Adobe Palace

by Joyce Brandon

  Samantha felt so grateful for her support and friendship, she could hardly speak. “Thank you so much, Mary Francis,” she said softly.

  Samantha walked outside and joined Steve Sheridan who, true to form, was leaning against the building. The topmost edge of the sun was all that showed over the row of hills to the west. “I hope I didn’t embarrass you, paying for your dinner like that.”

  “I seemed to hold up under it.”

  She laughed, then a trifle nervously set out at a leisurely pace down the plank sidewalk, Sheridan beside her. She realized that by walking around the town square, she was taking a chance of being further humiliated, but she didn’t care. She would not hide in her room.

  A warm breeze blew through town, carrying the smell of fresh, warm horse urine with it. Horses stamped and whinnied. The sound of a piano drifted over from the saloons on the south end of the town square. Samantha looked sharply at Sheridan.

  “I hope I’m not keeping you from anything.” She inclined her head at the row of saloons, billiard parlors, and brothels that serviced the town’s miners.

  “I’m not a drinking man.”

  “Your vices run in different directions?”

  “I’ve had no time to cultivate vices.”

  They strolled to the end of the sidewalk. Sheridan put out his hand to help her down onto the dusty road. The warmth of his touch caused a rush of energy through her body. She laughed. He glanced at her, and she knew she was still young and pretty enough to make a man look at her in that special way.

  Reaction sparked in the depths of his eyes. He narrowed them as if to hide it from her, but it was too late—she had seen it. Suddenly she felt as if she knew too much about him. She knew he wasn’t a marrying man. But that was all right with her. She was already taken.

  They crossed the deeply rutted road in silence. Steve stepped up onto the sidewalk on the north end of the town square and held out his hand to her; she took it again. His eyes watched hers as if to divine her thoughts, but of course he couldn’t. She didn’t even know them herself.

  “How long have you been in Picket Post?” he asked.

  “Almost three years.”

  “Did you come here alone?”

  “With Nicholas.”

  “Fine boy you have there.”

  “Do you have children, Mr. Sheridan?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever married?”

  “No time for marriage,” Steve said gruffly.

  She felt good. Her shoes fairly skimmed over the sidewalk.

  Chapter Four

  From the hotel window, Elunami watched Sheridan and the señora as they stopped in front of the livery stable. He said something, and she laughed and followed him inside. Elunami sensed something between them, and this caused a heavy feeling in her stomach. Though her eyes were dry, she realized that deep inside she was crying. Seeing them together as man and woman reminded her of Yellow Fox. Until Yellow Fox, her problems had seemed manageable.

  Elunami turned away from the window. Looking back on her life, she felt little joy…except for the brief time in her youth when she had been celebrated as a rainmaker. Her mother and grandmother had been very proud. Even her stepfather had stood in awe of her. They had not known it was nothing she could help.

  It had started when she was almost five springs old. Her Hopi name, which she hardly remembered now, had been Tuvayesva, which meant Butterfly Resting. She had lived in Old Oraibi on Third Mesa, one of three high mesas that rose out of the desert like the long, ragged fingers of Black Mesa to the north. The high cliffs, six hundred feet or more above the floor of the desert, provided the Hopi with natural springs and protection from their enemies—the Navaho—whom they called Tasavuh, the “Ones Who Pound Heads.” Away from the edge of the mesa, the pueblos rose up to five stories high. In front of every dwelling, against the high walls, tall ladders leaned, ready to be pulled inside if enemies attacked.

  At night, Butterfly Resting would lie down next to her little sister on their rabbit-skin blankets in the corner of their small pueblo room and close her eyes. Within minutes a sound like that of running water would fill her head. It grew louder each night, until it was like the roar of a great river.

  At some point the sound changed to that of holy men chanting and singing in the distance. Then it changed again to the clanging of heavy bells in the top of her head. As she strained into the darkness of her mind, searching for the source of the sound, her soul lifted out of her in a great rush of whirling energy, as if a dust devil had dipped down and scooped it up.

  When the whirling stopped, she found herself perched somehow beneath the ceiling of an enormous round underground room. It was not one she recognized, so she believed it had to be the Flute kiva, where the holy men of her tribe carried out the many rituals of their spiritual life and in which the holy priests sat in meditation each night.

  For a long time she seemed to float there, watching the old men meditate. After a time, Tuvi, the pekwin, an ancient holy man acknowledged by all as the most powerful priest of all the clans, a man who bore the responsibility for the spiritual welfare of the entire Hopi tribe, glanced up and stared directly at her. Her soul trembled at the contact. Then rushing feelings started again, and she found herself back in her bed, too stunned by what had happened even to cry out. Her mind swallowed the memory.

  But the next morning in the square, Tuvi squatted against one of the pueblos facing the central plaza, peering at each person who walked past. At first he did not appear interested in Butterfly Resting. His gaze slid over her and onto the next person—then unexpectedly returned to her.

  That evening, Tuvi came to speak to her stepfather, Gray Deer. Through his marriage to her mother, Gray Deer had become the son-in-law of Talasvenka and a member of the Bear clan of the Hopi tribe. This meant that although Gray Deer was a Sioux, he had been accepted in the village. He was very much aware of the high standing of his position, and, when sober, would not do anything to bring shame or dishonor to it. A visit by the pekwin could mean great honor or great dishonor, and this uncertainty flustered Gray Deer.

  Butterfly Resting sensed her father’s agitation and became afraid. Tuvi and Gray Deer spoke in low tones; she could not make out the words. After a moment Gray Deer frowned over his shoulder at her as if she had done something for which she would be punished. Fear tightened her body. Gray Deer was the only father in the pueblos who whipped his children. He whipped everyone, even their mother. Her grandmother claimed he had been raised by heathen whites, who were cruel to everyone, even their own young.

  They stopped speaking; Gray Deer called her sternly to his side. As scared as she was, she did not hesitate for fear of increasing his wrath. He took her by the hand and followed the old priest to the Flute kiva. Tuvi sent runners to all the priests in Oraibi, a village of eight hundred people.

  She sat on the ground where Gray Deer told her to sit, with her legs stretched out before her as all Hopi women did, and she stared around the inside of the holy Flute kiva with wonder. It was the same room she had seen last night. She had been in the other kivas several times for ceremonies, but this one was for priests only.

  Within minutes, the enormous chamber was full of priests. With her father watching, Tuvi questioned her until he’d learned everything she knew about her night visit to the kiva. Tuvi was kind and gentle with her, but her voice and body trembled. She had no idea what Gray Deer might do to her for bringing herself to the attention of the priests in such a way.

  The old men withdrew and spoke among themselves. Finally they approached Gray Deer and spoke to him in low tones, then more loudly, so she, sitting at a distance, could hear them. “She is young, but we will teach her.” In the following weeks she learned that in her tribe, anyone with a spiritual gift was taken under the guidance of the priests, just as other children were taught sheepherding, farming, weaving, bowlmaking, or fighting. Children had many teachers. The whole tribe took responsibility for all children.
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  Word spread among the pueblos that Butterfly Resting was kópavi—that her head was open to the Great Mystery. She became the Hawk Maiden—the youngest child ever taken into the holy kiva. They taught her the Hopi way of meditation. Tuvi showed her how to sit, but he did not give her the holy words. She was too young.

  The first evening she sat in meditation, her soul was pulled upward in a great rush just as it had been before. Afterward she opened her eyes; it was as if she had only just closed them, but it was morning. Streaks of sunlight filtered in through the holes in the roof of the kiva.

  Tuvi seemed to know what had happened to her. He explained that in time she would remain conscious and would be able to remember what happened after her soul was pulled up to the level of the Great Mystery. His eyes smiled with joy when he looked at her. After a time she realized Tuvi could read the Great Mystery’s soul tablets on which each person’s history was stored. That was how he had recognized her soul.

  A few weeks later, during the Powámúya ceremonies, the elder priests laid offerings of bean sprouts grown in the kiva as part of a ceremony to invoke rain. Days passed with no rain. People worried that the priests were not sufficiently pure of heart. The priests meditated all night every night.

  Ten days after the ceremony, rain clouds darkened the sky, carried swiftly on a strong wind. People stopped work to watch them pass. The women sang a mournful prayer song as the clouds carried away the water so badly needed by their withering crops.

  With the wind whipping her skirts about her calves, Butterfly Resting felt deep sadness. Her grandmother, Talasvenka, which meant Painted With Pollen, walked to her side and handed her a spruce limb. Talasvenka had told her that spruce was the most powerful of all the trees, with great magnetism to call down the rain. “Speak to them,” she said. “Ask them to give us their water.”

  Butterfly Resting took the spruce limb and lifted it to the darkening sky. “You must not be selfish little rain clouds. Give us your water.” She spoke as if cajoling one of her friends, and to her surprise, fat raindrops began to fall. Her grandmother called everyone around her and told them what she had done.

  The wind changed direction, and it rained for three days, a steady soaking rain good for the crops. The grateful tribe made pahos, feathered prayer sticks, to give thanks to the Great Mystery. Tuvi smiled his approval. He called her to sit with him and told her she would become a priestess of the rain society. He would ask Gray Deer for permission.

  Gray Deer readily agreed. The whole family was honored. The day of Butterfly Resting’s initiation, her grandmother took her for a walk, just the two of them. At the cliff’s edge they watched the sunset, as the all-covering Sky Father darkened around the Earth Mother. Talasvenka turned to her.

  “I let you do this thing now even though I know it is dangerous. The post of priestess of the rain society is one of great responsibility. The welfare of the entire tribe rests in your hands. And you are only a child. There is always a possibility that you might make a mistake and be condemned as a sorceress. But I trust you will do nothing to bring dishonor on our clan.

  “I will help you. I will teach you everything I know about the plants and herbs. It may not seem related, but everything helps. Everything works together—wind, trees, night clouds, houses, even the clothes on your back. They are all hoi, all living souls.”

  That evening Butterfly Resting became the shiwanokia, an important priestess. For a while her status upset the family routine. Her mother and grandmother spent more time teaching her than the other children, which angered Gray Deer, who resented anyone being more important than he. Behind Gray Deer’s back, her grandmother sneered. “He is no Sioux. The Sioux would no more strike a child than I would. He is a white man in disguise.”

  Her grandmother could not stand his beating her daughter and grandchildren. She said it was not the Indian way, unless the man drank firewater, which was not allowed on the mesa. “The Sioux are good people, but he is not. They probably whipped him and drove him out of the village. Better a thieving Navaho,” she grumbled when her son-in-law was not in hearing.

  Her mother, Chu’mana, Snake Maiden, defended her husband, but it only caused more dissent. At the age of fifteen Chu’mana had been carried off by an Irish cattle rustler who kept her for six years, until he was hung for rustling. She came home to her mother’s pueblo with two daughters, five-year-old Margarita and Butterfly Resting, then an unnamed infant. Both had red hair and fair skin. Chu’mana felt lucky to get any husband with such daughters.

  Sioux were rare in Arizona. Only one driven away by the soldiers ever came this far south. Chu’mana had been fascinated by how different Gray Deer was from the Hopi men. Gray Deer, with his battle scars and bitterness, seemed manly and stern. And so she married him.

  One day, in the year of Butterfly Resting’s seventh spring, Gray Deer became angry with her and raised his quirt to strike her. Chu’mana, standing behind him, grabbed the quirt and would not let go. They fought, and Gray Deer slapped Chu’mana so hard that she flew against the adobe wall of the pueblo, slipped to the floor, and did not get up. She lay in a strange sleep for three days. Talasvenka tended her and flashed baleful looks at Gray Deer, who stayed drunk on pulque and cursed his wife for fighting back.

  The afternoon of the third day, Chu’mana died. Gray Deer left the pueblo. Women came to sing prayer songs and prepare Chu’mana for burial in the Earth, which nourished all living Hopi and to which they returned. Butterfly Resting sat with the women until bedtime. Her grandmother put her gently to bed, saying she needed to visit the outhouse.

  Pressed close to her sister, Margarita, Butterfly Resting cried herself to sleep on her blankets, the sound of the women’s prayer songs in her ears. As she slept she saw, not a moving dream, as was customary, but a picture, for only a moment, of her grandmother at the edge of the mesa, her familiar silhouette outlined against the bright moon and twinkling stars, a heavy rock poised above her head.

  When Butterfly Resting woke the next morning her mind had swallowed the picture. She did not even remember dreaming. Her father did not come home the next morning. One of the warriors found Gray Deer below the mesa, his head crushed. People said that perhaps the worn path had crumbled beneath him and sent him tumbling down. It was a path avoided by most, as the red rock broke loose at times. No one accused her grandmother. The Hopi did not kill their own people. When Butterfly Resting heard, she remembered the dream for a moment. She never spoke of it to anyone, but she no longer wished to be kópavi.

  She and her sisters, Margarita and Little Bear, lived on the mesa with their grandmother in more peace and happiness than ever before. She missed her mother and Gray Deer, who had not always been mean to her. Sometimes when his temper was not bad, he had laughed and played with her and her sister.

  They had plenty of food to eat. The crops of peaches, corn, melons, peppers, beans, and cucumbers were plentiful. They traded with clans who grew other crops or raised sheep or hunted. Life was good.

  Until one day in her eighth spring. White government men came and walked through the plaza looking at the people. They talked for a long time with Lololma, chief of the “Friendly” faction of the Hopi. Lololma sent word to all the clans of Oraibi that he would come the next day to choose children to go to the white school in Flagstaff.

  Before the appointed time, their grandmother buried them in the sand under a bush north of the pueblos. Only their faces showed, so they could breathe. It was a bad feeling, as if her body were suffocating. The sand was cool, but her face itched when insects crawled on it.

  It did no good. The Indian police found them. They found all the children. Butterfly Resting learned later that Lololma had walked directly to their grandmother’s pueblo and asked to speak to Butterfly Resting. Her grandmother pretended she did not know where her granddaughters were, but Lololma knew better. He sent the Indian police out to search the village.

  The police dug them up and marched them to the plaza, where their pa
rents stood in tense silence. Lololma ordered her and five other children to go with the white men. Her grandmother and the other mothers cried. The fathers were angry but silent. Lololma was the most high chief of the Hopi. He ruled the pueblos on all three mesas, over four thousand Hopi.

  With fear so heavy in her she almost could not breathe, Butterfly Resting was lifted into the white men’s box wagon with five other terrified children. No one told them what would happen to them. They rode for two days in the wagon, parched and scared and hungry, drinking and eating only when the white men stopped to feed themselves.

  Finally they reached a building on the outskirts of a town where they were turned over to a stern-faced white woman with twenty or so other Indian children behind her and a heavy wooden ruler in her hand. She told them to call her Mrs. Addison. She would be their teacher. Mrs. Parker interpreted that first day. Butterfly Resting learned they had been taken to school, where they were expected to learn to be “civilized.” Disobedience would not be allowed. If they were good, they would be allowed to go home in the summertime.

  The stern white woman cut their hair, made them wear white clothes, and forbade them to speak their native language. Each child was given an English name. Butterfly Resting was named Elaine Norman. The girls wore high-necked, long-sleeved brown gowns with white pinafores. The boys wore black knickers, tall white socks, and high-collared white shirts with black cloths tied in a bow at their necks.

  If anyone disobeyed the rules, the punishments were swift and hard—the heavy wooden ruler whacked across trembling palms or the sensitive backs of legs, a humiliating experience for children who had never been whipped.

  The schedule was not too different from at home. The children rose at five o’clock in the morning to wash, dress, and do their morning chores, which consisted of sweeping and cleaning their dormitory. They ate at seven, washed their own dishes, and reported to their desks at eight, where they stayed until noon. They ate a meal of strange food, stood in line to wash their dishes in a pan of cold, dirty water, and filed outside, where they were free to run and play for an hour, after which they filed back to their desks, where the unlucky ones fell asleep and were whacked with the ruler.