The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (4 page)

Crossing the street, Sterling could feel the asphalt sink a little under his tennis shoes. All surfaces—concrete and plate glass—radiated heat. But at the end of the first block, Sterling wasn’t even sweating. Because the heat was so dry, moisture could not even form on his body. The thermometer on the bank building read 103, but Sterling decided he was feeling pretty good considering.

Downtown Tucson looked pretty much like downtown Albuquerque before they had “urban-renewed” it—and tore down the oldest buildings with merchants who had catered to Spanish-speaking and Indian people. Sterling walked up and down the streets. He liked Tucson’s bright pink courthouse. He put his fingers in the fountain; its water was not as hot as he had expected. He walked past the Santa Rita Hotel and decided it looked too expensive. He rested awhile on a bench in the shade at a park across from the city library. There were a lot of flies. Sterling fanned them away with his hat. A few of the hippies dozing on the grass opened an eye when he approached. But they pulled newspapers over their heads against the flies and went back to sleep again. Hippies in Albuquerque or Barstow pestered Indians with questions about Indian ways. In Tucson hippies were more like regular white people, who ignored Indians. That was all right with Sterling. He had learned his lesson with white people who had questions about Indian ways. A Tucson police car cruised by the city park. The cop looked sleepy, but Sterling was careful to avoid the cop’s eyes. Even if he was well dressed in his black-and-white-checkered slacks and blue short-sleeve shirt, Sterling knew some cops didn’t need any excuse to go after Indians.

The only other sign of life Sterling found downtown was in front of the blood-plasma donor center. Two white men were loading insulated containers into an air-freight truck. The containers looked like ice chests for cold beer. Of course Sterling knew they were full of blood. That was one thing he had never done and hoped never to have to do. Sell his own blood. The donor center was probably why the little park was so full of hippies and run-down white men.

A cold beer was what he needed. He walked north again, past the music store and the wig shop. Then he saw it: the Congress Hotel. Suddenly he remembered. This was the place John Dillinger’s gang had made their worst mistake.

Sterling started to feel better. Tucson was going to be an interesting
place. It had history. Where else could he have a cold beer at the same place Dillinger and his gang had been drinking beer in 1934? He opened the bar door and a gust of cold air-conditioning hit his face. Going from bright sun outside into the dimly lit bar left him blind for a moment. Even if they didn’t like Indians in this bar, Sterling wanted to have one drink there, for John Dillinger. When he could see again, he found the bar almost empty, except for an old woman on a stool talking to the bartender, and two old white men arguing over a video game. Sterling watched the bartender’s expression, to see if Indians were unwanted. But what he saw was relief. Maybe the bartender had wanted an excuse to get away from the old woman. Of course Sterling was well dressed. Even in the heat he was wearing his bolo tie made with a big chunk of good turquoise. The bartender was even friendly. He set the mug of beer in front of Sterling and started talking. “She’s trying to get me up to her room,” the bartender said. He was a small, balding white man with tattoos up and down both arms. The old white woman was wearing a dark purple dress with little white dots all over it. She wore open-toed, white high heels she had hooked around the bottom of the barstool like a pro. Her white hair was carefully waved in little curls around her face. She had drawn careful circles of rouge and used just the right amount of lipstick. Forty years ago she had probably been a beauty. “Don’t be fooled by the bartender,” she said to Sterling. “I’ve had him up to my room plenty of times.”

Then she went back to her drink—something pink in a tall glass. The bartender moved away from Sterling then, wiping the bar and rinsing glasses. The two old men were no longer sitting at the video game. They were pouring beer from a pitcher and arguing over pinball machines and video games. How could you trust a video game? It was all electronics, all programmed like a computer to beat you. You had no chance. But at least with the pinball game, you could see the effects of gravity—the edge of the flipper with just the right leverage to fling the steel ball up the ramp and ring the bells and buzzer.

Sterling could begin to see how the place must have looked in Dillinger’s day: the seats in the booths and the stools were covered with red plastic now, but he could see they had once been done in real leather. Only the bar itself was still dark mahogany. All the bar tables had been replaced with red Formica. The floor was covered with red indoor-outdoor carpet pockmarked with cigarette burns. But at the doorway an edge of black marble tile could still be seen. It had been a classy place in its day. Sterling paid for another beer and asked the bartender if it
was always that quiet. “Oh, this is about average for a Tuesday,” he said. “At happy-hour time they come in.” He nodded in the direction of the two old men and the old woman. Retired people living in the cheap rooms downtown. The old woman was hanging off the stool by her high heels, leaning toward the old men, who were still arguing about pinball machines and video games. Occasionally the old woman would leer at the bartender or at Sterling. “You’re not an Arizona Indian,” the bartender said. Sterling shook his head.

Just then two men had come into the bar. Both wore dark glasses and were nervously scanning the room, for somebody. The men wore identical white jeans and pale yellow polo shirts, and big gold wrist-watches. The Mexican with the cruel face was staring at Sterling. The young white man with him stared at Sterling too. Sterling smiled at the bartender uneasily. The men were looking for old Fernando, who worked as a gardener when he wasn’t getting drunk, but nobody had seen the old man for weeks. The Mexican with the cruel face stepped closer to Sterling. “You,” he said. “What about you? Can you work?”

“Gardening?” Sterling suddenly felt light-headed from the beer and the heat. “Ah, yes!” Sterling said. “Yes!” Trying to come up fast with the answer the men in dark glasses wanted to hear.

“Oh, yes!” Sterling heard himself answer. “Big lawns! All kinds of lilac bushes—dark purple, lavender, pink, white, blue!” Before Sterling could go on about the pool full of giant goldfish—all of it made-up—Ferro had turned and pointed to the door. “You’re hired. Let’s go.”

The Mexican had the young white man drive the four-wheel-drive truck. No one spoke during the entire ride. They drove north and then west from downtown Tucson. The dry heat had parched the leaves of the desert trees pale yellow. Even the cactus plants had shriveled.

Sterling had never seen dogs like these before—leaping high against the chain-link fence—snarling, barking guard dogs. They were either black or reddish with short coats and brown or black markings on their faces like masks. Sterling had noticed the dogs each wore heavy leather collars mounted with tiny black metal cylinders.

“WELL,” STERLING SAYS, pushing the broom back toward the shallow end of the pool. He pauses and stares at the Catalina Mountains to the east. “I hope I am going to be here awhile, because I don’t have any other place to go.” Sterling has to clear his throat to keep the tears back. Seese wipes the back of her hand across her face but never looks up from the water. Her sadness startles him, and Sterling is seized by memories and lets down his guard. Remorse, bitter regret.

The stone idols had got Sterling banished. How many times had the theft of these stone figures come up during the hearings and Tribal Council proceedings? So often his brain had gone numb and lost track. The stone figures had been stolen eighty years before. Yet at Laguna, people remembered the crime as though it had just been committed. But the incident involving the Hollywood movie crew and the shrine of the great stone snake was no crime; it had been the result of a simple mistake; a small misunderstanding, a total accident.

The theft of the stone figures years ago had caused great anguish. Dark gray basalt the size and shape of an ear of corn, the stone figures had been given to the people by the kachina spirits at the beginning of the Fifth World, present time. “Little Grandmother” and “Little Grandfather” lived in buckskin bundles gray and brittle with age. Although faceless and without limbs, the “little grandparents” had each worn a necklace of tiny white shell and turquoise beads. Old as the earth herself, the small stone figures had accompanied the people on their vast journey from the North.

Generation after generation the protection and care of the stone figures had passed to an elder clanswoman and one of her male relatives. She prepares cornmeal and pollen sprinkled with rainwater to feed the spirits of the stone figures, which remain in her house when they are not in the kiva. She lifts them tenderly as she once lifted her own babies, but she calls them “esteemed and beloved ancestors.”

The stone figures were stolen from a kiva altar by “a person or persons unknown” according to the official report. A ring of anthropologists
had been crawling around the Pueblos all winter offering to trade for or buy outright ancient objects and figures. The harvests of the two preceding years had been meager, and the anthropologists offered cornmeal. The anthropologists had learned to work with Christian converts or the village drunk.

The people always remembered the small buckskin bundles with anguish because the “little grandparents” were gone from them forever. Medicine people at all the Pueblos, and the Navajos and Apaches too, were contacted. All those with the ability to gaze into still water or flame to locate lost objects or persons, all those able to gaze into blurry opals to identify enemies sending sorcery, began a search. The gazers had all agreed the stone figures were too far away to be seen clearly. Far, far to the east.

Years passed. The First World War broke out. The elder priests had all died without ever again seeing their “little grandparents.” Fewer and fewer remained who had actually seen the “little grandparents” unwrapped on the kiva altar, smooth stones in the swollen shape of female and of male.

Then a message came from the Pueblos up north. Go to Santa Fe, in a museum there. A small museum outside town. The spring had been wet and cold and only increased the suffering caused by meager harvests. The federal Indian agents didn’t have enough emergency corn rations to go around, and reports came from Navajo country of people dying, starving, freezing. In Santa Fe the state legislature was two years old, and did not concern itself with Indians. Indians had no vote in state elections. Indians were Washington’s problem. A muddy wagonload of Indians did not attract much attention. The Laguna delegation had traveled to Santa Fe on a number of occasions before to testify in boundary disputes with the state for land wrongfully taken from the Laguna people. The delegation’s interpreter knew his way around. A county clerk had told them how to find the museum.

The snow had melted off the red dirt of the piñon-covered hills except for the northern exposures. It was early afternoon but the sun was already weak as it slipped into the gray overcast above the southwestern horizon. An icy breeze came off the high mountain snowfields above Santa Fe.

At the museum, the interpreter for the Laguna delegation left the others waiting outside in the wagon. The old cacique was shivering. They built a small piñon fire and put on a pot of coffee. Museum employees watched out windows uneasily.

“Yes, there were two lithic pieces of that description,” the assistant curator told the interpreter. “A recent acquisition from a private collection in Washington, D.C.” The interpreter excused himself and stepped outside to wave to the others by the wagon.

The glass case that held the stone figures was in the center of the museum’s large entry hall. Glass cases lined the walls displaying pottery and baskets so ancient they could only have come from the graves of ancient ancestors. The Laguna delegation later reported seeing sacred kachina masks belonging to the Hopis and the Zunis as well as prayer sticks and sacred bundles, the poor shriveled skin and bones of some ancestor taken from her grave, and one entire painted-wood kiva shrine reported stolen from Cochiti Pueblo years before.

The delegation walked past the display cases slowly and in silence. But when they reached the glass case in the center of the vast hall, the old cacique began to weep, his whole body quivering from old age and the cold. He seemed to forget the barrier glass forms and tried to reach out to the small stone figures lying dreadfully unwrapped. The old man kept bumping his fingers against the glass case until the assistant curator became alarmed. The Laguna delegation later recounted how the white man had suddenly looked around at all of them as if he were afraid they had come to take back everything that had been stolen. In that instant white man and Indian both caught a glimpse of what was yet to come.

There was a discussion between the assistant curator and the Laguna delegation’s interpreter, who relayed what the delegation had come to say: these most precious sacred figures had been stolen. The museum of the Laboratory of Anthropology had received and was in the possession of stolen property. The white man’s own laws said this. Not even an innocent buyer got title of ownership to stolen property. The Lagunas could produce witnesses who would testify with a detailed description of the “little grandparents” as the people preferred to call them. For these were not merely carved stones, these were
beings
formed by the hands of the kachina spirits. The assistant curator stood his ground. The “lithic” objects had been donated to the Laboratory by a distinguished patron whose reputation was beyond reproach. As the head curator was out of the office, the Laguna delegation would have to return next week. When some of the members of the delegation raised their voices, and the interpreter had tried to explain the great distance they had already traveled, the assistant curator became abrupt. He was extremely busy that day. The Indians should contact the Indian Bureau or hire a lawyer.