Wild Indigo (14 page)

Wiley Mason was an antique living treasure in New Mexico, especially in the Taos Valley. Still going strong at ninety years of age, he was known throughout the northern central mountains. People spoke with great reverence of this leathery, white-haired, wiry character whose body had shrunk from its former, formidable size until his head looked almost comically large, as if he were a cartoon of himself. Legend claimed that his eyesight was still sharp enough to spot arrowheads in the deep silt of desert arroyos, his bony legs still strong enough to carry him on arduous hikes, and his constitution still spry enough to sustain him through baking hot days on archaeological digs and bone-chilling nights on mountainsides, accompanying the local tribes on vision quests and ceremonial rituals.

His adobe home in a compound of buildings on forty acres in San Cristobal, north of Taos, was a mecca for seekers who came to learn of Pueblo Indian mythology, native creation stories, and southwestern mysticism.

I had talked to his wife when I phoned to make the appointment, and she had assured me that Professor Mason would be most interested to see the santo that had appeared on my doorstep. She met me at the door and ushered me into the cool great room, shaded by a
portal
overlooking the San Cristobal Valley. While I waited for the professor, I perused the collections of artifacts, masks, books, and ritual objects displayed in glass cases around the inner walls of the large room.

“What have you brought me?” a sharp, trembling voice echoed against the walls. Wiley Mason made his way carefully down the two steps into the room, but then strode toward me with an oversized, outstretched palm.

I shifted my rag bundle to the crook of my left arm and extended my right to shake his hand. His grip was firm and strong. “It's a santo,” I said. “It says ‘San Cirilio' on the bottom.”

“Aha!”

“You know about San Cirilio?”

“A little something. A little something. Put it over here.” He gestured toward a table and moved some books aside to make room.

I set the bundle down and began to unwrap it.

Professor Mason pulled eagerly at the rags, as if he couldn't wait. When the carving was exposed, he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out some spectacles and put them on. He picked up the santo and began to examine it from all angles.

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Oh, yes, yes. Yes.”

I waited patiently, but he said nothing more.

Finally he set the carving down and looked at me. “Have you been in contact with a witch?”

I laughed, nervously. “A witch?”

He didn't seem amused. He tilted his head to one side and removed his glasses. “Has someone cast a spell on you?”

I started to laugh again at the absurdity of this, but the laughter died in my throat. It sounded instead as if I had burped. Finally I said, “Why are you asking me this?”

He pointed to my face. “How did you get that?”

I told him about Tecolote, and the vision I'd had at her house, but I was careful not to mention Esperanza by name.

“And this woman, you say she's a curandera?”

“Yes, that's what she told me. I don't think of her as a witch. I mean, I know she can do things, strange things. They also call her a bruja.”

“Well, to some, witch and bruja are one and the same thing. Did she tell you she was a bruja?”

“Yes. And maybe I also heard it from someone else as well. But I know I heard it from her. And I know for certain that she told me she was a curandera. Why? Do you think she's the one who left this for me?”

“It's possible. If she's only a curandera, though, she cannot help us here.”

“Help us? Help us with what?”

“If someone has put a spell on you, then she is probably just trying to protect you. She could have left San Cirilio for your protection.”

“But why? I mean, what is this carving going to do?”

He took a deep breath as if to gather patience with my ignorance.

“Curanderas cannot afford to dabble in witchcraft, or their patrons will fear them and will not seek them out for
curas.
Instead, they can offer some protection, but you will have to seek out an
arbulario,
a true brujo or bruja, a witch who can undo the spell.”

“What spell? You mean the scars?”

“Yes, the scars. And perhaps more than that. Have you been ill?”

“No.”

“Has anything strange been happening?”

Now I laughed out loud. “Everything strange you could imagine. Strange things are the norm for me.”

“Like what?”

I told him of the apparition I'd seen while running on the gorge rim, the pictograph that had vanished from the face of the rock. I told him about the prayer stick, the nachi.

“What do you know about this nachi?” Mason said.

“Nothing. I asked my medicine teacher about it, and she said to wait a few days and she would tell me what to do with it.” I felt a pang of discomfort remembering Momma Anna's admonitions about the object. Then, reluctantly, I added, “She told me not to tell anyone about it.”

The professor broke into a wide, toothy grin. “Well, you failed that assignment, didn't you?”

I shrugged.

“Tell me about the nachi.”

I thought about showing it to him—it was outside in my Jeep. But I remembered Momma Anna's warning that it could hurt someone. I described it to him instead, and he scratched a few words on a little notepad from his shirt pocket. Then he made for one of the bookshelves against the wall. He pulled down a tome and wet his fingers on his tongue, then began riffling through the pages.

“Aha!” he said, bringing the book back to the table beside San Cirilio. “Did it look like this?” he asked, pointing a long, bony finger at an old, yellowed page with a fuzzy black-and-white photograph printed on it.

“The feathers were tied more in a crown around the top, not inserted into the sides of the stick like in this photo. And there were grooves and notches on the bottom of the stick as if some kind of writing were made on it.”

Mason turned the page of the book to another photograph. “Notches like these?”

I bent over to look more closely at the blurred print. The professor handed me a magnifying glass. “Yes, with those same grooves.”

“Did your medicine teacher tell you what this nachi was?”

“No.”

“She didn't tell you anything?”

“Like I said, she just told me not to speak of it, that she would talk to me in a few days.”

“Aha.” He made another note on his pad. “And what color did you say the nachi was?”

“Blue on one side, yellow on the other.”

“Blue? What kind of blue?”

“You know—what they call Virgin Mary blue around here. The same color as they paint their doorjambs.”

“Oh dear.”

“What?”

“Just a minute, just a minute.” He thumbed through more pages of the large volume on the table. “And you said the man in your vision—the one you had at the curandera's house—you said he wore a whole bearskin, that his head was actually inside the mouth of the bear?”

I nodded my head.

“Not like this?” he asked, pointing at a reproduction of an old, faded black-and-white photo.

Just then the phone rang, and Wiley went to a nearby desk to answer it.

I studied the book. The picture showed a man with the top part of a bear's head for a headdress and his arm clad in the sheath of a cased bear's arm, the claws held upright for the photo, as if he were going to strike the photographer with them.

Mason spoke loudly into the phone, as if volume would solve the problem of geographical distance. “Yes?” He paused briefly to listen. “Well, does anyone there know where it is? He said he'd have it for me.” Another pause. “No, no, he said he'd have it ready for me, so it must be there somewhere. You know what you're looking for, right? No, it's not a tape. It's a round silver disc. It looks just like the ones you play in that fancy car of yours, only there's probably no half-naked women on the label.” He shook his head in consternation, then turned to look at me and rolled his eyes. “Okay, well, keep looking. It's there somewhere.”

Mason hung up the phone and came barreling back to me. “Well, Ms. Wild, does that look like what you saw?”

“No,” I said. “There were no parts and pieces. He had the whole bear on, and it was as if he lived inside it. I could hardly see him. His face was painted.”

“Yes, tell me about that.”

“It was black on one side and white on the other. And he had a strip of red cloth tied across his forehead. It showed like blood between the teeth of the bear. I thought what I saw
was
a bear until I looked more closely and saw the man's face in its mouth.”

“And this pictograph you saw—the one that vanished. You say it was red, like the petroglyph that's stained over with red up in the ruins on Sacred Mountain?”

“Yes, red. A red bear. Part man, I think.”

At this, Professor Mason snapped the book shut, causing the table to wobble a little. He started to walk for the steps into the room. “We're going to need tea,” he said over his shoulder. Then he bellowed toward the entry hall, “Frida! Frida! Make some
poléo, por favor.
”

When Mountain and I arrived at the BLM, phone lines were ringing, Rosa, the receptionist, was talking into the receiver, and Roy was pacing anxiously in the lobby. When he saw me, he hurried over. “Give me the keys to your Jeep,” he said, holding out his palm, a folded newspaper tucked under one arm. “We're going to have someone come out and take a look at it, see if it's worth fixing, or if we need to just pay to replace it.”

I got out my key ring, started working the car key off. “I'll have to get my gear out of my Jeep.” I was thinking of the nachi and the santo—both were in my car.

Roy petted Mountain impatiently. “You can get your things out of your rig when you're ready to leave; someone will have to give you a ride, you can take your stuff with you then.”

The phones continued to ring. Rosa couldn't keep up. I tendered the key.

“Have you seen this week's edition of the Taos paper?” Roy asked. “It just came out today.”

“No.”

“They got a big spread on this mess, right on the front page. There's even a photo of you driving your Jeep with the door blown off. You look real mad in the picture. Looks like it was taken right out front.”

“What?”

He opened the paper, pointed to the photo. “That reporter—Noah Sherman—he's the one who took it.”

The headline read:
TANOAH PUEBLO MAN KILLED BY RAGING BISON—CARELESS DRIVING MAY HAVE CAUSED STAMPEDE
. Right beneath it, the shot of me—angry, speeding away from Noah Sherman in my banged-up Jeep with no driver's-side door.

The Boss folded the paper again and tucked it under his arm. “I hated to show you that, but I knew you were going to see it. I got a copy in my office. You can read the whole thing later.” He gestured toward the reception area. “The phone's been ringing like that all day.”

“Roy! Everyone in the Taos Valley will think I'm a murderer!”

He took my arm. “Listen, when you go in to that interview with that attorney, say as little as you can. Don't go elaborating about things. You stand by what you put in that report—you ain't got nothing more to add, you hear me?”

“Boss, what's going to happen to me? Whose side is this guy on?”

“That guy's not the only one you're dealing with. There's also an attorney from the Department of Justice involved now. So you just do like I said.” He released my arm, patted my shoulder. “And let me keep Mountain in my office with me. We don't need to go calling attention to how unusual you are right now.”

When I came into the conference room, the two attorneys, one from Interior and one from Justice, were waiting with a stack of manila folders on the table in front of them. For once, I took the Boss's advice to the letter.

A gentle rain fell late that afternoon, cooling the air and creating towering double rainbows over Sacred Mountain. I left my Jeep at the BLM so the appraiser Roy had summoned could make a decision about what to do with it. Rosa, grateful to get away from the relentlessly ringing phones, gave me and Mountain a lift to the local dealership, where I picked up a loaner, a soft-top CJ. I transferred my gear—including San Cirilio and the nachi—from Rosa's car, and the wolf and I headed for home in our new ride.

Late summer tourists clogged the main drag in Taos looking for dining spots, and I found myself waiting at one of the few stoplights in town, right at the entrance to the plaza. A gazebo had been erected on the corner of the one downtown parking lot, the rim hung with chile
ristras
and painted gourds. Somewhere, chiles were roasting, and the pungent fragrance laced the air. The sound of a car stereo blasting a Stevie Ray Vaughan tune emanated from beyond the square. A small herd of vacationers crossed at the light on foot, carting shopping bags and cameras, wearing hats that looked new and uncomfortable. Still more visitors looked at their watches as they waited in cars, unable to move at their accustomed pace through the narrow street that for centuries had been the
camino real
to the grand and beautiful Taos Pueblo, the highway to that best-known Tiwa village. As always, Taos resisted time and change—and for that very reason, it attracted these outsiders, who would then find themselves both charmed and a bit uncomfortable in the vortex between the past and present. The same wayfarer who felt the powerful draw of the ancient ritual dances at Taos Pueblo would pace impatiently on the primeval dust plaza there and complain that the travel brochure had promised the dances would begin at nine a.m., so where were they already, it was fifteen after?

In this smaller Jeep, Mountain sat in the passenger seat and stuck his nose out the window, taking in the sights, smells, and sounds. I smiled at him and reached to stroke his ruff. He began to wag his tail wildly and fixed on something across the street. He made a little yelp, and then jumped toward the window, which I'd raised to half-height in case he had an idea like this one. I grabbed his collar. “No, Mountain, no! Sit! Sit!”

The wolf continued his excited display. I followed the direction of his gaze and saw two old women sitting on one of the park benches on the corner of the plaza. These
mujeres
were talking earnestly and making animated gestures, their heads covered with blankets and turned toward each other so that I could not easily see their faces. But as I examined them further, I began to recognize first one, and then the other.

My hand shot to my mouth. I said aloud: “It's Tecolote! With Momma Anna!”

Mountain seized the moment and managed to instantly morph himself into a flattened shape and squeeze through the half-open window and out of the Jeep. At the same time, the light changed, and traffic charged forward in both directions. I slammed the CJ into park and jumped out the door, narrowly avoiding an oncoming pickup. Mountain lunged only a few inches ahead of the truck, and the driver jammed on his brakes, making a loud squeal. This same event was repeated in a dominolike sequence as motorists on both sides of the road hastened to undo their automatic reaction to a long-awaited green light. The wolf, frightened by all this noise and machinery, ran even faster toward the two women on the bench. I stood helplessly watching as drivers cursed and shook their fists. Across the narrow entrance to the plaza, I saw Tecolote raise one hand and reach with the other for Mountain as he approached. She seized his collar and then looked toward the cacophony of swearing and squealing brakes. She nodded at me, and I saw Mountain lie down trembling at her feet, his eyes wide with fright. I got back in the CJ and put it in gear, then signaled to turn in to the plaza—for which the driver behind me regaled me soundly with his horn. Just as the light turned red, I squeaked through the intersection and into the archaic village common, where I parked the Jeep in front of one of the adobe shops.

“He's a bad boy, I tell him,” Tecolote said. “He says he is sorry, don't you, Montaña?” She stroked his back and neck.

Mountain still looked shaken by his near miss with the pickup. I went to him and he sat up and wagged his tail, his ears down with fear. My heart pounded in my chest, my mind having raced to the way my life would feel without this wonderful four-legged companion beside me. I bent down and put my arms around his neck and hugged him, stroking his long back. “Oh, buddy, you scared me there, you really did.”

Mountain's tail continued to beat against the ground.

I stood up and looked at the two women.

Momma Anna patted the bench beside her and gave me a shy smile. “Sit down! Sit down!” she said, in the traditional welcoming tone.

I went through the necessary formality of taking each of their hands in greeting and bowing my head slightly to acknowledge their status as elders. Then, instead of taking the seat offered, I squatted on my heels next to Mountain and continued to pet him. “What are you two doing here?” I asked.

Tecolote said, “Do you think you could get us a tamale over there?” She gestured toward the sidewalk vendor across the lawn on the other side of the square. “Your teacher and I are starving here. We'll look after
el lobo
for you.”

I stood up, resigned to my duty. “Red or green chili on top?”

“Christmas,” they replied in unison.

When I returned from my foray to the tamale stand, Mountain had relaxed into a nap at Tecolote's feet, and Momma Anna was laughing about something, holding her hand in front of her face out of modesty. The women took the tamales with great glee and ate them from their paper cartons with plastic spoons. They both grunted approvingly and made comments about the good flavors. When they'd finished eating, Momma Anna gathered their utensils and cartons back into the bag and handed it to me. “Do you mind?” she asked, adjusting her blanket over her head and shoulders.

I took the trash and walked the few steps to the nearest receptacle. Then I returned to confront the two women as directly as I dared: “So, what are you two doing here together?”

Tecolote held up her palm as if to stop my questions. “Your teacher and I are consulting on a matter of great importance.”

Momma Anna nodded her head with a shy smile. “It what I tell you.”

“What you tell me?”

“You know—you must find out. I tell you find out.”

I squatted down and looked directly into her face. “Momma Anna, when I was at your door yesterday with questions that might have helped me to find out, you wouldn't talk with me!”

“You bring that next other lady. I not know her.”

“But she could help us, she wants to help.”

“She not Indun. Not like us. Not like you either. You part Indun, part white girl, part wolf.” The two elders looked at each other and laughed loudly at this.

I smiled, exasperated. “No, no, she's not Indian, but she's FBI, and she has a lot of resources at her disposal. And she wants to help.”

“I cannot say things. People listen, there trouble. I must not talk, say name, that boy.”

Tecolote interrupted. “Did you get a visitor?”

“A visitor?”

“
Sí,
a visitor.”

“The santo? San Cirilio? Yes, I got him.”

“Good. You keep him in the center of your casa, on your hearth. He protects from evil.”

“Why didn't you at least knock on the door, say hello?”

Esperanza smiled at me. “I don't bring him to you, Mirasol. I
send
him to you.”

“But who?—who delivered it?”

Tecolote smiled and patted Mountain, now resting with his head on her shoe. “San Cirilio is able to go where he will. Or sometimes San Cirilio is carried on the backs of
los lobos.
The old people over here say that he is a friend of the animals, and that he can talk to them. We used to have
lobos
here, but not too many no more. Maybe he finds some of those ones they bring here to live again in the mountains.”

“But what do I do with him after I've put him in my house?”

Tecolote sighed. “You don't
do
with him, Mirasol. You let him
do
with you. He is the one who will
do.
To be in his presence is not to be taught, or made to do something. It is to be blessed with his beauty and his radiance. And his strength and protection. Let him do this for you.”

Before I could respond, Momma Anna cut in, as if there had been no other matter under discussion. “You talk my brother Yellow Hawk. That the one teach young men, he teach my son.”

I swung back to face her. “Teach him? Teach him what?”

“They have lot of training this time year. My brother—he peyote chief. He teach young men. He stay with them in kiva.”

“So…your son, he was staying in the kiva? Training with Yellow Hawk?”

Momma Anna nodded. “They don't come up, only when moon is dark. We take them food, light fire in dark moon time. They lose weight down there, they need food. That Madonna, she not wait for him, make fire, take him food. She off doing what she please.”

“Then…if the trainees are kept in the kiva except during the dark of the moon”—I tried to think of a way to put it delicately—“why was…your son in the buffalo pasture? In broad daylight?”

Momma Anna's eyes filled with tears. “I not know! You ask my brother. He maybe knows.”

“But—I'm not even welcome out at the pueblo. Can't you ask him?”

“I try. He not come ceremony for my son—that when kiva doin's, and he not come. They done now, and still he not come comfort me. Now, no one knows, he's nowhere.”

“Nowhere?”

“He not come home after kiva doin's. He maybe went Sacred Mountain, fast, pray. Many time elders do before journey, Indigo Falls. No one knows. He's nowhere.” She paused a moment, then turned her head in contemplation. “Do you know man name Ron?”

“Ron?”

“I think white man, maybe poor, not clean.”

“Who are you talking about, Momma Anna?”

“At my son house, I hear him talk phone. He walk away, I make busy like not listen. He talk quiet—say man name Ron. He say he go see Ron.”

“Ron? Did you hear anything else?”

“I dunno.”

“Why did you say you thought he was white? Poor? And…what did you say—dirty?”

“My son say that.”

“Do you know anything else about this man Ron? When your son last saw him, where he met him?”

“I not know. You find out.”

I stood up and shook my head in frustration. “I don't get it. You want me to find out about people I know nothing about, talk to people you yourself can't find. I'm supposed to find out stuff but I'm not welcome anywhere, nor will anyone talk to me.
You
won't even help me, and I'm in real trouble now—my job's on the line. Everyone's mysteriously dropping off packages, things I don't understand. I feel like I'm going in circles and I know less than anyone else!”

Tecolote took a harsh tone: “Stop complaining, Mirasol! At least these things that come to you are for your good. Many people are trying to help you. San Cirilio is trying to help you. You always go looking for wisdom, and then you complain about how much it costs.”

Momma Anna broke in: “But what about the nachi? That maybe not good. Maybe someone send evil there. Old time, that for scalp ceremony, mean war. They have many old scalp in kiva, use that kind nachi for scalp ceremony. Nighthawk feather mean water. Somebody make war near water—maybe scalp you. Yellow, blue—mean meeting night-day, dusk. Or maybe summer-winter, meeting of two season. You got mark of bear, you under spell.”

I threw up my arms. “Okay, stop it, stop it! I'm tired of all this spell stuff, and these cryptic messages and strange objects. Have you seen the Taos paper? Do you know what's really going on? They're practically calling me a murderer, and everyone in town is going to read that, if they haven't already.”

Tecolote rose and took hold of my forearm, her gnarled fingernails digging deeply into my flesh. “Calm yourself, Mirasol. Do as your teacher says and sit here with us for a while. We have brought you some things to help.” She pushed me back toward the park bench until I sat down.

At this, Momma Anna rose from her seat and reached beneath her shirt and drew out her
jish
. She untied the deerskin thong that held it closed and rummaged inside the bag for a chunk of brownish root, which she placed in my palm. She closed my fingers over it and said, “Burn half with red chile and salt. Carry other half next to heart.” She thumped her chest and then held up her medicine pouch. “Like this. Then, after: take nachi that spring by you house, back where we find flower, wild spinach that next other time. Plant in wet mud, leave there. Make offering, cornmeal. Back away, don't turn back on it, keep face to nachi, okay? Do at noon, big light. No witch come out at noon. Tomorrow. Don't wait. Then, nighttime, you come pueblo for feast, bonfire. Serena pick you up, Hunter say you come.”