by Susan Slater
Yuk. Not a good idea. But she had always heard lab technicians were so insensitive to their surroundings that they could have a jelly doughnut in one hand and cut with the other. Disgusting, but probably true.
The corridor angled to the right and ended at a set of double doors. There was a makeshift waiting room outside with two chrome and black leather chairs, an ashtray that looked like a miniature space needle and a smoke-gray plastic magazine rack fastened to the wall. Someone’s attempt to be homey, Julie thought, but it didn’t quite make it.
There was a man standing beside a silver-colored box, some kind of lab casket, she supposed, strapped to a gurney. There were two more lined up behind that one. The man was young, tall, and even from the side strikingly handsome with high cheekbones. A shock of unruly brown, straight, thick hair fell over his right eye. He absently pushed it away. His 501s and t-shirt hugged a muscular physique. “Oh God,” Julie prayed, “let me be clever.” She stepped forward.
“I’m sure if that one’s taken, they could find you an empty before sunrise.” She let a teasing smile linger a moment.
The man turned to look at her. His eyes moved slowly over her face. In anger? Disgust? Dismissal? She couldn’t read his expression. Finally, he turned back toward the box and said, “This is my grandmother.”
Julie hoped if she just waited the sky might fall, in this case, rows and rows of florescent lights in the ceiling would explode all around her and bury her in rubble. How could she have been so stupid, so callous? What was worse, now she couldn’t seem to find anything to say.
She was saved by an older man in a white lab coat who pushed through the double doors. He noticed Julie and glanced from one to the other before he decided that they were not together.
“Can I help you?” he said to Julie.
“I’m here to meet Ben Pecos. The clinic in Tewa said that I could find him at the OMI.”
“I think you already have. Ben, when you’re finished, I need to see you inside.”
Julie watched the doors swing shut; the rubber molding held them perfectly aligned. Julie wished the man had stayed, wished she didn’t have to turn around. Ben Pecos. She needed a really big favor from someone she had just insulted. She took a deep breath and turned to face him.
“I’m sorry. My remark earlier was thoughtless. I was expecting someone who looked more ...”
“Indian?”
Julie nodded and wished she could take the remark back. Why was she making such a mess of things?
“Could we start over? I really feel awful.” She thought she detected the hint of a smile. “I’m Julie Conlin, Channel Nine News.” She held out her card. “Dr. Black thought you could help me in reporting on the mystery illness—keep me from putting my foot in my mouth. Which can be a full time job if you hadn’t noticed.”
This time a laugh. Yes. He was smiling. She met his gaze and found herself hoping he liked her, had forgiven her at least, because the queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach never lied. She was attracted to this man.
“What do you need?”
“An interview with clinic personnel, maybe someone on the tribal counsel.”
“When?”
“As soon as possible. I’m doing a brief spot tonight at ten, background mostly, but need to follow it up with something in depth tomorrow.”
“Meet me at the clinic tomorrow afternoon. Two o’clock. Do you know how to get there? I-25 to Bernalillo, through town on highway 44 then take highway four out of San Isidro. Second turn to the left after you see the Tewa village sign.”
“I’ll find it.” Julie smiled and held out her hand. She knew he was watching her navigate the rubber mat as she walked back up the corridor. She willed herself to exit professionally and not get a heel caught. For the first time that day, she was glad she had on the shorter skirt.
+ + +
“You get rid of the girl already? Nothing personal, but I’d rather look at her than you.” The man laughed showing an upper row of uneven, stained teeth. A smoker, Ben thought, probably explains the ashtray in the hall.
“I need your John Henry here,” the man pointed to the top page of a stack of papers then flipped to a sheet near the back, “… and here. Date both entries, and you’re on your way.”
“How soon will you have the results?” Ben asked.
“Hard to say. I know this is priority, but don’t expect much before the first of next week. C’mon. I’ll give you a hand getting the box in your van.”
This wasn’t the way he should be taking his grandmother back to the pueblo. Her frailness under the sheet on the table inside had made him feel sick. He hadn’t been able to help her. Had he, in some way, let this happen? He slammed the back doors of the van shut and climbed behind the wheel. He looked down the driveway at the sun, still well above the tops of the trees. There would be time to prepare his grandmother for burial before it set.
Ben usually didn’t mind the drive from Albuquerque to the pueblo. New Mexico 44 was a long stretch of highway without the usual visual distractions of signs, gas stations, or even residences. Winding through the flat land before gently rising to meet the mesas, the asphalt was flanked by blue-green clumps of chamisa and sage. In the distance, the mesas rose like leavened cakes high above the desert floor, their flattened tops dotted with piñon. The sprinkling of green stood out in sharp contrast to the reds of their steep rock sides.
This was his heritage, this country that Coronado discovered four hundred years ago. He had come in search of the seven cities of Cibola, golden cities of great wealth. What he found were several sunbaked adobe farming villages with the names of Halona, Hawikuh, Matsake, Kiakima, Kawkina, and Kianawa. What he left was religion, oppression, illness ... death.
Maybe he should make a commitment to help his people. Accept an IHS grant and return to school in January to continue in psychology. Didn’t he owe his grandmother that? Even if it meant a payback after he graduated—working in some God-forsaken place. A place he might not want to live? Like Pawnee, Oklahoma or Rosebud, South Dakota? He sighed. The internship would help him make up his mind.
In the meantime, he wondered what he would tell the reporter, Julie. He found himself looking forward to seeing her again. Would she be upset if she knew that a medicine man had already planned a communal cleansing rite? A rite that required that the man enter a clairvoyant trance to seek out the witches who had done this evil? Ben smiled. He’d stick to the conventional stuff.
His aunts met him at the house. Already people were bringing food. His two uncles carried the coffin into the bedroom and his aunts shooed everyone out in order to prepare the body. If they were surprised to find the body sealed in a plastic zip-lock freezer bag, no one said. Ben had remembered to put the jewelry in the box beside his grandmother.
The grave had been dug and three of the four fiscales came to the house to take the body to the church. The fourth fiscal remained in the grave to insure that witches would not jump in and claim it as their own or plant evil objects. Ben joined the procession and walked numbly to the cemetery. The Catholic rites were short. The priest sprinkled holy water, offered a prayer, and threw a handful of dirt into the grave with his left hand. A bundle of his grandmother’s prized possessions were placed under her head including the pot used in her naming ceremony.
The fiscal stood at the head of the grave and told the mourners that Ben’s grandmother had gone to the place of “endless cicada singing.” He told them not to be sad or let the death divide their home. Ben forced himself back from the pain and concentrated on the late summer afternoon. He watched the flame-red sun sink behind the trees along the river. A breeze teased the leaves of the cottonwoods, twisting each individually, their green-gold heart shapes fluttering, then falling still. Away, beyond the river the mesas formed a stairway—a now purple black silhouette of giant stepping stones.
Ben stepped to the back of the group of mourners. He felt suffocated. He would say his goodbyes later. He closed his eyes and brea
thed three long abdominal intakes of air. He stood a moment in the shade of a cluster of Russian olive before walking back to the house.
He set aside the screen door that was propped in the doorway. Ben smelled the house’s mustiness that even the platters of fried chicken and casseroles of enchiladas couldn’t mask. His aunt had left a shoebox of belongings his grandmother had wanted him to have on the table. His name was scrawled across the lid. He toyed with opening it, then pushed the box to one side and got a glass of water. The water looked faintly yellow with a hint of sediment swirling in it. He put the glass down without taking a drink. Not unusual. The water purification system often had problems. He was certain that the team of health specialists had already taken samples.
What a relief if the cause of the illnesses turned out to be something like the water. Something that could be changed, controlled. Something the tribal lawyers could have a field day with—as if they needed an excuse for litigation.
He walked back to his bedroom. The room seemed crowded, cramped with only a dresser and single bed. The chenille bedspread, its fuzzy lines and dots worn smooth along the top, looked dingy. Ben walked to the window and opened the curtains. It didn’t seem to help. The room needed paint and bright colors and a child’s happiness. And that was something it had never had. At least not for a long time. His earliest memories were of hiding behind the door and crying when his mother would come home drunk. His grandmother had been the one to comfort him and shield him from the scenes—the screaming, the anger, the sickness.
His mother had started college but was pregnant before Christmas. The father could have been anyone. A classmate. A professor. She gave birth to Ben in this house and made pottery bowls intricately designed with black and white patterns on smooth clay to support the two of them. But after a while the selling trips to Santa Fe and Albuquerque stretched into weeks of partying. When the money ran out, she came home and made more pots. Later she made storytellers, small clay women with babies sitting on laps, hanging from necks, clinging, adoring, loving.
Ben hated the storytellers. In their cloying stillness they mocked the essence of a mother that he had never had. On his senior trip in high school, he visited the Smithsonian and stood and stared at his mother’s work. Fourteen years later and two thousand miles from home, he stood and studied the perfectly crafted figure of the storyteller and could not hold back the sobs of anguish—for the mother he had never known and the artist who had died so young.
No one knew the father of the baby his mother lost that spring when he was four. Maybe the Mescalero Apache bull rider who hung around during the summer with a mending clavicle. The pregnancy sobered his mother, and she did her best work that winter. She was ill much of the time. The alcohol weakened her body. She stayed at home and played with her son and created. It was the happiest winter of Ben’s life, only to be shattered in late April when his mother was taken to the hospital and didn’t return.
Ben walked back to the kitchen and opened the fridge. A six-pack of Dr. Pepper sat on the second shelf. Not his favorite, but better than tap water. He sat at the kitchen table. Had his grandmother been right to let him be adopted? What would he have done had he stayed?
Idly, he flipped the top of the shoebox to one side and pulled away the layers of tissue paper, and caught his breath. The storyteller was on its side but he could tell it was one of his mother’s best. He gingerly placed it on the table and moved it so that the figure sat squarely in the middle of a shaft of light He turned it to the right and back to the left. A mother and child—the child standing on the woman’s lap, arms around her neck—a baby boy close to his mother’s heart with brown hair and Anglo features.
+ + +
Julie turned at the second left after the sign that welcomed visitors to the pueblo. The short incline of dirt road leveled immediately and continued until it widened to form a parking lot in front of the community center, public health clinic, and tribal offices. All the buildings looked new and affected in their pretend-adobe styling. Only the fire station at the rear looked functional and unpretentious. A new red truck outfitted with flattened hoses that snaked around pegs on its side was being polished by two men in tribal-tan uniforms.
Ben was waiting for her and waved her to a spot in front of the governor’s office. Friendly, Julie thought. That’s promising.
“Can I help with anything?” Ben leaned in the driver side window.
“No thanks.” Julie turned to pull the laptop from under the front seat and then froze. “Ben. Over there.” Julie pointed through the windshield to the right of the car.
“Nothing to worry about. That’s Lorenzo Loretto. Don’t ask me how old he is, he’s been around forever.” They both watched as the bent figure passed in front of the car. Lorenzo waved his cane in the air and worked his puckered lips that were pulled back into the dark cavern of his mouth. Only nonsensical sounds came out
“Ya-tee. Na, na, na. Hey-toe, na. Yaha nee.”
“He’d look better with teeth,” Ben said. “The clinic had a set made for him, but he lost them, or traded them for something he wanted.”
“Is he all right?” Julie was pointing to Lorenzo’s ragged blanket and soiled shirt. His deeply lined weathered skin hung from prominent cheekbones and left hollows where flesh should have been. Wispy, matted white hair stuck to his forehead, held there by a rolled red bandanna that had slipped rakishly over one eyebrow. Droplets of drool left the corners of his mouth and followed the deep creases in his chin before sliding down his neck.
“There’s probably no better place for him to be. Better here outside in the fresh air than locked up in a hospital or home. Everyone keeps an eye on him,” he said.
“He seems a little eerie.”
“I still say it’s the teeth. A set of choppers and you’ve got Cary Grant.”
“But is he harmless?” Julie watched as Lorenzo continued to wave his cane slicing the air in front of him.
“Only one blemish on his record—a breast-slapping incident involving a nun.”
“What?” Ben had her full attention now.
“Two summers ago, coming out of church, one of the more well-endowed nuns had a June bug land on her chest. Lorenzo squashed it flat. He had witnesses. He was only trying to be helpful. Everyone thought it was funny, but the nun was pretty flustered.”
“Are you pulling my leg?” Julie waited for him to laugh but his face was deadpan.
Suddenly, a short, plump pueblo woman ran out of the tribal offices looking distraught.
“Help. Someone. Come quick. It’s the governor. He’s collapsed.” Julie and Ben left the equipment and ran after her. The office was dark and it took Julie a moment to adjust to the dim light. An oversized walnut desk and two glass-fronted bookcases filled the back wall. On a Two Gray Hills Navajo rug in front of the desk lay the crumpled body of an elderly man. His bronze skin looked sallow and drawn. His eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling and his breath escaped through his mouth in raspy whispers.
Ben dropped to his side and loosened the constricting bolo tie and unbuttoned his shirt. He yelled at the pueblo woman to get the paramedics.
“How’s your CPR?” Ben asked, his fingers pressed against the carotid artery.
“Up to date, but I’ve never used it.”
“Like it or not, I think you’re going to get your chance. I’m not getting a pulse. Let’s do this together; you take the chest.” He reached up to grab a handful of Kleenex from the desk and swabbed the inside of the man’s mouth to check for obstructions. “All clear. Okay. Here we go, on a four count. Me first.” Ben bent forward over the man’s mouth, pinched his nostrils shut and inflated his lungs with air.
Julie placed the heel of her right hand on the back of her left hand and rested both lightly on the governor’s chest. She leaned over the body with her elbows bent poised above the sternum. On cue and counting under her breath, she let her body’s weight fall forward and down in quick thrusts. A brittle rib gave way with a snap. The
rubber dummies never did that, she thought. Noticing her grimace, Ben said reassuringly, “Ignore. Bones heal, but you have to be alive first.” She watched as he again filled the man’s lungs with air and she waited to repeat her routine. Pausing, Ben checked for vitals.
“Okay. Let’s go again.”
“He wasn’t even sick.” The pueblo woman had reappeared in the door. “He started coughing yesterday.” She twisted a Kleenex and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “He said that he hadn’t slept last night, the coughing kept him up. And then he started to walk around his desk and fell to the floor.” Her voice ended in sobs.
Julie’s turn to rest. Rocking back on her ankles, she shook her forearms and hands and bent forward on cue pushing with her weight. She didn’t see the paramedics rush into the room but scrambled out of the way as two uniformed men dropped to the rug beside her. She suddenly didn’t have the strength to stand, so she leaned against a wall away from the frenzied activity in front of her. The wall felt cool against the sweaty dampness of her blouse. She pulled her knees up and rested her chin on crossed forearms. She felt drained and helpless.
Ben leaned against the opposite wall. A lock of damp hair stuck to his forehead The scene between them was barely controlled bedlam. The two paramedics and the governor were part of a jumble of wires and paddles and metal cases of dials and electronic graphs all beeping out information in a code foreign to her. With a press of a button, the old man flew into the air and flopped back grotesquely. Again, the electric zapping charged through his body. And, a third time. Suddenly, the room was quiet. Julie, Ben and the two paramedics formed a tableau. Each unbelieving, each reliving the scene before him, each questioning his part in its outcome.