Wild Sorrow (21 page)

Instead, I knew there was hardly a place anymore where she and her babies could hide, where her life did not intersect with the danger and temptation of what we called civilization. We pushed ever farther into the wild every day with our sprawl and technology; we invaded the wilderness for recreation in exploding numbers; we trapped, hunted, and reviled the wild things that belonged to the beauty we wanted to claim for our own; we sought ever more ways to experience what she had, even as we dominated and feared and destroyed it. If we managed to save her today, we still robbed her of the nobility of a natural life. And death.

I squeezed my eyelids shut, unable to bear the sight of what I—what we—had done.

Charlie nudged my arm. “Well, will you look at that,” he almost whispered.

I opened my eyes. The puma looked right at me. Her expression was suddenly calm, even passive. She was lying down on one side, her tail still flipping, but slowly now—back and forth, back and forth—as if she felt safe.

An hour later, we watched as Charlie's crews loaded the lion in her cage onto the trailer. “We'll have to feed the babies,” he said. “They'll probably eat about anything right now. Jackrabbit, deer, whatever we can get for them.”

“Do you think we'll capture them, too?”

“I doubt there's a chance. We'll just have to put out some food and try to hurry and bring their mama back. If she survives, and if she's a good mother, she'll find them again. And they're young enough, they will stay close by wherever she left them. We just have to hope we get the meat close to where they are so they don't starve.”

“How do we know where they are? Do you think they're somewhere near here?”

“I'll tell you straight, it's a crapshoot. We never have much success with saving cubs, no matter how we try to do it. We'll put out food in a scatter pattern around this spring and watch for sign. That's about all we can do. Finding this place to set the traps, that was a good call on your part. If you want to improve the odds for those cubs now, though, I'd say you should pray.”

The Slam

Before going back to the pueblo to get Mountain, I stopped by Diane's house to return the sweatpants I had borrowed. When I pulled up in front of the house, I felt a strange, alerting sensation. The back of my neck tingled, and my temples felt cold. I thought of the cougar with her long whiskers probing the air. I looked to both sides of the Jeep, then checked the rearview mirror. Nothing.

I reached across the passenger seat and picked up the boxed Howdy Doody doll to retrieve the pants from beneath it, then set the doll back in place. I grasped the door handle and hesitated. Diane's street was more quiet now, at one in the afternoon, than it had been in the middle of the night when I had tried to sleep while staying here.

I stepped up on the front porch, still experiencing a disquieting, red-flag feeling that I couldn't quite sort out. The front door was slightly ajar, and I looked around once more before pushing it open just enough to drop the sweatpants on the floor to one side of the entry. I recalled Diane's complaint about the door needing to be slammed so it would stay closed, so I gave it a hard tug to make sure it shut.

When the door met the jamb, a blast hit my head like a concussion bomb, and with it, light and force exploded—a shock wave slammed my torso so hard it hurled my stunned body backward as if I weighed nothing. I remember flying through the air, across the
portal
and into the dirt yard, where I skidded and twisted and rolled across the ground.

I landed on one side, my face and neck pressed into the frozen ground, my body in a near-fetal position, my head rumbling with a cannonade of sonic aftershocks. I spent a moment struggling to orient myself between up and down, then rolled onto my hands and knees. One hand collapsed and a shooting pain forced me to lean onto the other arm. My back hurt, my vision swam. Still kneeling, I put one foot down and felt the ground twirl beneath me. Using my one good hand to support my body's weight, I put the other foot down—both knees deeply bent. I pushed the ground away and brought my hands to my bent knees. I nearly fell forward but caught myself by pushing one foot ahead of me, then did the same with the other, until I made it the few yards to my Jeep. I could barely hear when I used the Screech Owl to summon the fire department. The dispatcher reminded me several times that it was not necessary for me to yell, however my senses informed me only that I was moving my lips, not that I was successfully making sound. My head felt like someone had pounded a bale of cotton into it through each ear. I sat in the driver's seat of my Jeep, the door hanging open, and waited for help to arrive. I leaned back against the headrest and suddenly felt like I might pass out, so I forced myself to sit upright. I blinked my eyes and felt rough grit on my eyeballs. I turned my head to the side and saw Howdy Doody smiling at me. “What are you laughing at?” I asked. But I didn't hear my own voice—instead, the pealing thunder of artillery sounded over and over again in my head.

I barely heard the wail of the sirens through this thick, pulsing fog. I started to get out of the Jeep when I saw the red truck approaching, its lights flashing blue-white-red, but I put one boot on the pavement and thought how hard it would be to stand up. I decided to wait.

While firefighters unfurled hoses, a paramedic tended to me through the open door of my Jeep. I began to regain my hearing as he tested my pupils with a flashlight, then determined that I was awake, alert, and oriented, and checked my neck for trauma. More than anything, I felt like my insides had been turned upside down and shaken and now my brain wasn't right side up: everything worked, but with great difficulty. The medic diagnosed me with lacerations and contusions on the side of my neck and chin where I'd skidded across the ground, and a sprained left wrist, which he packed with a cold pouch and then wrapped with an Ace bandage. He warned of the more dangerous possibility of a closed head injury. I declined a ride in the ambulance for further tests.

Diane arrived as firefighters finished putting out the flames. A third of the house was blown open and charred. The worst was the kitchen. While the paramedic applied ointment to the rashy scrapes on my neck, I watched Diane pacing furiously back and forth on the road in front of her home. With the first aid finished, I rose gingerly from the seat and stood upright, holding the roof of the Jeep for a few moments before I went to comfort my friend. My balance was still a little off-kilter. I walked slowly toward Diane as she flipped her cell phone closed. She tried to keep her composure, but tears filled her eyes. “I can't handle it anymore!” she said.

I put my arms around her, noticing sharp pain in both shoulders as I raised my arms, the tenderness in my sprained wrist. I hugged Diane and she hugged me back, patting a particularly tender spot along the back of my ribs.

“If I saw that bastard landlord of mine right now, I'd probably kill him,” she said.

“Me, too.”

“I'm taking the sonofabitch to court, and if he pays off the judge and I can't win, then I'm going to find a way to settle the score.”

I paused a moment to note the ringing in my ears. “I'll help either way. It's not just you. I could have been killed; either one of us could have. That's got to be criminal negligence or something. Let's get him, however we have to do it.”

Diane pulled back and looked at me. “That's big talk from you,” she said. “You sounded like me just then. Not even angry. Just determined.”

I swallowed. My mouth was dry, my throat raw. “You know, it's been a long week.” I started counting off the events on my fingers. “I've been thrown by a horse, slammed into a gate so I got splintered and bruised. Gone without sleep and endured incredible cold, never mind the body I found and the big cat that nearly ate it. I've been whipped by the wind, and pelted with snow. Then someone called me out to witness a despicable act of cruelty and took a shot at me.

“The electricity at my house has been off, I've had to squat outside to go to the bathroom and fetch all my water from an icy stream. The wolf has run off and acted out and nearly gotten himself shot. And then someone started an avalanche and beat the hell out of my whole back side. Now, I've damn near been blown to bits.” I was out of fingers. “It's hard to stay pleasant and even-tempered through all that.”

Diane gave me a sober stare, as if she were analyzing all I'd just said. Her lips bent slightly upward into that wry, cynical grin she so often gave in a dark moment, when humor was a sort of coping mechanism that made her grisly line of work bearable. Then she suddenly burst into laughter. “Okay. You win,” she said. “Your week has definitely been worse than mine.”

I tried not to, but I laughed, too.

We must have looked like a pair of maniacs to the nearby firefighter and the crew from the propane company that had been called to the scene.

“So now you need a place to stay,” I said to my friend. “I don't know if the power is back on yet, but you're welcome to come crash at my cabin until you can figure something else out.”

Before Diane could answer, Agent Sterling pulled up in a black SUV. He stepped from the vehicle and started toward us. “Thanks. But I think I'll just get a motel room,” Diane said. “I need to stay in town.”

Monito

When I got to Momma Anna's house to pick up Mountain, no one was home. I drove to the old part of the pueblo, parked in the corral, and went over the wall by the cemetery, planning to head for Grandma Bird's, where I hoped I might find my mentor. But when I knocked on the door, no one was home. I proceeded toward the church, but it, too, was closed up. From the center plaza, I glimpsed Sica Blue Cloud across the río, hobbling along the front of the main structure on the other side of the pueblo. I hurried across the footbridge to the Winter side, hoping to catch up with Sica and ask if she had seen Momma Anna and Mountain.

But before I reached her, the old auntie went through a door into one of the lower-level dwellings. I stopped in my tracks, wondering what I should do. I was incredibly exhausted; my whole body ached. I just wanted to fetch Mountain and go home. After a few moments' hesitation, I knocked at the door I'd seen Sica Blue Cloud go through. I heard muffled voices, the shuffle of footsteps, and then Rule Abeyta opened the door. He didn't speak at first, his furrowed face looking down at me with that same pained expression I had seen on the day I had met him in the governor's office.

“I'm sorry to disturb you, to arrive uninvited. I wonder if I could speak to Sica Blue Cloud for just a moment? I saw her go in here.”

Rule Abeyta gave me a wary look. “What happened to you?”

“I got . . . I fell. I slid.” I reached my good hand to my neck and felt a smarting report from the inflamed flesh.

From inside the room, I heard Sica's husky voice. “Let her come,” she said.

In the one-room dwelling, a fire crackled in the kiva fireplace in the corner. A bed and small table filled one half of the room, and in the other, Sica sat at a table with a cane resting against her straight, outstretched leg. I approached her without speaking, nodded as I gave the slightest bow, and took her offered hand.

“She is a good girl,” Sica proclaimed to Rule. “This one know a lot of old way.”

Rule did not speak, but made himself busy preparing coffee.

“I was looking for Anna Santana,” I said. “She has my wolf, and I am ready to take him home. It's been a long day.”

Sica did not offer a response to that, nor did she offer me a seat. Since I had not been invited to sit, and it was also not appropriate for me to press for information, I waited for what would come next, pretending to be interested in the artwork that Rule Abeyta displayed in his home. I knew when the coffee was ready, there would be some conversation. Until then, I had no choice but to forbear. As I perused a faded print by one of Tanoah Pueblo's better-known artists, a carved cottonwood figure on the mantel above the kiva fireplace caught my eye. Even though I had only seen it previously for an instant, I recognized it as the same small statue that Rule had dropped and then hid under his blanket when we'd brought the Holy Family to Sica's house. I moved toward it, examining the figure closely. The carving depicted a nun holding her rosary up above her head with one hand in such a way that she appeared to be hanging herself. The figure's head was tipped at an unnatural angle, swollen-looking and stained blue and black, and there were yellow lightning bolts painted on her cheeks. She seemed to be wearing some kind of fibrous bracelets around her ankles. I gasped aloud, remembering Cassie Morgan's desecrated body. “What is this?” I asked. I turned and looked from Sica to Rule, not caring that I had just violated the no-questions custom. “Is this what you called the ‘monito'?”

Sica spoke. “This the important guest I tell you. This the monito.”

“This looks like a nun,” I said.

Sica nodded again. “Yes. This nun hang herself with her own religion.”

“But I don't understand.”

Rule brought two cups of coffee to the table. He offered me a seat, then handed me a cup, but he remained standing. “The monito is a living presence. It is a reminder to all the children who suffered at the Indian boarding school to be compassionate, even to those who captured us and tortured us.”

Sica spoke again. “Those one who do that, they are sin doing that. They killing themself with those evil deed. All children who suffer from that, they not need hold bad feeling in they heart.” She thumped her chest emphatically.

Rule went to the mantel and picked up the carved figure. “The monito shows us the pain and the shame of those who were cruel so that we do not need to hold any revenge. As you can see, the monito tells us that evil is taking its own revenge on itself. The figure is of a nun, who might represent goodness to some. But the monito is the reminder that evil takes its own toll.”