The Witch Narratives: Reincarnation (20 page)

She combed Grandma’s white hair, humming a native tune as she did so. She removed a large turquoise clip from her own head, her thick, flowing hair bouncing against her back. She attached the clip to the center of Grandma’s hair and reached down and kissed her cheek.

“I miss her,” Grandma said, crying softly.

Pity was lost on Salia. She stood, glaring, with one hand on her hip. “I told you to never mention her!”

“Felicita,” she cried in a strangled gasp.

She reached out her hand and gave her a resounding slap.

The force of the blow jerked her head back against the chair.

She rocked, the chair creaking, until finally the chair stilled and Grandma stared straight ahead with lifeless eyes.

Just like when she threw Mother’s eyes at the fireplace, Salia mewed, “What have I done?”

She was old and dying. Her heart broke over Mother,
she thought, screaming in pain.

Across the way from her was life. At the ballpark, someone hit a home-run.

The crowd cheering made her feel so alone.

She hugged the
Shroud of Veils,
tears rolling down her cheeks.

21

T
here was but one now at the house at the bottom of Witch Hill.

“Hello, Grandma, how I miss you,” Salia said to the Pueblo vase holding her ashes. In the center of the vase was a dried, black rose.

She climbed to the third floor of the house and entered the corner room at the end of the hallway. She drew open the black curtains of Tezcatlipoca’s altar. The legs and feet of a panther were wrapped around idol.

She climbed the steps to the altar and removed an ordinary-looking lodestone from his bellybutton.

The rock purred as she tenderly carried it over to the window so it might enjoy the rising sun. She petted it and fed it iron filings, the rock greedily swallowing. It breathed, swallowing drops of water, which she sprinkled on the stone. The knowledge of the piedra imán was ancient and went back to Roman times, where the simple stone magnet was said to possess supernatural power and a life of its own.

She hummed a song to the lodestone, kissing it on what could pass for a high forehead. It puckered its lipless mouth back at her. She placed the shape-shifting stone in her skirt pocked, buttoning it up.

She stood over the mirrored foot of Tezcatlipoca, staring at her reflection. With a velvet glove, she conquered Mother. She, whom they thought so powerless, proved herself a child of Tezcatlipoca.

Indeed, he is the god of chaos, loneliness, misery, and despair.

She sighed deeply, closing the drapes, leaving the dusty idol in darkness.

She wearily walked down the stairs, her shoes echoing loudly throughout the house.

She placed Grandma’s private Navajo blanket around her shoulders, rubbing her hands on the material and sniffing it. She had been a Navajo from Gallup but married a Santo Domingo man. Grandma never really fit in at the pueblo, though she could weave marvelous blankets, which were scattered about their house. Mother had been buried in a blackish creation but she didn’t know where. Grandma took her body and buried her in secret. She
had another relation, Mother’s first cousin, Ernesta Rosa, whose Italian father married Carmen Esperanza, who had been Mother’s aunt. The Rosas lived in Los Angeles and Salia had never met them, though they were members of the Sisterhood of the Black Rose.

She left the house and climbed Witch Hill, feeling winded and empty inside.

She stood at the top, grimacing at Madrid below.

She lifted her arms and Grandma’s blanket, as if she had grown wings.

She spun, her skirt twirling, revealing her shapely legs. No decent young lady would have danced in such a wanton fashion.

She spun faster, until she was merely a mirage.

Until she vanished.

There at the top of the hill where Salia had stood, sat a coyote, with its salivating tongue hanging out.

The coyote whined at the Fourth of July parade down below and the procession of decorated trucks, horse carts and wagons.

After the parade, the coyote rested her head on her paws, watching with sad eyes, the wrestling matches, pie-eating contest, Indian dances, foot races and horses races.

The coyote crawled on its belly over to the rodeo, laying low so it wouldn’t be seen.

The coyote ran back up the hill after it grew dark and sat at the top.

The coyote lifted its mouth, howling at the fireworks, some shaped like flags and eagles. There was loneliness to that howl. There was a sadness.

The coyote spun, transforming back into Salia and she sat, her shoulders shaking with sobs. She had never felt so lonely, with six thousand tourists in town. A cowboy was singing and families dancing in the streets of Madrid.

She stumbled down the hill and danced by herself at the bottom of Witch Hill.

Soon, she was joined by a pack of coyotes, running around her, dancing in a circle.

See. I am not alone.

Part Three

Just A Working Girl

A fortune read in chili seeds. Two paths forking on the Turquoise Trail. Which path will it be? A heart stopped when the Ortiz Mountains fade from view? Or a grave in Madrid? The Turquoise Trail has always been paved with death. So, it is written. So, it shall be.

22

T
hings had not gone well for Salia these past eighteen months, since Mother and Grandma died. She was still waffling about, trying to learn her place in the world, trying to earn her way. She was still that little girl in the classroom, whom all the kids laughed at and snubbed. She was currently locked in Madrid’s jail cell, a tiny one room brick building, next to Mine Number 13. She looked out the small, barred window.

The villagers heckled, throwing rotten fruit at her.

“Such saints,” she screeched, spitting at them. “Where’s your Christmas spirit, Cabrones?” she cussed at them. She moved away from the window and sat on the dirty floor with her knees against her chest. No one would have dared brought charges against Mother or Grandma.

Hidden in a big pocket of her skirt was Mother’s obsidian mirror. She held the mirror up to her face, rubbing at a spot of dirt on her cheek. She blinked her eyes, her face vanished from the mirror, and the face of her old friend, Marcelina Martinez, took her place. She was pregnant again, though not yet a mother. There was a line across her forehead for every baby she miscarried—a boy and two girls. She was a hair dresser at the local beauty salon which was, of course, owned by Patrón Stuwart. Always pregnant, bloated and weary, she found little joy in life. She still had her Juan, but her doubts and jealousy of other women kept her awake at night, which explained her dark circles and puffy eyes.

She looked bored as she combed the hair of Mildred Hughes, the gossiping, fat wife of the mine manager. While Mildred jawed at the woman next to her, damaging a rival’s reputation, Marcelina stole some coins from Mildred’s purse.

Well,
Salia thought,
it is the only way she will get a tip.

She tried to bring up Marcelina’s brother, Diego, into focus. Padre Sanchez was mysteriously murdered last year. Diego was now Padre Rodriguez, priest in residence at the Church of San Cirilio.

Such a saint,
she thought and gave up trying to bring his image into view.

She faced the mirror in the direction of the Santo Domingo Reservation and her relatives. Jefe and Two-Face were going at it like dogs.

The shaman, Storm-Chaser, Mother’s old love, was setting fire to Jefe’s tipi. Jefe was his son-in-law and enemy. Jefe coveted the old shaman’s power, which was why he impregnated Storm-Chaser’s daughter, Weeping-Woman.

I hope the incestuous lovers burn,
she thought, chuckling.

Back at the pueblo, in Storm-Chaser’s apartment, his wives, Spider-Woman and Little-Dove, were biting and scratching each other.

She turned the mirror to the morada, the holy Penitentes shack. Pacheco, the mayor, was abusing himself.

Ah, well. His dead wife can’t give him much satisfaction.

She circled the mirror to the Mine Shaft Saloon where Tom Dyer, top mine foreman, was playing cards. He was a tall, skinny man, who had the habit of dipping his head like a chicken when he talked. He dipped his head over a handful of cards, a bottle of half-empty whiskey at his elbow. Like every day after work, Dyer high-tailed it to the saloon where he got drunk and cheated at cards. He kept a pistol on the table, just in case.

Oscar Hughes, the mine manager, usually spent his free time with the prostitutes upstairs. Today he was in Santa Fe, rich, fat and pounding away on a girlfriend. Oscar would have his piece of flesh in the mine and with the whores. He preferred to tie up his beauties, a little rough play his lady wife would never agree to.

A rotten tomato hurled through the jail window, splattering the back of the mirror.

She closed her eyes, growling deep in her throat like a wild animal.

A pack of coyotes came running down the Turquoise Trail, their paws pushing against the snow. White flakes blew around their legs, their breath showing in the frigid air, making it seem like they traveled in a cloud, appearing as ghosts.

The coyotes were no apparition, but wild beasts. The coyotes circled, snapping their fangs at the villagers heckling Salia.

The villagers screamed, running for their lives. One man lifted his pistol, but was attacked. The coyotes tore at his flesh, splattering blood on the snow.

Salia howled a few notes. The coyotes howled back, seeming to answer her.

She set down her mirror, and the vision of her pack of coyotes, running back towards Witch Hill, faded from view.

Unfortunately, the mirror could not reveal the future.

She looked out the jail bars, wondering if she even had a future.

Salia had not yet earned the respect from the villagers and sometimes thought with despair, that she never would.

23

T
he five o’clock train pulled in at the Madrid Station. At the back of the train was a private car in which a brown-haired gentleman snuggled beneath a fur blanket. It was December 14, 1929, and damned cold. Light snow fell then mixed with coal dust, powdering the peaks of the Ortiz Mountains ash-colored.

Ashes were a fitting way to describe the town.

Samuel coughed into a linen handkerchief, lifting the hanky to inspect it for any sign of blood, the tiniest drop that would indicate the illness, which nearly claimed his life, had returned.

Samuel Stuwart was not like the rest of mankind. He was part owner of the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railroad. He was the full owner of the Albuquerque and Cerrillos Coal Mine. His father bought the mine eleven years ago because Madrid was the only place in the U.S. where both hard and soft coal could be found together. His father died when Samuel was twenty, and he was his only heir.

The blood in his lungs is what first brought Samuel to New Mexico seven years ago. He was so weakened by the train ride from Pittsburg that he had to be carried from the train, when he arrived at the Albuquerque station. His man servant did not complain because Samuel was not a heavy burden, weighing 127 pounds because tuberculosis ravaged his six foot frame.

After spending a year in a sanitarium, he took up lodgings on the street known as Tuberculosis Row. He lounged beneath the fierce sun, growing stronger each day, breathing in the crystal clear air, which eventually dried up his lungs and the disease threatening his life.

For four years now, Samuel was a healthy, strong, virile, 28 year-old gentleman. He decided against ever going back to civilization, his lungs prospering in the dry New Mexico climate, as did others. Tuberculosis Row still flourished in Albuquerque. TB patients lived in sanitariums, cottages, duplexes, and apartments. As for Samuel, he built a mansion in Albuquerque, in the Italianate architecture. His 700 acre estate was known as the Castle, with an aviary and botanical garden. In Madrid, he owned a magnificent
hacienda spreading out across the village, higher up than any of the other homes. It was called the Big House. Samuel had only slept in that house eleven times.

He literally owned not just the mine but the entire town, including the miners’ shacks, somewhat better shelter than the mining tents of the previous century, since they were made from adobe, a mixture of mud and straw. His baseball players, which included a majority of the administrative staff, lived in considerably better homes than the adobe hovels the miners subsisted in.

He left the operation of the mine to his superintendent, Oscar Hughes. He left the town to the local rubble, as he called the mixture of Anglo, Hispanic, and the occasional American Indian traveling the Turquoise Trail into Madrid. He much preferred Albuquerque, with a population of 27,000 compared to Madrid’s 4,000. However, duty called. There was unrest in Madrid, and it wasn’t because natural gas had diminished the need for coal, and production slowed at the mine.