Sister Eve and the Blue Nun (28 page)

Father Benavides, superior of the Franciscan missions of New Mexico at the time when Sister Maria was said to be transported to the southwestern people, left the mission and visited the nun after going back to Mexico City and returning to Spain. He had met the Indians who claimed that the young sister had come to them, believing that she had spoken to them and taught them. And having heard from the priest in Spain, who gave further insight into the nun's travels and the possible arrival of another tribe of Indians to his mission, he intended to meet Sister Maria. Father Benavides also intended to interview this young woman who was said to have appeared to these tribes more than five hundred times.

The priest wanted to learn more about her events of bilocation and authenticate the experiences. He wanted to see for himself if this nun had been given the gift of teleportation and if these incidents had truly happened or if it had been merely some community vision given to the native peoples, attributed of course to God but without involving the mystical and well-connected Spanish nun.

After speaking on several occasions with Sister Maria, Father Benavides was said to have been convinced that indeed she had visited the area numerous times, calling attention to details of the landscape and the people there, details that only someone who had visited the location and seen the people would be able to name. He wrote later that she spoke of being present at the baptisms held in
this river of pink pearls, able to give complete descriptions of the priest officiating at the blessed sacraments as well as those receiving the sacred rite.

It was also said that he was convinced of her devotion to the native people as she spoke to him of her great love for them and of her deepest desire for them to know of her faith, to become baptized and join her in her religious tradition. She believed that God had given her the gifts of love and devotion, which then led to the gift of bilocation so that she could make sure the tribes had been given instruction about the Christian faith.

The stories of the young nun's bilocation brought much fame to Sister Maria, and with the fame, Eve recalled reading, came also great suspicion. She became a target of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, created to downplay the rise of mysticism within those in the church. Many believed that the reports of mystical experiences harmed the work and mission of the faith, and those with this belief considered those who claimed to have a developed and significant mystical inner light as a threat.

So much had been made in Spain and in the New World of the young nun's gifts and actions that, like many others accused of being “alumbrados,” she was quickly scrutinized. Sister Maria eventually came face-to-face with interviewers in 1635, and again in 1649, the Lady in Blue was investigated by those involved in the Spanish Inquisition.

She was questioned extensively about her visions and mystical experience, but she continued to maintain her innocence and devotion to God. After the interrogations, reports revealed that Sister Maria was never formally charged with any crime against
the church. While so many religious leaders and laywomen and laymen were found guilty and suffered grave consequences, Maria remained a nun in good standing with the Catholic Church.

Whether it was because of her authenticated story of bilocation made by the well-respected Father Benavides on her behalf or because of her personal relationship with King Philip IV, having served for years as his spiritual guide and confidante, the young nun was eventually exonerated, never having been forced to stand trial.

In a letter that Sister Maria penned to the Franciscan missionaries in the New World, she told of the desert places she had visited. Eve remembered reading about the letter in a journal article discussing the strange incidents that had occurred in the southwestern states. Eve had kept the article for years because of the many facts and details it included that she had not read before.

In her letter Maria wrote that she had been in the kingdom of Quivira and with the Jumano Indians, which were the last ones to whom she had been transported. She had gone to a place the Franciscan missionaries had not traveled and visited a people they had not encountered.

Eve waited as the truck took the exit, understanding where they were ultimately heading. John Barr was traveling south from Mountainair into the West Mesa and along the Liberty Valley down to the Gran Quivira at the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. He was going to the pueblo where Sister Maria was believed to have appeared to the Indians sometime in the early 1600s.

FORTY-FOUR

Eve waited as John Barr turned down the dirt road heading south away from the Gran Quivira at the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. She stopped at the intersection and followed the white truck with her eyes only as Barr headed south, kicking up clouds of dust behind him. She knew there wasn't much beyond the monument. A few trails led to the Pinatosa Canyon, and a path took travelers to a small camping and picnic site, but from what Eve remembered of her visits to the national monument, there was not much beyond the restored pueblo.

At one time, Eve recalled, several villages had been settled in the area, ranching communities, a few pueblo houses, but most were deserted in the 1920s and 1930s during seasons of drought. The next village south on the road Barr was taking was Claunch, and Eve knew from a visit there some time ago that it was mostly a ghost town, abandoned years before. She didn't know exactly where he was going, but she realized she was not able to follow
him undetected any farther. There were not enough vehicles on the road to keep her truck hidden, and with night approaching, Eve realized her surveillance was likely coming to an end.

She drove up the highway a bit, made a U-turn, and pulled off the road into the national monument parking lot. It appeared to be closed, probably still too early in the year, she thought, assuming it didn't open again until later in the spring. There was only one other automobile that she could see, a green truck, with a license plate identifying it as an official vehicle of the National Park Service. A ranger's ride, she figured, but she did not see anyone around and guessed that it was left there at the national monument grounds when not in use.

She was a bit chilled since the sun had set and the desert air had grown colder. She kept the engine running and turned on the heat and waited, not knowing where Barr was going or why he had driven to the monument and then gone farther south. She could only guess that he would eventually return to the road he had been traveling and head back to the main road or to the interstate.

Of course she wanted to keep following him, wanted to maintain a good visual on the man, but she also knew she didn't want to be alone and confront him again. She had been frightened enough the first time. She simply wanted to see where he was going and see if he might lead her to the hiding place of Brother Anthony.

She thought about her phone again, wishing she had it, wishing she could contact the Captain since she knew he was likely very concerned. She looked at her watch, realizing it had been more than six hours since they had talked. She guessed that he had already phoned Daniel and was sure that at that very moment,
both of them were trying to locate her. She realized they would never suspect she was sitting along a desolate road in the desert almost three hours away from where they were, following a madman without any real proof that he would, in fact, lead her to Brother Anthony.

She sat back in her seat and thought about what she knew about the area Barr had driven into. She recalled reading in history books that the pueblo at Gran Quivira had been built in a commanding position on a mesa and was originally named Cueloze by its inhabitants. The first Spanish visitors were said to have arrived in the area in 1598 and called the native village Pueblo de los Jumanos, which she knew translated as the “village of the striped ones,” and those striped ones, the Jumanos, were one of the tribes that Sister Maria visited.

She knew that Gran Quivira was one of the places the Spaniards had visited during their explorations for their home country, searching for the fabled gold, believing earlier reports they had heard about the seven cities of the New World. Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and Juan de Onate, both passionate Spanish explorers, had been to the pueblo, trying to locate the great treasure recounted to them in stories told by earlier surveyors.

The area where she had parked and was waiting was believed to have been settled in the ninth century by Indians known as pit-house dwellers. Three hundred years later, a larger village of Indians settled there, building adobe houses aboveground and using the distinctive pottery style that was often found in the area, Chupadero black and white. By the 1600s, when Sister Maria was said to appear to the Indians, this village, this place where Barr had
led Eve, was the largest settlement of Indians in the southwestern United States, with more than fifteen hundred people living there.

Eve looked around and thought about a village that might have existed such a long time ago. She thought about the people and their mud houses, their sharpened skills of hunting and farming, their religion intimately tied to the cycles of nature, and their struggle for survival in a place with so little water. She thought about the unwanted arrival of the Spaniards and their priests, the fights and battles with the newcomers and their ongoing skirmishes with other tribes, recalling that the pueblo where she was waiting, along with several others in the area, was abandoned not long after the appearances of Sister Maria because of heavy Apache attacks.

“Where are you, John Barr?” she asked out loud, wondering where he had gone, what he was doing, and whether she should follow. She had leaned back her head and closed her eyes, deciding to rest for just a second, when she heard a knock on the window of the passenger-side door. She sat straight up as her eyes flew open and instinctively grabbed the wheel.

“We're closed,” a voice from outside called out.

Eve could barely make out an image of a woman standing on the other side of the truck. She was making the gesture of rolling down the window. Eve hesitated and then leaned over to reach the lever and manually lower the window. A woman with a wide-brimmed ranger's hat looked in.

“You can't park here,” she said, glancing around the inside of Eve's truck. “There's no camping in the parking lot.”

Eve nodded. “I wasn't camping,” she replied, and then wished
she hadn't made that response, thinking that perhaps she should have just taken the instruction and driven away.

“No?” the woman answered, still looking around. She pulled out a flashlight and shined it in Eve's face. “Then what are you doing here?”

“I just stopped for a little bit to rest,” she lied. “I didn't know you were closed.” She put up a hand to shield her eyes. “I got information online and thought I'd drive down here for the afternoon.”

The ranger paused and lowered the light. “You from Albuquerque?”

Eve shook her head. “Madrid.”

The ranger studied her. “You got some identification?”

Eve reached in her back pocket for her driver's license but then couldn't resist a dig. “You need to see my ID just for coming to the site and parking in your lot?”

The woman walked around the front of the truck and within seconds was standing beside Eve on the driver's side. She gestured rolling down the window again and Eve complied, rolling down the other window and handing her license to the uniformed ranger. The woman was close enough that Eve could read her name tag.

Park Ranger Rita Rachkowski was taking a good look at Eve's information.

“Well, Ms. Divine, I am allowed to ask for the identification of someone trespassing on federal property.” She handed Eve back her license.

“It's
Divine
,” Eve responded, correcting the pronunciation. “And I didn't know I was trespassing. I just stopped in a parking lot to rest for a few minutes.”

“Uh-huh,” Ranger Rita replied. “Well, the monument is closed. We don't open for six weeks. You'd have known that if you were researching us online.”

Eve knew she had her there. “Okay, I'll just head back home, Ranger Rachkowski.” She pulled her seat belt back on and started to roll up the window and then she had a thought. “Do you have a phone I can borrow?”

“It's
Ra-CHK-owski
,” the ranger said, making her own correction. “And no. There's no signal out here. I only use my scanner. You can go back to the closest town, Mountainair. There's a pay phone there.”

Eve shook her head. That was going to take her too far away from Barr.

“Here,” and the ranger pulled a brochure out of her back pocket and handed it to Eve. “For next time,” she added and smiled. “Have a good evening,” she said and stepped back.

Eve took the brochure and placed it on the seat beside her. She cranked the engine and slowly pulled away.