She raced inside again wearing her latex gloves. His head rolled from side to side against the wall. He tried to get up. No problem. Another three second jolt animated his limbs that jerked like those of a crazed marionette. He was helpless again.
Stepping over his legs, she grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar and dragged him a few feet into the living room. She released the shirt as if it was poison. She heard the back of his head smack the floor.
The next two minutes were a flurry of swift, purposeful action. She pushed, pulled and ripped while avoiding his weakly protesting arms. Twice he almost succeeded in getting up but she subdued him again with quick jabs in the face with her fist. When the wrestling match was over he lay flat on his back, stark naked.
She tied his hands together, savagely yanking the rope into one knot then two. Not satisfied, she wound duct tape over the rope for good measure. When she bent toward his feet the sight of his naked genitals revolted her. She resisted the urge to spit on them. Instead, she put her shoe against his hip and rolled him onto his stomach. She tied a knot around one ankle, left a few inches of slack, then tied the other foot, hobbling him loosely enough that he would be able to walk.
Panting with exertion, she smelled the stench of his sweat then a more disgusting odor. When she rolled him onto his back again, she saw a puddle spreading on the dark wooden floor. Urine.
He tried to speak, “What are you...?”
“Shut up, Blood sucker! You and I are about to take a little trip.” She reached for something to stuff in his mouth and retched when she accidentally touched his white jockey shorts. Incensed, she grabbed a sock and jammed it into his mouth. A glob of saliva smeared her wrist above the glove’s protective barrier. She wiped it on the seat of her jeans with a violent swipe, then tore off another long strip of tape. The brisk ripping noise sounded vicious, a satisfying sound to match her mood.
She pressed the end of a strip of duct tape over the sock in his mouth, grabbed a fist full of hair to lift his head and wrapped the tape around over his mouth again. She thought, If someone tries to rip it off, it will yank out his hair.
On her feet, she considered him while she caught her breath. He was out cold but from the rise and fall of his chest, she knew he was alive. The tape stood out in grey bands against the whiteness of his fleshy body. He looks like a maggot, she thought, but trussed at both ends, more like a fat, pale sausage waiting for the frying pan. Of its own accord, her right foot crept forward and poked a slow motion dent into his belly. The toe of her sneaker left a dusty print in his flesh. She looked at it for a long time, as if it might be the sole clue to some ancient mystery she must solve.
***
The morning after Thanksgiving, Allie was making her bed when she remembered she had three more days off counting today. She propped pillows against the bedstead, satisfied with her choice of pattern and hue in the lovely shams. Then she arranged her son’s ancient stuffed bunny against them in a pose of abandon, with its limbs spread, head back and long ears akimbo.
When she was finished with her morning exercise routine of qi gong and yoga she set out for another visit to Montezuma Well National Monument.
She loved the pleasant drive, a breezy cruise down Highway 260, a brief race north at seventy-five miles an hour on I-Seventeen, then an exit at Maguireville onto Beaver Creek Road for the last leg, completing a thirty minute drive to a destination in the middle of nowhere. She turned off the access road and jerked to a stop when she saw the driveway to the Well’s parking lot still blocked by the entry gate, a rather flimsy structure composed of two metal pipes chained and padlocked together.
With a look at the dashboard clock, she realized she was early. The ranger wouldn’t arrive until nine a.m. to open the Park. Since it was less than a fifteen minute wait she backed the car up and pulled over. The sun shining through the half open window gave just enough heat for comfort. The air was cool with the scents of sage and creosote. She leaned back, stretched long and hard. With a contented sigh, she ceded all track of time to memories.
On her first visit, she had found an informative brochure at the trail head. The first thing she learned about the Well was that Montezuma had nothing to do with it. Native Americans discovered it thousands of years ago. Soldiers at war with Native Indians then rediscovered it several hundred years ago. The Well is still sacred to local tribes, who use the water in religious ceremonies. Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well both are destinations for tourists from all over the world.
They would be well-advised to visit in Spring or Fall, she thought. On her first visit in July, the temperature was a sweltering ninety-five degrees by noon. On that day, the half mile long access road gave her time to wonder if this sight seeing jaunt was going to be worth it. The road ended in a one-way circular drive that gave onto a dozen or more parking spaces and continued past a tiny frame building, the visitors’ information booth. It also served as the ranger’s air-conditioned refuge.
That day she had approached the concrete walkway and ascended a series of stone steps with no expectations. She reached a concrete landing which led to another set of steps with a handrail made from a length of metal pipe. Under the blazing sun at mid-day, the rusty pipe felt hot to the touch.
More steps and more landings, this time with signs that told her the Well is a funnel shaped, limestone sink, three hundred and eighty-six feet across, a hundred and fifty feet deep in the fissures at bottom, where springs that feed the Well bubble up at the rate of one and a half million gallons of water every day.
At the summit, she gazed down hundreds of feet into the Well, thinking that it was much more than a well. In this parched land, it was a miracle. Vegetation outlined its steep banks with beautiful shades of green. Islands of algae and pond weed floated on its surface. The greenery gave cover to ducks and other aquatic life in a testament to the miracle.
The walls of the Well, where cliff dwellings a thousand years old were visible four stories above the water, drew her eyes. Grey limestone overhangs served as the roofs. The walls were constructed of adobe brick and stone, built by the Sinagua Indians whose name means 'without water.'
She looked at the stone facades for a long time but they told her nothing. The openings for doors and windows were dark, mysterious oblongs unpenetrated by the strong rays of the sun. With a heavy, uneasy feeling, she took a last look then continued on the concrete pathway that led down into the Well.
After several steps, she saw wild grape vines growing by the path, mallow weed with orange flowers, and tall spiky shrubs called Mormon tea. To the right, the wall of the Well had collapsed some millennia ago, leaving huge boulders and slabs of rock a foot from the pathway. One slab the size and shape of a large speed boat balanced on an even bigger boulder. On top of the 'speed boat,' in what must have been an inch or two of rocky soil, a prickly pear cactus grew.
Allie wiped the sweat from her forehead with a tissue. She noticed that the further down the steep path she walked, the cooler it grew. Then the shrubs formed an archway, casting dense shade over the path. Down a little nearer the water, willow trees with silvery green leaves appeared, along with water loving Arizona walnut and hackberry trees.
Where the path leveled out she saw a Datura plant, a poisonous flowering weed whose white blossoms open at night, then in the shallows at the edge of the Well, large patches of reeds and cattail. She wiped the last beads of sweat from her forehead and breathed in the cool, damp air.
Abruptly, here on the floor of the Well, more ancient native dwellings appeared along the right side of the path. They were roped off now but some of the smoke-stained walls were marred by graffiti: dates and names of miners, soldiers, and pioneers who lived more than a century ago. Passing the dwellings, she came to the end of the path where she found a rock to sit on.
From above, the surface of the Well had appeared as a tranquil mirror reflecting a sterile landscape of sky and rock, but from here she spotted turtles churning across the surface or sunnin
g on rocks, ducks paddling their way among water plants, clouds of dragon flies, like scraps of iridescent orange and blue gauze, skimming and soaring a few feet above the water.
Suddenly she felt a chill that came, not from an errant breeze, but from deep inside her. Time stopped while an image, a memory, or perhaps a warning struggled to reach her awareness. It was akin to a déjà vu experience, but then, not quite. She shrugged and rolled her shoulders, trying to dispel the ominous sensation, trying to return to the present.
Gradually, she became aware of a hollow, gurgling sound that suggested water running through a narrow opening. The outlet! She had read that the outlet for the one and a half million gallons of water the well produced daily is called a 'swallet', an underground tunnel a hundred and fifty feet long The water rushes through the swallet to empty into its natural outlet, Beaver Creek, as well as into a channel dug by the Hohokam natives hundreds of years ago to irrigate their crops.
When Allie found the outlet, she saw the roof of the tunnel was set low, almost flush with the surface of the Well. Determined to see where the water emerged, she retraced her steps back up the trail into the blinding light of the sun, then around to her left and down again until she saw the creek on her right. To the left, the irrigation channel flowed with water.
The concrete path wound its way close to the irrigation canal, which in turn hugged the cliff, the outer wall of the Well. Entranced, she followed the path to its end, where an enormous sycamore tree bent toward the creek. The smooth, pale trunk had extended horizontally for five feet before it turned to grow upward. Its wide, spreading leaves were like open palms warming in the sun. It would take three people with outstretched arms to encircle the massive tree trunk. Allie had never considered herself a tree hugger, but this magnificent, living being made her want to run her hands over it, recline against it, embrace it.
This place, unlike the Well itself, was not haunted by the departed souls of countless natives. This place lived and breathed, a lush, soothing ambiance that emanated from flowing water, vegetation and soft, dark earth. The shade felt like a cool cloth on a fevered forehead, a gift cast by sycamores, ash trees fifty feet tall and willows in abundance draping over the path and the creek.
Drops of water fell from the overhanging bank, where lamb's quarters, salt bush, and Spanish dagger grew. Their leaves shed droplets onto the path.
Below a small embankment, the creek, wide and shallow, burbled happily in the sun. The irrigation channel on her left appeared just two or three feet deep, its banks lined with water cress, maidenhair fern, penstemon and golden columbine. She bent down and trailed her fingers in the clear water, almost touching long, white filaments that flowed like mermaids’ hair in the current. She sat down on a large rock. For a long time, she remained there, soaking up the life giving peace of the place.
***
That memory had almost soothed her to sleep when the sound of tires on gravel interrupted her reverie. She saw the Park ranger had arrived to release the chained-up gate. They waved at each other then he followed his white pickup truck into the parking area.
“I’ve seen you here before, haven’t I?” he asked, as they exited their vehicles.
She nodded. “I come here as often as I can.”
“Welcome back. Nice to see local people who appreciate the place. Mostly we get tourists and some of them think it’s just a big hole in the ground.”
“In all the times I’ve been here, I’ve never been in your little visitor’s center. What have you got in there?”
“Come on in. I’ll show you.”
They walked to the building, where he unlocked the door and stepped aside for her to enter. The structure consisted of one small room with a window that enabled the ranger to greet and converse with park visitors from inside his shelter. It provided space for two desks, a waste basket and a small bookcase. The walls were lined with shelves filled with an assortment of objects--part of a plant called a devil’s claw, animal skulls and what she could only identify as dead things floating in jars of liquid.
The ranger was a man in his forties who looked to Allie as if he worked behind a desk in an office, rather than in the sunny outdoors. He bent to switch on a small space heater. When he looked up Allie was peering with a puzzled face at the glass jars.
He picked up one. Nodding at its contents he said, “That right there, you’re lookin’ at somethin’ you won’t see anywhere else in the world. That’s Motobdella Montezuma.”
Allie peered at several pale, wormlike creatures about three inches long floating in the jar. “What are they?”
“They're leeches.”
“They don’t look like leeches.”
“The actual color is black. The formaldehyde bleaches out the color, and they’re not fat and snail shaped like most leeches. See, the water in the Well is filled with carbon dioxide. It’s very alkaline because of the dissolved limestone. Fish can’t live in it but the amphipods can. That’s what the leeches feed on.
“Amphipods are tiny little crustaceans, like miniature shrimp. I don’t have any in here to show you, but they’re in the Well, all right. The leeches are at the top of the food chain here, and there are millions of ‘em. They’re blind but they come up at night, big, dark clouds of ‘em, up from the bottom of the Well to feed.”
“I thought all leeches feed on blood.”
“We have a few blood sucker kind that live in the shallows around the edges of the Well. But these don’t suck blood. They just swallow the amphipods whole. Most people, even locals, don’t know that. Maybe we don’t mind if they’re ignorant of it. Maybe the thought of millions of leeches in the water keeps the skinny-dippers and partiers from sneakin’ in here, nights. And this here,” he continued, picking up another jar, “is a water scorpion.”
Allie accepted the jar from him. She inspected the insect floating in it. “It doesn’t look like a scorpion, either,” she said. “Those two little hair-like things at its end aren’t stingers, are they?”
“Nope. Just feelers. These eat the amphipods, too. They spear those amphipods, just suck ‘em dry, more like a spider than a scorpion. Like I said, these species, you can’t find anywhere else in the world. ‘Course we have the usual animals, too.” He picked up a tiny skull to show her. “Rabbits, squirrels, foxes, raccoons, coyotes, all the ones you’d expect to see hereabouts.”
***
Allie's session with Kim had just begun when Kim said, “I saw you at the Well last Friday.”
“Oh! You were there too? Do you go there often?”
“The Well is sacred to my people. Also to the Navajo and the Hopi. We get the water to use in ceremonies.”
“I’ve heard that. It's a place that feels sacred to me, too.”
“Do you know our legend about it?”
“No, tell me.”
Kim relaxed against the sofa and looked straight ahead. Her eyelids drooped a little, perhaps a sign she was focusing inward or backward in time. She hesitated. When she spoke, her voice sounded as soft as a child’s.
“They said the lake had no bottom. The people lived around there and they were happy for many years, but there came a bad drought. The chief was an evil man and it was an evil time. He touched his daughter while she slept, in a bad way. She grew very angry. She cast a spell on him that made him sick, sick enough to die.
“When he was dead, she called a flood down on all the people. Then a corn stalk sprouted from the heart of her father’s dead body. The people climbed on it, out of the water. For a long time they lived. Then she called another flood and one woman alone lived through it. The people all came from her, First Woman, and from Father Sky.”
Allie said, “Sort of a creation story. A story about abuse and anger. When you said 'he touched her...in a bad way' you were talking about sexual abuse, weren’t you?”
“Yes. Our people didn’t know exactly what words to call it, but it happened anyway, even back then.”
Kim did not look or sound childli
ke now. Her fists clenched at her sides, her jaw line set in a rigid square.
Allie said, “Thinking about it makes you angry.”
“Doesn’t it make you angry too?”
“Yes it does. Maybe it’s no comfort to you, but sexual abuse is probably as old as the human race. Stories of women trying to protect themselves from it or seeking revenge on people who’ve victimized them go back to the beginning of recorded history.”
“I know.” A flush rose to Kim’s high cheekbones and her eyes narrowed as she rushed to articulate her feelings. “I’ve read about chastity belts in medieval times. Even today, in some places, they sew the young girls’ vaginas shut. Disgusting!”
“Yes, it is,” Allie said, her voice calm.
“You know, there’s a legend about a woman from our tribe being chased through the desert by a cowboy.” She spat the word like an expletive.
“She knew he was going to catch up with her and she knew what he wanted. He was bigger, stronger than she was. She couldn’t win a fight with him. So she stopped and she packed sand into...into it.”
Allie refused to release the gasp in her throat. She said, “That must have been...horrible,” while her imagination struggled with the images that implied an unyielding determination in the face of violence and evil.
Kim’s face settled into a grim expression, as if she were thinking the same things.
Into the silence, Allie said, “Life is strange. Sometimes even tragic.”
“Life is brutal,” Kim said. “I lean toward just killing them all.”
Allie shifted in the easy chair she had taken instead of her task chair, in order to equalize her relationship with her client. She felt both disappointed and fearful the session might drift out of control.
“Careful, Kim,” she said. “Anger can be your best friend or your worst enemy. The way you lean is the way you go and if you lean far enough it’s the way you fall.”
The Well - Book One of the Arizona Thriller Trilogy Page 7