Jojola appreciated the sounding board as he became increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress in the case. But his time with Marlene wasn’t all about work. He played tour guide, but in another sense found himself in the role of spiritual guide as well.
After Blue Lake, he’d taken her later one afternoon to what was one of his favorite spots on the rim of the gorge, above where a pair of golden eagles were nesting. They sat on the edge of a precipice with only the outcropping of the aerie between them and the river bed nearly eight hundred feet below. He explained that he often went there when troubled to burn sage to cleanse himself while appeasing the spirits and asking for their guidance.
As the sun lowered itself in the western sky toward the low dark line of the Nacimiento Mountains, their conversation turned to their pasts. Feeling that Marlene—who he noticed normally brushed over her deeper issues with humor—would need to be drawn out if he was to help her, Jojola began by telling her of his days in Vietnam leading up to the massacre of the Hmong village.
“Despite what the New Agers, and even some Indians, try to project about the native populations before the Europeans arrived,” he said, “much of the Americas were embroiled in constant warfare. In North America, raids on other tribes were the way a young man proved himself and how older men showed that they were still capable of leading. It also served other purposes. One was to establish hunting territory and take slaves, who did the menial jobs in a village. Another was that the raids often resulted in capturing women, which helped keep the genetic pool from stagnating. Yes, we in the pueblos were more settled and had agriculture, but we supplemented it with hunting buffalo, which required going onto the plains and led to confrontations with the tribes there. We also did our share of raiding for women, slaves and—after the Spanish brought them to the area—horses.”
Jojola paused, thinking back all those years to when he and Charlie Many Horses received their draft notices in the same week. “But Vietnam was different,” he said. “We seemed to have no purpose there. We weren’t protecting our homes, or even the homes of the people who lived there. We weren’t even trying to conquer new territory. There seemed to be no purpose…other than to kill and try to prevent being killed…until a Vietcong leader we knew only as Cop, which means tiger, and his men wiped out a village of Hmong who were our friends. Then, at least Charlie and I had a purpose…revenge. And when Cop lured Charlie into an ambush, I swore a blood oath that no matter how long it took, I would find him and kill him.”
“Still?” Marlene asked. “After all these years? If you met him on the streets of Taos, you would still seek revenge?”
Jojola nodded. “It was a blood oath. I can’t take it back.”
The pair were silent for several minutes watching a thunderstorm building up in the west, casting a shadow over the land in front of them. Then Marlene asked in a quiet, almost-timid voice, “How did you forget about the men you killed?”
“I don’t try,” he shrugged. “Oh, I did for a time. Tried to block them out by becoming a hermit. Then it was with booze—not so much during the day at first; I could work and focus on a job, whether it was digging a ditch or riding on a garbage truck. But the nights were when the ghosts could not be ignored. So I tried to drink them away, but they only gained strength…. I’ve never told anyone this, but there were nights when I considered joining those ghosts permanently.”
Again Marlene nodded without saying anything; however, tears formed in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. In her mind, she could still feel her husband prying the bottle of Hennessey and the gun out of her hands. Butch tried so hard to help her, but he didn’t know, couldn’t know about the ghosts…not like John Jojola.
“I got married, but it turned out to be a bad thing for her, too,” Jojola went on. “A very painful time in my life.”
Marlene put a hand on his shoulder. “I heard your wife died. I’m sorry.”
Jojola looked at her oddly. “Did Charlie tell you that?”
“Yes.”
Jojola shook his head sadly and was silent. “She didn’t die,” he said after a moment. “She left me.” He told her the story of their downward spiral into the cesspool of alcoholism and how, after he’d pulled out of the dive, she’d continued and then that night he found her with her lover and the heroin.
“Then I’m even more sorry,” Marlene said. “I know what it’s like to blame yourself for what we do to people we love.”
“Thank you,” he said. “But I realized that I could not keep blaming myself entirely. She had her own path to follow.” He sighed. “And at least she left me Charlie. No matter what we do wrong, as long as we do right by our children, we’ve done a good thing in this world.”
Marlene bowed her head. “I can’t even say that,” she said. “I’ve been so busy trying to shut out my past, shut out the world, that I not only shut all that and my husband out, but my children, too.”
Jojola smiled. “It’s the shutting out part that’s the problem,” he said and told her about the medicine man and the dream in which the coyote suggested that he had to learn to accept his past, “and let the ghosts become part of my memories, not enemies I have to confront every day in order to vanquish them.”
“Did it work?” she said looking sideways at him.
“Yeah,” he said and laughed as he pointed to his head. “Sometimes it is like having a whole other village up here. At first, it seemed a little crowded, but now it’s more like coming out of your house and seeing a neighbor some distance away working in a field. Unless there is a reason that you want to make the effort to go talk to them, it’s enough to just know that they are there, part of the community.”
“Yeah but what about the ones you’d rather not be neighbors with?” she said with a laugh. She told him more of her past. “I’ve killed out of vengeance, and I’ve killed out of anger. And I’ve killed men who I still believe deserved it. But who was I to decide who lives and dies? Maybe that’s why I have such a hard time dealing with the guilt.”
Jojola shrugged. “Like any city or town, there are good people and bad people in my memory village. The good people do not become better just because you overemphasize their place in your life, and the bad ones don’t go away simply because you wish it was so. They’re there; you just need to put them in their place, not give them more importance than they deserve. After all, they are just memories.”
Again they fell silent. The thunderheads to the west rose tens of thousands of feet into the sky, their tops boiling with pent-up energy, the main bodies brooding shades of deep blues and purples. They blocked out the sun and the land was covered in shadow.
Marlene wondered if she would ever be able to create a village for her ghosts as Jojola had done and learn to live with her memories instead of trying to forget them. It wasn’t so different from what she was getting at the Taos Institute of Art Healing.
Much to her own surprise, she was truly enjoying the classes at the art school. However, it was one thing to paint pretty pictures of mesas and sunsets during the day, and then have her sleep filled with images more reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno at night.
Surprisingly, she found that she actually looked forward to the therapy sessions. Even the group meetings weren’t the big cry fests she thought they would be, filled with pathetic victims who’d let men run roughshod over them and done nothing about it. There were plenty of tears in these sessions, even a couple of the “patients” she’d anticipated, but she was impressed by the strength and resiliency of most of the other women.
Marlene was coming to accept that like most of these women, she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. In her case, one of the counselors told her, “Not unlike what soldiers suffer who have had to do some pretty horrible things to stay alive or protect their comrades. Good, decent people, ordinary people, who have been forced by extraordinary circumstance to behave in a way that grinds up against their moral code and the way they’ve been taught to believe. No wonder pe
ople with PTSD suffer from depression and fits of anger and suicidal ideation. They’re in direct conflict with their consciences. Some try to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol; others simply withdraw from the world from the shame, whether they recognize it or not.
“The fact that you’re here—that this violence has troubled you so deeply that you would seek help—is a healthy sign that you want to get past it. Now we just need to find a way that will let you do that.”
Jojola seemed to recognize that, too, as he cleared his throat and said, “There was something else, the medicine man told me…something that was even more difficult to accomplish in some ways. He said that I needed to forgive myself.”
“What about forgiving yourself for Charlie’s death?” Marlene asked. “If you still want to kill the men responsible, isn’t that because you feel guilt for not being there when he died?”
Jojola looked back at her, thought that Butch Karp was a very lucky man, and nodded. “You are a wise woman, Marlene Ciampi,” he said. “I suppose you are right, and maybe that is why Charlie is the most restless ghost in my village. In fact, he told me the day I met you that it was time to let it go.”
Marlene snorted. “I’m hardly a wise woman,” she said. “Otherwise, I would not be here. I just can’t get past feeling like I’m going to end up one of the bad people in everyone else’s village.” She began to cry.
Shrugging off his shyness, Jojola placed his arm around the sobbing woman. “In my tribe, we are born into one of two main clans. You are either in a spiritual clan or a warrior clan. It is simply recognition that not every problem can be solved by prayer and good thoughts, just as every problem cannot be solved by fighting and war. Like the Bible says, there is a time and place for everything. I guess one way to look at it is that if you had not committed these acts that trouble you, it is unlikely that we would have met. And considering the terrible thing that is now happening to my people, and the help that you have given me, I cannot help but wonder if there is a reason for our meeting.”
Marlene wiped at her tears and smiled at him. “Is that more of the ancient wisdom of your people?”
Jojola shook his head. “No, just a friend talking to a friend who has shared a similar path.”
Marlene thought of her husband and children. She realized at that moment how very much she wanted to share her life with them. Not by going back and trying to change the past, but my looking forward to the future. She at last even saw a glimmer of hope that such a thing was possible, and that she owed this revelation to the good man who sat beside her and opened her heart by exposing his own.
At that moment, the sun broke through a gap in the thunderclouds, bathing the part of the rim they sat on with the golden light of the end of the day. Perhaps disturbed by the sudden change, one of the eagles took off from the aerie below with a piercing cry, and flapping its wings, climbed up past them into the sky.
Marlene laughed delightedly like a schoolgirl. “You planned that,” she accused Jojola. “That’s some sort of Indian trickery to fool the gullible tourists.”
Jojola laughed, too. “No,” he said. “But perhaps it was part of a plan we don’t know about yet. My people believe that eagles are the messengers who carry our prayers to the Creator.”
Marlene watched the eagle soar on the updrafts until it was a tiny spot high above them. “I hope he is a strong eagle,” she said. “I gave him a lot of weight to carry.”
“He is strong enough,” Jojola said. “And look, he will have help.” He pointed to the second eagle taking off to join her mate. He chuckled and Marlene joined him until they were laughing so hard that the tears were pouring down their cheeks.
• • •
Remembering that day, Jojola now said to Marlene, “Maybe Charlie’s information means that the eagles got to the Creator with my prayers.” But he felt the rage rising in his throat as he digested the fact that the best suspect in the murder of four little boys was a priest. And that the church had a hand in hiding the killer and others who had apparently preyed on their flocks from the law and allowing them to continue putting more innocents at risk.
One thing that galled him was that this wasn’t the first time. Twelve years earlier, a story broke in the New Mexico media that pedophile priests had been sent to a secret sex offender treatment program in Deming, a quiet town in the southwest corner of the state. Then after their “cures,” the men had been assigned to parishes throughout the state where they again had contact with children. The church had done it without notifying anyone, but the story came to light when the priests began reoffending and ruining more lives.
Now the church was doing it again. The breach of trust and what it had meant to four boys he had known since birth made him so angry that he swore the same oath he had when he held Charlie Many Horses in his arms. He would find the killer and, police officer or not, he would kill whoever was responsible.
Marlene seemed to sense this. “What’s your next move?” she asked.
“I’m going to go to the sheriff and see if he will ask a judge for a warrant to search St. Ignatius. Maybe see if I can ask the priest who frightened Charlie a few questions. He seems to fit the physical description of the guy seen talking to one of the victims…and he limps,” Jojola said explaining the tracks he had seen at the first gravesite. “I have to move fast because it sounds like the administrator and whoever it was with him plan to get whoever it is they suspect out of town. But I also want to keep Charlie out of this for as long as I can; he could be in danger if they knew he’d heard them talking.”
“Tell the sheriff that you got the information from a confidential informant,” Marlene suggested.
“Yeah, but I have to be careful. If I give too many details, and Tobias hears about it, he may remember the discussion and that Charlie was in his office right after that. Got any better ideas?”
Marlene shook her head. “No. But I’ll think on it while you go talk to Asher.”
• • •
Jojola climbed in his truck and left for the sheriff’s office in Taos. There he was kept waiting by a deputy who clearly shared his boss’s disdain for the Indian police chief.
Finally tired of the game, Jojola walked past the deputy and burst into Asher’s office with the protesting underling in tow. “Sheriff, we need to talk. I believe I have a suspect in the murder of four children from the Taos Pueblo.”
Asher scowled and made no attempt to hide his irritation that Jojola was within shouting distance. “I thought I told you that this is the Taos County Sheriff investigation, Jojola, and to stay the hell out of it.”
Jojola put his hands on the front of Asher’s desk and leaned forward. “I have information from a reliable confidential informant that the man responsible for two, and probably four, boys may be a priest residing at the St. Ignatius Retreat.” He leaned a little closer, noting that Asher’s hand drifted toward the small button above the drawer. “Now sheriff, before you summon help to assist Barney Fife here, I’ve been doing my best to let you handle this investigation. But if you’re not going to act on my information, I will. What’s more I will call the governor’s office and tell them what I just told you. Now maybe you don’t remember, but the governor and I served in Vietnam together, and I think he’ll listen to me when I tell him you’re a big, fat, ineffective pig who is dragging his feet on the investigation into the murder of four of the governor’s constituents. And I’m absolutely positive the media will be just as interested.”
Asher turned redder than normal and held up his hands. “Hold on, Jojola, don’t get your nuts all tied up in knots,” he said. “I appreciate the information. I was just trying to point out that there needs to be one central command for this investigation or else we’ll be trippin’ all over our fuckin’ feet. It’s Saturday and I’m not going to be able to find an amiable enough judge to come away from whatever barbecue he’s at to give us a warrant to search a Catholic retreat and question a priest, for God’s sake, on the word of
a fuckin’ confidential informant. And tomorra’s Sunday…ain’t no way we’re gonna get a judge to disturb a Catholic institution in this state on a Sunday. But tell you what I’ll do. First thing Monday morning, I’ll go see a friendly judge I know—he goes to my church—and see if I can’t get him to spring for a warrant.”
“Monday!” Jojola shouted. “This guy could be gone already, much less two days from now.”
“Look, if he leaves, we’ll extradite his ass back here,” Asher said. “Provided, of course, we got a case and this CI of yours doesn’t just have a hard-on for the Catholic Church.”
“If he leaves the state, we’ll never get him back here for questioning, and you know that as well as I do,” Jojola replied. “And if we don’t question him, we might never make a case to extradite him.”
“Well, if we don’t have a case, we don’t have a case,” Asher shrugged. “Now if you don’t have anything better to do than tell me how to conduct an investigation…” He went back to looking at the papers on his desk.
Jojola remained leaning on the desk. He considered what it would be like to cut the bastard’s heart out and show it to him while he was still breathing.
The sheriff looked up, his face contorting in anger. “You still here? Deputy, show Mr. Jojola the door, and don’t let it hit you in the ass on your way out.”
When the deputy hesitated, his eyes on the big hunting knife, Jojola smirked. “Don’t bother, Barney. I’m leaving before this gets messy.”
Outside, Jojola jumped back in his truck, but he wasn’t about to wait until Monday. Instead he drove to the retreat. He arrived at the gated entrance and told the guard, “I’d like to talk to Tobias.”
When the administrator showed up several minutes later, Jojola didn’t wait for any pleasantries. “I want to talk to you about a priest who may be involved in a murder investigation I’m conducting. I have reason to believe he resides here.”
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