by Rada, J. R.
A few moments later, David heard a man scream as another pair of snakes broke from the pile. David saw the rude man break from the crowd and run toward the parked cars.
“He must not like snakes,” Sarah said.
David laughed.
After a few minutes the snake men dashed into the circle, seized handfuls of the writhing snakes, and rushed out of the village and down the steep trails of the mesa to the fields below.
“They’ll thank the snakes and let them go now,” Sarah said to David.
In the plaza, the antelope men circled the plaza a few times, stamped on the plank over the sipapu to tell the underworld that the ceremony was over. Then they marched back to the kiva.
“I still don’t understand why the snakes don’t bite. How could they tell whether someone was pure of heart?” David asked Sarah.
“The dancers have worked for many days to cleanse themselves of evil. The snakes know that no harm will come to them and so they don’t bite. It’s an animal instinct.”
David wasn’t sure if he believed her or not, but it certainly seemed to work. None of the snakes had bitten any of the dancers, and luckily, none of the spectators either.
He walked back down the stone stairs to the ground. As he started to walk toward the pickup truck, he felt someone touch his hand. He looked to his left and saw Sarah holding his hand. She smiled at him and they walked to the truck together.
CHAPTER 36
Gary led the way as he, Lou, Christine, and Billy Joe worked their way through the tunnel leading from chamber twenty-three. It was a large tunnel with a seven-foot high ceiling. He glanced at the pedometer on his hip. They had travelled a little under a mile so far in this tunnel. He would have expected it to open up into another chamber before this. None of the other chambers were more than a quarter of a mile apart.
His foot kicked something and he heard it bounce along the floor of the cave. It had a hollow sound that made him stop.
“Something wrong?” Christine asked from behind him.
“I thought I just kicked a stone, but it didn’t sound like a stone,” Gary said.
He squatted down and looked in the direction he had kicked the stone. Only there was no stone. There was, however, a charred piece of wood. He grabbed it and stood up.
“What is it?” Lou asked as he came to the front of the line.
“A piece of wood,” Gary said.
“Wood? But that’s impossible,” Billy Joe told him. “This is the center of a cave not a forest.”
Gary held up the six-inch piece of wood. “Not only is it possible, but this branch has also been burnt.”
The group fell silent. Gary was thinking the same thing everyone else had to be thinking. How did a piece of wood wind up where there was no wood? How did a fire burn a piece of wood where there were no fires?
“It looks like it was part of a torch,” Christine said.
“Then either we are close to the natural entrance, or some unprepared fool decided to go exploring and got himself lost,” Gary said.
“There’s one more explanation,” Lou said. “What if it was part of a torch used by the Indians who left the kachina doll we found the day before yesterday?”
“There’s still the problem of what Indians would be doing so deep in a cave.”
Lou took the piece of wood from Gary’s hand and stared at it in the light of his head lamp.
“One thing’s for sure. We’re not the first people down here,” he told the others.
“Let’s keep going,” Billy Joe said. “I’ve waited long enough to find the next chamber.”
The entrance to the next chamber came a few hundred yards later. The group suddenly found themselves standing on a ledge staring out over a dark chasm. Their flashlight beams could not reach the opposite side of the chamber let alone the ground at the bottom of the chasm.
Gary moved closer to the edge and peered over it. Nothing. Nothing but absolute darkness. He took off his backpack and fished a light stick from it. It was a plastic tube filled with chemicals that when shaken, threw off a dim light. Gary shook the stick until it glowed, then he tossed it over the edge.
It seemed to fall slowly as if it were falling through water and not air. As it passed out of the range of Gary’s flashlight, he could still see a shrinking yellow line. That too, eventually disappeared, but Gary still hadn’t seen the bottom of the chasm.
He straightened up and turned to the others.
“Can you see the bottom?” Christine asked.
Gary shook his head. “The light stick may still be falling as far as I know.”
“Is it too far to rappel down?” Billy Joe asked.
Gary saw that the ledge behind Billy Joe continued to descend along the edge of the chasm.
“It’s too deep to rappel, but I think we may still be able to get down to the bottom,” he said. He pointed to the trail. “The ledge may go all the way down. Even if it doesn’t, it will get us a lot closer to the bottom than rappelling from here would get us.”
“So you want to go down to the bottom?” Lou asked.
“Don’t you? We’re all here to explore and map this cave system, and that’s part of it,” Gary said.
“But we’re not getting any closer to the natural entrance. We’re just getting deeper.”
“We can find the entrance later. Let’s find out where this trail goes and how deep this cavern is.”
Gary shouldered his pack and started toward the ledge.
CHAPTER 37
Sarah sat on the shelf of rock with her back to the pile of rocks that covered her grandfather’s burial place. This was the third night of her vigil. She didn’t think any animals would be able to get to her grandfather’s body, but she was still obligated to watch over his body and ensure her grandfather’s safe passage to the spirit world.
“Take him to your heart, Taiowa,” Sarah whispered to herself.
The watch was a tradition and tradition had suddenly become very important to her. She had lived with her grandfather for ten years and had accepted his beliefs and his ways because it pleased him, but she had never really believed in the legends. That is, she never believed in them until she saw one of them kill her grandfather.
The Bow Clan lived.
If there was another world inside the earth, one of the worlds of creation, what did that mean about the Hopis? Were they a different race of humans or had all humans emerged into the Fourth World through their own sipapus?
The thought that she might not be the same as other people, even other Indian races upset her. She had spent her childhood as an outsider in the white man’s world. She had always been different from them no matter how much she told herself otherwise. Now it seemed that perhaps she was different from other Indians as well.
Sarah heard a stone fall and for a moment, thought it might be her grandfather exiting from his body on his way to the spirit world. Instead, she saw David climbing the ledge toward her. When he reached where she was sitting on the ledge, he sat down next to her.
“I thought you were asleep back in town,” she said.
“I was.”
“How did you get out here?”
“I gave Ethan five dollars. He’s a very nice guy, and talented, too. I saw some of the jewelry he made. He probably makes a killing on that stuff in Phoenix.”
Sarah fingered her bracelet silently. David saw her and asked, “One of his?”
She nodded. David took her hand in his and brought the bracelet up closer to her face.
“Beautiful,” he said.
Sarah looked at him and then quickly looked away.
They sat quietly for awhile. David leaned back and looked up at the stars in the sky. Sarah shifted her body so she was close to him as she could get without actually touching him.
“Thank you for what you did this afternoon at the snake dance,” Sarah said unexpectedly.
“You mean the cameraman? I didn’t do anything. You did. I just helped,” David said modest
ly.
“But you didn’t have to.”
“Of course I did. You were right and he was wrong. And besides, he was pretty rude. I may not understand your religion, but just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t respect it. The same goes for him, too,” David explained.
“Why did you come here tonight?”
“I thought you might want some company. I know I did. It’s hard to explain, but even in that town full of people, I still feel alone. I keep expecting to see the second Bow Clansman come after me.”
Sarah nodded. “I still feel that way, especially now. My grandfather was one person I didn’t feel alone around, but with him gone...”
“You’re alone again,” David finished.
“Yes.”
“Then I hate to tell you what I came to tell you.” He paused and Sarah looked up at him. “I have to go back to Utah tomorrow.”
Sarah’s anger flared for some reason she didn’t understand. She felt as if David had just betrayed her in some way. But she had no hold on him, just as Ethan had no hold on her. David had come to Oraibi to honor Adam, not to be with her.
“Terrie’s funeral is tomorrow,” David was saying. “I should be there. It’s my fault she died. I should tell her I’m sorry.”
Sarah turned to David. “Why do you accept the responsibility of her death and my grandfather’s death so easily?”
“Because they are my fault. For some reason I can’t remember, the Bow Clan is after me and one of them can see through my eyes. He sees what I see. He saw Terrie through my eyes and killed her because he probably thought I was at her trailer. He saw you and Adam through my eyes and the Bow Clan attacked your camp and killed your grandfather. If it hadn’t been for me, both of them would still be alive.”
“But you can’t be held responsible for the actions of the Bow Clan. That’s like saying if I gave you directions to someplace and then you got hit by a car while you were crossing the road on your way there, it would be my fault,” Sarah told him.
“That’s different.”
Sarah crossed her arms over her chest. “How? You didn’t send the Bow Clan to them on purpose. If you’re going to martyr yourself, don’t do it slowly. When you’re back in Utah, wait around and let the Bow Clan get you. The last one hasn’t given up you know. He just can’t find you because you’re too far away from him.”
“Is that what you want me to do? To go back to Utah and fight him?”
Sarah turned away. “Of course not. But if you go back to Utah, the Bow Clansman will be able to find you again. He may come after you when you’re unprepared.”
“That’s a chance I have to take. Terrie was my girlfriend. I can’t be late for our last date.”
“Did you love her?” Sarah asked suddenly.
David rubbed his chin. “At first, definitely. At the end, I’m not so sure. She definitely didn’t love me.” Sarah decided not to ask how he knew Terrie hadn’t been in love with him when she died. “But you know how love is. It messes up your emotions when you’re too close to it. You have to step back away from it to see things straight. And the straight truth is that Terrie and I were probably going through the motions for the last three or four months. We had reached a point in our relationship that we couldn’t get past,” David said.
“No I don’t,” Sarah whispered.
“You don’t what?”
“I don’t know how love is.”
David arched his eyebrows. “You’ve never had a boyfriend?”
“I didn’t say that. I just said I don’t know what love is.”
“What’s the difference?”
Sarah stared at him. She turned away from him when she felt the dirty feeling return. When she felt tears start to well in her eyes, she stood up and ran further up the side of the mesa. David quickly caught up with her and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“I’m sorry if I said something to upset you. I didn’t mean to.”
Sarah turned, leaned her head against his chest and started to cry. David stood there and let her cry. She felt foolish doing it, but she was too tired to put up a front even for a white man. So she cried.
Besides David wasn’t like other white men. He had shown that this afternoon in the plaza. She had found what she had been looking for years ago, but now it was too late. This white man was going home to die.
David left her a few hours later around one in the morning. When Sarah got back to the pueblo just after sunrise and opened the door to her rooms, they were empty. David had gone. Her grandfather was gone.
She wondered if she would ever see him again. Or would the Bow Clan kill him?
CHAPTER 38
As the gray-steel coffin disappeared into the grave, David tilted his head back and stared at the bright afternoon sky. He could not stand to look into the dark hole where Terrie’s body would rest. It was better to look at the light. The light hid nothing from his eyes. The darkness hid everything.
The grave reminded him of the hole he had fallen into. It looked like a large sipapu. However, for the Hopi, the sipapu was a place of emergence, of new birth. For Terrie, it was a place to be hidden away in and eventually forgotten.
Terrie’s parents had chosen to bury their daughter in the Locksley Cemetery in Blanding. They had a large family plot filled with three generations of McNees. Terrie had never wanted to leave Monticello and now she never would.
Nearly a hundred people had turned out to pay their final respects to Terrie. That was one of the benefits of living one’s entire life in one town. Terrie had known a lot of people, and a lot of people knew her. David saw Terrie’s old teachers, her old babysitters, and her school friends. Some came from Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, and Boulder, but others had chosen to remain in their home town just as Terrie had done.
One person hadn’t come to pay his respects to Terrie, but to watch David. Sheriff Harding stood on the opposite side of the grave staring across the dark chasm at him. David’s parents had driven down from Provo to lend David their support and try to get him to return with them to Provo. He wasn’t sure he needed their support and he definitely didn’t want to go back to Provo. Terrie was dead because David had led the Bow Clan to her. He didn’t want to do the same thing to his parents.
He missed Terrie and he still felt guilty for leading the Bow Clan to her, but the hole she had left in his life wasn’t as large as he thought it would be. Maybe she had been right when she said he was living for his job. Yet, Adam’s death had left a large hole in his life, which was odd since David had barely known the man.
As the coffin touched the bottom of the grave, Mrs. McNee sobbed loudly. Terrie’s father put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and held her tight. Mrs. McNee collapsed into the crook of his arm.
The Mormon bishop closed his Bible, and bowed his head in prayer. When he said, “Amen,” the people on the fringes of the crowd began to move toward their cars. Terrie’s parents stood up and accepted the condolences of many of those leaving.
“Davey, do you want to go get some lunch with your father and me?” David’s mother asked.
David turned around to face his mother and shook his head. “No, thank you. I want to be alone for awhile.”
Marcy Purcell hugged her son tightly. “I know it’s a great loss, Davey, but you can’t die just because she did. You have to go on living. Let’s have lunch and we can talk it over.”
David looked over his mother’s shoulder and saw Sheriff Harding still staring at him from the other side of the grave. The sheriff hadn’t said anything or made any move to approach him.
David pushed himself away from his mother’s embrace and said, “I know I have to go on living, Mom, and I will get over her. Just not yet.” He glanced at the sheriff, then added, “I think I ought to stay in Monticello this weekend. I’m not in the mood for travelling.”
Especially not after driving seven hours to get here, he thought.
“But Davey! I was counting on you coming home this weeke
nd. You promised!” Marcy complained.
David held his mother’s hands in his own. “I know I promised, and I know I’m a lousy son to break that promise. But with everything that has happened lately with Terrie and Randy, I just wouldn’t be good company.”
“But being home would...”
David patted her hands. “No, Mom.” He said it just firmly enough so that his mother would know his mind was made up, but not harshly enough to upset her. After all he had already put her through, the last thing David wanted to do was upset her.
Marcy frowned. “Won’t you at least come to lunch with us, then?”
David hated to keep putting her off, but it was for her own good. He didn’t want to lead the Bow Clan to them. He purposely kept averting his eyes from his mother’s face so if the Bow Clansman was watching, he wouldn’t see David focusing on any particular person. If his parents went home to Provo, they would be safe.
He turned and shook his father’s hand. “I’ll call you tonight,” he told Lewis.
David walked off to his car without looking back at his parents. Sheriff Harding stopped him as he was about to climb in.
“I’m glad to see you back in town, Mr. Purcell.”
David turned and held out his hand to the sheriff. “Hello, Sheriff. It’s good to see you. I’d say ‘It’s good to see you again’ except that your implications the last time we talked left me feeling pretty uncomfortable.”
Sheriff Harding stared silently at him.
“It didn’t seem to make you uncomfortable enough to stay in the county like I asked you to do.”
“I had some things I needed to do outside the county so I did them. Since when did your request become an order?”
“It’s not an order, just some sound advice.”
The sheriff grabbed hold of his belt and pulled his pants higher up on his ample waist.
“I don’t think so,” David said. “You’ve got no right disrupting my life if you aren’t going to charge me with anything. But you can’t charge me, can you? You know I didn’t kill her.”