The Shaman Laughs
( Charlie Moon - 2 )
James D. Doss
James D. Doss
The Shaman Laughs
/pitwku-pi/were usually good-natured, though on occasion they could be grouchy.
— Anne M. Smith Ethnography of the Northern Utes
1
Colorado, Southern Ute Reservation Canon del Serpiente
From a distance, the lone monolith has the sinister appearance of a peglike tooth, set firmly in the mouth of the Canyon of the Snake. A close examination reveals that the top of the sandstone projection is remarkably flat. Suitable, perhaps, for a table. Or an altar.
Near the center of this surface, there is a cavity. In the age of the woolly mammoth and giant ground sloth, it was only a shallow depression that caught a few drops of rainwater; barely enough for a sparrow's bath. But that was then. Now it is larger. Deeper. But the sparrow no longer comes to bathe in this place.
In a time known only to lingering ghosts, the basin was put to practical use by resourceful women of the Anasazi. They would fill the natural metate with hard grains of blue and yellow corn, then grind the maize into a coarse meal with heavy granite manos. Over a score of generations, their labors gradually enlarged the cavity and gave it a measure of symmetry. These were the fat years, before the great thirst visited the land. Drought did not travel alone; Hunger and
Sickness strode along hand-in-hand, only a few faltering steps behind. At the appointed time, Death would come in the form of a small gray owl and sit on the heads of those who were called away to the world of shadows. Many were called.
During the centuries after the Anasazi had passed into the whispers of romantic myth, the bowl-shaped cavity reverted to its original function as temporary home to the occasional goat-faced spider or silverwing cricket. But that was during the dry season. When booming thunderstorms rumbled over the sinuous canyon, the cavity would catch a precious store of water. Flittering yucca moths, even sleek ravens would come to drink. It might have remained so for a thousand millennia until the sand-laden winds finally eroded the monolith to dust.
It did not remain so.
On this day, the cavity in the stone is filled with a warm liquid. It is thicker than water.
The long finger dips into the viscous fluid, then touches the tip of the tongue. Yes… delicious. The finger dips once more, then moves in slow, deliberate strokes over the grainy canvas. The drawings on the sandstone table in Snake Canyon are simple, but the subjects are unmistakable. The original figure was a bull elk. There are also mule deer, a few horses, a scattering of domestic cattle.
But the slaying of animals has never been more than a preparation for the ultimate goal… and the incomparable delicacy.
These new sketches in scarlet represent human beings, the second much larger than the first. The left hand of the smaller figure grasps a rectangular object. To the casual observer, it might be a purse. Or a book. To identify the larger of the intended victims, the stained finger executes a short arc over the stick-man's shoulder. Among those who possess knowledge of such matters, there will be no misunderstanding of this archaic sign.
It is a crescent moon.
The Shaman's Home: Canon del Espiritu
Daisy Perika leaned on the aluminum sill of her kitchen window. She stared at the stark outlines of the great stone women perched on Three Sisters Mesa, that five-mile finger of sandstone that separates the Canyon of the Snake from the Canyon of the Spirit. The old woman did this whenever she was troubled; it helped to calm her spirit.
But something moved. She blinked at the ghostly figure of mist descending the mesa's crumbling talus slope. The vaporous Whatever It Was took each step with exaggerated care, as if a fall might cause serious injury. How curious; this comic behavior brought a slight smile to her wrinkled face. The specter seemed to raise a wispy arm in a hesitant greeting, then ventured forth in starts and stops as if unsure of itself. Would the phantom approach the Ute woman's home uninvited? Perhaps this shadow wished to talk. To whisper sly myths into the shaman's ear; tales of times when the earth was young. Before the People were. Many spirits, like human beings, had a tendency to exaggerate. Not a few were incapable of telling the truth. But the apparition paused, then turned away, apparently drawn to the shelter of the sandstone walls of Canon del Espiritu. Wandering spirits, even ghosts of human beings, were common enough in this place. Such appearances did not trouble or even surprise the old woman. This was a lonely spot, where even the ghosts thirsted for conversation with the living.
Matters of far greater consequence than this shy apparition occupied her mind. But, since Nahum Yacuti had disappeared so mysteriously in that awful storm, who was there to talk with about such deep things? Daisy had almost forgotten about her cousin; Gorman Sweetwater sat at her small kitchen table, sullenly nursing a cup of brackish coffee.
Gorman longed for a smoke and, as was his habit, was feeling sorry for himself. He figured he ought to be able to smoke if he wanted to. Hadn't he driven all the way out here to bring his cousin a load of stuff she needed from town? The Ute rancher thought about rolling himself a cigarette, then he thought again. The old woman was in a foul mood tonight. And he didn't want to get Daisy started with all that endless talk about how bad smoking was for his lungs and it would be the death of him for sure and didn't he care that poor little Benita would be left all alone without a Daddy and besides who would take care of his precious cattle then? Gorman slammed his coffee cup down hard enough to get her attention.
Daisy Perika was startled by the noise; then she remembered the groceries her cousin had brought to her remote trailer home at the mouth of Canon del Espiritu. She lifted a carton of eggs thoughtfully, as if weighing them. "Something ain't the way it ought to be." She snapped at Gorman like it was his fault.
"That woman at the store said"-a dry cough rattled Gorman's lungs-"… said them eggs is jumbo grade A and still warm from the hen." He stuck an unlighted pipe into his mouth; the taste of stale ashes lifted his spirits. "Take a sniff, I bet you can still smell the chicken's-"
"I don't mean the eggs." Gorman could act so stupid! Or maybe it wasn't an act at all. She opened the refrigerator and carefully placed a dozen eggs into their oval receptacles in the door shelf. "It's the air that don't feel quite right tonight," she said almost to herself, "I won't be able to sleep good."
Her cousin raised an eyebrow. "What's wrong?" Sometimes, Daisy could see tomorrow. And the day after.
"It's like Kwasigeti comes for somebody. Somebody I know."
At the mention of the demon, the pipe slipped from Gorman's lips and clattered onto the linoleum floor. "Somebody you know?" He hadn't been feeling all that well lately… Maybe the old woman could see a deadly sickness coming to snatch his soul from his body. He pressed the question as he retrieved the beloved pipe. "You mean… like one of your relatives?"
She refilled his cup with black coffee. Charlie Moon, her favorite nephew, was out there somewhere in his squad car, patrolling the rutted back roads of the Southern Ute Reservation. "Not you, Gorman."
With great relief, the old rancher released the breath he had been holding. "You always did worry too much. Me," he pointed at his chest with the pipe stem, "I figure when a feller's number's up, it's up." He leaned back and stuck the pipe between his teeth. "When old St. Peter toots that big horn, why I'll just saddle up my pony and go and meet Gabriel at them purple gates."
Daisy sighed. Like most old men, Gorman got sillier with every passing year. The shaman squinted through the open window at the approaching midnight. She hugged her shoulders and sniffed at the night air. The breath of the canyon was still warm, but it was not sweet with the usual aromas of sage and juniper and pinon
. "I don't know what it is, Gorman… something just don't smell right."
Gorman Sweetwater, whose reprieve from the cold fingers of Death had improved his mood considerably, glanced over the rim of his coffee cup at his cousin. He smiled only with the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, "Maybe it's that old pitukupf who lives up the canyon in his badger hole; I doubt if that little fellow has took himself a bath for… prob'ly twelve or eight hundred years. More or less."
The old woman pretended not to hear this foolish talk. Her cousin, who had once lost a good horse because he didn't show proper respect to the pitukupf, should know better than to make jokes about the dwarf-spirit. But Gorman, like most old men, was apt to forget the hard lessons he'd learned in life.
And then there was Charlie Moon. There would be no point in telling the policeman that she sensed something terrible out there. Her nephew would treat her with respect, but he would pay little attention to a warning based on her intuition. Daisy Perika closed her eyes and tried to see into the darkness. Tonight, she knew, sleep would not come at all.
The Policeman's Home
on the Banks of the Los Pinos
It was almost midnight when Charlie Moon finally unbuckled his cowhide cartridge belt and draped it over the back of a heavy oak chair. He pulled off his boots. The Ute policeman's thoughts drifted to Benita Sweetwater. Any day now, Gorman's daughter would be home from Fort Lewis College in Durango. He could almost see Benita's dark eyes, the flash of her sweet smile. But such thoughts were distracting and would rob him of sleep. Moon forced his mind to other matters. Such as Police Chief Severo's upcoming vacation and his replacement by Scott Parris for those few weeks. Moon smiled at this thought; it would be good to spend some time with his friend again. The Ute also considered his unfinished adobe home; there was so much work be done, and never enough time. And finally, Charlie Moon let his thoughts drift to his aunt Daisy. It wasn't good for the old woman's mind, living by herself at the mouth of that haunted canyon. It was a place that more prudent Utes preferred to avoid. The isolation turned her thoughts inward, made fantasies come alive and dance around her little bed after the sun slipped behind the mesa. But there was no use talking to her about moving. The old woman was stubbornly fixed on the notion that because she had entered into this world at the mouth of Canon del Espiritu, from that sacred place she would also depart.
But Charlie Moon did not entertain those troublesome thoughts that keep less fortunate souls sleepless far into the depths of night. For this reason, the Ute policeman was usually asleep within a minute after his heavy frame hit the mattress. On this night, Moon rolled over in his bed and was soon lost in the infinite, ever-changing landscape of his mind. As a finger of cold moonlight reached gently through the window and touched his face, the dream began innocently enough, without any hint of that which was to come. * * *
The dreamer walked along a much-used trail. Without knowing how it could be so, Charlie Moon was certain that his feet had made this path.
This place was unremarkable except for its striking familiarity. Before him was a field of black basalt boulders, scattered patches of juniper and pinon, and irregular clumps of fringed sage. White four-petal fendlerbush blossoms waved at him, mountain bluebirds and yucca moths were on the wing, tireless honeybees droned from pink rose to purple aster. The Ute paused to watch a buffalo cow grazing on the lush grasses; her mate drank from the waters of the rolling stream. And what was his grandmother's name for this creek that churned its reddish-brown waters through the shallow valley? Sweet Waters of Forgetting? Blood of Manitou? Tears of the Sky Virgin? He could not remember. But one landmark was unmistakable. The stark profile of the Coch-etopa Hills rose into a morning sky that was a whitish blue. But the dreamer could see over the horizon-far to the east, this endless sea, this sky-blanket over the earth patched with billows of clouds that rolled and swelled-great vaporous waves driven before an unseen storm that had not yet reached its full fury. A small wooden ship pitched upon the rolling surface of this sky-sea, square sails bent before the winds. A craft that would bring the fierce Blue Eyes to this land of the grandmother of all his grandfathers. Some of these first would be killed, a few would be enslaved, fewer still would be absorbed into the confederation of tribes who lived in that place where the sun came up. But there would be many others who would come over the cold waters. Many beyond counting. The ship vanished into a deep fog.
The Ute knew that he had walked this trail many times, a thousand winters before the People had been given the horse, even before the bow and arrow had replaced the flint-tipped dart and atl-atl throwing stick. Charlie Moon also knew that he would be here again. Soon. Before the Apache Plume gave her last petals to North Wind. He heard a low rumbling sound, like summer thunder over the San Juans. It was the buffalo bull; the great animal pawed the sod ner-vously as he bellowed his words to the clouds. The cow continued her grazing.
Moon was suddenly distracted from the buffalo; he turned to see an old man, dressed in leather breeches and a spotless white shirt with silver buttons. His legs were bowed, his short form bent forward. The man's long hair was straight and coarse-coal black tinged with streaks of snowy white. The face was ancient and wrinkled, the nose flattened, the skin dark like polished walnut. The beaded band around the old man's head was a marvel to the dreamer; this ornament shimmered with more colors than a rainbow-amber and turquoise and cornflower and jasper and rose quartz and a dozen other hues that Charlie Moon had never seen nor imagined and would not remember after this dream.
The old man's lips sighed, then formed soundless words. "Son of Buckskin Moon, son of Alice Winterheart… will you look upon what I must show you?"
Moon nodded. There was something hauntingly familiar about this elder, but his identity was hidden from the dreamer.
The venerable figure raised his arm; he pointed to a small forest of piflon and juniper. He stared at the young Ute with an expression of unutterable sadness, then turned away. The stooped figure left the path and walked into the small forest of evergreens. Moon was not eager to follow, but he found that his legs were in charge. They made long, heavy strides.
In Middle World, thunder rolled down the broad valley, along the muddy banks of the Los Pinos, off the rocky face of Shellhammer Ridge, over the painted steel roof of the house where the dreamer slept. The west wind sighed heavily, rippling the waters of the Pinos, bending the limbs of great cotton woods and limber willows along the river's banks. Just above the foaming rapids in the elbow of the river, in the home built of adobe bricks, the dreamer heard the thunder speak. Charlie Moon also heard the nervous chatter of the cottonwood leaves, the dark whisper of the willows. He stirred uneasily, but did not escape the prison of his dream.
Moon was now aware that he was running. He wanted to turn away, but the dreamer's legs were like great pumping pistons, driving him toward some uncertain dark shore. But now, in a clearing among the juniper and pinon and scrub oak, his legs slowed to a walk. But it was very strange-the light of the sun did not touch this place of dark mists! Worse still, the old man was not here.
There was a small half-alive tree isolated in the center of the clearing; even the dry grasses did not grow near its roots… The big Ute moved toward this tortured growth and was suddenly stopped as if by a wall of smoky glass. Barely visible through the folds of darkness, Charlie Moon could see a form suspended from a branch in the tree. It must be an animal. A fresh deer carcass waiting to be butchered.
The mists parted for a moment… No… oh no… it was a human being… naked… hanging by the ankles. The face, twisted in pain, was unrecognizable through the swirling mists. The Ute could not tell whether this was a man or a woman… but he had a sense that he knew this person well. In the same way that he knew himself.
As the thunder rumbled over his sleeping body and the cot-tonwoods shuddered and rattled, Charlie Moon realized that he was struggling in the depths of a strange nightmare. But there was little relief in this knowledge.
; The wretched prisoner called out to him, but Moon could not understand the words. From the darkness, a second figure appeared. But this was neither human nor animal. This apparition had matted hair, short muscular legs that terminated in shining black hoofs. And a great shaggy head. Blood dripped from the grinning lips of the beast, and fire flashed like lightning off the curved horns above its ears. The shaggy figure approached the naked upside-down human being. The right arm was raised-a slender blade of blue flame appeared in the hairy fist. As the dreamer watched in horror, the horned beast began, very deliberately, in the manner of a skilled butcher, to dismember the struggling victim.
Charlie Moon tried to break through the invisible barrier and come to the aid of this human being, but his efforts came to nothing. The hanging figure screamed and begged and screeched and pleaded. But the beast was without mercy. Now, the human being made one final cry and the pitiful sound was like that of a helpless animal being ripped apart by the claws and teeth of a merciless predator.
Moon roared in defiance at this abomination; he directed his protests to the heavens that seemed so far away from this dark place. There was no answer from the heavens. But the horned creature paused in its bloody work, then turned to observe the dreamer. There was a slight cocking of the beast's head. A recognition.
With a spasmodic jerk of his spine, Charlie Moon awoke on his perspiration-soaked sheet. His body was stretched, like the poor wretch hanging from the tree. His mouth gaped… his chest heaved as he gasped for breath like an asthmatic. The big Ute was ashamed; even as a child no nightmare had brought such raw fear. He gritted his teeth and willed the terror to depart. Oh, so gradually, he relaxed.
The rainless storm of wind and thunder rolled away to the South. But a vicious gust of wind had slammed the branch of an aspen against the window and there was now a short, curving crack in the pane. The cold moonbeam slipped in through the window once more. Refracted by the fracture in the glass, the finger of light painted a cunning geometry onto the pillow, just above his shoulder. It was a short arc… a crescent. A sign.
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