Wild Mystic

by Sandi Ault

  I began a mental review of any ceremonies I knew of at Tanoah Pueblo that Abasolo might have attended. The tribe did the Matachines dance on Christmas Day, and the pueblo was open through the New Year’s holiday, during daylight hours. On New Year’s Day they did the turtle dance, and the next public dance would normally be tomorrow, on King’s Day, for which they usually did the deer or buffalo dance. But this year, the cacique had ruled that there would be no public dances on the Christian holiday marking the arrival of the three kings at the crèche. Instead, the pueblo would be observing their ancient traditions in Quiet Time for ten days. After that, they would re-open and remain so through the beginning of March, when Tanoah Pueblo would once again observe the old ways during the nearly seven-week-long Spring closure.

  I shook my head, unable to see even a thread to follow in all of this. Before I wasted more time looking in every direction, I needed to know the facts at hand. I knew I had to do more research on Adoria Abasolo.

  “Mountain, let’s go to the Taos Library,” I said to my companion. “Those librarians adore you, and we haven’t been there in a while. I’ve got some reading to do.”

  As I said this, I looked in the rear view mirror to make eye contact with the wolf, whose head blocked my view of the road behind me. He responded by reaching over and licking me on the cheek, and as he did so, in the mirror I saw a black Hummer a quarter-mile or so behind us on the two-lane road. I hadn’t remembered seeing it before. I wondered how it had come up on us so unexpectedly—especially since this trail led through twists and curves and there was a chill wind occasionally blowing snow and limiting visibility, which had forced me to drive more slowly than I might otherwise have. I decided to perform a test. I slowed my speed by ten miles per hour, well below the speed limit. This should have caused the Hummer to overtake me in a few minutes.

  But the follower slowed, too, and the slight tingling in the back of my neck turned into a tense rigidity. I noticed I was clenching my teeth. This wasn’t the first time I’d been followed in high country, and when it had happened before, I’d nearly been run off the road and then forced to defend myself in a shootout. I chastised myself: Why didn’t I take the more heavily traveled road through Dixon? Here I was again, alone and miles from anywhere with someone tailing me.

  I sped up. The Hummer matched my speed. My mind ticked off a list of possible perps, starting with Eddiejoe Ibanez, or one of his goons. I thought of gaining cover on one of the switchbacks, then taking one of the forest road turnoffs and trying to hide in the trees so I could reverse positions with my shadow. But that’s how the shootout happened the last time, and I didn’t want to find myself on the defensive and trapped down a primitive Forest Service road without backup, especially when I didn’t know how many people were in that car. My cell phone had no signal here, and I couldn’t use the radio to hail dispatch because there was no line-of-sight in these mountains. I figured it was best to keep driving straight ahead and hope they didn’t try to overtake me and force an altercation. I reached between the folded-down backseat that Mountain was perched on and the back of the front passenger seat, my eyes still on the road. When I got my hand on my rifle, I pushed the butt all the way until it pressed against the back door behind my seat. I was a crack shot with a rifle. If I had to get out and fight, I wanted to be able to grab it in an instant.

  12: Never Judge a Book

  By the time I got on the Paseo del Pueblo in Taos, my shadow had dropped out of sight. I turned off the road and waited for a while in the parking lot of the grocery store, but I did not see the black Hummer go by. I began to think I’d been too quick to assume the car was following me—it could have been anyone coming from Peñasco or Mora traveling to Ranchos de Taos or one of the small villages around the Taos area. I was sleep-deprived; maybe that was making me twitchy.

  I headed directly to the Taos Library. As usual, the staff flocked to the wolf, emitting squeals of delight—and if he hadn’t known them, he might have turned tail and run. But Mountain had been coming to the library with me since he was a tiny cub, so he forgave his fans their inability to contain their enthusiasm. Besides, both here and at the bank, he generally received several dog cookies, and there was no better way to a wolf’s heart than through his stomach.

  I enlisted the help of Carla, my favorite research librarian, who directed me to the shelf where Abasolo’s books were kept. I picked up several of these and headed for an upholstered reading chair, where Mountain joined me and made himself comfy on the carpet at my feet. I began with her first published collection of poems, and as I thumbed through and read one or two, I knew why President-elect Vargas had become alarmed by the mystical nature of Adoria’s latest efforts. Her early work was grounded, rustic, earthy and more like a still life in words than a trip to another dimension. I particularly liked the imagery of one poem at the end of her first book:

  A Woman’s Worth

  A woman’s body is her great gift.

  In its strength, she finds herself a warrior

  Even if it is only a battle

  With a stain on a white shirt

  Or a skirmish with the cupboard’s contents

  To make them last until the end of the month.

  In her body’s womb, she finds herself a creator;

  Her children will always be her greatest work of art

  But she may also find a moment to paint

  Or sew, or draw, or to form up a little figure out of the clay

  While she is hanging out the wash in her bare feet.

  She may dance, or write love songs,

  Or tell fortunes while the children are napping,

  Or imagine a way to design a dress

  On the way home from work, or as she starts supper—

  So great is her ability to create.

  In her body’s health, she may find the tenacity

  To live long enough for things to get better,

  To outlast an unkind husband…

  Or retire happily with a loving one,

  To witness the descent of the uncle who shamed her

  To outlive the nun who beat her,

  To see an unfaithful boyfriend grow bald and fat,

  Or better—to nurse her sick grandchildren

  And make them well again,

  To run and play with them

  On the soft grass under the shade trees by the river.

  But in her body’s beauty,

  Which only lasts for a moment,

  She can trade at high market

  For all the stars in the sky.

  And there, the timing of the deal is everything.

  Her beauty peaks when she knows nothing of her worth

  And begins to diminish as soon as

  she starts to value herself.

  I perused other collections of Abasolo’s work and all of it was similarly hard-edged and down-to-earth, beautifully poignant while made up of everyday imagery. I opened my backpack and took out the blue folder I’d placed in it. Scanning through the file’s contents, I read some of Adoria’s recent poems. By comparison to the larger body of her work, her last twenty or so poems seemed like they’d been written under the influence of a powerful hallucinogenic.

  And here I began to make a series of associative leaps in reasoning. I remembered Momma Anna telling me to ask “him” for help in finding Abasolo, and to feed the peyote plant. Peyote was a hallucinogenic, and somewhere at Tanoah Pueblo or on their reservation lands, there were regular meetings of the American Indian Church, which was a group of peyote dreamers. Further, I remembered seeing those books by Videl Quintana in Adoria’s study. And I knew just enough about Quintana to know that he had made his name and fame publishing purportedly true accounts of learning the ways of a Central American shaman who made the pupil ingest peyote to begin instruction. I got up and looked for Quintana’s books, but the library only had copies of two of them. I decided to check them out and peruse them later.

  Had the peyote church conducted any
meetings recently? Could that be where Abasolo had gone when she disappeared? Vargas had said she had gone to Tanoah Pueblo for a ceremony of some kind, and from what I knew, the peyote rituals were ceremonies conducted by elders, medicine men and women. But why at Tanoah Pueblo when Adoria lived practically right next door to their sister pueblo, Picuris? Because of their much smaller population, it could be that the Picuris who practiced the religion went to Tanoah for this ceremony. Or maybe Abasolo preferred the anonymity of going a distance to avoid running into her neighbors. Perhaps I could find out more about the poet’s routines from her neighbor, Susan Lacy. By now, she surely would have realized that her writing teacher had gone missing.

  I took a selection of volumes to the check-out desk, where Carla gazed at a computer screen. She scanned my card and the books, and as she picked up the two by Quintana, she said, “You’re lucky. We can’t keep these on the shelves. And the circumstances surrounding his death! They’ve never solved all those mysteries!”

  “What mysteries?”

  “Oh, there are so many. His death was kept secret until months afterward. And I don’t think they’ve settled his estate yet—it’s been more than ten years since he died. Some of the people who were named in his will just disappeared. Quintana’s followers who believed all that woo-woo stuff he wrote said that those closest to him went with him into the next dimension! It was quite a stew for a long time. And it sure spiked his book sales!”

  “How about Adoria Abasolo’s books? I saw you had most all of them on the shelf.”

  “Well, poetry doesn’t make it to the bestsellers lists like Quintana’s books did—his read like fantasy novels, and some say that’s what they were—not anthropological studies, as he claimed. But there’s not much demand for poetry. We did see interest in Abasolo pick up some when she won the Nobel prize a few years ago, and then a flurry of checkouts again when she was named the US Poet Laureate this past year. Most of our poetry has a slow rate of use, but Abasolo is local, so we keep a copy of everything she does.”

  “It’s a shame more people don’t read her. I was just reading some of her early poems, and they’re really good.”

  “Most people don’t even know about her around here. She might have more of a following if she did some events when her books came out. But she doesn’t do public appearances.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes, we asked her to do an event for local authors here at the library last summer—and this was right after she’d been named poet laureate. I sent an email to her publisher and they forwarded my request to her agent who replied and said Abasolo didn’t do public appearances.”

  “Do you happen to have that agent’s name and contact information?”

  “Not handy, but I might be able to find it. Are you thinking of asking her to do an appearance?”

  “Something like that.”

  “If I find it, do you want me to use the email address associated with your library card—like we’ve done before when you requested research information?”

  “That would be great, thanks. And Carla, would you do a small research project for me as well?”

  “Sure thing. What do you need?”

  “Any information you can find for me on peyote and the American Indian Church. And before I leave, will you give me the log-on password for today? I want to use one of the public computers.”

  13: A Good Trap

  The mountains of northern New Mexico were wild and beautiful, but in many ways they created a barrier against so-called human progress. Here, as in other high places, the terrain was rough and rugged, and the weather made the roads unpredictable. The lack of line-of-sight connections to the high mesas nearby prevented cellular and Wi-Fi from working. But more than that, the sparse human population that these mountains sustained—a number held in check by the lack of water—meant that the spread of advanced technologies into rural areas was not cost-worthy. And unlike so many other beautiful spots on the map, rich developments did not spring up in the loveliest areas precisely because of these difficulties, especially the fact that one might have to drill halfway to China to get a drop of water. So, while some locals celebrated these protective landforms, saying las montañas del norte were sleeping giants who kept the region pristine, others found it difficult to settle for a life without modern amenities, no matter how beautiful their surroundings.

  I was happy without technology at my cabin in the pines, where I lived practically off-grid. I got my electricity from the rural electric coop, I paid to have water hauled to my cistern every few months, and I heated my home with firewood burned in a small, centrally-located woodstove. When the power went out, which it frequently did—especially in winter—I cooked on that woodstove, too, because the range was electric. For years, I had lived and worked without a mobile device, but when I got into some trouble last winter, Roy had insisted I begin carrying one, even though there was no service in half the places I was assigned to protect.

  Lately, I was grateful to have the Screech Owl, and to be able to check my email on the computer at the BLM or a public computer, because it allowed me to stay in touch with my faraway boyfriend, Kerry. And so, before leaving the library, I logged into my email to see if there might be a note from him. There was!

  Babe,

  Now that I’m back in the northwest,

  I feel lost, like I left half of me with you.

  I can’t go on being separated, living so far apart.

  We belong together.

  Kiss Mountain on the head for me,

  and feel my arms around you.

  Love, Kerry

  He included a few photos: a breathtaking view of a turquoise lake surrounded by pine-forested peaks, a “selfie” that he’d taken of the two of us laughing while we were on a hike just days ago, and one of Kerry, me, and Mountain with heads touching—lying on the big rock in the woods near my cabin where I always went to talk to the stars.

  I sat unmoving, running my fingers back and forth across my lips, tears welling in my eyes. I heard a woman clear her throat behind me. I turned and looked.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Carla said, “but there’s an old man in the front lobby—he told one of the librarians he wanted to know if you were here.”

  I closed the screen, stood, and followed Carla to the front entry. The man who stood wrapped in his blanket just inside the big glass doors was an old friend of mine. “Sevenguns, I am so happy to see you. It’s such a surprise that you found me here.” This seemed like a very curious circumstance. I had never seen the old man away from Tanoah Pueblo before.

  “I saw that Jeep. Easy to know that’s you. Got wolf hair all over in there,” he said.

  I laughed. “Yes, that’s true.” I was quiet for a few moments. “I don’t think you have come here to use the library.”

  His chin dipped down. “No, I do not read so good. Remember, I tell you at that school when I am small, I make the trap, catch a lot of rabbit for stew. They like to have that meat, so they let me out of class. I never learn much read or write, but I get by.”

  Sevenguns referred to the Indian boarding school that he had been forced to attend as a child, when government workers forcibly took children of school age from their families at the pueblos and attempted to convert them from their native ways, beliefs, and languages. That school had long since been shuttered, but not before it had caused irrevocable harm to most of the children who attended, and to their families and their tribal legacy.

  I smiled at my friend. “Well, I am glad to see you.” Careful not to ask a direct question, I said, “I am thinking that if you will not be staying here for a time that perhaps you are on your way somewhere.”

  “I have friend over at this church.” He hitched a thumb back in the direction of Our Lady of Guadalupe, two blocks away. “I come see him, hope he will give me a ride home. But he is not there. I see you drive by with that wolf of yours.”

  “So I am thinking that you might like a ride ba
ck to the pueblo.”

  He lowered his head. The Tanoah not only frowned on asking questions, but especially asking for things from others, because this would nearly always create an imposition. There wasn’t a word for no in the Tanoah language, hence it was difficult to refuse any request without being rude. Instead of inventing a way to express the negative, this peaceful tribe had long ago developed a tradition of avoiding queries and requests, and this had worked well for them for many centuries. Sevenguns spoke in the general direction of the floor. “I can walk. I come by to say hello.”

  “Well, I was just going out by the pueblo. I would love it if you would ride with me. You could keep me company.”

  “I could do that for you.” He smiled shyly.

  On our drive north and west of Taos, I decided to see if I could get any information from Sevenguns. “I have a friend who went to a ceremony in your village recently.”

  “We have only turtle dance this month,” he said. “Christmas, we do Matachines…”

  “I don’t think she went to the dances. I am thinking it was a religious ceremony.”

  “Women not go in kiva.”

  “Not in the kiva. I think it was someplace else.”

  “No place where white woman can do ceremony there.”

  “She’s not white, she has brown skin.”

  “Other tribe maybe can come, maybe a relative.”

  “I am looking for this woman and this is the last place I know that she went. To the ceremony.”

  “Maybe talk women. You know some those aunties.”

  “I will. But I am hoping someone can tell me if there has been a recent ceremony, so I could know which auntie to talk to.”

  Sevenguns looked out the window and did not reply. I wished I could take back what I’d just said. Whether or not I’d asked a question, it was a request, and now he had to either ignore it or figure out a way to politely refuse it, and feel as if he’d been rude to me either way. A thing like this could sour a relationship forever.