by AULT, SANDI
Mountain got up and walked slowly toward me, his head down. I reached out a hand and he came forward to experience my touch—the touch of someone he trusted, someone he loved, someone who loved and adored him. I stroked the beautiful mane on the side of his neck, and he nuzzled his nose into my armpit, taking intense pleasure in the experience.
Kerry spent his last night before leaving at the cabin with me. As we lay on the bed facing one another in the glow of the candles flickering on the nightstand, I tried to memorize everything about my lover that I beheld: the round form of muscle at his shoulders, the soft down of hair on his chest, the angle of his jaw, the thin white scars under his chin. I savored the fragrance of his skin and realized I could probably go blindfolded into a room full of people and pick out Kerry just by scent alone. Like a wolf, I had imprinted Kerry’s pheromonal signature in my sense memory.
The next morning when Kerry left, I gave him the deerskin vest I had made for his camera accessories, and I saw his eyes grow moist. “I love this,” he said as he put it on. It fit wonderfully, and looked good on his lean frame. “I love that you made it with your own two hands.”
“And by precious little light,” I said. “It’s a wonder I got the seams straight.”
“I’m not giving up,” he said. “I’ll be back to get you soon, and by that time you will have missed me so much that you’ll go anywhere with me.”
“Maybe Mountain and I can come for a visit,” I said.
“Come soon, babe,” he said. “Come for a visit, and never leave.”
45
The Heart of the Matter
On the last day of the year, Mountain and I went for an afternoon hike. I had a destination in mind, and I’d brought a backpack full of treasures. We came across the high mesa from the northeast, passing by Pueblo Peña and carefully making our way down the slender, sloping path and around the slide debris on the small shelf below the canyon rim. I spread two large squares of cloth, then unpacked food, and plenty of it. I’d brought things that hungry children love to eat: hot dogs with ketchup, macaroni and cheese, corn chips, chocolate cupcakes, and candy. I set out bottles of root beer and boxes of juice, all arranged nicely as for a feast. I put out some unfilled balloons, some marbles, and two slingshots. On one cairn, I propped the Howdy Doody doll; on the other, a child’s set of plastic bow and arrows, because Tom Leaves His Robe had told me how much the boys at the Indian school loved to play Wild West. In case these two needed to escape danger, I left the tool that Roy had given me. It had saved my life, and it might just save theirs, too. I clutched my Apache tears that were given me by Sica Blue Cloud, and I choked back my own tears and forced a smile.
As Mountain and I climbed back up on the canyon rim, the sun was beginning to set across the dry back of northern New Mexico, over the vast, empty country that stretched to the west, a land of precious few rivers and high, haunting mesas broken only by more cracked-earth canyons like this one for as far as I could see. Long, shimmering beams of silver sunlight stretched like fingers into the sky, up toward the lone white cloud that floated in the turquoise heavens, to touch it tenderly before leaving. Seconds later, the western horizon was stained with color as an enormous fuchsia fruit ripened atop the soft purple swells of faraway mountains. Behind us, the ancient and enduring walls of Pueblo Peña, the silent house of sorrow, glowed red and gold.
As I stood there watching, with Mountain sitting beside me, a peace and a warmth came over me unlike any I had ever known. I felt a knot of sadness in my chest unraveling, and its barbwire tentacles no longer clutched at my heart. In that moment, I knew that the one true mother who had always been with me, the one that Momma Anna had spoken of—for whom I was a cherished and beloved daughter—was Mother Earth. Her beauty, shelter, and love had always been there for me, had always comforted me and nourished me and provided for me.
Before leaving, I went down the slope to the abandoned Indian school. I passed by the post where I almost became a meal for two hungry cubs. I walked through the gates that had been battered down by my horse, and I went to the chapel doors, which had since been forced back in place after I had stumbled onto a saga of sorrow. They were now sealed with a strong brass lock. I looked around for a pin or a nail, until I found a large cactus thorn. Returning to the chapel entrance, I pushed the cactus thorn into a crack and pinned the milagro—the cracked heart bound with barbwire—to the door of the San Pedro de Arbués Indian School, and I asked for the miracle of healing for all hearts that are filled with sorrow.
Epilogue
Epiphany
Before dawn on the morning of the Epiphany, I drove to Momma Anna’s house in the Blazer. We had made plans to go to the home of Sica Blue Cloud Gallegos to pick up the bultos of the Holy Family and return them to their permanent home of veneration in the church. Yohe met me at Momma Anna’s front door. “We gathering some few things for Sica,” she said. “Sica not feel good. Very ashame her nephew do that terrible thing. And very bad more, he try make look like Indun do that. Sica say that like a knife in her heart.”
Momma Anna came to the door with a large handwoven basket covered with a cloth. “I make soup for Sica,” she said. “She not eat. She wail, they hear her cry in the village. We go church, ask Sister come, pray with Sica.”
Sister Florinda Maez, Momma Anna, Yohe, and I went together to Sica’s door, prepared to give the old woman comfort, and to transport the Holy Family back to the church. Sister Florinda knocked, but there was no answer. She knocked again, and we waited. The sister pushed open the door. “It’s dark, the lamps aren’t lit,” she said. “Maybe Mrs. Gallegos is sleeping.”
Momma Anna and Yohe looked at one another. Neither woman spoke.
Sister Florinda pushed the door a little farther. “Mrs. Gallegos? Sica? It’s Sister Florinda, I’m going to come in and make sure you’re all right.” But she didn’t go in. And Momma Anna and Yohe remained fixed where they stood.
But I did not hesitate. I stepped across the threshold, through foot-thick adobe walls into a dwelling that had been built nearly five hundred years before white explorers had come to “discover” this new world—a world in which a vibrant civilization balanced delicately on the rim of a tiny river, celebrating with the movement of the sun and the stars, resonating with the rhythms of the earth. I entered into the abode of a woman who had been lucky enough to have been beaten so badly with a broom that she was permitted to come home from a place that sought to steal the soul of the People through the genocide of its children’s spirits.
It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust. A blanket had been tacked up over the window behind the Holy Family on their table, leaving the room in darkness. A large shadow hung in front of me, the shape of it instantly recognizable, and I felt a violent rush of sickness sweep through my chest and into my gut.
Sica Blue Cloud had struggled long and hard to get to a spike that had been driven into one of the vigas that spanned the low ceiling in her humble home. Holding on to a broom for support—a broom, of all things!—she climbed onto a low stool, and then the folding chair that I had seen her nephew bring. From this she stepped off and flew, rising like a Blue Cloud—away from the pain and the sorrow, away from the shame and the incapacity to fathom why, away from the leather belt that encircled her neck, holding her suspended in midair for just long enough to give her spirit time to leave her crippled body behind. She had made a sign and hung it to her chest by forcing the crucifix on her rosary through the top of the paper. The sign read: I am an Indian.
I went to the doorway and looked out at the three women who awaited word of what I had found. Their faces looked stunned, confused, and fearful—much like the faces of the children in the photographs I’d seen at the abandoned Indian school. “Sica’s sorrow,” I said, looking at Momma Anna, “last time.”
About the Author
Sandi Ault celebrates her love for the wild west in this series. She loves to write, to explore, to adventure, to research, and to discover. She
spends her free time hiking mountains, deserts, and canyons, searching out new sources of wonder and amazement, new places of magic and enchantment. She is at home in wild places, in the ruins of the ancient ones, in the canyons, on the rivers, on cliff ledges and high mesas. She loves to visit her friends and adopted family at the pueblos. She lives in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado with loving companions: a husband, a wolf, and a cat. Visit her on the Web at www.SandiAult.com and www.WildSorrow.info.
COMING SOON:
Another episode in the WILD Mystery series:
WILD PENANCE