Wild Inferno (15 page)
Authors: Sandi Ault
A Feast of Sorts
Thursday, 2030 Hours
As I drove around to the east side of the mountain ridge topped by the two stone pinnacles known as Chimney Rock and Companion Rock, the shadow of the highland created early dark. It would not be sundown for almost another half hour, and yet, with the smoke in the atmosphere, it seemed much later.
Bearfat was standing in the parking lot in front of the visitors' center when I pulled up. A different young girl stood beside him. “Jamaica Wild!” he called, and waved, smiling. “I knew you'd be coming.”
I got out of my Jeep. “I'm here at your request, I understand.”
“It took some doing. I was afraid if I left the area, they wouldn't let me back in. But I told the guy guarding the gate out by the highway that I had to talk with the governor, and he let me make a quick run to Ignacio. There's no cell phone coverage here. I thought we ought to have someone who could get word out if we needed anything.”
“Well, I'm here.”
Bearfat flashed a wide, white smile at me. “It's going to be a good night.”
I didn't understand his comment so I stood quietly. If there was one thing I'd learned from my dealings with the Tanoah, it was
When in doubt, don't talk.
Bearfat was obviously testing me. He stood and looked down at me, smiling, hoping to make me uncomfortable. His young friend watched me suspiciously.
I bent down and picked up a tiny pebble from the parking lot. I acted as if I were enthralled with it, examining it carefully, turning it over and over between my fingers, setting it in my palm and raising it to eye level to look at it. I knew this gameâthe next one to talk was going to lose some power in the relationship. It wasn't going to be me.
Finally the girl with Bearfat spoke. “What about all that food?”
Bearfat was clearly chagrined. He broke off staring at me to glare at his companion.
“What food?” I said.
The girl simply pointed at the picnic table under the trees to one side of the visitors' center. Three large cardboard cartons sat on the tabletop.
“It's supper for the ones up on top,” Bearfat said.
“How long has the food been sitting there?” I asked, walking toward the picnic table.
“About a half hour, I think. They're having a prayer ceremony at sundown. They will want to feast after that, but no one will eat until their prayers are spoken.”
“Okay, then,” I said, “should I take these boxes up with me?”
“No,” he said. “We'll have the feast down here so everyone can attend. The prayer ceremony is only for the Puebloans.”
“Oh.”
“But you're invited,” Bearfat said, smiling again.
“I am?”
“Yes, you and that wolf of yours. You better hurry. It's almost time for sunset.”
As I drove away, I found myself shaking my head.
Bearfat!
I said to myself.
What kind of a game are you playing? And why do you insist on playing it with me?
I drove through the parking lot on the top and didn't see anyone around. I parked in my usual spot, got out, and walked past the comfort station, back across the pavement, and up the path leading past the Parking Lot site. To the west, the sky was dramatic: Peterson Ridge loomed in indigo relief on the horizon. The sun lingered on the rim of the ridge before saying good night, looking through the black and gray and magenta scarves of wind-blown smoke, illuminating these clouds of carbon from behind with a purple glow and red-feathered edges so that the whole atmosphere looked as if it had been washed with blood. Below, and to the southwest, an intense yellow incandescence marked the flame front, while smaller spot fires shone from within the dark relief of trees, like dozens of night-lit homes on the outskirts of a city.
I crossed the narrow causeway and heard a soft drumming sound. Then I heard a male voice cry out in falsetto voice:
Way-ah-hah-hah, Way-ah-hah-ah-yeh.
The drum grew louder, and more voices trilled:
Way-ah-hah-hah, hey-ah-eh-yay!
The smell of smoke from the fire was intense and heavy, but the voices were high and drawn, vibrating, penetrating the fog like a baby's cry, urgent and pure.
I climbed the rock steps to the Great House then walked along the wall, and as I rounded the corner of the structure, Mountain sprang toward me, his bridle in place, his lead trailing behind him. He squeaked and twirled as I patted and comforted him, and I found my hand softly pounding his back to the beat of the drum. I knelt and embraced my best friend, and he smiled and licked my ear. I took his leash and walked to the top edge of the ruin and looked down into the kiva.
The round stone-built room was filled with the native Puebloans, seated in circles emanating outward from a small, vacant hoop in the center. As the drumming and singing continued, two women took turns shaking pairs of prayer sticks embellished on the ends with feathers over the others at the ceremony. I watched as the pair went from person to person. They approached Momma Anna, who was sitting along the back wall. One woman reached high in the sky with her feathered sticks and shook them as though she were making rain, moving them downward until she shook past Momma Anna's shoulders and down her arms to her elbows and then into her lap. She stepped carefully to the side and the second woman held her prayer sticks low, then shook from the ground up, stooping to shake the feathered ends right over Momma Anna's crossed legs, then up her torso in front of her chest, in front of her face, over her head, and reaching upward to the sky. I started to sit down on the ground above the kiva rim, but a man stood and waved at me to come down the steps. Mountain balked and wouldn't come, so I took one step and stood for a while, then another, and then I sat down on one of the low steps. The wolf trembled and hesitated, but he carefully made his way down two steps and lay on the stone stair behind me. The song-prayer ended, and the man who had waved to me spoke in his native tongue. I didn't think it was Tiwa, because I had become familiar with the flat, nasal tones of that language through my work with the Tanoah. I thought perhaps this man might be Hopi, but I wasn't sure why. When he finished his prayer, the drum began to beat low and steady,
bom-bom-bom-bom, bom-bom-bom-bom,
and a woman in the center circle stood and offered a large abalone shell to the sky. I thought she was going to smudge by burning cedar, or perhaps even sage, but instead, she put two fingers into the shell and then put them on her tongue. Afterward, she made a circle with her fingers over her head and shook them at the sky and then circled them again over the ground.
As the drum beat on,
bom-bom-bom-bom, bom-bom-bom-bom,
the sky grew darker and it was hard for me to see what was going on in the round pit. It appeared that the abalone shell was being passed from person to person to repeat the offering, but I lost track of it somewhere in the second row. The sound of the drum was mesmerizing:
bom-bom-bom-bom, bom-bom-bom-bom.
I found myself swaying gently from side to side, rocking on my hips on the stone step. I closed my eyes and I could feel the drum as if it were my own heartbeat. I felt a bump on my elbow. I looked down to see that a woman was offering the abalone shell to me from her seat against the wall just below me. I reached down and took the shell from her, praying that I wouldn't make a mistake. I had only clearly seen the first woman's gestures, so I tried my best to remember exactly how she had performed the ritual. I put my fingers in the shell and found grains or meal of some kind in the bottom. I took a pinch and put it on my tongue.
Corn pollen.
Then I raised my pinched fingers and made a circle over my head, sprinkling some of the grains onto my hair. I reached to the heavens and offered some to Father Sky, then to the step below me, where I circled my fingers and offered pollen to Mother Earth. As I made this offering, the drum beat on:
bom-bom-bom-bom.
When I was finished, I looked to see what I should do with the shell, whether to try to pass it back to the woman who had just handed it to me or to move down another two steps and try to get it to the next person over against the wall.
But instead of the seated woman who had handed me the abalone shell, Grampa Ned stood right next to me, his large eyes looking directly into mine as I sat on the step. A flap of skin hung away from his left temple and I could smell the distinctive, acrid smell of burned hair and flesh. He was smoldering, and his neck was black with oozing clots. His chest, his back, and his shoulders dripped red-black blood, and he wore a blanket of billowing layers of tissue-thin ashes, which flaked off in bits and blew like tiny cinders from a fire. He smiled at me, and instead of taking the abalone shell I was holding just inches away, he held up his own offering with his left hand. He held a bag made from the tawny skin of an Indian woman's face, her long black hair woven across the top for a handle. Ned Spotted Cloud raised the bag and pushed it right in front of my chest so I could see what was inside: dozens of human hearts, some of them still beating,
bom-bom-bom-bom,
the hearts he had stolen from the women he had known.
Coyote and the Desert's Blanket
Thursday, 2200 Hours
Later, after the ceremony and dinner and a storytelling, those gathered at the visitors' center milled around and talked. A few of the men smoked cigarettes.
I used my sat phone to call the ICP and check in. The Boss spoke in short, clipped sentences. Division Zulu, with its threatened power lines and potential for rampant spread in the national forest, was his chief concern. “We still don't have good containment on the eastern flank,” he said, “so you keep your radio on and your sat phone with you. I don't give a damn what the governor says, if I say we need to evac those Indians, then that's what we're going to do. I'll call you.”
Mary Takes Horse came up to me as I was hanging up. “How did you like the story I told the other time we were down here?”
“I loved it. With respect to men, I've known a few coyotes in my life, but I haven't met a bear yet.” I thought of Kerry as I'd last seen him just a few hours beforeâhis grizzled beard and driven look. “Or maybe those bears are hard to recognize.”
She gave a pleased grin. “You should watch for that tenderness and devotion. That's the sign that you got a bear on your hands.” Then her face grew serious. “Somebody said the fire burned across Oscar Good's ranch.”
“Yes, but we have good structure protection. It got into the trees along the river and it shot up Devil's Creek, but they foamed his house and his barn, and they have crews working to protect all the houses along the river. I just got an update.”
“At the press conference earlier, they said a member of our tribe was lost to an act of violence.”
I nodded my head. “Yes, I know.”
“Clara White Deer said you are the one who went looking for him.”
I lowered my head. “Yes, ma'am, I did. But I didn't find him. Until later.”
She was quiet.
I looked up at her.
She had her head tipped to the side, studying me, as she had earlier that day. “Do you know the story of the coyote who stole the desert's blanket?”
I wrinkled my brow. “No, ma'am, I don't.”
“You listen for the next story. I'll ask Jimmy to tell that one. Have you met Jimmy?”
“No, I haven't.”
She held up a hand for me to wait, then disappeared into the crowd. I took Mountain off into the bushes so he could relieve himself. Mary Takes Horse came back pulling a man in a cowboy hat by the arm. “This is Edgar âJimmy' Johns,” she said. “He's an attorney for the tribe.” Mountain was wagging his tail wildly and flicking his ears.
“Jamaica Wild. Pleased to meet you,” I said. I stroked the wolf's head to try to calm him.
“Just call me Jimmy,” the man said, as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a strip of jerky. He tossed it to Mountain, who raised up on his hind legs, paused for a second waiting for it, and snapped it out of the air like an outfielder catching a high fly ball. “I been giving him some of my homemade elk jerky. He really likes it.” He reached down and patted the wolf on the back. Mountain made smacking sounds as he chewed.
“This is the girl who went looking for Grampa Ned. She wants to hear âCoyote Takes the Desert's Blanket,'” Mary Takes Horse said.
Jimmy opened his mouth and nodded his head, as if he'd just had an
aha
moment. “Oh. Oh, right. Okay. I can do that one.”
Edgar “Jimmy” Johns stood before the crowd and waited patiently for them to quiet down. Mountain watched him eagerly, hoping for another wedge of dried meat. Jimmy held up a palm signaling for quiet. In the other hand, he held the same bear rattle that Mary Takes Horse had used at the previous storytelling ceremony. As she had done, he shook the rattle in an arc over his head, making a sustained sound like that of a rattlesnake warning of its presence. Then, Jimmy Johns held the totem high and made three sharp swipes downward, as if he were striking blows with a tomahawk. And then he began the story:
This was a while back, before people came to this place. There was this coyote who made friends with a young falcon. The falcon lived up high on the top of a canyon wall, and he
would a lot of times go out for a mouse or a rabbit, flying way down from up there, way down to the bottom, and not get one. And when he did that a couple times, he would be too tired from the flight to make it back up to his nest. So the coyote would catch a little mouse or maybe a lizard and leave a little bit so the falcon wouldn't starve. And they became friends that way, after a while. So one day, the coyote was walking in the desert and he saw this little slot canyon over there on one side and he thought he just might go in that canyon and see what was in there.
Well, all of a sudden, that falcon swooped down from the top of the wall and he landed right in the coyote's path. “Don't go in there,” he said.
“Why not?” said Coyote.
“The desert keeps her blankets in there,” Falcon said, “and you must not touch them. She's very proud of them, and she only likes to show them when the light is just right.”
But that old coyote, he did not listen and he went on in down that slot canyon. Pretty soon, he sees all these beautiful red and yellow and purple and blue blankets hanging all over the canyon walls. And the colors of these blankets are so beautiful that he cannot help himself, he just has to have one of them. “I just have to have that red and blue one over there,” he says to himself. So he goes up to that blanket and takes it down from the cliff wall where it was hanging.
Right at that time, that falcon comes flying fast and he nearly crashes into Coyote. “Don't you take that blanket!” the falcon says.
Coyote just laughs. “I will look so good in this one. It must have been made for me.”
But the falcon warns him again: “Don't you take that blanket! The desert will be angry!”
But old Coyote doesn't listen, he just has to have that blanket, and so he puts it around his shoulders and ties it under his chin, and off he goes, stepping high like a prairie chicken.
But he only gets a little way back down that slot canyon when there is a big rumbling sound and some of the red sandstone crashes down off of one cliff wall and almost hits the coyote in the head. The falcon, who is flying overhead, calls down, “See, I told you. You made the desert angry.”
But that coyote didn't listen. He just started stepping real high again, showing off his new blanket, letting the breeze catch the corners of it and making the colors ripple in the sunlight.
Well, pretty soon the ground starts to shake and all sorts of stones come tumbling down off the sides of the canyon and one big slab falls right across the opening to that little slot canyon, trapping him in. And Coyote tries to push that big rock, and he shoves and he pushes, but it will not budge. “Help me, Falcon!” he calls.
Falcon floats above him in the sky. “You made the desert angry when you stole her blanket! You have to give it back.”
Well, the coyote doesn't want to hear this, so he starts trying to climb up the cliff wall. He scrambles up a little way, and then the rock is too slick and too steep and he falls back to the bottom of the little canyon. “Help me, Falcon!” he calls again.
“You have to give back the desert's blanket,” the falcon calls from the sky.
Finally it is getting pretty late and the coyote has missed his lunch and his dinner and he is getting hungry. The sky gets dark and it starts to get cold. Coyote's stomach is grumbling, and he wants to go to his den under the big cottonwood down by the river, where he has piled up some soft leaves and he has some old bones that might still have marrow inside. But he doesn't want to give back the blanket, especially because now it is pretty cold down there in that slot canyon. “I'll wait until morning,” he says, “and then, when the sun starts to heat up the rocks, I'll give the blanket back. l just have to make it through the night without a meal.”
But Falcon remembers how many times Coyote helped him out, and so Falcon goes and gets a mouse and he drops it in front of Coyote. So the old coyote has a little something in his stomach to get him through the night.
In the morning, the sun starts to warm the canyon walls, and the blankets begin to glow with color. Coyote unties the knot where he has fastened the blanket around his shoulders, and he holds it up. “I'll give the blanket back,” he yells into the canyon, “if you'll move this rock so I can go home.” His voice echoes in the canyon and pretty soon a rumbling sound starts, and the big stone slides back and the way is open.
But that old coyote just holds on to the blanket by its edges and out of the canyon he runs. And the rocks start crashing down from the canyon walls, and small stones rain down on him, but he just keeps on running. He's not going to let go of that blanket.
So now you might be walking sometime in the desert and find a pile of rocks in the canyon, or even maybe the rocks are still falling and they almost fall on you, because the desert is
still mad about someone taking her blanket. And maybe sometime you see a coyote, but he is never sitting still, he is always loping along. The coyote is still running because he knows the desert is angry, but he never did give that blanket back.