by Susan Slater
The paramedics lifted her onto the gurney and rushed her to the ambulance. Ben asked them to let her mother ride with them and helped the woman climb in back beside Jennifer. The ambulance roared away, sirens wailing. He watched it until it was lost in traffic.
Turning back to the group of girls, he realized that most were in shock, some crying, some just standing and staring at the ground.
“Will she be all right?” someone asked.
“I’m going to be honest. I don’t know,” Ben said.
“Where will they take her?”
“To the Indian Hospital.” Ben motioned for one of the mothers to come forward. “I’m going to ask Mrs. Tafoya to take you to eat and then on home. Why don’t you get changed and meet her and the driver back by the bus in ten minutes.”
Ben noticed a group of Anglo parents standing at the edge of the field. A man left the group and walked toward him.
“You goddamned Indians. You think I’m going to stand around while you endanger the life of my child?”
“No lives are in danger.” Ben faced the man close enough now to smell the alcohol on his breath.
“Oh yeah? Says who? Some red-skinned asshole?” He pushed Ben hard with a fist to the chest. Ben regained his balance but didn’t answer.
“You tell me my little girl wasn’t exposed to your disease out there.” The man was six inches from Ben’s face and waved a hand toward the field. “You can’t, can you? They ought to quarantine your home, rope it off and keep all you in your own filth.”
Ben balled his hands into fists but willed them to stay by his sides. To his right, he saw two police cars lurch to a stop on the side street parallel to the field. Two cops were running toward him. He turned back to the man in front of him and didn’t have time to duck before he took the full force of a fist to his nose. He knew it was broken before he hit the ground.
“There, you bastard. And there’s more where that came from if my little girl gets sick.” The cops grabbed the man and pushed him to the ground, slapping the cuffs on his wrists.
“You want to cuff someone?” He struggled to roll over. “There’s the one you want. Get that piece of scum and throw his ass in jail.”
+ + +
Riding around Albuquerque in the Channel Nine News van waiting for something to happen wasn’t her idea of an exciting evening. When the radio interceptor picked up a police call to break up a fight at a soccer field, Julie was less than thrilled. But it was more live, on the scene reporting if the incident proved newsworthy. She sighed. Exposure was everything.
As the van rolled up beside the school bus from the pueblo, Julie recognized the team banner and saw the soccer team huddled around the driver and two Tewa women. Then she saw Ben on the ground, his face covered with blood. She ran toward him, pushed her way between the two cops and threw herself beside Ben. One cop grabbed her arm and attempted to pull her away.
“You’re obstructing an arrest ...” he started.
“Julie Conlin, Channel Nine News.” Julie wrenched her arm free of the cop and gently drew Ben’s hair back away from his forehead. “He needs medical attention. Call an ambulance. Now. Or I’ll have your badge for failure to provide life-support when needed.”
The cop backed away. One of the Tewa women had gone to the restrooms and brought back two handfuls of wet paper towels. She knelt beside Ben and helped Julie apply the compresses to Ben’s nose.
“You pussy-whipped bastards. You going to let some skirt tell you what to do?” The cops had pulled the cuffed man to his feet, and he now turned his anger toward Julie.
“Raymond,” Julie called to the cameraman who materialized behind her. “I want full shots of this man and all remarks on tape. I can and will use them in my report tonight on Channel Nine News.”
“I got everything on film.” Raymond moved to the side, his shoulder camcorder focused on the scene before him. Julie rose and stood calmly in front of the man, her voice cold and exacting. “In fact, you may want to give us an interview now. Just a few comments to set the record straight. But I must warn you that because of the unprovoked aggression used against this man, this tape could be subpoenaed by the prosecution when this case comes to court.”
“No goddamned Indian is going to take my ass to court.” The man leaned toward her, held back by a cop on either side, but he seemed to be having second thoughts.
“That’s enough,” one cop interjected. “Let’s get going. The ambulance is on its way, miss.”
Ben sat up; if it hadn’t hurt so much he would have laughed. Julie was something else. He’d rather have her on his side than anyone he could think of. He watched as she turned her attention to getting the busload of soccer players on their way. She reassured everyone, then double-checked to make sure the driver had directions to the restaurant. The cumbersome vehicle pulled out as an ambulance screeched to a halt.
“I’m going with you to the hospital. I’d hate to have someone botch a nose-job.”
Julie helped him to his feet. As he leaned on her shoulder, he realized the nose still worked as a fresh lemony scent drifted up from her hair. Funny, his nose didn’t seem to hurt as much anymore. He was acutely aware of Julie’s body pressing into his side as she helped him to the ambulance. It didn’t surprise him how much he liked the feel of her leaning into him. It hadn’t been in the plan, but maybe this was the kind of complication he needed.
+ + +
Jennifer died at 12:01 a.m. Sandy sedated her mother and kept her overnight. She had not left Jennifer’s side and refused to accept the fact that she had died of the mystery illness. She insisted that Jennifer had a weak heart and strenuous exercise had caused it to fail. She also insisted that Jennifer had shown no signs of the respiratory illness and had only complained of a headache and scratchy throat that morning.
By the next morning Jennifer had become a number—number ten to the media—and she was headline news. Sandy got a call from Johnson Yepa’s office about setting up a community meeting. They wanted him to attend. It was scheduled for Monday evening in the pueblo. The principal of the high school called, shocked at Jennifer’s death but wanting to know how contagious she had been and whether he should worry for his students and take any precautions. The inquiry seemed more self-motivated, Sandy thought.
He didn’t know how much new information he’d have for the meeting in Tewa. Hundreds of samples of tissue and blood had been sent to Atlanta. Hundreds more were being scrutinized here. But there was nothing definitive yet. Speculation, but not fact. Theoretical candidates were the viruses that cause internal bleeding—sure-death organisms like Africa’s Marburg, Ebola, and Lassa viruses, as well as Asia’s Hantaviruses. By the end of the week, they would be attacking the problem from a different angle—dissecting the known carriers of such diseases, the rodents that lived in and around the pueblo.
Portable nitrogen tanks were already in place to hold their remains in the lab behind the hospital. A new floor-to-ceiling freezer had been installed yesterday. Another bank of computers lined the west wall. The temporary field headquarters had proved invaluable. Not that it looked anything like its counterpart fourteen hundred miles away—it didn’t. Here CDC employees wore shorts and jeans in the sometimes stuffy confines of the windowless building. But the swift silent killer was being hunted down by an army of experts, Sandy thought.
The CDC had promised to stay on the scene for as long as it took. Every time Sandy walked back to the lab, he saw new license plates. There were health workers from Arizona, Colorado, Alaska, back East—other labs vacated in order to help solve the mystery. If they could just find answers before this thing escalated.
SEVEN
Johnson Yepa was beginning to dislike his job being governor of Tewa. He didn’t understand Anglos and didn’t want to spend time trying. This mystery illness was a thorn in his side. A festering wound. His people felt they were being pushed around. And they looked to him to make it stop.
He knew it was going to be a bad week w
hen the jar of fermented calves brains and human urine—a concoction that would strip the sinews from the underside of a hide—tipped and spilled in the cab of his truck. He’d had to stop by the side of the road, the fumes were so bad. He offered two grade schoolers a couple bucks each to clean it up, and they had refused. He took the truck back to Albuquerque. It cost him forty bucks at a carwash. And now the smell of minty urine made him gag.
Two nights ago he amorously turned to his wife in bed and, with one hand on her breast and his enunciation crisply clear, said, “Mollie, let’s you and me have some fun.” But his wife’s name wasn’t Mollie. As she had so quickly pointed out. He didn’t know how long she stayed locked in the bathroom. He had finally gone to sleep.
Now, to make matters worse, his wife signed them up for marriage counseling with some psychologist at IHS. He had missed one appointment already, but he was thinking he should make the next one. Last night there was no supper on the table when he got home, and this morning his wife left the house without fixing him breakfast.
He stepped out of his office to walk across the parking lot to the community center. He’d have to chase the kids out of the gymnasium and get the chairs set up for the meeting. The sun was beginning to go down earlier, he noticed. It was only seven and there were long shadows reaching behind the parked cars to the center of the lot. Maybe it would be an Indian Summer.
Indian Summer. What did that mean? Once in grade school he had looked it up in a dictionary. “A period of mild, dry weather usually accompanied by a hazy atmosphere occurring in the United States and Canada in late autumn or early winter.” There wasn’t one mention of Indians. Indian corn, Indian file, Indian giving—these he understood; but what did the weather have to do with Indians in the Southwest?
He pushed the bar handle on the door to the community center and felt the blast of rock music coming from the three boom-boxes sitting at the edge of the floor. Ten high-school-age jocks were putting in a little basketball time. Johnson regretted having to chase them out. Last year, the Valley team took regionals.
He leaned down to snap off one radio, then moved to the others. Only way to get their attention. Before leaving, the kids dragged folding chairs from the storage room under the bleachers and set them in a U around the portable microphone. One of the kids even got the mike to quit emitting the high decibel shriek that rattled the windows every time Johnson pulled it toward him and said, “Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3.”
Johnson was ready when the first families arrived. He met them at the door. Mary, his secretary, brought an urn of coffee and plugged it in on the counter that opened to the kitchen. Someone else put out three cellophane-wrapped sacks of cookies, chocolate over marshmallow with a sweet dough bottom. The kind that gave him a toothache.
They would wait until Dr. Black arrived, and then Johnson would open the meeting for questions. In less than half an hour, over one hundred people crowded onto the gym floor. Johnson turned the air conditioning back on as people climbed the bleachers to find seats and complained of the hot air above the floor. He had not expected so many people.
+ + +
The anger pressed against Sandy as he opened the door. Anger and fear, he thought. He had come alone and immediately wished he hadn’t when he realized that he was the only one sitting under the basketball hoop in front of the crowd. He was blind-sided by the first question.
“Why did you lie about the death of my daughter?” Jennifer’s mother asked amid a chorus of support. “Why did you call it this illness when she had a history of heart trouble and it was clearly heart failure?”
Sandy recalled that this woman could be belligerent and demanding in the best of times. She had chaired a couple of Indian rights organizations and had a reputation for not seeing an issue from more than one side. Now, less than a week after her daughter had died, she was like a cornered buffalo ready to charge blindly and hurt anything in her path.
“You’ve ruined our economy. We have been banned from selling our food and crafts at the Fair this fall.” She was standing now, an older daughter on each side steadying her. “An exchange trip of high school students to Northridge, California has been cancelled because they thought they might get ‘infected.’ This reeks of racism.”
Three rows back an older man held up a copy of USA Today with the headlines, “The Tewa Flu—Southwest Killer.”
“In Albuquerque last week, my wife and I ate at a restaurant and saw our plates carefully removed and put in a different pile when we were finished.” This from yet another man in the back.
“There were two reporters at my house the day after Peter died,” a man yelled out. “Then before they left, two health workers showed up. I don’t talk to nobody anymore.”
“Unsolved Mysteries has called five times.” This from Mary, Johnson Yepa’s secretary. “Then NBC Dateline, The Wall Street Journal, and a Paris magazine. But what I liked most were the thirty-four calls from clergy and spiritual healers. A lot of people offered prayers and support.”
Thank you, Mary, Sandy thought. The crowd was slowed down by the positive side of things. Positive side? What was the positive side? The crowd had turned back to him, now.
“What would you like me to do?” Sandy asked.
“We want you to use accurate information. Don’t tell something that isn’t so. That construction worker from Pena Blanca helped his family farm. The weekend before he died he used a chemical pesticide to get rid of grasshoppers. Has anyone checked out his exposure to that?”
“And we want people to respect our privacy with our dead.” Sandy saw a lot of affirmative nodding at this.
“Get people to stop discriminating,” someone yelled out.
Now their expectations were beginning to fall into the miracle category, Sandy thought.
“I’d like to spend my time tonight sharing with you what needs to be done and why. Then I want your help in telling me how we can accomplish our goals in a way least upsetting to the pueblo.” Sandy spent the next two hours listening and presenting his needs. He tried to explain why they would be trapping rodents in the village and surrounding fields. He sensed skepticism but overall, the meeting went well. Before he left, Sandy had a chance to question Mary Toya.
“Mary, do you have a minute? I need to find a Mary Toya who sells at the Governor’s Palace in Santa Fe.”
“I do sometimes.”
“This would have been the weekend of August 8.”
“Let me think. Yes. I missed one weekend in August, which was the sixteenth. My sister and I trade off weekends sometimes, but I went to Santa Fe the three other weekends that month.”
“A woman from Illinois vacationing with her family bought a bracelet. Her three year old daughter took some seeds from a basket. They were pumpkin seeds. Anyway, we think the child was allergic to them and we’re trying to find out where she might have gotten them,” Sandy lied. But he was too afraid of saying something that might be misinterpreted as an allegation.
“Pumpkin seeds? I keep a basket of piñon or sunflower. I don’t have pumpkin seeds with me very often.”
“Where do you buy your seeds?”
“Bernie’s,” she said.
“The grocery up by the highway?”
“He buys pumpkin and sunflower seeds in bulk. He almost always has piñon seeds. Are you sure she said pumpkin seeds?”
“Yes. I’ll check with Bernie. Thanks,” Sandy said.
+ + +
The UPS truck lumbered down a dirt road, slowed, stopped, backed up. The driver hopped out, knocked on a door, got back into the truck and turned down another road. The driver had asked directions at the grocery and still found himself more or less lost. Less, because he knew he was in the right pueblo and more because every house looked alike.
There was a ‘rush’ stamped on the papers clipped to the board on the dash. Some high priority government delivery that had to get out here today. He swore as he tried another dirt lane and found it a dead end.
The shi
pment wasn’t small. The truck was crammed floor to ceiling with boxes. And something clinked like metal chiming against metal at every bump. And that was more than one a second. He’d be glad to dump this load and be back on the highway. With his wife pregnant and everything, it didn’t pay to take chances with this illness thing and hang around the pueblo more than he absolutely had to.
Ben Pecos saw the truck as it backed out of the dead end by his aunt’s house. He waved to the driver and motioned him to stop. The passenger side door was open, and Ben jumped in.
“I’m the one who will sign for these but I need you to take them to the site. Just follow this road back toward the highway and take the last dirt road to the right.”
“What’s in the cartons?”
“Traps. At least one thousand stainless steel traps.”
“What the hell you going to do with those?”
“Catch rodents who might be carrying the key to the mystery illness.” Ben had thought the driver was hugging the driver-side door, but now he looked plastered to that side of the truck’s cab.
“You mean mice and things like that could be the cause?”
“Could be.”
“Are they dead or alive when you catch ’em?”
“Alive. It will be up to me to euthanize and send the bodies to Albuquerque.”
“Does this pay pretty good?”
“Yeah. But it’s pretty seasonal,” Ben said.
The driver bumped along in silence. “I’d like to get into something else but UPS pays okay. It’s just the hours on the road, and dealing with people who think you’re late or miss you all together and get irate about having to set up another delivery time.”
“Here.” Ben hadn’t meant to yell, but they almost missed the turn that would lead around the back of the pueblo. He had set up a tent with some basic equipment for treating his captives about halfway between the edge of the village and the open mesa. He’d keep the traps here and not have to drag them back and forth.