by Alisa Valdes
She looked hurt and shrugged, and totally missed my subliminal messaging technique. “Okay. I’m used to it. He’ll just be the new guy who comes between us, is that it?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, Kelsey. I do. I want to so badly it hurts. But I can’t.”
“I understand,” she said, seeming to be hurt by my words.
“Don’t take it the wrong way. Please?”
The good thing about Kelsey was that she had a singular ability to consider things before reacting to them. This was one of those times. “Can I think about this a while?” she asked me.
“Of course.”
“Okay.”
I turned my eyes to the playing fields once more, hoping to calm my brain down enough to slip into a cozy denial once more, but this was not to be, because tied to one of the aforementioned deciduous trees, a tree that moments ago had been reaching in solitary determination to the sky, was a small black dog.
Buddy.
The rope was long and red, and stood out crisply against the white snow, as did the dog. My dog.
“Omigod,” I said, under my breath. My pulse did that thing it was getting so good at now, and began to hammer away inside of me.
I scanned the field with my eyes, looking for Demetrio. But I saw nothing. Just Buddy, the red rope, the trees, and the otherwise vacant snowy fields. Buddy, being his usual self and appearing unharmed, tugged at the rope and yapped at the crows flying overhead. They were bigger than he was, but being a Chihuahua he was certain that he was the biggest and most fearsome dog who ever lived. I watched, astonished and unsure about how to handle situation, as Buddy pulled and pulled at the tether.
Soon, the rope came loose from the tree, and Buddy got his wish of freedom. He promptly squandered it in running across the field, chasing crows straight toward Adelante Road. The good news was that Adelante Road was far enough away that it would take Buddy a minute or two to get there. The bad news was that Buddy was inexplicably drawn to busy streets, and seemed to think that it was a Chihuahua’s macho duty in life to challenge moving cars to a duel, confident that he would always win. Given that he was roughly the same color as blacktop, I was forever rescuing him from this particular delusion.
“Oh, no,” I said, in a panic.
Before I knew what I was doing, I was up out of my seat, shrugging back into my jacket and backpack, hightailing it toward the door, against every school rule, and with the eyes of a dozen newly minted enemies upon me.
♦
“Maria!” cried Yazzie.
I ignored her, and sprinted out the door, down the steps, and around the building, toward the playing fields. I ran and ran, and soon saw Buddy tripping along happily toward the road.
“Buddy!” I screamed. “Stop! Stop!”
As usual, he turned to acknowledge my voice and command with a smile, and quickly returned to his task of suicide by car.
“No! Bad dog! Stay!”
He ignored me some more, stopping only to sniff a tumbleweed that had recently been showered, one assumed, by the steaming effluvium of some other canine.
“Stop right now!” I shrieked, sprinting faster now. The cold air made me cough, and fogged my glasses, but I kept running. When I got to within ten feet of him, Buddy seemed to realize that resistance was futile at last. He curled his body toward me, simpering, and dropped to his back, apologetic.
“Bad dog!” I said again, as I reached him.
Buddy wagged his tail and flattened his ears against his head to let me know he meant it.
I scooped him up into my arms, and kissed him. “You bad, stupid, crazy little dog!” I kissed him again. “What is wrong with you?”
Buddy licked my chin, as though “loving Maria” were the correct answer. Perhaps it was.
“Where have you been?”
I was so happy to have him back, I almost couldn’t stand it. I cried and laughed, and snuggled and cuddled him. I was so involved with this emotional reunion that I almost didn’t notice Demetrio standing between a couple of evergreens, at the far end of the field, watching.
My face lit up at the sight of him in his baggy jeans and parka, and head bandana with sparkly studs in each ear. He looked as fresh and inappropriate as a gangsta rap video. He smiled back, though with trepidation. I ran to him, dog in my arms, and flopped against him. He smelled like ozone.
“I’m so happy to see you,” I told him as I melted into his embrace. “You’re real. How is it that I can feel you?”
“It just is. I can’t stay,” he said. “I’m happy to see you too, mamita, but I gotta jet.”
“Just tell me how you’re real, if you’re not.”
“I’m real. As real as you are. I just wanted to bring Buddy back, and ask you to meet me this afternoon,” he said. “We’ll talk then. I’ll explain everything, if I can. There’s a test you have to do.”
“What kind of a test?”
“A ceremony. Sort of a blessing. I can’t explain it now. They’re coming.”
I turned back toward the library, and saw what he saw: a line of people standing at the other end of the playing field, coming after me. Yazzie was among them, as was Kelsey. They watched me standing with my arms around Demetrio, a small black dog between us. Their faces betrayed grave concern. In the trees above them, crows cawed.
“Wait! I have something to ask you.”
He waited, impatiently.
“Were you in my dream the other night? With the dark room, and the candles?”
“No,” he said with a naughty grin. “You were in mine, though.” He reached out and drew a triangle in the air with his finger. “Obtuse, equilateral, Pythagorean, scalene, isosceles.”
“How?” I asked breathlessly, my heart racing. It was amazing. Exciting. There’s no way he could have known about the triangle in the dream unless I’d told him, which I had not.
“You better get back to class,” he said. “You have an angry mob on your tail. Meet me at the church, after school. Skip dance. We have to do it early. I’m sorry. I’ll never ask you to miss it again.”
“Okay.” I clung to him, but he was stronger than I was, and managed to peel my arms off of him. I waited for him to kiss me, but again he backed away, quickly now, avoiding my eyes. I tried to follow him, but he cut me off with a fierce look, and a stern shake of his head.
“Later,” he said. “Like I told you, I want to, but I can’t.”
I faced the field, and began to walk toward the library, and the crowd of people. As I returned to them, carrying my tiny dog that had been whisked off in the jaws of a monster coyote the night before, fresh from what must have looked like me making out with one of the hoodlums Logan had apparently posted, I had to think of a lie to tell them, and quickly. I hated this.
“Hello,” I called as cheerfully as I could, when I got within earshot of my class, all of whom apparently found my mental breakdown much more interesting than the controversy surrounding photorealism in art.
“A ghost,” whispered Yazzie, her eyes filled with tears, as I passed her. She stared at the figure of Demetrio as he stalked across the field toward Adelante. “He’s got a golden 4th aura. A good revenant. I knew it.”
“I’m sorry. I brought my dog to school,” I mumbled, even as I stared at her in wide-eyed shock. “Silly me?”
Yazzie composed herself, wagged a finger at me sternly, looking around her at the other teachers and students.
“You are going to the office with me right now!” Yazzie practically shouted this information, clearly a performance for the benefit of the others. “Everyone else, back to the library. I’ll be back as soon as I get this disobedient Maria to the headmaster’s.”
Kelsey looked back at me over her shoulder, with a worried look, as she walked with the rest of the class back to the library. Yazzie clipped ahead, trying mightily to look like a normal, strict teacher type. In the end, she looked like a witch trying to belly dance.
“Maria,” she said, loudly, “you of
all kids should know better.”
I came to walk next to her, Buddy happy in my arms, oblivious to everything but the crows in the trees.
“I can explain,” I told Yazzie.
“Shh,” she said, conspiratorially, looking about to make sure no one was within earshot. “I know. I get it.” She spoke in a low voice. “I’m not taking you to the headmaster. We’re going to my office.”
“What? Why?”
The flock of the crows seemed to be following us, and Yazzie noticed as surely as I did. One in particular seemed bigger than the others, in charge. It had yellow eyes, and seemed to be smiling as it swooped down toward us and then soared back into the sky. I felt I’d seen it before somewhere. We walked clear across the campus, and the bird followed overhead, doing its dance, cawing a laughing sort of caw at us, enjoying itself.
“Morboso,” Yazzie grumbled, sizing up the large bird, stopping in her tracks in the center of a school courtyard when she’d had enough of its teasing.
“What?” I asked, aghast. “How do you know that word? That’s the plumber’s word.”
“Don’t look it in the eyes.”
“The bird?”
Yazzie ignored me and, muttering, burrowed through her large hobo handbag, retrieving from it a wooden slingshot and a rock the size of a large marble. With amazing dexterity and speed, she loaded the rock into the device, and shot it at the crow, narrowly missing the bird yet managing to relieve it of a few tail feathers.
“Be gone, ánt’įįhnii!” she screamed, loading another rock and launching it toward the creature as it winging away in a panic, and then another, until is was gone.
“What are you doing?” I cried.
“Protecting you.” She grabbed me by the arm. “Let’s go inside.”
“You look insane,” I told her, as I followed her into her office.
“Ask me if I care.”
“I’m guessing not.”
“Correct.”
Yazzie sat down at her desk, and waited for me to sit in a nearby chair.
“Do you have the story I gave you?” she asked.
I had worn a different jacket, and besides which had left it in the library in my haste to save Buddy from traffic. Yazzie produced another copy of it, yellowed and torn as the first, and instructed me to read it aloud, for her.
“Do I have to?”
She put her hand on mine. “I know you think I’m nuts, okay? I know that’s what you all think of me. But I see a lot of Changing Woman in you. Okay?”
“Who?”
“The great Goddess. I see her in you. This is a changing season for you. Do not be afraid of the Blessing Way, when it comes.”
“The what?”
“The ceremony.”
“That’s what he just told me. He wants me to go to a ceremony later today.”
“Good! The sooner the better. You should go. You have the feel of Kindreds. I picked up on it right away.”
“What is a Kindred?”
“He’ll tell you. Read me the story.”
I did as she told me. It was a fable from the local Cochiti Indian pueblo, about a boy made fun of by all the other boys in his village. He ends up leading a successful hunt through his smarts, and the boys who mocked him become the outcasts. The boy becomes the leader after the grandfather dies. Etc.
“And?” I asked, when I was through.
“There is meaning in this, for you.”
“I don’t understand it.”
“Be strong, Maria. It will make sense. Take the right path now, and you will triumph in the end.”
“And what if I don’t take the right path, by mistake?”
“The morboso knows who you are, and where you are, and who your friend is. Taking the wrong path is a bad idea.”
“Kelsey?”
“The one who thinks I never remember her,” said Yazzie. “She is marked. I’ve sensed this. That is why I try not to draw undue attention to her.”
“What does that mean, that she’s marked?”
“Perilous. Very dangerous for her.”
“Are you sure?”
“The morboso watches her. If you take the wrong path, she will be the one to pay.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s how this morboso do things. Go to your ceremony. Do as the revenant boy instructs you. Listen, here,” she touched her solar plexus. “The heart knows. This is a wonderful journey you’ve set out upon. If you do it right.”
“And if I don’t?”
“If you don’t, I am sorry to say someone probably will die.”
“Kelsey?”
“I cannot say.”
I sat in shock, not knowing whether or not to believe her.
“Now,” she said. “Let’s both pretend we never had this talk. You will go back to class, tell everyone it was all cleared up and you will never take your dog to school again, even though we know you didn’t bring him here. The revenant did.”
She ran her hand over Buddy, with half-closed eyes.
“He has been there,” she said, looking mournfully at my dog. “You poor, dear creature.”
“Where?”
“To the Very Bad Place,” she said with a horrible shudder. “He dragged him there.”
“Demetrio?”
“Is this your ghost’s name? Demetrio?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head vehemently. “No, not him. Demetrio would never do that. I painted all of this last night, it came to me. This is my medicine, painting. This is my way of knowing things. The one who took your dog to the other side, he is the enemy of your ghost. He is a chindi.”
“My ghost has an enemy?”
“A chindi enemy. Yes. Very much so, yes. But he thinks this is a friend.”
“Who is he, this enemy?”
“I do not know his name, only that it is - let’s see. I think they behave as very close friends, as brothers. Demetrio is unaware of the true nature of this chindi. Blind to it. Be very careful of the morboso, the chindi. Now, let’s go from here and not speak of this again today.”
♦
Hours later, after miraculously getting through my finals in spite of my racing mind, I parked the Land Rover in the otherwise empty lot at the church on the hill in Golden. I was astonished upon opening my car door to find Nutmeg, the revived Tramway Boulevard Chow, waiting for me there, smiling with her wet black eyes, wagging her tail. I set Buddy on the ground next to her. The animals sniffed each other’s rear-ends in greeting, making me grateful - and not for the first time - that I wasn’t born a dog.
I looked around, and didn’t see anyone else around. I did notice, however, that the door to the church was open a crack, as was the usually padlocked gate leading to the graveyard.
Finished “greeting” Buddy’s nether regions, Nutmeg pawed the frozen pebbles on the ground as she tended to do when she wanted me to follow her, and with a quick glance at me over her shoulder, set off at a trot toward the gate. Buddy gamely followed her, his tail held high with confidence that he’d just conned a new female into joining his expansive harem. I brought up the back of this odd parade of creatures, curiosity and dread battling for dominion of my emotions with each footfall. My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I assumed it was my mother, who’d been calling me frantically almost since I’d left school. I hated that she was worried, but right now I could not concern myself with her. I had bigger issues at hand. I reached into my pocket, and turned the phone off.
I entered the darkness of the sacristy, and was hit with a thick, musty, papery smell, an earthy smell. The air was as cold inside the building as it was outside. My eyes quickly adjusted to the change in light, and I was soon able to make out the small room. It was much changed from the last time I was here, in that it was occupied.
At the other end of the room from me, at the altar stood a very tall, very thin man, with a plump, pleasant-faced woman. I instantly recognized the man as the same one who had told me and Kelsey to get of
f of his land down the road from here. He and the woman looked up at me from their work arranging candles, containers, and what appeared to be surgical instruments, upon the large wooden table. I smiled meekly at them. They did not smile or return my wave of greeting. Rather, they watched me warily, flinchingly in the woman’s case. They were, I realized, afraid of me for some reason. This was not comforting in the least.
I walked toward them, marveling as I did at he sheer quantity of animals here - dogs and cats, but also deer, bears, and the baby bobcat Demetrio had held in his arms. Buddy was beside himself with fear, facing so many other animals that were bigger than he was. He was boastful under most circumstances, but did have it in him to recognize the truth of his size when push came to shove.
He cowered behind me now, trying to dart between my legs with every step I took. Curiously, none of the other dogs attempted to greet him, or me. Like the cats, who displayed a profound courage considering their mixed company, they sat perfectly still, and watched us move with patient, knowing eyes. It was uncanny, and more than a little creepy. All of the animals stayed still, and payed attention as though they understood what was happening here. I, for one, did not. At all.
“Well, hello,” I said sarcastically to the cranky, horrible man, when I got within earshot of the couple.
“Sit down, there,” said the man, pointing to the front pew without looking up from his task. He was just as unhappy to see me now as he had been before.
“So, what’s happening here?” I asked, jovially. “Ritual sacrifice? Neighborhood potluck?”
“Be quiet, please,” said the man, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “You give me a headache.”
“Sorry. I have some Tylenol in the car, if you want it...”
“Silence!” he roared.
“Alrighty then.”
I sat quietly and observed them. There were boxes of powders and vials of liquid upon the table, and greenery that seemed to have been take from trees outside. Candles of different sizes, all of them white, burned. I noticed now that the man and woman both wore brown robes, the same kind Demetrio had worn in the dream I’d had about him, but with colorful woven Pueblo-style serapes draped over them. The man had what appeared to be a fox skin hanging from his roped belt. The woman wore a pendant around her neck that appeared to be in the shape of a very fat, or very pregnant, woman. They both had moccasins on their feet, and small, colorful feathers woven though their hair.