The Pumpkin Seed Massacre

by Susan Slater

  He showered. The water was tepid and the white spots of alkaline on the shower curtain had fused to form a powdery hem. He wrapped a towel around his waist and walked to the kitchen. His grandmother had gone into Albuquerque with his aunt. The city was some hour’s drive away but offered the closest decent shopping. He opened a window and felt a breeze skip across his face. Already hot and dry. He closed the window.

  He unwrapped the plate of fry bread beside the plastic bear of honey, then wrapped it again. It was one less thing to feel guilty about.

  He wasn’t used to a lot of starch and fat calories and the grease-soaked pastries would sit like a lump in his stomach. He walked back to his bedroom to dress. He was doing everything but let himself think. If he was offered an internship, would he accept? His counselor called it “the perfect opportunity, a chance to make up your mind about working with your people.” He’d see. He hadn’t received the offer yet.

  + + +

  The room was crowded with twenty-odd healthcare workers. Some he knew; others were probably from surrounding pueblos or Albuquerque. Dr. Black motioned for him to join them and pointed at a table holding three open boxes of doughnuts. Ben declined and took a chair by the window.

  “I think we’re all here. Twila won’t be with us this morning.” Dr. Black was looking at his notes.

  “Could we discuss the lunch program for Headstart?” a plump woman in the front row asked.

  A man two rows back stood and turned toward the group, then waited until he had everyone’s attention before he spoke. “Doc, I shouldn’t need to remind you how important it is to discuss the allocation of federal monies for a new alcohol program. The governor of the pueblo has personally asked me to report to him what is being planned.” Johnson Yepa, the lieutenant governor of the pueblo—Ben remembered the short, stocky man from his youth. What a blow-hard. There’s one in every group, he thought, and sat back to see how Dr. Black would handle the situation.

  “Johnson, I want to hear the reports of my clinic personnel, first. We’ll tackle how we want to spend the grant in small group discussions later.”

  Great. Johnson wasn’t going to get away with anything. Dr. Black was staying in control. A good leader. Ben watched Johnson, who seemed to be studying something on the floor.

  “I don’t want to tell you your business, Doc, but something as big as alcohol, as meaningful to this pueblo, should be getting your full attention.” Johnson’s voice rose to a sonorous pitch. He paused for emphasis, then with a sweeping gesture included the group. “There isn’t a family in this room who shouldn’t be concerned about this killer. Some of our leading citizens and artists have died because of the bottle.”

  Johnson looked around. Ben suddenly had the sinking feeling that he was going to be singled out.

  “Some in this group have suffered grave personal loss.” Johnson meaningfully dropped his voice and almost indiscernibly pointed his chin toward Ben. There was shuffling of feet and some in the group uncomfortably shifted in their chairs and looked at the floor. Everyone knew that Ben’s mother had died of alcoholism.

  This was a surprise. Ben hadn’t expected his interpersonal communication skills to be tested so quickly, but he had to do something, defuse the situation.

  “Dr. Black, I’d like to volunteer to lead a small group. I’ve just finished doing work with teens who drink and have some ideas to share. Mr. Yepa, I’d welcome your input. It’s good to see our community leaders supporting alcohol programs.” Ben thought Johnson looked surprised, maybe deflated, but he nodded his acceptance.

  “Great. We can benefit from a new perspective.” Dr. Black beamed his approval. “Let’s move on to training for the paramedics. Earnest? Do you have an update?”

  Ben listened to the reports. These were dedicated people who enjoyed what they were doing, who felt what they did was making a difference. Somewhere between the discussion to add more vegetables and decrease the pasta in the preschool lunch menu and the vote to expand the capacity of the on-site computer, Ben made a decision.

  “I appreciated the way you derailed Johnson but kept the focus on the topic.” Dr. Black stood beside him as the others left the room after the meeting. “How ’bout joining us? I’d like you to take the internship.”

  “Thanks,” Ben said, “I’d like to give it a try.”

  “Meet me at my office—nine tomorrow. And, one other thing, call me Sandy.”

  + + +

  It had started out to be a bad day and had the feel of a bad rest of the week. Sandy walked into his office at six thirty a.m.—extra time to tackle the ever-present paperwork—when he got a call from Twila. It was the end of her shift at the clinic; she should have been on her way home. He felt that little twinge of sixth sense; something wasn’t right. “Two more elderly people died last night. The fourth death since Monday.”

  Sandy sat forward. Four deaths in four days—that was a flag for an infectious disease specialist.

  “Give me the symptoms again.”

  “Simple flu—dry coughs, aching joints, low grade fever, fatigue. One had pink eye. Then it progresses to a kind of pneumonia.”

  “Ages?”

  “Sixty-three to seventy-four.”

  “Incubation time?” Sandy heard Twila take a deep breath.

  “It’s got to be less than twenty-four hours. But, that seems impossible.”

  “Send me their medical records—at least, your notes from when you examined them.”

  Sandy waited by the fax sipping his second cup of machine-coffee, white. He placed the papers in four neat stacks across the conference table in the nurses’ lounge and sat down to consider the variables. A summer virus outside the spectrum of flu shots? Maybe. Could all four have had a history of upper respiratory? A quick check ruled that out, only the first two.

  Plague was always a worry, but there hadn’t been any cases reported so far this year. Then he separated the last sheet from each pile, the certificate of death, and stared at the four identical causes—fluid on the lungs—suffocation.

  Finding answers wouldn’t be easy. The pueblo people probably attributed these deaths to witchcraft. He needed to sit down with the governor, apply pressure if necessary, to be able to do whatever was needed, including autopsy if there was another death. Maybe it would be a good idea to get Ben Pecos involved. He could help interview the families. Yes. He’d get Ben started right away.

  + + +

  The Albuquerque Indian Hospital looked out of place, an afterthought set back as it was, off of Lomas Blvd., just east of University Avenue. But it had been there first, built in the thirties, a lone tuberculosis sanitarium nestled among seedling pines that then marked the outskirts of town. Any crowding now was the fault of something else—the University of New Mexico Medical Center. The health care conglomerate next door continued to spread upward and outward and finally dwarfed the four story building. People even forgot that IHS was still there.

  “On Lomas? An Indian hospital? I don’t remember one.” Ben had stopped twice for directions.

  He parked his uncle’s blue Dakota under a towering evergreen and hoped that any dots of pitch would come off in the carwash. He was humming as he took the hospital steps two at a time. Once the decision had been made, it felt right, this internship; he even admitted that he was looking forward to it. His grandmother was pleased. He wasn’t sure that she didn’t take responsibility for it—probably paid a medicine man to cast a spell.

  He got directions from the receptionist and stopped at Gloria’s office.

  “I’m glad you’re with us. Dr. Black will see you now.”

  Ben thanked her and walked across the hall. Sandy was glued to a computer monitor. Ben cleared his throat.

  “Ben. Come in.” Sandy shot up to remove an open book from the chair beside him. “How about a change of assignment? It’ll put that alcohol counseling job on the back burner for awhile, but I’d like your help on this.” Sandy filled him in on Twila’s news.

  It crossed B
en’s mind to mention the cemetery and the newly provided burial spaces. Half the village, mostly the old people including his grandmother, blamed the fiscal officer. He didn’t, but at least his grandmother would be pleased that he was aware of Indian thinking.

  “Interview each of the families. Note anything unusual but also get the mundane stuff, what they did prior to death, what they ate. As you know, we’re always concerned about plague in those areas. Make sure you don’t get in the way of any customs, but I guess I don’t have to tell you that.”

  “My grandmother keeps me straight.” Ben smiled ruefully not wanting to admit how little he did know. The meeting was short. He felt Sandy was preoccupied with the illness thing. So he did a few errands in town and headed back to the reservation.

  He parked the truck by the side of the house and watched a dust devil skip along the side of the irrigation ditch. It started slowly, gathered speed, sucked up bits of sand into its cone, then circled once or twice more, before it flattened and died silently in the weeds.

  Within the fourth day of a death, wind was suspect. His grandmother believed that the wind was the soul of the departed trying to regain entry into this world. Sal Toledo had died Monday night. Had he just seen some part of Sal whirling drunkenly only to commit hara-kiri in an outcropping of buffalo grass? He didn’t think so.

  He got out of the truck. Was there any hope for him? His lack of training in Indian ways was a source of anguish for his grandmother. She fretted that he wouldn’t be careful.

  “If the soul becomes lonely, it will return to take someone with it.” Four of her friends had died. He knew his grandmother believed that Sal had returned for company—taking his three friends to the other side with him. She warned his daughters and nieces to watch their children. Children could not be left in a room by themselves during this time and the houses of the dead had to be occupied by at least two people so that the souls did not reclaim their old homes. So much to remember.

  His grandmother sat at the kitchen table snapping the ends off of plump green beans. Ben pulled up a chair and offered to help.

  “Sal visited me last night.”

  Ben didn’t say anything. Sometimes she saw her dead friends in her dreams.

  “He said nothing but I know what he wants. He beckoned me to follow.”

  Ben shivered. Was this because she was old? Seventy-eight her last birthday. Did she see her own death? He didn’t want to think that his time with her might be running out. He pulled a handful of beans out of the colander and waited, but she didn’t say any more.

  Sal Toledo’s “releasing” ritual would be performed this evening, the fourth night after his death. Sal was the husband of his grandmother’s younger sister, and Ben had promised to take his grandmother to the ceremony. The house was filled with smells of his grandmother’s cooking. The ritual involved all the relatives of the person, and for someone like Sal, there were generations to be fed.

  + + +

  The evening turned cool once the sun slipped behind the mesas.

  Ben helped his grandmother open the windows of her house so that the adobe would gather the coolness and store it within the two foot thick walls well into the next day. When they were ready to go, she walked in front letting him carry the basket of food and bring up the rear with his uncles, aunts, and nieces. It would be easy to lose patience with his grandmother. She refused to use even a cane to help her navigate the washboard surface of the pueblo roads.

  Sal’s house, a flat-roofed, boxy adobe connected on the north to his daughter’s house and on the west to his brother’s house, was filled with people. All of the furniture had been removed from the front room, a combination living room/dining room, and food was placed in a row down the center of the floor. Paste wax and elbow grease made the linoleum shine but didn’t cover up the tiny bumps in the surface. Originally, the dirt floor had been prepared with a mixture of goat’s blood and ashes spread evenly into all corners, but eventually the small rocks had worked their way through the dried paste. Three pieces of linoleum covered the two rooms, their mismatched geometric patterns faded and cracked at the edges.

  Ben watched as Sal’s brother sat on the floor at one end of the food.

  A new cooking pot was placed in front of him.

  Carefully, with his left hand, he scooped small portions of each kind of food that had been brought and put it into the pot, then lit a cigarette made of native tobacco. He inhaled and exhaled directly over the pot and when he was finished, dropped the glowing butt into the food.

  Pushing himself to his feet, he took a short-handled broom and made sweeping motions over the heads of each person in the room, standing tiptoe to clear Ben’s hair. Walking to the fireplace, he pulled out a cold lump of charcoal and placed it under his tongue.

  After wrapping himself in a blanket, he stooped and picked up the cooking pot, put it under his left arm and walked to the door. Sal’s wife and older relatives began to wrap themselves in blankets. They would follow the offering to a shrine outside the village. His grandmother tugged on his arm. She expected Ben to accompany her.

  The night was still and moonless. Ben could hear frogs gallantly attracting mates along the river. The shrouded row of mourners walked single-file past the church and on toward the fields. He and his grandmother brought up the rear. Just before they reached the shrine, Sal’s brother purposely dropped the pot. It exploded scattering food in a large circle. Sal’s brother next drew four lines in the earth and spit out a bit of charcoal. Each follower also drew four lines. After a sharp look from his grandmother, Ben squatted and did the same, the hard sandy soil resisting his efforts.

  The procession turned to go back to the house and stopped a third of the way and repeated the drawing of four lines. Sal’s brother again spat out a bit of charcoal. This was done two more times before the procedure was repeated in front of the door and under each window of Sal’s house. At this point the brother turned to the group and offered the following prayer:

  We have separated ourselves by smoke

  We have painted the world between us gray

  We face each other from the sides of steep arroyos

  Do not, we beseech you, look upon us with longing, but release us

  Let us go so that we may prosper and you, likewise, may be free

  And this, our life, will be contented.

  After this final release of the soul, the members of the procession washed their hands in a bowl of water set out for them by the door. The wish of, “May you have life,” was met with, “Let it be so,” as each person reentered the house. Sal’s brother picked up the hand-broom, poked it into the fireplace and dusted each person with ashes and then blew ashes into the four corners of the room. With a “Now, you can eat,” everyone filled his plate.

  On the way home, his grandmother quizzed him about what he knew of the ceremony they had just celebrated, correcting him—which seemed often—when he got something wrong. Instead of going directly home, she asked him to walk with her by an abandoned house at the edge of the village. He remembered the house and a little of its story, enough to recall that as a child he knew better than to play near it.

  She told him again how that family hadn’t had a releasing rite after the death of their daughter. How at night they began to hear whispering and felt someone walk through the house. At last, at wit’s end, they fled, abandoning their home. No one had been able to live in it since—not even today, some twenty years later.

  They stood quietly, then his grandmother reached out and took his hand. “I worry that your time on this earth has been troubled. I worry that you have lost the way of your people. Your mother would be proud of you, but she would not want you to put aside your heritage. If I had been strong, they would not have taken you from me.”

  Ben didn’t know what words would comfort his grandmother so he simply said, “I’m home now.” He thought she nodded.

  The chirp of crickets and the distant yip of coyotes filled in the silence. At last
, his grandmother turned to go. She allowed him to hold her elbow when it became difficult to walk over the ruts. A minor victory. Tomorrow he would interview Sal’s family and start a data bank of information, hoping to find something the four flu victims had in common.

  + + +

  Julie might be fresh out of school with a Masters in journalism from the University of New Mexico, but she was good, the best investigative reporter in her class. Granted, her time in the field was limited but she trusted her instincts, and they were seldom wrong. So when all her feelers screamed that something was up, it was.

  The Albuquerque TV station newsroom buzzed with activity, faxes, phone calls—Santa Fe had called twice that morning. First, the Tourist Bureau, then the Office of Economic Affairs, both with veiled warnings about not broadcasting something inflammatory—adopting a wait and see approach. They didn’t have to worry. Her boss wanted to do just that—keep this one out of the news until they were certain. He was not a reactionary. That might explain why his station had the top ratings—consistently the top for almost ten years. That was an honor you earned, Julie knew.

  “There’s a meeting in my office in five minutes.” It was the boss himself who walked down the narrow aisle between the twenty-odd cubicles summoning his crew.

  “You think this has something to do with the mystery flu?” Julie fell into step behind a fellow reporter.

  “What’s your best guess?”

  They both found seats in the back of Bob Crenshaw’s spacious office and watched as the room filled.

  “Do you ever wonder about the dress code around here? What’s good for the gander isn’t acceptable for the geese.”