The Turquoise Ledge

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  The little spiders in my studio increased as I spent more time at my desk after I broke my foot. I moved some webs but used a clean dry rag and then left it outside where the spiders might escape overnight. I transferred the spider egg sacs to the rain lily leaves where they may hatch. They seldom bite me and if they do it is because I’ve accidentally squeezed one with my elbow against my writing table.

  It’s almost eight weeks to the day since I last walked before I broke my foot. The hurricane rains were lovely last night. This morning the desert is wet—so many shades of green. In the bright sunlight everything that is wet reflects a mirror light. The reds and yellows of the limestone are fluorescent. The bones in my foot feel healed and I can’t resist a walk.

  The trail is a beloved friend I realize now. I didn’t know how much I missed it until I started to walk today. I intended to go left and take just a short walk in the arroyo, but my feet wouldn’t leave the trail. The fresh rain breeze in my lungs felt exhilarating. My left foot felt good to be on the trail again. Both feet in contact with the welcoming trail made me feel so alive. Oddly, it was my right ankle that I sprained when I was twelve that protested after the lay-off.

  I took my time and kept walking to see what had been going on along the trail while I was laid-up. One ant was out early to see what he could find knocked down or blown in by the wind and rain last night. All around I could hear the calls for celebration and the singing by the cactus wrens and thrashers.

  Water was gurgling in the big arroyo where it surfaced then disappeared again below the sand. In other places, water dripped from the rocks and filled sandy basins no larger than my hand.

  I saw traces of soapy froth from yucca roots flooded by the heavy rainfall. I was the first human over the trail this morning, but the javelinas had already been down the big arroyo ahead of me. From the darting patterns of their v-shaped tracks and the damp sand and pebbles kicked loose, the javelinas had been dancing there the hour before to celebrate the gorgeous rain.

  What an unexpected gift this rain! It means the arroyo may begin to transform the damages the man and his machine caused. I felt an effortless connection with every part of the trail. Even the steep eroded hill by the Thunderbird Mine seemed less rough and difficult than it had been the last time I walked here eight weeks ago.

  Since the damage to the big arroyo, I no longer assumed I would find the trail as it was the last time I saw it.

  I had to walk more slowly over the unfamiliar terrain left by the heavy rain and runoff. I also very much anticipated what I would see when I reached the place torn up by the man and his machine. After all these years in Tucson, I’m still not accustomed to the way untouched rocks and hills and the living creatures here can be crushed alive by these men and their machines without a second thought.

  At the site of the damage the deep ruts left by the machine were partially filled with freshly washed sand and pebbles from the rain. Many of the smaller rocks damaged by the machine had been carried downstream or buried. But the holes left behind by the big boulders that were gouged out by the machine would need far more time to fill in.

  I walked a short distance past the damage and found a turquoise rock on the new sandbar left by the flood. The rock fit in my hand like a triangular egg with a turquoise frog shape on it. The rainstorm water had brought this turquoise rock here. I went only a few feet farther and spied another turquoise rock; this rock also fit in my palm, but was flatter and had a layer of turquoise over one end in the shape of a bobcat’s head.

  A third piece of turquoise rock I found was the size of a grape with coppery brown rock surrounding the turquoise layer which is shaped like a star.

  On this walk I missed seeing the red grinding stone in the middle of the wash but thought perhaps I’d been distracted and overlooked it. I saw deer and coyote tracks at the edges.

  The wide ledge of bluestone was more exposed now than ever before. Small pools and basins in the bluestone hold the rainwater. The sand that once covered the bluestone got moved by the water, and accumulated around the boulder and covered up the petroglyph. Somewhere I have a photograph of the petroglyph from twenty years ago before it got buried in sand.

  The flood carried away the remains of the poor palo verde tree that had been previously uprooted by vandals, but later a home to wood bees and wood ants. The scent of the catsclaw in blossom and the damp woody stalks and barks drying in the sun give the breeze a wonderful perfume. What blessings this rain and this Earth!

  I picked up bits of trash washed down the arroyo by the rain: a plastic dental floss container, a fragment of brown bottle glass, a white paper dust mask. The turquoise “mystery cabochon” I passed up on the trail by the rodent hole then turned back for was actually a wad of blue chewing gum discarded by some park visitor.

  The next morning the arroyo was bank to bank with javelina tracks. The air was scented with barks and roots and sweet desert woods and was deliciously cool this second day after the sudden big rain.

  Still no red grinding stone. In the runoff flood after the rain it didn’t stand a chance. It must have tumbled end over end with the other rocks and tree roots and debris. Foolishly I had thought the water would go around it and leave it be.

  The big arroyo has no attachment to the way things are. The arroyo is the space the water and the boulders and other debris pass through in floods, the space that desert animals and I move through. The space that is the arroyo changes with every flood.

  A distance past the old culvert, as I approached the straight stretch of arroyo, I found a turquoise rock the size of a Brazil nut and the shape of a baby sea turtle; a layer of turquoise marked the turtle’s shell.

  During the time my broken foot had prevented me from walking the trail, I found so many turquoise rocks around the house and yard I began to wonder if the turquoise stones really were everywhere—not just in the arroyo. Now that my foot is better I can walk the hilltop around the house to take a further look.

  The other afternoon I wandered up the hillside past the big power pole. At its base there was a pile of dirt left over from the drilling that had been done to set the pole. In the dirt I found a round turquoise rock the size of a grape—more evidence that there is turquoise under the hill where my house is.

  CHAPTER 34

  Every summer my great grandma A’mooh grew cosmos, four o’clocks, morning glories and hollyhocks. I plant pots of cosmos in the autumn now and think often of A’mooh. In her yard there were the lilacs and the old-fashioned rugosa rose bushes, and next to the swing on the long porch there were two shrubs with cascading branches of tiny white flowers that she called “bridal bouquet.” A huge datura plant had grown in the sandy floodplain soil in her back yard; she called it a “moon flower” because the blossoms opened at night.

  My garden is fifteen or twenty mismatched clay and plastic flowerpots on the porch of my studio under the big mesquite in the front yard. I drag this potted garden back and forth from the sun to the shade in the summer.

  In November I sow seeds before the cold weather comes. The seedlings like the milder temperatures and they grow quickly after the equinox. By the end of January my front porch is perfumed by pots of datura, alyssum, cosmos and snapdragons. On the nights the temperature falls below freezing, I make tents out of old towels and sheets to protect the cosmos and datura. I drag the pots back into the sun all winter, then back under cover at night, over and over. This is the fate of any gardener of alien plants from outside the desert.

  There is no point in preparing a flower bed. The desert trees and shrubs can send out roots overnight to suck the water from a flower bed or tree well; the mesquite tree in my front yard will even steal the water from my clay and plastic pots if I don’t block the drainage holes in the bottoms of the pots with pieces of slate. The pots are discolored with streaks of gypsum from the well water and some of them are cracked.

  The garden shade, the green leaves, the seeds and the water buckets attract birds and rodents which att
ract the rattlesnakes. The cool of the dampness and the deep shade of the pots give great comfort to the rattlesnakes that live around and under my house. Snakes will perish in direct sun and the summer midday heat in a matter of minutes much as we humans can die of heat stroke. Besides their heat detection sensors, rattlesnakes also have organs to detect the coolest spot in an area.

  One morning I walked back and forth on the porch with the hose watering the flowerpots, past the geranium that overhangs its pot and sweeps the porch bricks. After an hour or so I took a break and sat down where I could see the small brown rattler coiled up under the overhanging geranium branches on the porch floor. My feet had only been inches from him all that time but the snake recognizes me—he must do this often but I never noticed him until today. He seems unconcerned about me; I’m not enough of a threat to make the snake want to leave the sweet cool shade of the clay pots where ground squirrels and sparrows stray from time to time.

  Over the years I had planted a good many cacti from outside the Sonoran Desert only to watch the birds and rodents feast on them. Sonoran varieties secrete bitter or toxic juices that protect them if their spines and stickers don’t stop predators. I can’t resist night-blooming cacti. I grow the indigenous reina de la noche but also three others that are not native and must be protected from pack rats and from freezing. I grow the night-blooming cactus for the subtle glorious fragrance of the blossoms that last only one night.

  I grow pots of datura because datura withstands the heat and ultra-violet radiation of the summer. By day, the alyssum, snapdragons and datura survive in the shade; at night the big white datura blossoms are heavenly fragrant.

  The daturas are interesting to grow because they are a vital part of the life cycle of the beautiful hawk moths that may grow as large as hummingbirds. The hawk moths visit the datura flowers on moonlit nights guided by the perfume and the luminous white flowers the size of saucers. The moths lay their eggs in the dirt around the base of the datura plant and the larvae grow into huge beautiful bright leaf green caterpillars with white markings. The voracious caterpillars then strip the datura plants of their leaves and buds before they spin their cocoons.

  At the end of September, the heat began to recede, and a rainstorm revived my garden. The pink and the white rain lilies bloomed and I kept watering them after the rain left—for the bees and the butterflies and for me.

  One morning as I watered, I saw two large grasshoppers, amazing in their beauty and their size. Their outer wings were emerald green in the center with peacock green along the edges; the inner wings were hues of magenta red and magenta pink with lacy leaf patterns in bright yellow. Their faces and necks were outlined in bright yellow on jade green, and their antennae were bright orange with bold black stripes. They sat in the cluster of pink rain lily blossoms they’d been eating. They regarded me fearlessly, with great majesty. Their bright black eyes looked intently into mine.

  As soon as I saw them, I wanted to sketch the grasshoppers in colored pencil, but I was busy and went off to do other chores. I worked on the manuscript. I forgot about the grasshoppers.

  The next day I found one of the big grasshoppers under the potted fig tree. He walked unsteadily as if drunk or sick. His antennae moved feebly, but he didn’t seem afraid of me. I picked him up carefully and moved him so he wouldn’t drown when I watered the fig tree. I wondered what had happened. Poison? Then I remembered: his life was the length of a summer; he was dying of old age. Still he was arresting in his beauty and his steady gaze connected with mine. The vivid colors and intricate markings were unlike any I’d ever seen. I left him in the rain lilies to die in peace.

  The next morning I found the grasshopper in the rain lily leaves, “dead” some might say because he didn’t move, but he was still brightly colored, so there was life in him yet. I gently picked him up and brought him into my studio. I needed to hold him in place somehow; all I had was a shot glass where I stood him up so I could see his thorax plainly.

  As I sketched him, I realized he wanted a portrait in the manner of the Star Being portraits I’d painted. Later, after I finished the grasshopper’s sketch, I brought out a big canvas like the ones I used for the Star Being portraits, and I prepared the canvas with stucco and left it to dry.

  I was thinking about how to paint the grasshopper face-on in the manner of the Star Beings; it presented difficulty because of the shape of the grasshopper’s head, so I didn’t work on the portrait. A few days later while I was outside to watch the rain clouds gather from a hurricane in Mexico, I noticed another of the big colorful grasshoppers under the mesquite tree by the front porch. It looked me in the eyes, and I knew at once this grasshopper was a messenger from Lord Chapulin.

  Get back to work.

  I thought a profile was a tempting variation from the portraits I’d done, so I got out my sketchbook and colored pencils to attempt a sketch in profile but I just couldn’t get it right. Chapulin didn’t want a portrait in profile; he wanted his portrait face-on, like the portraits of the Star Beings.

  I had to work awhile to get the face-on pose to look right. At first I drew the eyes on the sides of the grasshopper’s head, but this was incorrect; the eyes were more to the front of the face. As I sketched, I understood Chapulin wanted to be seen and remembered as he was on the big fiesta day in August when there were so many good things to eat, and he celebrated by wearing powdered turquoise all over his head and face out of regard for Tlaloc, Lord of the Rain, whose color is turquoise.

  I relied on my colored pencil sketch to draw the outline of Chapulin’s portrait on the canvas. In the sketch his buckskin leggings and moccasins could be seen, but on the canvas, only his head, chest and waist fit. I was pleased with the work I’d done, so I left the portrait for the rest of the week while I worked on the manuscript.

  Another week or two passed. One day I noticed one of the big “painted” grasshoppers on a datura plant outside my studio window; the grasshopper gazed in at Lord Chapulin’s portrait on the easel. I felt uneasy because I’d done no work on the portrait for a long time.

  Then one morning outside my studio under the mesquite tree, Lord Chapulin himself approached me. He came straight toward me and climbed up from the ground to a sandstone bench to get closer to me. He regarded me gravely and remained motionless on the sandstone while I looked at the hues of green, the magenta pinks and reds, and the black and orange markings so I’d get them right when I painted him. Then he lost interest in me, and turned his attention to the rain lilies that stirred in the breeze.

  A day or two later as I watered, I splashed a pot of purple alyssum and suddenly there was Lord Chapulin, indignant and glaring at me. Forget about your writing—complete my portrait.

  That night when I went to plug in the lights under my car to ward off pack rats, in the beam of the flashlight I saw a team of brown ants struggling to carry a dead grasshopper that resembled the others, but this one was much smaller, with lighter yellow green hues on the outer wings, and light pink on the inner wings. The grasshoppers wouldn’t last much longer.

  The next morning I hurried back to the portrait before I forgot the pink hue, and I repainted the dark magenta on the portrait’s inner wings with a light magenta pink—the effect was a rosy magenta. Perfect. Exactly what Chapulin desired. I knew what Chapulin desired because he communicated with certain thoughts that would cross my mind, thoughts about what he wanted for his portrait, thoughts he sent directly to me.

  At one point I whited out a lot of a dark green color I didn’t like, and Chapulin’s portrait looked ghostly and I called it Ghost Grasshopper but I couldn’t leave it that way. Chapulin wanted to be portrayed as he was in life, not death. Still, the grasshopper figure all in white on the red background looked really cool.

  Lord Chapulin is secretive and mysterious. Those of his kind may appear only once in eighty-four years while others return in cycles of seven or twenty-one years. When the portrait was finally completed in the last week of October, I opened t
he front door one morning and there was Chapulin warming himself in the sunlight on the top branches of the greasewood bush that faced the studio window where his portrait sat. I watched him for a while to figure out whether he liked the portrait, but I couldn’t be sure. So I turned back to paint the white flowers on his belt; as I touched up the green on the wings I felt such happiness and pleasure. Later when I looked out, he was gone.

  I watched for Chapulin and the others whenever I watered. I even looked for dead grasshoppers, but they all were gone without a trace; carried off by the ants, scattered by the wind.

  CHAPTER 35

  On my walk this early October morning, two horsemen startled me. I didn’t realize I walked in such a deep meditative state as I was down the trail to the big arroyo. I really had trouble coming back down to Earth. “Oh you startled me!” I said. Horses are so large I should have heard them or seen them sooner than I did. The riders seemed a little intoxicated by the power the horses gave them. I was reminded of a phrase in my new novella: the Spaniards in the New World had “the advantages of gunpowder, horses and dogs.” I was glad I carried my ultralight five shot .38 revolver that day.

  Encounters with wild beings aren’t nearly as jarring probably because I am watching for the wild creatures but not expecting humans, like the two horsemen.

  Later I met up with them in the hikers’ parking lot; I’d managed to walk the same distance in the same amount of time as the horses.

  I often think of Geronimo and his ragged band of women and children in their final years of resisting the U.S. troops. Five thousand of them had pursued forty or fifty Apaches, mostly women and children. The troops rode horses, while the Apaches traveled on foot. In the steep rocky terrain the horses were ineffective; they went lame and slowed the troops; if the Apaches got a horse they promptly butchered it and dried the meat. Travel on foot was the fastest way over the steep rocky trails of Sonora and Chihuahua.