Wild Inferno (16 page)

Thursday, 2300 Hours

As I prepared to tuck in for the night, I took Mountain in the restroom with me and washed my face with the cold water. I heard noises in the shrubs outside, beneath the open window. Mountain went on high alert, the ridge along his back spiked with hair, his nose pointed upward, and his body quaking with adrenaline. I put a calming hand to the back of his neck and barely breathed, “Shhhhh…”

Moving carefully, I stepped lightly toward the door, and Mountain tiptoed right behind me, his head lowered now, ready to defend, attack, whatever was required. I pressed the flat of my palm right in front of his nose and whispered, “Stay!”

He tossed his head in defiance, moving his nose around my palm.

As quietly as I could, I slid the bathroom door open a few inches. Mountain scrambled on the concrete floor to try to get to the gap, so I quickly slid through and pulled the door shut behind me, leaving the wolf in the bathroom. The noise in the bushes outside had stopped, and Mountain was now making all the sounds—scuffling back and forth on the concrete floor, leaping at the push-out window set high in the concrete block wall, yipping and barking.

I headed down the lamplit side of the building on tiptoe. When I turned the corner, the black darkness before me made it hard for me to see. I heard another sound of shrubs rustling right in front of me, and finally I gained my night vision. A small bear cub about the size of Mountain was looking up at me fearfully. I panicked immediately.
Where is the mother? If she catches me anywhere near her baby, she'll rip me to shreds!

I started to back away when I heard a thumping sound. I looked toward it and saw a large black bear standing up, wrestling with a locked trash container, her coat shining like silk in the light from the side of the building. The Dumpster was metal and probably weighed hundreds of pounds, and yet the bear lifted it and rocked it and slammed it around. She held the two sides of it between massive arms, shaking it back and forth on the gravel pad. Finally, in frustration, she threw back her head and bawled, a low guttural
nnnnaaaaahhgggh!
Then she looked in my direction.

I knew I had been seen! I pivoted so quickly, I almost tripped over my boots, and I scrambled toward the door of the restroom. I could feel my heart beating so hard in my chest that it was like someone knocking at my ribs. A cacophony of shrubs tearing, limbs snapping, twigs breaking, and great feet pounding surged with me as I took the few long strides to the metal door, pressed it open just enough to jam myself in without letting Mountain out, and slammed it shut. Desperately, I fidgeted with the slide-bolt lock, all the while knowing it was so flimsy that the bear would have the door bent in, torn off its hinges, and smashed over my dead body before I could even get the bolt slid into the hole. I pressed my weight against the door, and a great
wwwwhhhockkkkk!
sounded as the door compressed, throwing me backward onto the floor. The door flew back and smashed into the block wall, and the bear stood on her hind legs peering in, her great mass more than filling the opening, so that she had to bend down to see inside.

When I went down, Mountain quickly moved between me and the animal, and he now stood with his lips pulled back and his teeth in a menacing grip, uttering a low, threatening growl.

The bear sniffed and hesitated. She did not look at me, but kept her eyes on Mountain. I could smell her raw, gamey musk, and I could feel her own fear, hunger, and desperation.

There was a moment of complete quiet. Mountain stood between my legs, his head thrust low and forward. I lay propped on my elbows looking up from the floor, afraid to move. The bear raised up slowly, her eyes above the doorway, then she turned slightly, dropped to all fours, and lumbered toward the back of the building where her baby waited.

Mountain started to lurch forward, but I quickly grabbed his hind leg. He turned and started to nip at me, but caught himself before his teeth touched my hand. “You stay,” I said, holding his leg. He tugged the limb repeatedly, trying to wrest it from my grip, but I held firm, and we wrestled. He kicked at me and pulled powerfully at the leg I held, and he flailed his neck and head from one side to the other trying to break my hold. When he relaxed the leg for an instant, I grabbed hold of his hips, got to my knees, and threw my weight over him, my arms encircling his abdomen. I rode him over to the wall like that, pushed my feet under me, raised up enough to release one arm, and closed the now concave bathroom door, which no longer fit in the door frame, but rather swung from its hinges in the opening like a struck gong.

I turned to look at my best friend, my companion, my family. “You!” I said, and I threw myself back onto my knees and grabbed him around the neck. “You saved me.”

Mountain wagged his tail wildly, looking over my shoulder on one side and then the other, still scouting for the bear.

Thursday, 2330 Hours

I called in a bear report to the ICP and spoke with Ops Chief Charlie Dorn, who worked for the Department of Game and Fish in New Mexico. “You probably won't see her again up there, now that she knows there's a wolf around. She won't want a wolf near her cub.”

“I didn't think so either, but I thought I ought to let someone know.”

“Well, we'll notify the wildlife people in the morning, but there's nothing they can do in the dark anyway. They're not going to come set traps at midnight,” Charlie said.

“I thought about warning everyone up here but they're all asleep. Do you think I should stay up and keep a lookout?”

“I wouldn't worry about it, Jamaica. You got a four-legged bear deterrent system right there with you. I don't think your mama bear will be back.”

I already knew that bears avoided wolves from my experiences at home. My remote mountain cabin was near enough to a small spring that there were plenty of bears around in the summer. But none came within a hundred yards of my place, even with a Dumpster out back for an easy target. Mountain had marked his territory well, and the bears were forewarned. He and I often fell asleep on the ground outside my cabin, when I went out to talk to the stars. I felt perfectly safe then, and with Charlie's reassurance, I felt safe now, too. The bear had only charged to protect her cub. Now that she knew there was a wolf in the vicinity, she would move the cub out of harm's way.

I generally kept the backseat folded down in my Jeep so there would be plenty of space in the rear cargo area to transport Mountain. Tonight, I rolled down all the windows, left the hatch open, and unfurled my sleeping bag in the extended cargo area. It was too hot to get in the bag, so I stretched out on top of it, my feet hanging over the back bumper, my arm around the wolf, his back to me, his bridle on, and the leash looped over my wrist. The heat and the smoke made the air feel sticky and thick. I was so tired, and yet my mind was going in circles over the encounter with the bear, the vision of Grampa Ned, and the stories I'd heard.

After an hour or so of trying to sleep, I got up and pulled my boots back on, laced them up, and took Mountain for a walk in the dark. On the top level of the parking area, I noticed a round dome of faint light glowing above the Great House kiva. I made my way carefully across the narrow causeway to the ruin. The red glow of the fire blazing to the west made it fairly easy for me to see as I climbed the rock steps up to the ruin and the sloping path along the high wall. Once I reached the top, I approached slowly and looked down from above. I saw Momma Anna sitting in the kiva with a group of several women, a small lantern exuding soft, yellow light in the center of the circle. She looked up at me and Mountain standing on the rim and waved for us to come down. I tried to coax Mountain down the stone steps, but he trembled and balked, then finally leaped down them, nearly pulling me over. The women laughed, and my medicine teacher patted the ground next to her. I sat, and Mountain plopped on his side at my feet, still fretting over the unfamiliar and incomprehensible stairs. I leaned my back against the wall.

“We not see star,” Momma Anna said. “Fire make sky look like gravy.”

I smiled. “Yeah, it's pretty smoky.”

“My people watch star here, time before time.”

This startled me. “What?! Your people were here? At Chimney Rock?”

She clamped her lips tightly together, disapproving my question.

I couldn't help myself, I pressed on: “But I thought you told me your people came through the Eye of the Great Spirit, the Indigo Falls. Remember? You told me that story last year.”

She made a little
tst-tst
noise with her mouth. “My people here, last world.”

“Last world?”

She nodded her head.

I struggled to think of a way to get her to continue. I knew if I asked another question, I would face a wall of silence, perhaps for days. I was about to try making a statement to provoke more conversation when she went on of her own accord.

“Many my grandmother take care star.” She made a long, sweeping gesture with her hand, taking in the arc of the sky as she moved, the motion as graceful as a dancer's.

At this, the other women began to watch Anna, some of them shifting their position so they could better see her.

Anna pointed the tips of her fingers straight overhead and began making an ever-widening circle—slowly, languidly, as if she were stirring the heavens with her hand. I found myself entranced by this, and as I watched, I began to feel sleepy.

“Many my auntie take care moon. Get up with moon like baby, watch moon like baby, only sleep when moon sleep.” She opened both her arms wide and circled them outward as far as they could reach, and then scooped them together and brought them to her breast as if she were picking up a small child, gathering it to her in a fond embrace. I could not remember what she had said, but the dance of her arms through the air captivated me.

“These grandmother, these auntie, they learn count time. Star teach them. Moon teach them. They even count time backward. Back…” She drew one arm and then the other up from her torso, high above her shoulder, and then behind her as if she were doing a choreographed backstroke through the air. “Back, back, when only one woman come here through hole in sky. She bring a man with her to make seed. They make home by river down there, make her belly grow. They make children, and those children make more children. They call their relative Sky clan, all the one here. They take care of sky, that where they came.” Momma Anna pressed her palms together as if in prayer and slowly pushed them high above her. Her face tilted upward.

I followed her example, looking up into the darkness. As I did so, I pressed the top of my head against the rock wall and thought how easy it would be to lean into the wall and fall asleep, just like that.

“Time move like star in sky.” She opened her arms into a wide V, then drew her arms inward and crossed her palms over her chest. “Time move, and time move. Time always moving.”

I felt as if I had warm milk flowing through my veins. My eyes burned and my eyelids longed to close. I couldn't help it, I opened my mouth into a wide yawn.

“Next time, the People say they must go into water, come up next world, Indigo Fall. So, they leave here, leave twin war god here…” She opened one arm outward, palm up, her eyes following her fingertips as she swept them slowly outward toward the two rock spires. “They watch over one true grandmother.” She bowed her head.

When I woke up, the sun was starting to paint the tips of the Continental Divide pink. I raised up on my elbow and looked out the open back of the Jeep into the predawn light. Momma Anna was standing there with a towel over her shoulder and a bar of soap in one hand. She looked in at us, her head tilted to one side as if she were trying to figure something out. “You and that wolf,” she said, shaking her head. “Sleep in same bed.
Tst-tst.
”

“I just had the strangest dream,” I said, stretching. “You were in the kiva up at the Great House, and you were telling this story, and you were doing this incredible dance with your hands and arms, as if you were performing a ballet.”

She smiled—a big, wide smile. “I like dance. I like grass dance, fancy dance…”

“No, this was something else. You were telling a story when you danced with your hands.” I sat up and scooted to the edge of the Jeep's deck and started pulling on my boots.

“Dance always tell story.”

Mountain rolled onto his back, happy to have more room, and he spread his back legs wide apart, feet in the air, his front paws curled up next to his chest, and his whole underside exposed in such a way that if it weren't so ridiculously comical looking, it might have seemed vulgar.

Momma Anna and I looked at him, and we both began to laugh. She brought one hand up and covered her mouth, but her eyes sparkled.

“That wolf has no shame,” I said.

She turned and started to walk toward her makeshift camp under the big piñon. “We had bear here last night,” she called over her shoulder, “make bathroom door look like big bowl.”