by Kathi Appelt
Days passed, followed by weeks, with nary a customer. And then, one morning, a strange sound arose from the horizon. Voices! People voices! Singing people voices. The camels heard them before they saw them. At first, they were just specks in the distance, but as they rolled nearer, Cosmo and LaLaFitte walked out to greet the newcomers, who just kept singing until, at last, they came to a full-throated “Amen.”
Bird-a-roos, what we had was a gospel choir, making their way to Presidio for a choir convention. There were three mule-drawn wagons full of at least two dozen singers. And all of them wanted some water from the fountain, especially the mules.
A kindly neighbor would have said, “Sure, drink your fill.” After all, the fountain never ran dry. But nope.
Cosmo said instead, “One bucket of water for a Liberty nickel.” (He failed to tell them that the bucket was leaky.)
When the singers hesitated, LaLaFitte chimed in. “Buy a bucket, and get a half-price camel ride.”
Camels? It seemed the camels, and Soot with them, had ducked into the side yard. All that singing was hard on their ears. So LaLaFitte quickly fetched them. Well, you can imagine the surprise on those choristers’ faces.
Whoa!
Camels!
Real camels!
Like in the Bible!
Like the Wise Men!
Well, the hallelujahs went around the bend and straight up to heaven. Soon Zada and Asiye were saddled and taking one rider after another around the circumference of the Mission. It was a good day for all, and when the choir left, their thirst sated and their hearts full, Zada and Asiye could hear their jubilations for quite a while, until they finally faded into the sunset. Even Soot, having caught up on the mule news, was not as grumpy as usual.
As for Zada and Asiye, they loved the riders. All of them were gentle; as soon as they dismounted, they took a moment to say thank you and rub the camels’ necks in appreciation. Moreover, they seemed genuinely glad to be in the presence of animals who had carried the Wise Men, even though technically, those exact camels were history.
Zada liked the way they patted her; almost like Teodor had so long ago. There was something about them that made her feel important, like she and Asiye mattered, at least in those few hours.
And isn’t that the thing we all want, to matter? When all the choristers were finished, when the mules had taken their turns emptying the leaky bucket, when everyone had taken a spin atop the camels, Zada was sorry to see them leave.
“Maybe they’ll come back,” said Asiye.
“Amen,” said Zada, practicing this new form of Amin, a word she’d heard a million times before. She couldn’t decide which one she liked best, but what she knew either way, it was the perfect word for ending things. She said it again. “Amen.” And just to seal the deal: “Amin.”
But aside from that one day of coffer filling, the gold mine that Cosmo and LaLaFitte expected to gain from their enterprise proved as elusive as the famed city of Cíbola. Basically, it was a bust. Zada had to admit that the conquistadors (note: lowercase) gave it a good shot. But without any more takers, there was no reason to stick around.
So, one night, while Zada and Asiye were bedded down, the conquistadors packed their belongings, donned their helmets, climbed aboard Soot, and disappeared into the West Texas desert. They didn’t even tell the camels goodbye. The next morning Zada and Asiye awoke to the emptiness. They looked all around, but the trio was gone. Nary hide nor hair was left behind.
Zada wasn’t sure whether she was sad or happy. The conquistadors had been friendly enough, but she had to admit that Soot was a decent mule and she would miss his eye rolling and his jovial brays. She could actually feel a small tear welling up in the corner of her right eye.
Just in time, Asiye, who always seemed to know exactly what to say, spoke up. “I think it’s time for a new field trip, don’t you?”
Zada swallowed. Then she said, “A field trip would be lovely.”
The thing is, they had each other. They had a whole desert full of cactus to munch on. There were mountains to climb, and ancient sea beds to explore, where the wind exposed old fossils of sea urchins and trilobites. And always, the Camel Chief watching over them, his blue eye shining in the nighttime sky.
61 West Texas
1890
Zada stopped in her telling, to take a deep breath. Her eyes were slowly adjusting to the dark, and there was a bit of a glow from the dust-covered stars. Soon, she hoped, the moon would rise and bring a bit of extra light.
It was getting late, and she could feel the babies leaning against each other, and then she heard yawning. And why not, they should be exhausted. She sure was.
But almost as soon as those visions of Dreamville crept into her head, Wims chirped. “Auntie,” he said. “What was the most exciting field trip ever?”
“Yeah,” said Beulah, her voice stretching out. “Tell us about the most exciting one.”
“Are you sure?” asked Zada. That was met with, “Yesyesyesyesyesyeyes…”
“Okay then,” she said. “Ears open.”
* * *
When you live on an open desert, you cannot avoid some stupendously hot days.
“Oof,” said Asiye, on one of those. “It’s hot!”
“Crazy hot,” said Zada. The two were folded up beneath a rocky outcropping, trying to stay in the shade as much as possible. The dry heat shimmered like waves above the floor of the desert.
“It’s too hot to spit,” said Asiye. Which made Zada smile.
“It’s not too hot to go for a swim,” she said.
“A swim would be excellent,” said Asiye.
They knew the exact perfect swimming hole in the Rio Grande’s bend, so they rose up together, gave a shake, and off they set—slowly, so as not to over-sweat. We’re talking seriously hot. I mean, temperatures were cracking the records. Zada couldn’t wait to wade into the cool water.
But as the camels approached the river’s banks, they heard a mighty rumble, which soon became a deafening roar. The ground beneath their feet started to shake. Rocks that had sat in the same places for eons rolled down the hillsides. Prairie dogs burst out of their tunnels and headed north. For Zada and Asiye, there was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
All at once, like in the blink of an eye, Zada and Asiye were completely surrounded by thousands of longhorn cattle. It seems our duo had gotten caught in the middle of a massive roundup of beeves. Cowboys—all atop horses—were moving the cattle from the border with Mexico to the markets in Oklahoma and Kansas.
There were cattle from horizon to horizon, hill to hill, no empty spots to be seen, and no way to wade through them. Zada shook as hard as the ground. She couldn’t make her feet move. She was stuck. Asiye was pressed against her. “What do we do?” shouted Zada. And then Asiye called out, “Rocks in the river.”
Rocks in the river? What did that mean? Rocks in the river? But then Zada figured it out. She and Asiye would stand as still as rocks, while the river of cattle passed them by. As long as they stood there, the longhorns would flow around them, like water flows around rocks in the river.
Hours passed, there were so many bovines. As night fell, the dust from their millions of hooves became supercharged. And something happened that Zada had never seen before or since: on some of the cows with the longest horns, a bolt of lightning sparked from one horn tip to the other, zzzzzzaaaaapppp!
Introducing St. Elmo’s fire.
“I’ll never forget that,” said Zada. And you better believe that it was a topic of discussion between her and Asiye, for… like… eons!
“Did you ever?”
“No, never.”
“Me neither.”
“Amazing.”
Imagine, lightning striking from horn tip to horn tip.
“Spectacular.”
“Stupendous.”
“Wowzers!”
As for the swim, the cattle had muddied up the water so much with all their thundering, it took days for
the water to run clear again. But did Asiye and Zada mind the mud? Not one dad-gummed whit. After pretending to be rocks in the river, what was a little mud? The rocks didn’t seem to mind, so neither did they.
62 The Mission
1910
Klee, klee. Killy, killy. Wims and Beulah gave Zada a round of enthusiastic “Yessirreees! Bravo! Huzzah!”
Not a yawn in sight. In fact, the busy whispers started back up. Then died down. Up. Down. Up. Down.
Finally Zada couldn’t stand it. “Chirp it out!” she said.
There was a long silence. At last, in his most plaintive voice, Wims asked, “Auntie? We’re wondering. Did Asiye grow wings?”
Zada did not expect that. Nor did she expect to be so moved by their questions and their remembering.
“Why, yes,” she said. “As a matter of fact, Asiye did grow wings.”
“But,” she added, “maybe not in the way you might expect.”
63 The Mission
1910
Sometimes a story takes a turn, and the teller must decide how much to share. Zada realized that she wasn’t quite ready to revisit the next part of the story.
And besides, it was so quiet just then that she thought the babies might have fallen asleep. Weren’t babies supposed to sleep? A lot? Weren’t they ready for bed after such a long day, even if the bed was the furry patch between her ears?
Zada was ready for sleep. Every hair on her hump was tired. Slowly she lowered herself onto the floor of the sanctuary. Unlike her lightning-fast drop in the mountain lion’s den, this time she took her time. She eased her front legs down first, followed by her back, which she tucked tightly underneath herself.
Ahh. She felt a wave of relief roll over her. But before she could finish one complete inhale-exhale, she felt a fracas brewing atop her head.
Before she could discern what all the shuffling was about… “She’s down. Now’s our chance.”
“You first,” said Beulah.
(Zada realized that Beulah had scooched over, so that she now stood behind the camel’s right ear.)
“No, you first,” said Wims.
(Wims was now standing behind her left ear.)
Shuffle shuffle shuffle.
(Clearly, something was afoot. No. Make that two somethings were afoot.)
“Together,” said Beulah.
(Oh dear.)
“Anchors aweigh,” they said in a single voice.
Uh-oh, thought Zada. Not good. Not good. Not good.
All of a sudden… Pppeeeepppeeeepppeeeeeeppp!
Zada gasped.… “WAIT!” she called, but it was too late. Wims slid from the top of her head to the bottom of her long neck, where he banked the curve, and then—whoosh—down her side he went—PLOP—onto the ground, and only a second later… “Incoming!” Beulah repeated the maneuver. PLOP.
Zada closed her eyes, horror filling her chest. No. No. No.
This. Can. Not. Be. Happening. Whatever she had eaten twenty-four hours ago, plus whatever she had eaten in the previous six months, add in her dinner from two and half years ago, it all clumped together and began to swirl in her triple stomachs.
She felt her lungs squeeze. She couldn’t breathe.
Pant. Pant. Pant.
But then…
“We did it, Auntie!”
Wait? Didn’t that voice belong to Wims?
“Auntie! Look! We made it all the way down!”
That sounded a lot like Beulah.
Zada tried raising an eyelid… but no… she couldn’t look. She couldn’t bear it. But then, “Auntie! Wake up!”
Okay, maybe she was dreaming.
“Auntie!” Maybe she wasn’t dreaming.
She cracked open one eyelid. It was so dark it was hard to see, but sure enough, there, right beside her face, two fluff balls, doing a victory dance.
She wanted to step on them.
Wait, no, she didn’t.
Okay, maybe she did.
Instead, she looked at them sternly. “Next time, a warning, please.” Which seemed mild considering that hanging them by their toenails might be justice served. A whole zigzag of relief, anger, relief, anger flooded her. But soon it was all dashed by the high-kick routine—tap-tap-tap-Kick, tap-tap-tap-Kick, which Zada had to confess was nothing short of delightful. And who can stay mad at delightful?
However, even though they were inside the Mission, they were still vulnerable to ground-dwelling critters, critters who might enjoy a tasty kestrel for a bedtime snack.
And besides, there was the matter of bedtime. This would be the hour when Perlita and Pard would normally be tucking them in, sending them off to Dreamland, safe in their parents’ wings.
Zada didn’t have wings. But she had her front legs. They were folded beneath her. She could tuck the chicks between her knees. There they’d be safe, and warm, too.
“No arguing,” she told them. And with her nose, she finally wrangled them into that knee space, telling them in no uncertain terms, “Stay put.”
Zada waited a long minute. The chicks were quiet, at last. Maybe, she thought, this would be a good time to tell a different story, someone else’s story, something about kestrels. American kestrels, to be exact.
“Have I ever told you about the fiercest birds in the whole desert?”
64 Foothills, Chisos Mountains
1908 OR SO
It might seem like the desert, as lonely as it is, would be a quiet place. But if you pay attention, you will come to hear its many songs. There is the chitter-chatter of the pack rats. The whoosh of the river. The knock-knock of the ladder-backed woodpeckers. The snuffle of the javelinas. The fluttering of bats’ wings. It’s like a symphony of sounds. And always there is the wind, howling, piping, whistling, whispering. The wind all by itself sings a thousand different chords.
But of all the sounds, what Zada loves the most are the vibrant tunes of the song dogs. The coyotes. The wolves. The grey foxes. Whenever they raised their heads up and lifted their voices, it seemed as if they could croon the stars right out of the sky.
Each day they sang the sun up and then sang it back down again.
There was also the tune that Zada recognized as a victory song, a frantic melee of yaps and yippees, the one that meant, We’ve got our dinner. Zada did not begrudge them this song. After all, they had to eat too.
But one morning, she heard a different tune, more of a whimper, actually. It was well past sunrise, past the time of the coyotes and their friends. That was odd enough, but all mixed into the whimper was the wild sound of birds: Klee, klee, killy, killy.
Zada had heard those klees and killys before. Falcon, she thought. As the minutes ticked, both voices grew louder and louder, angrier and angrier. Finally, Zada couldn’t stand it.
She turned toward the tumult, and with each step, the voices grew. Sure enough, just as she got to the top of a hill, she spied them. One coyote. Two American kestrels.
But to her surprise, it wasn’t the kestrels who were being pursued. It was, instead, the coyote. A small coyote. Just a puppy. It was trying to tuck itself underneath a mesquite bush. Its front paws were covering its eyes, and it was shaking from nose to tail.
The kestrels, on the other hand, were all business. First they dove right at the puppy’s face, then they swished by and scraped the coyote’s ears with their sharp little talons. The coyote kept yipping and yapping and whimpering. The kestrels kept dive-bombing.
Zada couldn’t stand it. “Enough!” she called out. She stepped between the dog and its tormentors.
“Truce!” But the birds ignored her. They fluttered around and finally landed again on the coyote’s back. But what the birds didn’t see was the coyote’s mother, running toward them at full throttle, jaws open. Zada could tell that the kestrels were about to be toast.
“Fly!” shouted Zada. And just in time, the kestrels let go of the puppy’s fur and shot into the sky, leaving a trail of klees and killys in their feathery wake.
On the ground
, the puppy was safely in the paws of her angry mother. It was the last Zada saw of them.
She thought that would also probably be the last she saw of the fierce little birds, but hours later, while she was taking a nap, she felt something land on her nose. Actually, she felt two somethings.
“Thank you,” one kestrel said.
“You’re welcome,” said Zada. Then she expected the pair to fly away. That didn’t happen either. So Zada had to ask, “Were you planning to eat that coyote puppy?”
And though that was supposed to be a joke, to Zada’s chagrin, one of the kestrels began to cry. Not just a sniffly cry, but a full-blown sobbing sort of cry, a cry that soaked into her brilliant spotted feathers. Her partner, who explained that that was Perlita and he was Pard, tried to console her, but there was nothing he could say to make it better.
It seems that the puppy had come across their nest, a small nook in the side of a large boulder, and discovered their very first batch of eggs. The nest was within the puppy’s reach when she stood on her hind legs. Beautiful, spotted eggs. Laid only a few days earlier. They made a quick breakfast for the hungry pup. At first Perlita was heartbroken, but then she was furious, and in her fury, she had failed to keep an eye out for the mother coyote. Pard, in his concern for Perlita, had not seen the mother approach either.
“This is hard, isn’t it?” said Zada, wishing she had better words to say. But there must have been something in Zada’s comforting voice that spoke to the utter sadness that both birds held deep inside, because in two shakes of a wing, both of them nestled into the fur between her ears and stayed there for quite a long time. Zada didn’t complain. She was glad for the company.
It seems that grief can open doors—and hearts, too, if you think about it—some of which are unexpected. As it turned out, Zada needed a friend, and Perlita, with all her bravado, turned out to be just the one. Once she got past her sorrow, she regained her natural joie de vivre, which made Zada’s heart lighter. It even made her laugh, something she had not done in some time.