by Sandi Ault
I returned to the library, poured myself a cup of tea, and went back to the shelves and continued browsing. A name on the spine of a new-looking book caught my eye: Adoria Abasolo. I bent down and turned my head to read the adjacent titles. There were more than twenty books of poetry by her. I chose one and examined the first few pages. The title page read: Songs from My Heart, Adoria Abasolo. It was personalized: To my friends in silence, and autographed with her name scrawled in large, flowery handwriting.
Just then, Brother Tobias came in the room. “Miss Jamaica? How do you like our library?”
“It’s wonderful,” I said. “I noticed that you have a lot of books by Adoria Abasolo. Did you know she was your neighbor?”
“Oh, yes, we have all of her work. She sends over an autographed copy of every book she publishes.”
“Does she ever come here—for mass or vespers or anything?”
He wrinkled his brow. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m a fan of her work. I just wondered.”
Right then, Tecolote approached and stood beside the monk, looking at me. “She is full of questions, that one,” she said, pointing her bony finger my way. “¡Venga, Vamonos! I left a nice soup over the fire en mi casa. It waits for me now, but if we keep on like this, it will all bubble away.”
8: In For a Disappointment
In Tecolote’s tiny casita, a simmering pot of soup hung from a hook over the low fire, emitting the rich, gamey aroma of carne de cabra—or goat meat—stewing with garlic and the Mexican oregano that the locals called oreja Indio. The bruja went to the hearth, lit one of her charred punks and used the flame to ignite the wicks in five or six tall cylinder jar candles. These flared and flickered, casting golden light on a host of santos, the rustic carved wooden statues of saints displayed in the large inset nicho in the back wall of her adobe hut. On the other side of the hearth and above it was a thick slab of adobe upon which a straw-filled cotton bag served as a mattress. In centuries past, this was known as a shepherd’s bed; the thick base of the bed retained and transferred heat from the fire and kept a sleeper warm long after the flames died down to a smolder in the night. Atop Esperanza’s high bed and its mattress, a neatly folded red wool blanket sat crowned with the small deerskin pillow stuffed with wolf hair that I had made for her one Christmas.
I brought in an armload of firewood and a handful of kindling, and Esperanza used this to stoke up the fire. She offered Mountain another tendon, and he dropped to the dirt floor and went to work on it. “Siéntese!” She squeaked at me, telling me to sit, and she stuck a cast iron griddle onto some smoldering coals on the edge of the fire. “We will make tortillas. But first, tea.”
The only furniture in the one-room abode was a crude cottonwood table and two rough-hewn wooden chairs. Tecolote placed two cups on the table, added a pinch of intensely green herbs to each, and topped this with hot water to make tea. Then she set about making masa using fine ground corn, a little lime, water, and a lump of goat butter. She took a wooden spoon to the bowl containing the mixture and proceeded to whir it all together as vigorously as if her arm were motorized. Once the dough was smooth and elastic, I pinched off small balls and pressed them one at a time between a cast iron skillet and a large stoneware plate, flattening them into nice round tortillas. Each time I finished one, Tecolote cooked it on the hot griddle, turning it over once with her fingers, and then placing it between layers of cotton sack cloth to stay warm. This was a ritual we had repeated many times when I visited.
I sipped my tea. “I am looking for someone,” I told Esperanza. “Anna Santana thought you might know her. Her name is Adoria Abasolo.”
The bruja turned her head from the griddle to face me, eyeing me over the large hump of her shoulder. She made a grimace with her mouth. “Este no es tu sueño, mi hija.”
My Spanish was getting better the longer I lived in this area, but sometimes it was still woefully inadequate. The older she got, the less Tecolote wanted to use English, and the less tolerant she was with me about not learning what she called el lenguaje de la gente—the language of the people. “¿Sueño?” I said. “What does that mean?”
“Sueños can mean two things. One is…eh…hopes, Mirasol. You know how when you are hoping things will turn out a certain way?” Tecolote ladled some soup into a bowl and set it down in front of me along with a spoon. She brought over the cotton towels filled with the warm tortillas and placed them in the center of the table.
“And the other meaning?”
“Like when you sleep.”
“Dreams. So what you said is: this is not my dream. Is that right?”
“I can always tell when you are trying to make someone else happy.”
This puzzled me, and I held my spoon in mid-air, thinking about it.
“And now you are hoping la sopa will come to your spoon? You are in for a disappointment.”
“Very funny,” I said, putting the spoon down on the table. “Just be straight with me for a minute, would you? Do you know Adoria Abasolo?”
“No.” She brought her own bowl of soup to the table and sat down with her spoon in hand.
“Do you know something about her?”
The mujer began making short work of the bowl of soup. She shoved one spoonful after another into her mouth, then grabbed a tortilla from the stack and soaked up some broth in the bottom of her bowl. “I know una bruja was living in that place where I came to get you.”
I laughed to myself. “You came to get me? Okay, now when you say una bruja, do you mean a witch, or do you mean a healer like you?”
“Yo soy una curandera. Pero, sometimes las brujas can be healers, too.”
“Are you saying that Adoria Abasolo is a witch? Or a healer?”
Tecolote looked at me with coal black eyes. “You did not eat your soup.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You are hungry, but this matter has made your hunger invisible to you.” She reached across the table and confiscated my bowl and spoon and pulled them to her side. “It already has you under its power.”
I grimaced. “I’m just focused on finding Adoria Abasolo, that’s all. That’s what…”
But Tecolote did not wait for me to finish my sentence. She knocked hard on the table three times, and the bowls and teacups jumped and the spoons rattled. “You better come back and be here where you are right now, Mirasol. Wake up! Those brujas have you asleep already, and they are the dreamers, not you.”
I was so stunned by this that I sat in silence for a moment. “You said ‘those brujas’. Adoria is not the only witch?”
Esperanza took the bowls to the hearth and busied herself with the dishes. She worked with her back to me, but she spoke loudly: “El cuervo tells me you have the means to fly with one of those brujas. It is right there in your pocket!”
Now I was really confused. I shook my head. “El cuervo? Like the tequila?”
Tecolote scowled, obviously frustrated with my lack of comprehension. “El cuervo—the big black bird.”
“A raven told you…” I recalled when Esperanza had asked me to stop the Jeep on the way to the monastery and she had held up a feather that she found. Then I remembered the raven chick’s feather I’d slipped into my pocket when Adoria Abasolo’s neighbor had surprised me in the act of looking through the poet’s papers. I reached into my pocket and retrieved the downy black plume. Again, I felt it vibrate slightly between my fingers; it was so light that it trembled in the currents of heat wafting upward from the hearth.
“If I were going to try to find somebody—anybody—I would start looking for el dinero.” Tecolote handed me a jar with a piece of cloth tied over the top.
I took it from her and felt the warmth of the soup inside.
“When you go to su casa, eat some of this buena sopa I made for you, okay? And take these.” She rolled up the top few cotton towels with the tortillas tucked inside and pushed this across the table toward me.
I got up from the chair. Mountain t
ook notice and jumped up at my side. I knew the gift signified my dismissal, but I tried again. “Wait. You mentioned looking for el dinero. What money?”
“How do I know what money? Esta no es mi sueño. This is not my dream, Mirasol, and neither is it yours.”
9: Boundary Issue
It was midafternoon by the time I drove up the graded road that led from the highway toward San Lorenzo de Picuris, the old mission on the northeast side of the pueblo. I figured I might find Prescott, the archaeologist from the Santa Fe district, someplace in that area. I spotted a white truck with the BLM logo on the door like the decals I would soon be getting on my Jeep. Down the road a little farther, two men were waving their arms and shouting at one another.
I pulled over. “Guys, guys, guys,” I called as I got out of my Jeep. “Wait a minute, both of you. Let’s calm down here a second. Why don’t you each take a step back.”
The Anglo man wearing a BLM coat like mine stepped back. The Indian he’d been arguing with lowered his arms, but his jaw remained set.
“Now, would one of you tell me what this is about?”
They both started speaking at once.
“Hold it! Let’s share a talking stick.” I looked around, but all I saw in the immediate vicinity was a pathetic little twig. I picked it up. “Okay, what year were you born?” I pointed at the Indian.
“1970,” he said.
“And you?” I looked at the man I presumed to be Prescott, my new temporary pseudo-boss.
He threw up his hands. “Let him have it. I’m younger than him.”
The Indian took the stick and smiled. “Thank you. We are observing Quiet Time. This man was photographing our mission without a permit.”
I was glad that he was young enough to speak English well. So many of the elder Puebloans did not—or even if they did, they often chose not to when it would benefit them.
“I was n…” Prescott began, but the Picuris man and I glared at him with such intensity that he stopped.
The Indian continued, “We don’t allow photography during Quiet Time anyway, so there would be no way to get a permit.” Finished, he held up the stick.
Prescott reached for it, but the Picuris pulled it away and gave it to me. “This woman has made the peace we have at this time. She will decide who gets the talking stick next.”
I took it from him and handed the twig to the archaeologist.
“That is not a camera,” he said, pointing to the device on the tripod. “It’s a theodolite. It measures angles.”
The Indian was quiet, his jaw set.
I looked from one to the other. Prescott realized the stick was still in his hands, so he started to pass it to me, but I gestured for him to give it to the Indian man.
The Puebloan asked, “This light, it captures angles?”
“No,” Prescott said, but then remembered and reached for the stick. “No, it just measures them. It’s all numbers. Nothing is recorded but numbers. I’m measuring boundary lines for the BLM. The land here at the edge of Picuris abuts public land.”
The brown-skinned man considered this.
I reached for the stick. “If I could say something? I think I recognize you,” I said to the Picuris man. “Weren’t you one of the uncles who spoke the night before Frank and Lupé Santana’s son married at Tanoah Pueblo?”
The man smiled. “I remember you now, too. They let you come in after they talked for quite a while about whether to allow it.”
We were referring to an occasion several years before where a young couple, Momma Anna’s grandson and his bride-to-be, were counseled before their wedding by elders of Tanoah and their sister pueblo, Picuris. I was honored to be allowed to observe this, and to help the women in the family bake and cook for the occasion. “You must have given good advice. Those two are still happily married. I have forgotten your name,” I said. “My name is Jamaica.”
“I am Paul Deherrera. Frank Santana is my cousin.”
“I am so happy to see you again,” I said, smiling.
As the conversation went on, another Picuris man who had been crossing the dirt plaza saw us and came over. He stood on one side of Paul and squinted his eyes, examining these two white people who were having a discussion with one of his tribe. He looked to be about the same age as Paul, but he was wearing a Pendleton blanket, the traditional robe worn during holy times in the pueblo.
No sooner had this man joined the group than a boy of about fourteen tooled up on a dirt bike and came to stand on the other side of Paul—the three Picuris demonstrating a diverse range of appearances. Herrera was dressed in jeans and a down jacket. His friend wore the wool blanket in accordance with the old ways. This young man’s hair was cut in a Mohawk on the top with a long black braid in back, and he wore a black leather jacket over torn jeans. The one thing all three had in common was their footwear—they all wore soft, boot-like, flat-heeled moccasins.
Deherrera nodded to the newcomers, and then gestured to me. “This woman, Jamaica, is learning from Anna Santana.”
The two smiled and took turns shaking my hand. The young boy glanced into my eyes as our palms touched, but then he lowered his head shyly.
Paul returned to the matter at hand: “I do not know what the war council would have to say about recording numbers and angles. But as long as this man is not in the village with the device...”
“I am sure he understands,” I said, and I looked at Prescott questioningly.
The archaeologist nodded. “Sure. No theodolite in the village.”
There was a moment of quiet. Seeing there was no trouble after all, the two newcomers to the gathering nodded politely, and took their leave. The younger one held a hand up in a static wave and gave me a beguiling smile as he got back on the dirt bike and roared off down a side road that led away from the plaza. That one’s going to be trouble for the girls, I thought, if he’s not already.
“Paul, I will tell Anna Santana that I saw you,” I said. “I just came from her house this morning.”
“Please tell Grandmother that I will be seeing her at the feast of Saint Paul later this month.”
“Your name tells me it will be a celebration of your birthday, too,” I said.
“Yes. I hope you will come and join us. There is always plenty to eat, and we have dances.”
“I’d like that very much. Perhaps I can drive Momma Anna. I will ask her about it.”
The Indian man reached out his hand to me, and he held mine for a second or two. “Good-bye for now, Jamaica.” He walked away toward the mission church. I turned to look at Prescott, who had been silent for a while.
He pretended to mop his brow and whispered, “Whew!”
“Situation under control,” I said.
“So you’re Jamaica Wild. I’ve heard about you.”
“What have you heard?”
“A few tall tales.”
I wondered which of my adventures he was referring to. My boss Roy accused me of being a magnet for trouble, and there was beginning to be a fair amount of evidence to support his theory.
“I tell you what, they’re right about one thing,” Prescott continued, “you’re supposed to be good with Puebloans, and I can attest to that. Hey, is that the famous wolf Mountain in the back of your Jeep there?”
“Yes, that’s him. I’ll get him out and you can meet him.” I walked over and lifted the hatch.
Mountain jumped right out, ran over, and began sniffing where the Indians had stood, concerned that he might have missed something. Next, he trotted up to Prescott and began to smell his boots and pant legs.
“Best thing to do is just ignore him. Let him warm up to you when he’s ready.”
Prescott stood still until the wolf moved on to the grass alongside the road. “He’s beautiful. Listen, I’m glad you came along when you did.”
“I’m just lucky I had met that guy Deherrera before. It might not have gone so well if I hadn't. Anyway, I came to check in with you. I’m currently working on ano
ther project, but I was told you might need help in dealing with the war council at Picuris. I think we narrowly escaped that once already. Do you have something else you need to discuss with them?”
“I might. A ruin was discovered last fall on a ledge on the east side of the reservation, in Picuris Canyon. It’s on BLM land, but it’s close enough to them that they may dispute the boundary, or even launch a legal case to reclaim the area where it sits.”
“Would that be a bad thing?”
“It could be. If we don’t protect that ruin, it will be decimated by hikers, climbers, and curiosity-seekers. Picuris Pueblo has a dwindling population—only 92 folks live here at last count. They don’t have the people power to safeguard that ruin. It’s outside their boundary, no one lives near there. And yet, they are a litigious tribe, sometimes for good reasons. They just took the mining company to court and put them out of business when they won back rights to their ancestral clay-gathering sites. And that’s the reason a BLM crew has been up here doing surveys—because the court restored those lands to them. We’ve got to figure out where the lines are now, after that ruling.” He turned off his theodolite and removed its foot from the tripod. “Now this cliff ruin I’m talking about is not in the mine area where the boundaries have changed—it’s just beyond it, in the canyon, very clearly on BLM land. But it’s something that I thought we should address while we’re re-mapping—to save any further disagreement and to initiate a joint plan to protect the site. If we could convince the tribal government that we mean to either cover it up or close off and protect that ruin from further damage, then they might not turn around and take us to court, contesting whether the location of the site should be restored to them, too.”
“Why don’t you just ask if you can talk to the tribal council about it then? I can be there with you when you do.”
“I need to assess the ruin before we start any negotiations, or none of us will even know what we’re talking about.”
