Indian Affairs (historical romance)

by Parris Afton Bonds

  “Well, damn it, I’ll look for my answer among his people!” She declared to the room.

  Next week, when she was rested, she’d take her crusade, and her question, to the westernmost pueblos.

  Alone and without Man.

  * * * * *

  “This expedition hopes to discover the historic secrets of Chaco Canyon — the Stonehenge of the West. The complex of Indian ruins was one of the most densely populated areas in North America before Columbus came, a region where the Anasazi, the Ancient Ones, prehistoric ancestors of the Pueblo Indians, lived in vast communal dwellings. These ruins are ranked second to none of ancient times. No other apartment house of comparable size was known in America or in the Old World even until the Spanish Flats were erected in 1882 at Fifty-ninth Street and Seventh Avenue, New York City.”

  Alessandra stared at the quote by Neil Judd in Peg’s latest issue of National Geographic.

  I am like those Indian ruins.

  She tucked the magazine in her large, colorfully woven bag purchased at Rancho de Taos’s Mexican Market for this trip. According to Neil Judd, curator of archeology for the Smithsonian Institute, the trip to the western pueblos would be most arduous, isolated by the large expanse of desert as they were.

  Their pueblo’s native names were picturesque: Rock Slide People, People of the White Rock, and Pueblo By the Lake, though the lake must have evaporated in the severe drought of the late 1200’s that caused the survivors of Anasazi to relocate eastward, along the Rio Grande. According to Tony, though, the current day Puebloans resented being referred to by the name Anasazi, given by enemies to their ancestors. The Puebloans preferred to be called simply, The People. The Hopi Puebloans even designated themselves The People of Peace.

  Well, peace was not what she had in mind.

  Peg had arranged for the archeological expert Judd to meet Alessandra at Santa Fe’s Inn of La Fonda, the place where Henri had taken her and Jeremy on their first night in New Mexico. Judd was to escort her throughout New Mexico’s western pueblos, the Hopi pueblos in Eastern Arizona, and back to La Fonda.

  She sat in the hotel’s small, darkened bar room, lit by the flickering flame of the breast-shaped flue for drawing out smoke and waited for Judd. Occasionally she sipped her cup of cinnamon-flavored Mexican hot chocolate.

  Better chocolate than something more potent. If I have to know pain, no use delaying it with drugs like scotch or . . . Man’s peyote. Damn you, Man. If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s a practicing Indian!

  “Mrs. O’Quinn?”

  She turned, glanced up.

  “Neil Judd, your escort.” He was a tall man, broad and thick, with short-clipped dark hair, and no older than she, thirty-five, if that. He wore field boots. In one hand, he held a World War peaked army hat. He stuck out his other hand. “By the look on your face, I’d say you’re as surprised as most people meeting me the first time. They’re expecting a bespectacled, scholarly little man nearing ninety.”

  With a smile, she shook his hand and liked him at once. “You read my mind, Mr. Judd.”

  “Neil, please.”

  Their vehicle, used as transportation to and from Neil’s digs, was a relic left over from Pershing’s 1916 Expedition into Mexico in hot pursuit of Pancho Villa – a four-wheel Jeffrey Quad. Frigid wind pelted its cracked windshield with sand and beat loudly at the truck’s canvas wagon top.

  “We were just breaking camp for the season,” Neil said. “What with the sandstorms and winter just around the corner. You didn’t pick the best of times to spread your message.”

  “What happens after you finish for the season?”

  Neil drove determinedly through the haze of pumice that looked as if it had spewed from a monstrous volcano eruption. Wind-driven tumbleweed bounced in and out of sight. “It’s back to the shop. Categorizing potsherds, dating viga tree rings, classifying, serializing, evaluating.”

  “Sort of like solving a mystery?”

  “Exactly. What happened to this dead civilization? Boring to most people but fascinating to me. Because the dead civilization secretly lives.”

  “How it lives out here is the mystery.”

  Sand, sand, sand everywhere. No trees, no water, and now no roads. Only a jouncing, twisting path quickly lost in the fluttering veil of sand mixed with snow flurries.

  The western Pueblo people were less receptive to her message, more suspicious. Zuni Pueblo’s wrinkled, old cacique, sitting beneath strings of garlic and chiles, heard her message, translated by Judd, in stolid silence. Without consulting the other elders gathered in his adobe, he asked, “Why should we believe you? Aren’t you as white as the men you claim we should fear?”

  Translating this, Neil shrugged. “It’s your call, Mrs. O’Quinn?”

  “Tell the cacique that I have heard when he and his men go into all-night kiva sessions, they pray not just for their people but for the welfare of the entire world and every single person and creature on it. That they mean this literally and seriously. That they feel the responsibility is theirs. Well, I, too, feel this responsibility. Not just for my people, but for every single creature on the face of the earth. If one suffers, then I suffer.”

  After Neil translated this, a long silence ensured, enhanced by the wind-driven snow outside, stealthily encapsulating the cacique’s adobe. Meanwhile, the old man’s eyes operated on her face, peeling back her flesh, prying aside her eyeballs, tugging out her brain matter, inspecting it, thrusting deeper, reaching down to grab her heart and inspecting it for blemishes.

  God knew, there were enough. Scars, too. But, also, something fine and wonderful. I realize that now. That crystal bright light found in every beating heart if one looked long enough, hard enough.

  * * * * *

  The fury of the snow outside Bear Heart’s adobe was nothing compared to the blizzard in his heart. Even the flickering orange flames in the beehive fireplace could not melt the stinging sleet.

  The wedding was soon approaching. Next month, the Catholic priest would perform the ceremony at the San Geronimo Church to satisfy the Ordinary World. Bear Heart went back to tanning the hide for the traditional wide, white moccasins he made for his bride. He tucked three, then four, folds into the large tubes of buckskin to serve as pockets for her instead of the traditional single fold. Mud Woman was special and needed to know that. This would convince her.

  Since his parents were both dead, Tony’s mother was making the Wedding Vase, more a Tewa than Tiwa tradition. When the glossy two-mouthed jar was finished, Tony, his mother and himself would go to the house of Mud Woman’s parents. She would bring out everything needed to establish their new home together: clothing, utensils, mattress, moccasins, corn and any other homemaking essentials . . . including her white manta wedding dress and sash.

  A five-foot strip of white wool cloth, the Wedding Sash would be decorated at each end with a heavy fringe of twisted cords knotting over a foundation of cornhusks. The fringe represented rain, the symbol and hope for fertility.

  Only then would sacred water from the Rio Pueblo be placed in the Wedding Vase. He would give it to his bride, she would drink from one side of the Vase, then give it back to him to drink from the opposite side. This simple ceremony would unite them as one. He and Mud Woman would treasure the Wedding Vase throughout their married life. Should one of them outlive the other, the remaining spouse would give the Wedding Vase to a couple known to be living a happily married life. The Wedding Vase was always protected, never broken or destroyed.

  Even though the heart might be.

  Snow mounted outside his window. Deadly, quiet, entombing snow. In the avalanche of silence, he heard her call. Al-ass-and-ra of the funny name. Alessandra, whom he worshiped with the Sun and would love with his flesh. Alessandra, mirror of his soul.

  * * * * *

  Through the tattered white curtain of snow, Brother Raven wings his way. Screeching with alarm, his Power Animal settles with wildly flapping wings upon Bear Heart’s sh
oulder. The mystical black bird, the messenger of the void, from where all is conceived and then returned, has woven him in and out of the mysteries of life and death. The raven is the gatekeeper between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

  Bear Heart listens carefully to Brother Raven’s message — and knows his worst fear. Alessandra’s spirit is wandering somewhere between those two worlds. His heart freezes solid.

  But Brother Raven is also the messenger of prayerful healing, the carrier of energy between the Creator and the Created. The raven’s caw shrieks through the adobe, Hurry! Hurry!

  Rapidly, Bear Heart straps on the snowshoes. When he made the oval frames, carefully binding the chokecherry wood with animal hide sinews, he did not expect to use the snowshoes this winter. All signs had pointed to a light one. “Take me to this woman created flesh of my flesh!”

  Outside the wind roars with urgency, pushes against the back of Bear Heart with its might, hastening him. Led by the black shadow of his Spirit Ally, Bear Heart trudges through the blinding sheet of snow. The icy pellets sting his face. He has such a great distance to cover. Can he reach Alessandra in time?

  His body grows colder, as if in illumination. Inside his head, something gleams like fire. It gives him the power to see with closed eyes into the darkness, into the hidden things. Brother Raven shows him someone is with her. A man. They huddle in the lee of a circular stone wall. A kiva, of course. As if they are seeking to return to the womb.

  But which kiva? There are many, clustered together.

  The kiva’s wall is buttressed by other walls, mostly in rubble. Bear Heart recognizes the ruins of his ancestors, the Ancient Ones, whose rituals are a primary force in his daily life.

  His face grows numb, the feeling gone from his hands and feet. The thought crosses his mind that he might still be in the Ordinary World. Isn’t the raven both Trickster as well as Transformer?

  But, no, Bear Heart feels he has passed into the Non-ordinary World, if only because of the power surging through him. That has occurred most frequently in the midst of a Supreme Ordeal, a crisis involving an encounter with Death. It would come suddenly, in an instant, whether he went out to meet Death or to seek Life.

  Bear Heart’s legs stiffen. Refuse to cooperate. He begins to chant. He wills his pulse to beat the drum. The ritual action exerts some measure of contact with and control over spirits inaccessible to human beings in the Ordinary World. Enables him to gain control over a cosmos of uncertainty. Empowers him to transcend mortal’s concept of time and space. Helps him to reestablish communication between the spiritual and the physical realm.

  The chanter becomes the chant. As shaman, he is now being chanted by the powerful energies he is channeling.

  Soon natural and supernatural commingle in the person of him as shaman. Only as shaman is he able to assume qualities of both a god and a human. An interspecies being, as well as a channel for the gods. A mediator between the untamed and uncharted forces of nature and the human spirit.

  Following Brother Raven’s flapping wings, he strides through icy winds, fords stormy rivers, and shoves his way through icicle forests. Suddenly, the white veil parts, gives him a glimpse of Pueblo Bonito, and swishes closed. Above his own chanting, he hears voices. Gradually, the voices crescendo. Voices of the Ancient Ones, coming and going through several thousand years. They whisper, murmur. Distorted, distracting.

  He shuts his ears to them. Continuing to chant, he forges ahead. He keeps Brother Raven in sight. The scavenger eats all that is not Truth so that Bear Heart can get to the bones. Get to his beloved’s spirit.

  He can only surrender to Brother Raven and honor the great mystery of life and death. The song of the raven is the Call to Truth. And Truth, here and now, is Alessandra. Her energy is like a stream, flowing alongside of his over the eons. Some lifetimes, interflowing with his. Other lifetimes, flowing alongside his, paralleling but never touching.

  Alessandra is curled within the wind shield created by a big man’s arms. The two bodies are pressed together, seeking each other’s warmth. But each spirit is asleep. Sleeping deeper into death. Bear Heart feels her throat, searching for her pulse. Finds it, still beating faintly but rhythmically — undoubtedly due to her companion’s shielding body.

  The white man’s pulse is shallower, erratic. Is this a man to whom she has given herself? The blackness of jealousy slams Bear Heart, threatening to return his body to its heavy, physical state. He draws in light through his lungs, dispersing the darkness. The man needs his help, too.

  Brother Raven caws, beckoning Bear Heart to follow its flight again. Quickly Bear Heart takes the white man’s arm and hefts the heavy body over his own back. Standing, he shifts the man’s weight so that it is balanced evenly cross his own shoulders, and starts walking where Brother Raven leads. Bear Heart’s snowshoes sink in the powdered snow. Several times, he staggers. Once, he loses sight of Brother Raven, but the bird’s raucous shriek guides him through the dense, white fog.

  At last, he sees his destination. Brother Raven sits on the canvas top of the white man’s vehicle. A big truck. Why had the two foolishly left its shelter?

  Gasping, he deposits the white man behind the wheel and sets off again for The People’s ruins. Without the human load, he moves swiftly, covering the way back in less than the tick of the second hand of white man’s clock.

  Alessandra lies against the rubble, as white as the snow drifting upon her. He kneels over her, lays his fingers alongside her throat again.

  No pulse.

  His fingers press lower, beneath her snow-encrusted woolen coat, toward the delicate hollow where her collarbones converge. Frantically, he searches for some sign of life. So rapidly, she has left her body, that encasement of bones and flesh.

  No!

  The outcry causes Brother Raven to cant his head and watch the Passion Play curiously.

  Tears freeze instantly as crystals on Bear Heart’s lashes. Is he not a healer? Can he not heal the one he loves most?

  Then he finds her pulse, sighing as it loses its light.

  Wild with fear, he tears off his coat of animal furs, crouches over her, and, peeling back her coat, thrusts up her cashmere sweater. Then, he stretches his massive mahogany body atop that small, frail, ivory one. His heat begins to infuse the body.

  His throat takes up the magical chant. Sings of the potency of the journey. The relationship between birth, death, and sex.

  In my throat is a living sun.

  A living spirit song.

  My name is Long-Life-Maker.

  Yes, I’m here to heal

  With the healing ways

  Of the Magic-of-the-Ground

  And the Magic-of-the-Earth.

  And you will spring to life

  Through the power of the words,

  Through the Magic-of-the-Ground.

  The Magic-of-the-Earth.

  Brother Raven joins in the song. Its harsh cry transmutes into the sacred rattle: Bear Heart’s heart beats the sacred drum. As a last act, his mouth seals over hers. His breath moves through that encasement of bones and their flesh-covering, searching for her retreating spirit.

  The affinity that binds him to her maps the way for him to find her, to call the dreamer back to him. This sacred marriage with the untamed spirit of the opposite sex, brings together the slayer and the slain as one. The plow and the fertilized. The lover and the beloved.

  The drum, the dance . . . all begin the unearthly trans-temporal experience of ecstasy that opens communications with the supernatural. In this way, Bear Heart stands outside what he is in the Ordinary World. He enters her Ordinary World containment. The wizard empties himself into her. Partakes of the mysterium. His shaman’s spirit is self-fertilized in his experience of ecstasy.

  And he knows. He knows that a spell has been created binding him to her for lifetimes – a spell that the Ordinary World cannot break.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Bureau of Indian Affair’s clini
c at Shiprock was little more than a dispensary with its rawboned Indian agent doing double duty as doctor.

  “Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.” William Shelton’s well-aimed plug of tobacco hit the spittoon with a ‘tinng.’ “You two sleeping like babies in the storm. Thought at first you’d passed out from too much Taos Lightning.”

  He paused long enough to take the thermometer from between Alessandra’s quivering lips. “Yep, you’re gonna do fine, miss. A little frost bite on your fingertips, at most.” He popped open a small jar of ointment. “Now your partner, here, could suffer a mite of damage to his ears.”

  “I feel like a fool, Bill,” Neil said, pulling the slipping Pendleton blanket back around his shoulders. “I should have known better than to risk showing Mrs. O’Quinn the ruins when I could see that norther’ boiling on the horizon.”

  “Don’t take yo’rself to task, Judd. When a body’s temperature starts a’fallin’, you don’t think straight. The Norther’ crept upon me, too.” After brushing back lank brown hair from his hatchet-faced visage, he lightly dabbed the ointment on Alessandra’s fingertips. “Don’t rub ’em together, ma’am. Gotta be gentle with frostbite. Yep, I thought I’d beat it back to Shiprock afore it hit, but, by gum, if it didn’t sneak upon me quicker than greased lightning and ’bout blew my ol’ Haynes convertible off the road.”

  He stepped over to Judd sitting on the hardback chair, opposite the examination table where Alessandra perched, and dabbed at the man’s left ear. “If it hadn’t been for that Injun standin’ long side, I’d gone off in the bar ditch. Thank your lucky stars that Injun told me ’bout you two.”

  Alessandra’s head jerked up, her attention riveted on the Indian agent. “What Indian?”

  “Well, I don’t rightly know. I thought he was a grizzly, at first, standing ’long side the road in that animal skin coat, the snow swirling all ’bout him. Almost didn’t stop. Even when I realized he was Injun. He coulda been one of those what might be jest as happy to take my scalp. But Lord knows, you gotta take pity on the poor savages. ’specially one out in that blizzard. So I stopped to give him a lift. He didn’t want one. Jest wanted to show me the truck where you two were. Wouldn’t even git in my Haynes. Jest walked, leading me off road to the ruins. How in name of Beelzebub he could find his way back through that damned snowstorm beats the piss out of me . . . pardon me, ma’am.”