Wild Sorrow (12 page)

“It's okay, buddy,” I said, as I took a damp rag to the floor and swabbed up the goop. “After I get this mopped up, we're going to go see Tecolote.”

His ears stood up, recognizing the name I had spoken. He stopped panting and looked at me with excitement.

“Yes, we're going to see Tecolote. And then, after that, we're going to go on a little urban adventure.”

The Milagro, the Saint, and the Bruja's Gift

The tiny hamlet of Agua Azuela nestled in the mountains above a cerulean stream that fed into the Rio Grande. The ancient village centered around a deep fold in the earth where seventeenth-century Spanish settlers had built an adobe church, then a wall around it for protection against the Apache and Comanche raiders. The few dozen homes of the local weavers and wood-carvers were dotted around the
santuario
. Beyond this, Anglos had begun to build larger homes tucked into the foothills, but the center of the community remained small and humble, and the one-lane dirt road that led through the village ended at the gates in the churchyard wall.

In the hills above the chapel, up a slender goat path, lived an old curandera named Esperanza. The villagers sought her out for removing warts, for healing from sickness or depression, for salves for wounds or scrapes, and for counsel on matters beyond the reach of the church or the medical services at the clinic down in Embudo. They called the old
bruja
Tecolote, which was the word for owl. Esperanza had engaged me with her visionary powers and trance-inducing teas and spells almost from our first meeting. She had given me aid and exhortation twice in life-or-death matters, and although her advice was often cryptic and confusing, I had learned to trust it.

Mountain and I hiked up the snowy slope along the goat path to Tecolote's tiny casita, and we found her—as we always did—waiting on the
portal
for us, as if she had known we were coming. She huddled in her woolen shawl, smiling, and when Mountain saw her, he bolted up the path and onto the
portal
to greet her. “Ah, Montaña,” she said. “What a good, big boy you are! You are getting to be a
lobo grande
, no?” She patted the wolf vigorously on the rump, and he nosed at her apron. Tecolote cackled. “Okay, I see there is no way to fool a good, big boy like you. You know Esperanza has a treat for you!” She reached into her apron pocket and removed an object that looked like a ball of gooey twine. The wolf grabbed it eagerly and retreated to a corner of the
portal
and began tugging at one of the thin strands on the outer surface.

“What is that?” I asked, almost afraid to know.

“Those are
los tendones y los intestinos
. It's very good for him now, when he needs to stay home, not run off in the night.”

This, too, was typical of Tecolote. She seemed to know things she had no plausible way of knowing. “Is it going to give him a stomachache? Because he just ate a lot of deer sausage the other day, and—”

She held up a gnarled hand to stop me. “Shhhhh, Mirasol.” This was the name she called me. It meant sunflower in Spanish. “
El lobo
needs this, I assure you. Now, come inside. I made tea.”

Tecolote's tiny adobe casita consisted of only one room. On one side was the hearth, which she used for cooking and heat, and above it was a thick adobe slab known as a shepherd's bed, upon which thin cotton bags filled with straw served as a mattress, and a thick woolen blanket was folded for her cover. I had never seen a pillow or sheets on this bed, nor could I see a place in her austere abode where they might be stored. For this reason, I felt sure that Esperanza would prize the deerskin pillow I had made and stuffed with the soft downy fur from the wolf's spring and autumn sheds.

I sat in one of the two stick chairs at the rough-hewn plank table while the bruja poured water into cups from a cast-iron kettle that hung from an iron hook directly over the fire. She set a small, deep bowl with no handle on the table, and the aroma of Indian tea, a wild plant that grew on the hillsides here in the spring, wafted from the steaming cup. I was thankful to recognize this potion, as it meant I was not being served a
cura
, which might have caused me to hallucinate or fall into a trance, as I had unexpectedly done in the past.

Tecolote took the chair opposite me and set her own bowl of tea before her. “It is good to see you, Mirasol,” she said, smiling, her few brown teeth crooked against pink-white gums.

“It's good to see you, too, Esperanza. I brought you something.” I opened my backpack, which I had set on the floor by my chair, and pulled out the small deerskin pillow.
“Feliz Navidad,”
I said.

Tecolote's eyes widened. “Ohhhhh!” she exclaimed, genuinely surprised and delighted. “Oh, Mirasol! What a beautiful
almohada para la cabeza!”

“Yes, it's a pillow for your head. Merry Christmas.”

Tecolote took the gift from me and held it at arm's length in her two hands. “It's so soft,” she said. “It will be good for dreaming.” She jumped to her feet and put the pillow on top of the folded blanket on her hard slab bed over the fire. She patted it to fluff it with her hand, then picked it up again and pressed it to her face. “You put a wild thing inside,” she said.

I smiled. For once, I knew something Esperanza did not.

The old woman looked at me, cocking her head to one side, so that I could see the large hump on her back over the other shoulder. “You are not going to tell me?”

I smiled again and shook my head no.

She pushed her nose into the pillow and inhaled deeply. She lowered the pillow with a twinkle in her eye. “It is your hair.”

I had to bite my lip to keep from spilling the truth. This was the only time I had ever had anything on the old bruja.

Tecolote drew her head back and looked down her nose at me, and then she smiled. “Ah,” she said. “Ah.” She turned and put the pillow back on the blanket and patted it again, then ran her hand over the smooth deer hide. I could tell she was overjoyed with the gift.

“You haven't guessed yet,” I said, wanting the fun to continue.

Tecolote turned to the
nichos
in the wall to one side of her hearth, where she kept candles lit and small carved statues of saints known as santos. “I don't have to guess, Mirasol. I know.”

“You're just saying you know,” I teased.

She turned to face me with a little bundle in her hand. “You have given me something very precious, Mirasol,” she said, her eyes engaging mine tenderly. “You have filled the
almohada
with the
pelo
of the one you love.”

I smiled again.
“Sí,”
I said. “It's the wolf's hair. Isn't it soft and downy?”

She nodded. “
Sí,
it is very soft, very soft. As it turns out”—she smiled—“I have a little something for you as well.” She extended her palm.

I took the bundle, which was made of woolly red cloth. It was tied with a piece of sinew. I took my knife off my belt and cut the tie and unfolded the cloth. Inside the red wrapper lay a tiny silver heart which seemed to have cracked into two pieces, with a jagged split right down the center. The two sides of the heart had been secured together with what looked like three turns of miniature silver barbwire. I pressed the tip of my finger on one of the petite barbwire points and felt a pinprick. I looked up at the curandera and smiled. “Is it a charm?”

She nodded her head. “
Sí,
it is a
milagro
.”

“A miracle?”

“You are given a milagro for your particular ailment. Go into the church, say a prayer, pin the milagro onto a saint, and ask for a miracle to happen.”

I felt my pulse quicken. This was one of Tecolote's patterns. She was giving me instructions that I didn't wholly understand, but I knew from experience that I soon would. The old bruja had mentioned “ailment,” which meant that she saw something sickening or troubling me. Often her “sight” extended into the future or the past, and was not terribly time-specific, though typically dead-on in its accuracy in all other respects. I waited for Esperanza to say more, but she didn't.

“What church should I go into?” I tried. “The one here in Agua Azuela?”

Tecolote took our cups from the table, filled them with more tea, and then returned them.

“A church is a church,” she said.

“What saint, then?”

She shrugged. Then she picked up her bowl and took some tea, slurping loudly.

“Speaking of saints, do you know of this one: San Pedro de Arbués?”

Tecolote stopped slurping and peered at me over the rim of her cup. She set it down on the table. “How do you know him?” she whispered.

I told her about my dismal night in the Indian boarding school, about the body of Cassie Morgan, and the howling wind and the sadness I felt seeping from the walls of that place.

“A long time ago, that one, he was a persecutor of
los judíos
, which many people over here called Los Marranos—that is a term referring to pigs.”

I made a small gasp. “And they made him a saint?”

“He was a part of el Santo Oficio, the Inquisition. They used to force
los judíos
to convert, you know, against their will. It was very sad. This was near the time when the conquistadors came here. They did the same thing to
los indios.
It is a black stain living on the heart of the Church. They have not repented for any of these things, and so the stain lives and the heart slowly is dying.”

“No wonder they named that horrible place after him.”

“They say he was assassinated, and many people over here believe he was a torturer and assassin himself.”

I felt a heaviness sinking over me. “Speaking of torturers . . .” I went on to tell the bruja about the mutilated elk cow and calf and the note with the calf's heart in my Jeep.

The old bruja listened to my tale without blinking an eye. When I had finished, she raised a bony finger with a yellowed, curving hook of a nail on the end. “Do you know what you must do, Mirasol?”

I shook my head.

“You must listen to the trees and you must also watch the sky.” She wagged the finger back and forth for extra emphasis. “I advise you to treasure every gift you receive. Even if the thing, it seems small or insignificant, you must treasure it.”

I looked at her, bewildered. How could this have any bearing on people leaving desecrated bodies in horrible places, or luring me out to the wild with tortured animals to take shots at me? I was shaking my head in confusion when the bruja went on.

“And, Mirasol: consider your own childhood for the lessons and strength it offers you even now.” She struggled to her feet and picked up our teacups, even though mine was still full. She took them to the hearth.

Taking her cue, I got up to leave. Mountain was standing in the open doorway, wagging his tail, having devoured his gummy gift.

“If I don't see you before then,” I said to the old woman, “Merry Christmas, Esperanza.”

“I wonder,” Tecolote said, “if you would be willing to do me a small favor?”

I didn't answer, wondering the same thing myself. Tecolote was not the type of person to whom you wanted to issue a blank check.

“I wonder if you would mind taking a gift to the sister at the mission church at Tanoah Pueblo?” She went to the doorway and reached behind the open door, where she had propped a gunnysack against the wall. She pulled out a long cardboard carton printed with faded colors and handed it to me. It was an old box with a cellophane window in the lid, through which I could see a puppet-doll dressed like a cowboy in jeans, a checkered shirt, boots with
HD
written on the sides, and a bandanna. The name of the doll was emblazoned on the lid in green lettering across the top: HOWDY DOODY. It was a vintage, unopened doll, probably from the 1950s, still in its original packaging.

“You want me to take this to the church at Tanoah Pueblo?”

“Sí.
There is a sister who works there. It is a gift for her.”

It seemed a harmless enough request. “Sure,” I said. “This is probably very valuable now, something this old and never opened.”

“It would have been very valuable when it was first made,” she said. “It would have been
very
valuable then.”

Suffer the Little Children

On the way back to Taos, I saw a Tanoah man limping alongside the road wearing a thin, tattered coat that was open in front, despite the cold. I recognized the fellow as I came closer. He was a known Taos drunk who had lost fingertips and toes to frostbite from exposure when he passed out inebriated more than once in previous winters. Because of the missing toes, balance was a problem for him, and he could not walk normally, which only enhanced his reputation as an alcoholic. I slowed as I passed him, then pulled onto the shoulder ahead of him to wait, partly because I knew the man to be harmless, but also because the BLM encouraged a Good Samaritan policy. Tom Leaves His Robe, a Vietnam veteran and a member of the Cloud Runner Clan at Tanoah Pueblo, staggered toward me, hurrying to accept shelter from the cold and a lift into town.

He opened the passenger door, leaning down to look in at me. “Can I get a ride to town?” he asked. Then he glanced warily at Mountain, who had stood up in the cargo area of my Jeep and was eyeing the man with curiosity, his head bent low and forward in order to see better.

“Yeah, we're headed into Taos. Where are you going?”

“I got to go to my AA meeting. At that little church in El Prado.”

I reached back and grabbed hold of Mountain's collar. “It's okay, Mountain,” I said to the wolf. And to the man: “Come on, get in. My wolf won't hurt you.”