by Paula Paul
“What’s wrong?” Adelle asked.
“I can’t make it past all of this,” Irene said, nodding toward the rocks and the deep trench caused by the washout.
“You can’t?” Adelle sounded almost joyful. “You don’t have the right kind of car for this, do you? It requires one of those all-terrain things. We’ll have to turn around and go back home.”
“We’ll have to walk from here.”
“What? Are you out of your mind, Irene? We are in the middle of nowhere, miles and miles from anything. Oh, look!” Adelle pointed to the car parked beside the lake as though she’d only at that moment noticed it. “It’s a car, and there are people. We can signal them to come help us.” Adelle got out of the car in a swift movement that surprised Irene. She waved her arms and called out, “Hello!”
“Get back in the car!” Irene made a futile attempt to reach for Adelle.
“But…”
“You’d better hope those people haven’t seen us yet. They have a gun. That may be the people who shot Juanita.”
“Oh…” Adelle got back in the car.
“I’m going to walk toward them and hope they don’t see me. You wait here.”
“Alone?”
“It’s best that way.”
Adelle frowned, then opened her door and was at Irene’s side within a few seconds, moving with her toward the lakeside. She was silent for several seconds before she spoke. “I’m going to have blisters on my heels from wearing these shoes. Your feet are much bigger than mine.”
Irene ignored her and walked forward, but she moved more slowly than she might have, not wanting her mother to fall as they walked down an embankment that sloped away from the road.
“This is impossible!” Adelle said. “I can’t walk downhill like this.”
“You have to or go back to the car,” Irene said. “If someone has Juanita and she’s hurt, I have to find her.” She looked toward the lake, but she’d lost sight of the three people who had exited the car. Presumably they’d moved behind a stand of brush and trees along the shore.
“You’re walking too fast,” Adelle said. “These jeans make it hard for me to move.”
“That’s because they’re too tight. You should have bought a bigger size.”
“I refuse to wear those baggy things you wear.”
“They’re not baggy,” Irene said. “They fit the way they’re supposed to. I don’t have to lie flat on the bed to zip them the way you do.”
Adelle sniffed. “You’ve never had a sense of style, Irene. I don’t know what possessed you to open a store that’s even remotely associated with high fashion, even a secondhand store.”
“The reason is really quite simple, Adelle. We both have to eat.”
“You always did have a smart mouth.” Adelle sat down and scooted her way down the embankment.
Irene sighed and moved toward her to give her a hand when Adelle spoke again.
“Oh, my God, he does have a gun!”
Irene turned around to see someone emerge from the clump of trees. She could make out the man with the gun and two people walking in front with the gun trained on them. One of them appeared to be a woman with her arm in a sling. Was it Juanita? Irene couldn’t be sure.
“Look! They’re getting in the car,” Adelle said. “Do you think they’ll come this way?”
“I don’t know,” Irene said, “but if they do, I want to move my car before they see it.” She watched as the gunman herded the other two into the car, then got in himself. Within seconds, he’d turned the car around and was headed toward them.
“Let’s go!” Irene started up the embankment to get to her car.
“Wait!” Adelle said. She was now on her hands and knees, crawling up the slope.
“Hurry, Adelle! Hurry!” Irene called from the top of the incline.
“I’m not a mountain goat! I’m moving as fast as I can.”
Irene glanced toward the approaching car and back to her mother. The car was moving fast. The occupants would be able to see her parked car soon.
“Stay where you are, Adelle. Don’t come up any farther. Don’t let them see you,” she shouted as she sprinted toward her car.
“You can’t leave me here with murderers everywhere!”
“Don’t move!” she said just as she slid into the car. She started the motor and backed up, then turned around, gunning the motor to advance toward a large boulder she’d seen at the side of the road earlier. She made a sharp turn, spinning the wheels when she pulled behind the rock. Her heart was racing as she turned off the motor and waited, listening for the approaching car, hoping the dust she’d stirred up would settle before it arrived.
The wait seemed an eternity. What was Adelle doing? Irene hoped she’d taken her advice and stayed on the downslope of the embankment and out of sight. What was taking the other car so long? Had he turned around again to take the road all the way around the lake? How long should she wait? She knew she couldn’t wait long. Adelle might fall down the embankment. She was about to lose her resolve and go back to rescue her mother when she heard the sound of the car’s motor moving closer. She waited again as the sound grew louder and louder.
Within seconds it had moved beyond her. It was a gray Mercury. Dust from the road billowed behind it so she couldn’t make out license plate. She watched the car move away, feeling relieved that the driver had not appeared to see her. She gave the car a few more seconds to get farther down the road before she started her own car and headed back to rescue Adelle.
She found her, still on her hands and knees, her butt in the air, still trying to make it up the embankment and looking frightened. Irene scrambled down the incline. “Thank God you’re all right,” she said. Within a few seconds she had both of Adelle’s hands, walking backward up the steep bank as she pulled her mother up with her. Adelle didn’t speak, but grunted occasionally as she trudged along, one foot doggedly after the other. She still didn’t say anything when they reached the top and Irene helped her into the car. She remained in her peeved silence as Irene once again turned the car around and raced up the road, hoping to catch up with the car she believed held Juanita.
When at last she spotted the car ahead of her, Adelle was still sulking. Irene slowed her car, not wanting the driver ahead to suspect that she was following him. The driver turned on the road that led to Kewa. Irene drove a few yards past the turn, letting the car move down the Kewa road before she slowed and made a U-turn and went back to the turnoff to follow him. Adelle still did not speak.
The car moved closer to Kewa with Irene at least half a mile behind. Eventually, the car turned toward the cluster of houses that surrounded the church and plaza. Irene was far enough behind that she couldn’t see the direction the car headed once it was inside the pueblo. She did notice, however, that an unusually large number of cars were in the normally empty area on the edge of the pueblo. She drove toward the cars, hoping to spot the Mercury and maybe even Juanita. The sound of drums pulsated from the plaza along with a frantic chant in the Keres tongue.
“Corn dance,” Adelle said.
“Oh, yes, of course,” Irene said, remembering that it was August 4, the feast day of Saint Dominic, whom sixteenth-century Franciscan friars had deemed the patron saint of the pueblo. The Native American inhabitants of Kewa had accepted the day and incorporated their own religious holiday into it. It was a day to celebrate the Christian Father and the Great Spirit and Earth Mother and to send up prayers for a good corn harvest.
Irene got out of the car and waited for Adelle to join her. She could feel the beat of the drums radiating up her body from the ground. It was as if the earth had absorbed the drums and chants and accepted them as the prayers for the corn to grow.
“If you think you’re going to find Juanita in this crowd, you’re crazy,” Adelle said, hurrying to catch up with Irene. “There will be hundreds of people here.”
Irene knew she was right. Visitors from other nearby pueblos as well as non–Nati
ve Americans from surrounding towns always attended. In spite of the crowd, she continued toward the plaza. The sweet scent of piñon fires wafted around her. It was a seductive scent, promising chile stew and fry bread cooked over the fires as well as warm loaves of bread pulled from the piñon-stoked hornos.
When they reached the plaza, Irene noted the crowd that had gathered. People were standing around the plaza while a few were seated on portable camp chairs. Residents and their guests sat on the tops of their flat-roofed adobe houses. Two visiting Navajo women in long skirts topped with scarlet and orange satin blouses walked by. Their hair was pulled back in the traditional bun worn by both men and women known as a tsiiyeel. The women kept their gazes straight ahead in their tribal gesture of politeness as they met Irene and Adelle. It would be considered rude to make eye contact as they passed.
A large number of the visitors lingered in front of the whitewashed adobe church, where a celebration of mass had just been completed. The archbishop of Santa Fe, dressed in a black cassock and wearing a silver and turquoise cross, was among them. All eyes were turned toward one of the round underground kivas at the edge of the plaza from which the drumbeat and chanting could be heard. Within seconds, the koshare arose from the depths of the kiva. They were clowns or jesters, painted with black and white stripes, whose true mission was to watch over and care for the dancers, but they would also joke with the crowd and perform antics for the children.
Irene’s eyes continued to scan the crowd, but there was no sign of Juanita, no sign of anyone who might be her captor. What would the captor look like? She had been too far away from him to distinguish features. She could say only that he had been dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt—the same way many of the others in the crowd were dressed.
“I don’t see Juanita anywhere, do you?” Irene asked Adelle over her shoulder. There was no answer, and Adelle was no longer behind her. She felt a moment of consternation that her mother could get herself lost so quickly, but in the next second, she spotted Adelle talking to someone in the crowd. A couple with a small child in the father’s arms stood between Irene and whomever Adelle was speaking to, making it impossible for Irene to identify the person, except that the broad shoulders and short haircut seemed to confirm that it was a man. Adelle threw her head back and laughed and then leaned slightly toward the person, confirming to Irene that it was, indeed, a man. Adelle was flirting with him. In spite of her seventy years, Adelle was still an attractive woman, especially to men of a certain age, and she still loved to flirt. Irene wouldn’t interrupt her mother’s moment of indulgence. She needed to concentrate on finding Juanita.
From just beyond, in the direction of the kiva, the chanting became louder as the dancers, male members of the Squash Clan, emerged from the kiva, re-enacting creation—the arrival of the people from the underground Lake of Emergence. They moved toward the plaza, adorned in pine branches and feathers and dressed in leggings and bright-colored loincloths with moccasins that rose almost to their knees. Their bare chests were painted with ocher clay. They were men of all ages with long hair, ranging in color from gray to black, flowing down their backs. Fox furs dangled at the bottom of their hair, and small bells on their moccasins sang along with the chants. Necklaces of shells and turquoise hung from their necks. From somewhere in the distance, the sound of a flute, sweet as the scent of piñon, joined the beating drums. Irene was surprised at the sound. She’d attended the Green Corn Dance before and had never heard a flute. The music caught the attention of a few others in the crowd, especially Native Americans, who seemed just as surprised as Irene. The flute music stopped as suddenly as it had started, and everyone’s attention turned back to the chanting dancers.
Irene sensed eyes scrutinizing her from somewhere behind her and turned to find them. If anyone had been looking at her, they had dropped their gaze quickly and blended in with the crowd. There was a woman, though—short, a little plump, dark hair. Juanita? No, the woman was too old, too plump. From the plaza came a rattling sound—dry gourds filled with seeds that the men shook to mimic the sound of rain as a means of calling down rain from the sky. Irene continued to search the mix of people.
She saw her! Juanita. She was certain of it. But she disappeared just as quickly as she had appeared, pushing her way through the mass of spectators. Someone followed her. Someone dressed in a white T-shirt.
Irene had to turn sideways to maneuver her way around shoulders and arms to follow Juanita. She’d come back for Adelle later. The two people—dark-haired Juanita and the man in the T-shirt with lighter hair—bobbed in and out of sight as they moved through the crowd. Irene tried to keep her eyes on them as she tried to catch up with them. She called out Juanita’s name, but she got no response, and eventually the two of them were swallowed up and digested by the crowd.
Irene swung around, hoping to catch sight of them again. On the plaza the women dancers had joined the men. They wore wooden headpieces called tablitas and dresses that bared one shoulder—the right for married women, left for single women—and multiple strings of turquoise, coral, and shells around their necks. Their feet were bare in the belief that women must have more intimate contact with Earth Mother in order to fulfill the plan of the universe. As the dancers moved in a baffling but predetermined pattern, they turned to face an arbor where a statue of Saint Dominic stood with bowls of corn and chili sitting in front of him.
Still, neither Juanita nor her pursuer was anywhere in sight. Just as Irene turned toward the kiva of the Turquoise Clan, who would dance later in the day, she saw Juanita again. She was struggling with the man who had chased her. Irene tried to move toward her, pushing through the crowd with more aggression than she had before. She took an elbow in her eye before she managed to make her way to the edge of the horde that had gathered close to the plaza. Still, she kept going.
Though the mass of people was not so dense, there were still many individuals milling around, looking at booths displaying crafts, jewelry, pots, paintings, and clothing for sale by members of the Kewa Pueblo and others. Through the open doors of the houses, Irene could see displays of food—chili, bread, stew, sweets. Visitors were invited into the houses to take some of the food. It was the custom of the Pueblo people to share food gladly with strangers. A small child ran in front of Irene, almost causing her to fall over him, but she righted herself just in time to move forward a few steps and swerve around an elderly woman with the long skirt and stringy hair of a 1960s hippie.
Juanita and the unknown man had moved out of sight, but Irene still tried to push her way through the crowd, dodging tourists and locals. After what must have been at least fifteen minutes, she still hadn’t spotted the two again. She wouldn’t give up, though. Moving through the mass of people, she continued to search. She stopped by several of the houses, and she estimated she must have asked several dozen times if anyone had seen Juanita Calabaza. Most of the time she was answered with no more than a shake of the head.
“Haven’t you heard?” one young woman asked. “She broke out of jail. She’s on the run.”
“I thought I saw her earlier,” Irene said.
The young woman shook her head. “Not a chance. She wouldn’t come back home. Too dangerous.”
Sweat dampened Irene’s hair and dribbled down her face as she walked through the crowd, crossing the width and length of the pueblo in the hot August sun. She had lost track of how long she had been searching when she saw Juanita again. She was outside the plaza and housing area of the pueblo, in the parking lot. She was still with the man in the white T-shirt. He had pulled her arm out of the sling and appeared to be twisting it behind her back, forcing her to walk ahead of him. Juanita struggled, trying to free herself. Once again Irene pushed her way through the crowd, desperate to reach Juanita. Ahead of Juanita and her captor, a woman emerged from one of the cars in the parking lot. A man Irene didn’t recognize had opened the door for the woman and stood beside it. When the woman turned around to speak to the man, Irene saw t
he back of her jeans, stained with dirt from a downhill slide.
Irene’s first instinct was to call out to Adelle, but she held back, not wanting to attract the attention of Juanita’s captor. The man who had opened the car door for Adelle had walked away, leaving Adelle to walk back toward the pueblo. Within seconds she was directly in front of Juanita and her captor. Irene saw Adelle reach for Juanita’s arm to pull her away from the man holding her. In almost the same instant, someone moved behind Adelle. He raised his arm and brought something down hard on Adelle’s head. It looked like a gun. Adelle fell to the ground and her assailant ran away. Irene was too far away to be certain, but the man could have been the same one who had been in the car with Adelle.
By the time Irene reached Adelle, a crowd had gathered around her.
“I saw it! I saw the guy that hit her,” a woman said. “He went that way!” She pointed straight ahead. “I saw some people chasing him and that woman he had with him.”
Irene was on her knees next to her mother. A quick check told her that she was still breathing, although her eyes were closed. Blood matted her hair on one side and dribbled down to her ear.
“Adelle!” Irene said. “Adelle, can you hear me?”
Adelle’s eyes fluttered before she opened them and stared at Irene with a blank expression.
“Why did he hit her?” someone in the crowd asked.
“Somebody call the cops,” another said.
Irene had her hand on her mother’s forehead. It was cool and dry. Adelle’s eyes focused and she stared at Irene.
“I think I fell,” she said. “I was trying to get that woman away—”
“Back away, everyone. Back away. Let us get to the patient.” A group of paramedics gathered around Adelle; an ambulance was always on the premises for gatherings like the Green Corn Dance. A woman in a pale blue uniform pulled Adelle’s eyelids open to check for dilation, while a young man pressed a stethoscope to her chest and another dabbed something on the wound on her head.
