The Almanac of the Dead

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  “But that’s okay,” Mosca said through clenched teeth as he turned onto the gravel of Calabazas’s driveway. “We’ll take care of the pigs when the big day comes!” Mosca slowed the truck and looked intently at Root. Root shook his head. The Hopi must be crazy. White inmates hated black inmates and Hispanic inmates, and vice versa. Snitches were everywhere. Even if rioting started, what was the purpose? Mosca had been driving down Calabazas’s driveway and braked sharply. “The purpose? What’s the purpose?” Mosca started laughing, then stamped the accelerator so hard the big four-wheel-drive fishtailed and splashed gravel all the way to the big cottonwood tree in the yard. “Making big trouble is the purpose,” Mosca said. “Those fucking pigs won’t know which way to run!”

  A SERIES OF POPES HAD BEEN DEVILS

  ROOT SAW CARS he did not recognize parked next to Calabazas’s pickup; Mosca shrugged his shoulders. “Church people,” he said. Mosca did not care, but the strange cars made Root nervous. Liria and Sarita knew better than to hide refugees there, but sometimes they held meetings at the house.

  Calabazas had been sitting outside under the cottonwood tree in the remains of an old recliner chair, drinking a beer. There was a beat-up Styrofoam ice chest next to the chair. The sun had already dropped behind the trees along the river. Calabazas grinned at them. His hair was white at the temples and his mustache was silver. As they dragged lawn chairs to the tree, Calabazas popped open two more cans of beer. Calabazas looked a little drunk.

  “You still trying to figure out the meaning of life, old man?” Mosca said.

  “That’s right,” Calabazas said, “I thought I better get started on it while I’m still alive.” A cool wind rose from the river and stirred the cottonwood leaves. The three men drank silently and watched the sunset blaze red-orange across the sky. Actually Calabazas had been thinking about time.

  In the darkness Mosca could make out figures, but the voices were whispers. Cars started and turned down the driveway. The meeting was over. Mosca was already drunk. Mosca said he didn’t trust anything connected with the Catholic Church, and he didn’t trust anyone connected with the Catholic Church either. Mosca was always ready to bicker with Liria or Sarita over the Church. Mosca had been restless for weeks. He wanted action, he wasn’t happy with the things he had bought. The new clothes, new truck, and better whores had been exciting to dream about, but once he had them, he had realized how worthless they were. The clothes and the truck had changed nothing. The whores had worked like vacuum cleaners sucking him off, and for the money, Mosca understood why men invested in plastic inflatable women or Japanese battery-operated vaginas.

  What did the Church want? Was it different from what the generals wanted, or from what the rich wanted from the poor and the Indians? All the Church had ever done was snatch food from the mouths of the hungry in the name of Jesus Christ. The nuns and priests who called themselves the Liberation Church were puppets used by the Church to give poor people the illusion the Church was on their side. Anytime they wanted, the Church could have stopped their clergy from smuggling political refugees out of the South. But over the centuries the Church had learned to keep potential troublemakers, priests and nuns and “penitents” such as Sarita and Liria, safely occupied.

  The Church demanded the Indians pray only to Jesus. The Church didn’t want the people to listen to the spirits of ancestors or animals or rocks. The Church wanted Indians to feel and think like whites. Mosca wasn’t fooled; it was like the routine the pigs had: bad cop, good cop. The Church played the good cop. Smuggling out a few political refugees gave the Church good publicity.

  Mosca had got himself worked up. From the Catholic Church he had leaped to the Italians and the Mafia; the pope was part of the Mafia. Mosca knew his catechism. Mosca had been swatted with a flyswatter by the nuns if he did not repeat his catechism. The pope could stop Church sacraments to anyone for any reason; yet the pope had not stopped the sacraments to the army officers who hunted down and shot Yaqui women and children. The Church had two faces it wore in Mexico; both were mask faces. The truth was the Devil had taken over the Catholic Church sometime after Saint Peter died. After the takeover, the Devil had declared himself pope; a series of devils had been pope, and often the popes had had numerous wives and illegitimate children. The popes had been poisoners and sexual inverts because the devils lived in them and in their priests and nuns, whom Martin Luther had finally caught at their devil Masses and lewd celebrations. The Devil, the Church, and the Mafia were a world conspiracy as Mosca saw it.

  Root had been baptized a Catholic, but had refused to have a priest visit him in the hospital. Root had stopped believing a couple of years before the accident. He didn’t care what Mosca said about the Mafia and the Church; but he had been surprised when Mosca started talking about Max and Sonny Blue. Root had not heard Mosca talk about the Italians for a while; the Tucson families had had the pie split up before the Italians ever got to Tucson. The Mafia had been warned by the other white men; leave the border to the Indians unless you have wings. The Indians were allied with the desert inferno; all others died there. Mafia nephews and son-in-laws bought “legitimate” small businesses—sausage shops in shopping malls, or pinball and vending-machine concessions or private garbage collection. Max Blue’s wife kept buying real estate.

  Mosca had always enjoyed imaginary plots in which he surprised everyone and betrayed them all. Mosca loved to imagine the expression on Calabazas’s face when he discovered his wife had fucked to death a Church monsignor. Even with the old monsignor dead, Calabazas had lost his wife to the Church. Having the other sister was no consolation that Mosca could see; both women were under the control of priests. Sarita had taken up the refugee work only because the priests had threatened her with eternal hell for killing the old monsignor with sex. Churches had always made clever use of the money and manpower of sinners. Penitent sinners would do anything the Church told them to do.

  THE HOPI HAS ANSWERS FOR EVERYTHING

  ROOT WANTED to get Mosca off the subject of the Church so he could find out more about the Barefoot Hopi. Root asked Calabazas if he had ever met the Hopi. Mosca had, of course, answered before Calabazas himself could speak; no, only Mosca knew the Hopi, but soon people all over the world would hear about the Hopi. The Hopi was the organizer. The Hopi had dedicated his life to one day of mutual cooperation among all incarcerated persons in North America and in Mexico. Mosca was high and drunk. After his release, the Barefoot Hopi had traveled to prisons all over the United States where he had petitioned federal courts to obtain special permission as a clergyman to perform religious rites for imprisoned Native Americans.

  In prison they’d all learned to respect the Hopi because he had continued to practice his religious beliefs. The Hopi claimed his religion included everyone; everyone was born belonging to the earth. Some Hopis and other Indians had called the Barefoot Hopi a witch because he talked about the dead as if their spirits still hovered among the living. Those who objected to talk about the spirits of the dead were either Christians or staunchly traditional Navajos and Apaches uncomfortable with the subject of dead souls.

  Mosca had attended all of the Hopi’s Sunday services while he was in prison, and he had watched how the Hopi’s strategy worked. At first there had only been Indians and Mexicans; that week the Barefoot Hopi had talked about desecration. Earth was their mother, but her land and water could never be desecrated; blasted open and polluted by man, but never desecrated. Man only desecrated himself in such acts; puny humans could not affect the integrity of Earth. Earth always was and would ever be sacred. Mother Earth might be ravaged by the Destroyers, but she still loved the people. Mosca had listened to the Hopi talk for over an hour.

  As the months passed, more guys showed up, and they had permission to meet for two hours. Then a few blacks had come, blacks who believed they had Native American ancestry. After the black Indians, then other blacks had showed up; these guys had been quiet and never spoke; last came the white
guys—some who were mixed bloods, and others who felt like Indians in their hearts—whatever that meant. The Hopi’s religion made no distinctions. A few had showed up because they had heard wild rumors. The Hopi was always aware some might be spies.

  Mosca took a big hit off the joint and passed it to Calabazas; he puffed out his cheeks and chest and held his breath until he started coughing. “You should hear the Hopi tell it,” Mosca said. “He’s in town for some kind of healers’ convention. You should go.” Calabazas and Root had both nodded, and the three sat listening to the sirens and what sounded like gunshots in the distance. A police helicopter flew over the neighborhood flashing searchlights over roofs and backyards. Mosca’s attention shifted briefly to the police helicopter. “The Hopi has an answer for everything,” Mosca went on dreamily. “We know what the Hopi’s answer to a helicopter is. Boom!” Mosca pointed his finger at the sky.

  “You they’ll put in the gas chamber,” Calabazas said. “The Hopi had an excuse; he was protecting his religion.”

  “They might shoot me, but they won’t put me in no gas chamber,” Mosca said. “There won’t be any more prisons or gas chambers left by then anyway.”

  Calabazas and Root had learned not to argue with Mosca. Root could tell Calabazas was as skeptical as he was about any plans to organize a national uprising of prison riots and jailbreaks all over the United States. It wasn’t likely all the prisons and jails would participate, and everything in the Hopi’s plan depended upon simultaneous riots so that police and other law enforcement would be overwhelmed. Calabazas had asked what the Barefoot Hopi planned to do about the National Guard and the U.S. army. Even if state police and law enforcement were overwhelmed, there were still the military and of course, citizen volunteers. The air force would drop bombs on jails and prisons to stop the uprisings. Root had expected an angry outburst from Mosca when Calabazas asked about the air force; instead, Mosca had remained calm.

  “Well, you’re thinking just like the white man thinks, aren’t you?” Mosca said. “Listen to the Hopi. Army, Air Force, or Marines—the Hopi doesn’t worry about them. When the time comes, they’ll all be busy too. Anyway, bombs and guns are the least important weapons. The power lies in the presence of the spirits and their effect on our enemies’ morale.” The Barefoot Hopi was not the only one in contact with the spirits. Mosca reminded Calabazas and Root about the spirit voice in his own right shoulder. So far the spirit voice had not said much. A spirit didn’t actually need a voice to communicate; the spirit put the idea into your head out of the blue. When the spirit had filled the people, then all at once the people would know what they must do. The Hopi didn’t mean any Christian Holy Spirit either.

  The Hopi refused even to argue whether it was one spirit with many dimensions or many spirits with singular dimensions. That was white man talk. Instead the Hopi had talked about Buffalo Man, who had seduced Yellow Woman in the old stories. Buffalo Man’s spirit had moved from a human body to a buffalo bull’s body effortlessly.

  BOOK TWO

  THE WARRIORS

  GETTING OLD

  IT HAD BEEN a long time since Calabazas had got so drunk by himself; Mosca and Root had left hours before. Calabazas liked the way the sound of the crickets and his own breathing were in harmony. The whole world had gone crazy after Truman dropped the atomic bombs; the few old-time people still living then had said the earth would never be the same. Human beings could expect to be forsaken by the rain clouds, and all the animals and plants would disappear. All over the world Europeans had laughed at indigenous people for worshiping the rain clouds, the mountains, and the trees. But now Calabazas had lived long enough to see the white people stop laughing as all the trees were cut and all the animals killed, and all the water dirtied or used up. White people were scared because they didn’t know where to go or what to use up and pollute next.

  It was after three but neither Liria nor Sarita had come home. The U.S. government did not want the people Liria and Sarita and their Church comrades were smuggling across the border. Zeta and Lecha would say right there was the best reason to do it—because the U.S. didn’t want any more brown Indians or white Spanish-speakers on the streets of Los Angeles or El Paso. Still Calabazas tended to agree with Mosca that the motives of the Church might not be as simple and pure as the fervent nuns and priests imagined.

  Calabazas took full responsibility for how things had turned out with Sarita and Liria. At one time Calabazas had spent a great deal of time with Zeta on his mind. The two beautiful sisters hadn’t been enough trouble; Calabazas had not been able to resist Zeta, who called herself an enemy of the United States government. Zeta swore each shipment of contraband was a victory against the United States government.

  Calabazas liked to watch sunrise the way the old people had when he was a child. He thought it was funny the way the human mind only copied itself over and over, yet everything found itself radically changed. He watched the sky but he did not see what they had seen. Perhaps the earth was spinning faster than before; rumors like this had circulated among tribal people since the First World War. Calabazas had heard the arguments the traditional believers had had among themselves—each accusing the other of being tainted by Mormonism or Methodism or the Catholic Church. But he had also heard them discuss the increased spin of the earth; others disagreed and had asserted it was instead the universe running downhill from a great peak and the increased speed was only temporary, before it reached the plain to slow gradually and regain a measure of stability.

  Calabazas himself had no proof about the speed of the earth or about time. He did not think time was absolute or universal; rather each location, each place, was a living organism with time running inside it like blood, time that was unique to that place alone.

  Calabazas no longer recognized himself in the stories Mosca or the others told about Calabazas’s adventures thirty years before. The man in the stories sounded familiar, and Calabazas could recall what had happened, but the man he had once been was gone. Liria and Sarita had recently accused him of getting soft inside like white-bread dough; maybe they were right. Most of his life Calabazas had traveled back and forth across the border in a beat-up old truck or leading a string of pack burros on his little spotted mule. Calabazas had not been careful with money. If he had worked alone, and for himself, he might have been rich, though who knows? But Calabazas had worked with the people who had loved and cared for him as a child; he had worked with his relatives and his clanspeople in the Sonoran mountain villages. He had routinely made advances and gave out loans for no interest. He split profits fifty-fifty with village farmers, but he paid all the expenses himself as his pledge to them. He had not been a good businessman. He had not bought land and new houses; he had not bought gold or guns as Zeta had. He had given Sarita and Liria all the money they had ever asked for.

  Calabazas could also feel his own time running inside himself, pounded out by his heart. The bones and meat hauled the soul around for fifty or sixty years then let go. He had seen a great many changes in the United States and in Mexico during his lifetime, and they had all been ominous. Calabazas had asked the elders, but native people around Tucson could not remember when they had seen so many white people—women and children—living in cars and in camps under the trees.

  Now even crackpots such as Mosca’s pal the Hopi were planning and plotting. All the past summer, Calabazas had watched the riots and the looting in a dozen U.S. cities. Calabazas had noticed an important difference: this time the rioters did not loot or set fires in black neighborhoods. They had set fire to Hollywood instead, and hundreds and hundreds of both black and white youths had blocked fire fighters and fought police on Sunset Boulevard. The rioters had chanted, “Burn, Hollywood, burn!”

  Calabazas remembered the riots and looting in the sixties vividly. The U.S. president and Congress had done nothing for the poor until the poor had taken their anger to the streets. The people had high hopes for the war on poverty, but soon U.S. strategy maker
s had seen a better way to stop the riots in U.S. cities. If those young black and brown men rioting wanted to fight, then the U.S. had just the place for them in Southeast Asia. Those who had managed to survive Vietnam had been returned to their neighborhoods by the United States government addicted and maimed to ensure they wouldn’t take to the streets and fight anymore.

  Calabazas had given up on politics. Politics got you murdered in short order. Calabazas didn’t trust any government; Calabazas didn’t trust the Catholic Church either. Mosca had a good point: what business did the Church have removing political dissidents and activists? How were the people of those areas ever to rise up without their own leaders? The Church removed dissidents thousands of miles to the United States to keep them from causing any more trouble.

  Maybe there was something wrong with him, maybe time had worn something down inside Calabazas, as Liria had accused, and the flame had burned out. He was not ignorant. He had listened to the old ones bitterly recount the stories of the great war for their land; the people had never got tired of recounting Yoeme’s narrow escape from the hangman’s noose during the flu epidemic. Yoeme had been a big troublemaker among the Yaquis even before the revolution. The Mexican government had kept a bounty on her scalp; only Zapata might have pardoned her for her fierce war against the government, and the whites had murdered him.