Wild Mystic

by Sandi Ault

  At the base of a steep slope, a turnoff to a trailhead was masked by snow, but I made out a gate—twenty or so yards in—that stretched across a cattle guard over a culvert. The narrow track leading to that gate offered just enough room for me to park the Jeep next to a stand of thick junipers, well off the highway. I backed the Jeep in, snug up against the trees, reached into the glove box and retrieved my leather medicine pouch, grabbed my rifle from behind the seat, and then opened the hatch to let Mountain jump out and savor some freedom. I knew that I would enjoy the liberty, too. As I climbed through the wide opening between the bars of the gate and headed up a gradual incline that led into the wildwood, I knew that I would soon feel my mind let go and my intuition kick in. I had journeyed enough in nature to know that any problem I needed to solve, any truth I longed to know, would be unraveled and made evident there—sooner, and more certainly than anywhere else.

  Mountain glided noiselessly through the snow and deftly wound through the trees, his long, beautiful tail slightly elevated. His ears stood erect, pivoting, even when he lowered his muzzle to drink in the scents on the ground. At one point, he dropped to a low crouch, his nose pointed straight ahead, his haunches trembling. I followed the trajectory of his gaze and saw three bull elk foraging in the woods just beyond us. “They’re too big for you to take, Buddy,” I said softly, but even so, the sound of my voice split the silence.

  The elk raised their heads high and looked for the source of this unusual disturbance. The youngest of the three turned and took a low hop and disappeared upslope. Another of the trio followed him. But the largest, with a massive rack of antlers and a full, thick throat covered with a dark brown mane, pushed his head higher and turned it to the side, eyeing us menacingly. Mountain made a false start to measure the bull’s confidence, but the elk did not move. And now, neither did the wolf. The standoff continued for almost a minute, and then the bull seemed to lose interest. He turned and ambled off in the direction his pals had fled.

  We continued on, and within a few minutes, my four-legged companion sped off like a bullet after a rabbit who had been grazing in a clearing. The hare took evasive action but found his adversary too clever to be fooled. It was all over in a minute, and I heard the bunny squeak as Mountain seized it in his jaws. I looked for a fallen tree or a rock outcropping to use as a seat while I waited. I wasn’t going to get the wolf to surrender that rabbit, and I wasn’t going to allow him to bring his prize home in the Jeep, so I might as well let him eat it here. I dusted the snow off of a wrinkled slab of lichen-laced stone and sat down, propping my rifle against the rock beside me.

  At first, while I tried to appreciate the beauty of the spot, I was distracted by the sounds of ripping flesh, smacking lips, and an occasional crunch of bone. But in time, my senses began to train on other stimuli: the singing of the long-fingered pine needles in the breeze, the soft pflump of a mass of snow falling from a branch, the musty smell of bark, and the intense cold of the ancient stone against my backside. I felt the strength of this rock mass, which had been blasted here from the boiling center of the planet and left to cool and gather life around it so long ago. I sensed the ardor of the trees coursing upward with stoic determination. I knew that if ever there were a house of God, I was in it now.

  I took a pinch of cornmeal from my medicine pouch and sprinkled it as an offering. I had brought these questions to the altar of this living sanctuary: Where was Adoria Abasolo and what had happened to her? And who was following me, and why?

  As I studied the descent of confetti-like dust motes in a shaft of faint light, I tried to follow first one speck and then another, my eyes drifting with the slow, aimless free-fall of matter so light that it couldn’t even interest gravity. Those dots of dust were like the particles of information I had gathered—non-cohesive, undefined, insignificant in and of themselves. Adoria Abasolo had disappeared more than three days ago, after writing what appeared to be drug-inspired poems marked by paranoia of people coming for her. She was living on land owned by the monastery and was somehow linked to that institution; however, she had bought the vacant parcel next to hers to prevent having cattle grazed there. In doing this, she had made enemies in the high mountain villages sufficient to make her unwelcome among nearly all her neighbors. But one local, a writing student, came regularly to the poet’s home. And Adoria also employed a housekeeper who was a near-constant presence. Houseguests stayed at the residence when their hostess was not there. Abasolo had told the president-elect that she was going to a ceremony at Tanoah Pueblo, despite the fact that the neighboring pueblo, just a few miles from her house, had an almost identical schedule of public dances and events to commemorate sacred days. And where was her car? It wasn’t at her home, and if it hadn’t been found wrecked or abandoned, then it was likely that she was still with it.

  More motes: Tecolote had told me to follow the money; Abasolo gave her prize winnings from both the Pulitzer and the Nobel Prize to charities. But which ones? I would need to investigate that, or ask Coronel if he could find out. Momma Anna had advised me to talk to the peyote plant, and Yohe had let on that a young man had stolen some of the medicine from the tribe. But Bone Man had said that there were never any women outside of the tribe at peyote ceremonies, and perhaps no outsiders at all any more. And besides, the fireplaces—as he called them—were almost always on Saturdays at sundown, according to him, and that didn’t fit with the time when Adoria disappeared.

  And what about the black Hummer that was following me? Could it be Lor Talgren? Roy said his dog had been euthanized yesterday morning, which seemed to fit—the first time I’d noticed it following me was yesterday afternoon. But how would Lor have known to find me on the High Road? It didn’t make sense.

  I sat alert in the silence for a few minutes, waiting for inspiration. And then I realized that silence meant that Mountain had finished the rabbit. I looked around, and my wolf companion was nowhere in sight. I stood and periscoped my head from side to side. No wolf. I hurriedly reached into the medicine pouch, pinched some loose tobacco, held it toward the sky and then the earth, and sprinkled it on the ground as an offering in thanks for the rabbit’s life energy. I grabbed my rifle, studied the snow for tracks, then sprinted away in the direction they led, whispering, “Mountain? Mountain!”

  The wolf was posed as still as a statue in a grove of trees, less than fifty yards from the Jeep. His eyes were fixed on the two-legged walking toward my vehicle. The man cupped his hands around his face and peered into the passenger window. I touched Mountain’s back gently but he didn’t react—meaning he had heard me approach. I ducked to a kneeling position beside him, under the cover of some low-reaching fir branches. I could smell the rabbit’s blood, and I saw red stains in the fur around my companion’s mouth and on his neck, making him look fearsome. Snow began to fall.

  The man was tall, dressed all in black. He wore boots with the kind of tactical pants that military and law enforcement wore. His heavy jacket didn’t disguise a muscular build. And the black stocking cap made it impossible for me to tell his hair color, but the fair skin on his face told me he was Anglo. He studied the ground and our footprints there, and his eyes followed the route we had taken up into the trees.

  Fortunately, Mountain had come back well to the north of the way we had walked earlier, so the man’s gaze angled away to one side of us. All the same, I ducked lower behind the arms of the tree. Mountain didn’t move, alert, ready.

  The man’s head moved from side to side as he scanned the forest. The snow was falling faster now.

  I carefully brought the rifle up with my right hand and laid the bottom of the stock into my left. I pulled the butt to my shoulder, careful not to stir the skirts of our sheltering fir as I did so.

  The man looked up at the sky, perhaps noting the rapidly-increasing rate of snowfall. He turned and walked back to the highway, then headed northeast along the shoulder in the direction from which I had come—toward Peñasco.

  Mountain star
ted to move, but I reached my left arm out like a gate and held it in front of his throat. “Shhhh. Wait,” I whispered. I noticed the accumulation of white flakes atop his forehead and along the ridge of his nose.

  In less than a minute, I heard the sound of a vehicle on the road. The black Hummer, frosted with snow across its top and hood, drove past the turnout where my Jeep was parked and on toward Taos, a small storm of tiny white crystals taking flight in a fine spray behind it.

  23: Closed to the Public

  In Taos, I stopped by the library, where Carla waited at the research desk with a stack of books and papers for me. “Some of this would have taken too long to scan and email,” she said, “so I just copied a page or two from a number of different sources. You can get more information if you want by requesting the original. And because we were talking about him yesterday, I put some things in there about that author Videl Quintana—the one whose book you checked out. Remember, I told you about his mysterious death, and the details still weren’t sorted out yet? Among other things, he was big into peyote, and that’s what you wanted me to research.”

  I used the computer at the library to check my email. Nothing from Kerry. But the list of vehicles that Roy had forwarded was there, and I printed it off. I wrote a quick message to my lover:

  Dear Kerry,

  I miss you, my love. I hate having to write emails all the time. I wish I could hear your voice. Maybe we can talk soon. For the next day or so, I’m working where there’s cell coverage, at least some of the time. So if you are anyplace where a phone works, try to call!

  I have little to add here beyond a small list of complaints: the bed is too cold and too empty when you’re not in it. And I’m so hungry for another of your famous Forest Ranger Flapjacks. Beyond that, there is only this one little matter of housekeeping: I found one short brown hair on the edge of the bathroom sink. I might chide you for not policing it up properly…except that it made me smile. I taped it to the nightstand so part of you is near me at night.

  I miss your face.

  Mountain misses you, too.

  Love,

  Jamaica

  As I left, snow was falling gently. I held Mountain’s leash in my left arm and with my right, I wedged the library materials against my body. A lump in my pocket dug painfully into the side of my hip. I loaded Mountain and the books into the car and reached into my pocket to find the offender. It was my bag of offering medicine I’d used in the forest, the small leather pouch I always kept in my glove box and regularly filled with sage, corn meal and loose tobacco. Suddenly I remembered something I’d seen in the folder The Bartender had given me. It had been one of the few items still legible on the receipt from a grocery store in Española—Native American Spirit Tobacco, loose. Tobacco—especially loose tobacco, and even more specifically Native American Spirit Tobacco, was traditionally offered to a medicine teacher or healer to show respect, and was also used as an offering to the Earth Mother in one’s own medicine journey. Adoria was either seeing a shaman for healing or taking instruction in the medicine way.

  “Okay, Buddy,” I said to the wolf as I slipped behind the wheel and started the car, “I hope you’re not too full from your rabbit snack. Because we’re going to visit Momma Anna again.” As I headed toward the north end of town, under a low grey cloud deck and softly falling snow, I noticed that many of the luminarias along the roadsides and the adobe walls lining the homes and businesses had already been lit in honor of Kings Day. The soft yellow light from the candles in the paper bags glimmered against the fresh white blanket surrounding them.

  Because it was snowing and beginning to get dark, I decided to take the paved main road into Tanoah Pueblo from which I could veer off onto the narrow dirt lane called Rattlesnake Road right before entering the old part of the village. That way I could get to Momma Anna’s place with less risk and rattle than going the back way. But when I got to the Rattlesnake turnoff, I saw a confrontation taking place between three people. As I pulled closer to the scene, I made out two Anglos—a man and a woman—arguing and waving their arms as a stoic Tanoah tribal policeman stood with his legs spread wide, unyielding, his arms crossed over his chest. I could tell by their perfect red parkas that this was the same couple who had been asking questions of Dominic Gomez in the Bear Paw yesterday in Peñasco.

  I had no choice but to stop. If I’d veered around them and onto Rattlesnake Road, the tribal policeman would have eventually tracked me to Momma Anna’s to question why a BLM vehicle was on the reservation during Quiet Time, and after business hours, to boot. And it might make trouble for my medicine teacher if she had to defend me as a family member or even just a family friend. So I stopped, got out, and approached the trio.

  “It said in the Nine Northern Indian Pueblos brochure that there were dances today,” the Anglo man argued loudly.

  Nodding her head in agreement, the woman added: “The flyer said the public was welcome at the dances. You had no right to tow our car!”

  “The War Council voted not to have the dances this Kings Day,” the officer said. “That leaflet you got there says all events are subject to change and to call ahead to make sure.”

  “But we didn’t know the pueblo was closed.”

  “You can’t read?” The officer turned and pointed to the sign on the tripod in the middle of the road behind him. It read:

  Tanoah Pueblo is Closed to the Public

  No Tourists or Visitors Allowed

  The Pueblo will Re-Open on January 12

  He looked at me. “You can read that, right?”

  “Crystal clear,” I said. “Even in twilight with snow falling.”

  The two redcoats spun to see who had spoken.

  I smiled. “Anything I can do to help?”

  “Yeah, you can get this goon to give us our car back,” the man barked.

  I winced at the goon thing. “This officer is just doing his duty.”

  “And you were trespassing,” the tribal policeman said. He pushed his chin high and looked down his nose at the two agitated pale-faces.

  “We were not trespassing,” the woman retorted.

  “You parked here in an empty lot, which should have given you a clue, and you went right past this sign, and you were wandering around inside the wall of the village, in an area where there is nothing but residences, and where there are about a dozen No Trespassing signs.”

  “We got lost,” she replied.

  I cut in. “Look, I wonder if I can do anything to help resolve this situation. Can I give you two a lift back into Taos and you can plead your case to the War Council tomorrow?”

  “A lift?” Parka-Man shouted, “we have a lift, it’s our car. And this guy towed it off someplace.”

  I knew this cop. He was a good man. I gave him a pleading glance.

  He picked up the mic on his lapel and held the talk button. He spoke in Tiwa to someone, turning away to keep the conversation private. He turned back and looked from one redcoat to the other. “You’ll go peaceably and stay off the reservation while it’s closed if I give you back your car?”

  The male redcoat bit his lip, but the female nodded in silence.

  “You two wait over there,” the officer pointed at the side of the road near a cleared gravel parking area.

  They shuffled away, grumbling to one another.

  The Pueblo man took off his glove and extended a broad brown palm to me. “Agent Wild, how you doing?” His hand was warm as he shook mine.

  “Officer Rainwater. Thanks for your leniency. It’s Kings Day, so I think you did a good thing. Now everybody can go home happy tonight, having kept the peace.”

  “I wish I didn’t believe there would be a next time,” he said, “but things like this happen here almost every day. Tourists treat the pueblo like it’s Six Flags, like we ought to be open 24/7 so they can tramp around our sacred places and gawk at us Indians and take pictures with their phones.”

  This was a common complaint. Unfortunately, a small p
ortion of the tourists who flocked to the Taos area behaved as if all the riches of its tri-cultural heritage, all the beauty of its surrounding wilderness and wildlife, and all the events that were held in the villages, towns, and pueblos were simply entertainment for their benefit.

  “I imagine that gets frustrating,” I agreed. “I know how trying tourists can be, especially when they are ignorant of tribal customs and rights. I saw those two up on the High Road yesterday, asking a million questions of one of our field technicians. They’re probably just trying to see all the sights in the area. I only stopped to see if I could do anything to assist. I didn’t mean to interfere.”

  He grinned. “Well, you probably saved me some grief by butting in. I was about done with their belligerence. So what caused you to happen by right about now?”

  “I’m not here on business,” I admitted, “I’m visiting.”

  He narrowed his eyes.

  “I was going to see a friend, an elder. But she doesn’t live in the old part of the village, so I’ll be outside the walls.”

  He put his glove back on and took his time adjusting his fingers into it, then looked up at me. “Tell you what. You take care of those two in them red marshmallow coats over there, and I didn’t see you.” As he said this, an oversized pickup approached, towing a green Subaru behind it.

  I headed for the couple on the side of the road. “Hey, you guys, I know you’re upset, but I think it’s best if you don’t say anything more to the officer. He’s got your car here, so why don’t we all calm down now, and you guys drive on. What do you say?”

  The man’s face was full of fury. “Excuse me, but just who are you?”