guides, then slid behind the wheel of the pickup and started the engine for the trip back to Culiacán.

  Good-bye, Mexico! Alegría was not sorry to walk across that invisible line because, bless her, poor Mother Mexico had been gang-raped by the world. Alegría knew she had been destined for the luxuries and refinements of life, and she was not sorry to leave behind the sadness and the mess. Mexico would only become more violent. Alegría was sad for Mexico, but she had watched Bartolomeo and the Marxists struggle to teach the people and it was hopeless; there was nothing to be done. The masses were naturally lazy everywhere, and they often starved; that was nature. Her destiny had always been different; she had tempted fate by associating with university radicals. Bartolomeo had been Alegría’s peculiar weakness, but even he had not been able to stop her. She had stepped across the threshold to her new life in the United States. She could not think anymore about Mexico. She was almost within reach of Sonny Blue. Sonny had been all she had allowed herself to think or dream about on the tour bus. She had put aside all damaging thoughts or fears. The police chief and the others had bigger fish located closer, if they wanted someone to fry.

  The foothills were broken by wide, sandy washes and gray basalt boulders as big as motor homes; around every curve and over each rise Alegría had visualized five shiny new motor homes waiting for them. If not over the first or second foothill, then behind those boulders up ahead a little farther. At any moment Alegría expected the blinding reflections of the sun flashing wildly off the windshields and mirrors of the motor homes. Walking agreed with Alegría. She imagined how she would design the gardens for the new home she would build in Tucson.

  The volcanic ash packed firmly under the heels of Alegría’s shoes. Concrete or pavement were not always necessary; she wanted her rock garden to appear to be a natural desert landscape. Perhaps she might have a knack for landscape architecture too. Alegría stopped to look around. The sun was still climbing and the dry desert air was pleasantly warm. The tour had broken into four groups: the Indian guides walked a distance ahead, then the men; Alegría followed with the other women; and last came the five Salvadorian couples, who were complaining loudly and calling at the guides to stop. Tempers were short. Where were the motor homes? How much farther must they walk? The Salvadorian husbands shouted angrily and began to fling pebbles at the guides, who ignored them and kept walking.

  Alegría had observed that treacherous chauffeur Tacho long enough to know when Indians were going to make trouble, and her heart had beat faster when she saw the three guides disappear over a hill. Behind the hill must be the motor homes and drivers. As she neared the summit, a sudden gust of wind had chilled the sweat on her neck and scalp. A moment later as she stood on the hilltop, she realized what had happened. There were no motor homes and drivers waiting for them; there never had been; the Indian guides had been instructed to abandon them.

  The guides had carried away all the drinking water in their big backpacks. The four Mexicans still clutched their briefcases, but they were not much farther ahead of her now. She wondered why, in this heat, they did not remove their sport coats to make covers for their heads against the intense sun. Alegría stopped to look at the others behind her; they had all drunk too much of Mario’s free liquor the night before. The Salvadorians appeared to have the worst hangovers; the young husbands in their tuxedos were far behind, almost as far back as their wives, who still wore last night’s party dresses and high heel shoes. Alegría had wished she had a camera then for a snapshot; otherwise no one she told would ever believe this had happened.

  Alegría had snapped the high heels off her shoes after the second hill. She had been mistaken about the sun in the North. To hear those fools along the equator talk, no sun was more fierce than theirs; but they had never seen skies seared white above the parched earth. This northern sun smoldered fiercely for hours above a red horizon before it disappeared only briefly.

  Alegría argued with the voice of panic inside her head. Over the next hill they would find the motor homes and drivers waiting with the guides in the shade. The voice of panic was understandable in view of the strain Alegría had been under since Menardo had been killed. This tour company had been highly recommended; traveler safety had been one of Mario’s big selling points. Alegría adjusted the pink nylon un-derslip she was wearing on her head to prevent sunstroke. The Salvadorian husbands were carrying their wives piggyback now. The men had covered their heads with their jackets, and then the women had copied Alegría and wore underskirts on their heads. Just over the next hill and they’d be home-free; ice-cold beer and ice-cold water waited. They would take cool showers and rest in the air-conditioning of the motor homes.

  Alegría soon overtook the four Mexicans. They had sunburnt their faces before they had removed their jackets to cover their heads. They we
re standing on the big gray hill Alegría had nicknamed the Elephant’s Ass. Alegría used silly, funny words to keep her mind off the heat and to keep herself moving. Elephant’s Ass was a good name all right because that had been exactly where they were: a place where only shit could rain down. From the grayish clay hilltop they were able to look out over a vast barren plain that wobbled like a mirage in the waves of heat rising. Up the Elephant’s Ass and into the Blast Furnace. There were no more hills to hide the air-conditioned motor homes and drivers or the three Indian guides; there were only miles and miles of pale, arid plains broken by odd black volcanic formations and scattered with volcanic rocks.

  Alegría looked at the faces of the four Mexicans. They had begun to realize they had been abandoned. One of the four kept muttering, “This has never happened before”; he was one of Mario’s satisfied customers. He had made the journey twice before and nothing like this had ever happened. “This is not right!” the Mexican said forcefully; even the route they had taken this time was unfamiliar. “Why tamper with success!” the Mexican had repeated until one of the others told him to shut up. The other three men had grim expressions on their faces; Alegría saw they believed Mario had abandoned them deliberately. All along Mario had been setting them up for this big one. Mario had safely delivered them and their “goods” across the U.S. border a number of times to gain their trust. But Mario would not get away with it. “Too many of our families know,” the man said, wiping his face across the sleeve of his white shirt. “He won’t get away with this!”

  Alegría thought it must be the heat; she burst out laughing at the four Mexicans and their threats of what they were going to do to Mario when they caught him. She told them if they didn’t get out of the sun, they were all going to die. They had to find shade and rest until the sun went down; then they had to find water. She knew the highway should lie parallel with them and to the west. After dark, they’d walk in the sandy wash because the night air was cooler in the wash, walking was easier. The four men stared at Alegría in a daze; they were not accustomed to Mexican women making decisions without men. They nodded and moved slowly down the hillside to the dry wash to find shade. Alegría looked back at the others. The Salvadorians were moving again, but in slow motion; the husbands no longer carried their wives. They had broken the high heels off the women’s shoes too late, and the women’s feet had become too blistered and swollen for shoes. Alegría saw six of them huddled together under a shade canopy they’d created by hanging sport coats and petticoats on the branches of tall yucca plants. If they stayed under the makeshift shade by the yucca plant, they might survive; but the best bet was the dry wash where the temperatures were a few degrees cooler, and the steep clay banks of the arroyo provided good shade. Below her, Alegría saw two Salvadorian men about to pass the others huddled under the shade by the yucca. Alegría considered for an instant returning to tell the Salvadorians and the others about the dry wash on the other side of the hill. But the voice of panic whispered she must conserve her own strength or she’d die in the desert too, with the rest of them. They were silly, ridiculous people anyway, those bourgeois Salvadorians and Mexicans; they wouldn’t listen to a woman either.

  Alegría sank into the cool shade of the steep north bank of the arroyo. She tried not to think about water; the coolness of the shade refreshed almost like a sip of cold water. The shade and coolness in the arroyo must have revived the four Mexicans because when Alegría awoke later, the men were gone and Alegría found four sets of fresh footprints following the arroyo west. Men always had to be first; let them go. Before any of the others straggled into the arroyo, Alegría had made certain she could not be seen, then had reached inside her blouse and under her skirt to make sure her money belt was securely fastened. Mario and his thugs could have her trunks and suitcases full of “art” Menardo’s first wife had collected, but the emeralds and the safe-deposit keys in the money belt were a different matter; anyone who wanted the belt would have to kill Alegría first.

  Sobs and swear words woke Alegría. The Salvadorian couples had managed to reach the arroyo while Alegría had dozed. The sun was low and motionless in the sky and reminded Alegría of a blowtorch she had once seen at a construction site; the torch had been on one side of a steel panel burning a hole through. She had only been a first-year architecture student then, and the professors and male students had made lewd comments as they watched the torch cut the steel. They had forgot a woman was present; Alegría had got used to vulgarity in architecture school. Alegría did not move or speak. She watched the Salvadorian husbands half-carry and half-drag their wives on their backs and shoulders.

  The four Mexicans were in better condition. They did not stop. They were walking in the shade of the north bank of the arroyo. Alegría could not see them, but she heard their voices in the distance; the men sounded strangely exhilarated as they talked. The shade in the arroyo would be enough; no need to wait. They would start walking now and be that much closer to the highway and water. Alegría watched the last Salvadorian couple disappear as they rounded a curve in the arroyo. She estimated the temperature was still above 110° F, but the humidity was also less than 8 percent. The real danger was dehydration, not the heat.

  Alegría woke again after sundown. She had dreamed of nothing; the perfect, dark blank of nothingness. She had feared the torment of dreams about drinking water, or ice cubes in iced teas, and cold beer in chests full of ice. She had started walking; she could feel thirst take over the voice inside her head. Thirst was chanting its name over and over. Alegría put a pebble in her mouth because she had read in a novel once that a pebble might help. But the novel had not showed what happened after a while; novelists used poetic license that architects never got to use. After a while, the pebble in her mouth had not helped because all the saliva the pebble had stimulated had been used up. Alegría had read about death from thirst in Bartolomeo’s nasty little counterinsurgency training manual captured from the U.S. CIA. He had asked her to read everything because he loved her and he wanted her to know the risks. Thirst had seldom been used as a torture method by the CIA, the manual asserted, because the tongue swelled out of the mouth as thirst intensified, and the “subject” could not talk if he wanted to.

  Alegría knew she had only hours to find water or reach help at the highway after she saw the Salvadorian women. The two had died in each other’s arms, sitting upright against the arroyo bank. The contents of both their purses had been emptied out on the sand. At first Alegría had thought the husbands or maybe even Mario’s treacherous guides had sneaked back to empty the purses. Then she had realized the two women had been delirious from thirst and had dumped the contents from their purses in a last desperate search for something to drink. One woman had drunk her French perfume; the empty bottle was in her lap. Their expensive party dresses had held up under the ordeal very well; the fuchsia ruffles and pink crepe pleats had somehow remained clean and untorn, and only a little wrinkled. Alegría thought how odd death was to leave the party dresses without a tear or even a stain. She did not look at the faces, not for fear she might see black, swollen tongues or buzzard-eaten eye sockets, but because she had not noticed the women’s faces while they were alive and certainly did not want to bother with these Salvadorian cows now that they were dead.

  The white arroyo sand reflected the light of the three-quarter moon so Alegría could see plainly a hundred yards away. She squatted in the sand and cupped her hand to catch her own urine. She drank it all. She didn’t see what difference it made when it was her own; men routinely required lovers or wives to swallow their sperm. The urine brought the saliva back, and Alegría hardly bothered to notice the identity of the corpses she passed. She wasn’t curious or interested in those who had died. They hadn’t meant anything to her alive, and now they meant even less. She alone was going to live; she herself would survive. Alegría felt euphoric each time she passed another corpse. Guatemalans and Hondurans seemed to die in twos and threes; the Mexicans dropped
like flies, one by one alone. She had lost count, but she knew the “secret system”: each corpse she passed advanced Alegría closer to safety. The more the others died, the more likely it was that Alegría would be saved; that was only simple mathematics.

  Alegría had walked steadily all night. After dawn she passed the corpse of one of the four Mexicans; his briefcase was gone; before he had died, he had torn off all his clothes. Alegría did not stop again until the rotting smell was left behind. Before the sun got high, Alegría searched for shade where she could sleep until darkness. The arroyo was much wider now and there were desert trees growing along both banks. In the shade, under the desert trees, Alegría sat down with her back against a tree trunk. At her feet, half-buried in the sand, were empty cans and brittle, cracked plastic bottles that had once contained water. Alegría held a plastic bottle up to the sky in both hands; when she had first seen the bottle partially buried in the sand, she had thought it might still contain some water. But then she had noticed the gaping hole in the lower half of the bottle, filled with fine white sand. Alegría tried to sleep, but she was too thirsty. She had been weeping when suddenly Alegría had had no more tears. Her eyes felt burned and swollen. Now when she urinated, she had difficulty passing more than a few drops, which burned her cracked lips and tongue.

  Alegría refused to die. She didn’t care how weak and sick she was, she would sit there under that tree, and she would not die. She could feel the money belt with the pouch of emeralds against her ribs. Menardo used to spend hours examining and admiring them when he brought them out of the vault. Their intensity of color and the almost supernatural light that shone out of the emeralds, together with their flawlessness, made the emeralds worth millions. Only the Japanese had better emeralds, Menardo said. Now she had the emeralds. As long as she had the emeralds, Alegría refused to die. She was too thirsty to sleep, but she could think about the emeralds; they were hers now and they would keep her alive. In their endless depths of green, Alegría saw lagoons and pools of pure water surrounded by thick jungle leaves; the bluish-green light was a tropical rain-mist spread across the sky. She was determined not to die. Sonny Blue was in Tucson. So were hundreds of thousands in gold and in cash, even a town house. All that was hers now. She was going to live to enjoy it no matter how thick or dry her tongue got.