Wild Penance

by Sandi Ault

  Ebert drew in a breath. “Wow. I had heard some stories, but I didn’t know all the particulars. I thought they were a secret sect. How do you know so much about them?”

  “I’ve sort of been studying Los Penitentes. I’ve been drawing some of their shrines-I see a lot of them in the high country where I work. After I had done a number of sketches, I wanted to know more about them. I started doing research and taking notes.”

  The agent pursed his lips. “So you’re a resource protection agent? What got you interested in doing this sketchbook thing about the Penitentes?”

  “It started last year when I saw a procession over by the Chama. I was really intrigued. But it’s hard to get any information about them, other than what’s written, and that’s not much.”

  He nodded. “Well, good luck getting the facts about those guys. I hear they don’t talk too much about it.”

  “That’s true, they don’t. It’s taken me months, but I’ve finally found a pretty good source. I just met with him last week. It’s the first breakthrough I’ve had in a while.”

  “Okay, well, from what you know, maybe you can tell me a little something about it-like, why do they do this stuff? Why would anyone flagellate himself or volunteer to get crucified?”

  “It’s penance. To emulate the suffering they believe Christ endured. Penance is the main sacrament of their faith.”

  Agent Ebert raised his binoculars and looked down the gorge at the diminutive dark dot that was quickly disappearing into the rapids. “Man, if that’s what this is, it’s some wild penance.”

  3

  The Father

  When I first talked to him several months ago, his voice on the other end of the phone had been barely more than a whisper. “Father Ignacio Medina,” he uttered so softly that it took me a moment to realize what he had said. His rolling Hispanic accent was as smooth and rich as Ibarra chocolate.

  “Father Medina? My name is Jamaica Wild. I’ve been working on a sort of sketchbook about the Penitentes. I’ve been trying to learn more about them. I was wondering if I could come to see you for some information?”

  “Who did you say you are?”

  “My name is Jamaica Wild.”

  “And who do you work for?”

  “I work for the Bureau of Land Management, in the Taos region. But I wanted to talk with you about the sketchbook I’m doing.”

  “You work for the BLM?” He was still whispering. “What do they have to do with Los Penitentes?”

  “No, the BLM doesn’t have anything to do with this. I’m doing these drawings on my own. I’ve done some research, made a few notes, and written a few things about what I’ve learned and seen. I would like to talk with you about it.”

  “I am very sorry, I cannot help you. There is really nothing I could tell you.” He hung up.

  A week later I tried again. And again and again. For months.

  Father Ignacio Medina finally agreed to meet me one evening at a coffeehouse in Santa Fe. I was there early, sipping tea, sitting at a banco-an adobe shelf along the wall that was covered with cushions-in the back corner of the small room, near a fireplace exuding a comforting dry warmth and the spicy smell of piñon. I had opened my notebook on the table, and I was working with some colored pencils on a sketch of a shrine.

  I recognized him by his collar when he came in. He scanned the few occupied tables. I held up a hand and waved. He looked at me and narrowed his eyes, his brow folding into furrows, then made his way through the narrow, irregular spaces between the chairs. “Miss Wild?” he asked.

  I stood, extended my hand, and leaned across the table, looking directly into his stare. “Father Medina, I am so honored to meet you. I read your book The Passion and the Light. In fact, I practically know parts of it by heart. Thank you so much for giving me some of your valuable time.”

  His grip was surprisingly fierce. He studied me carefully. “How could I resist? When I stopped taking your phone calls, you started sending me letters.” Then he looked down at the banco. “Do you mind if we change places?” he asked, pointing to the spot where I’d been sitting, watching for him to come in.

  In fact, I did mind. I hate sitting with my back to a room.

  He stood over me, unbuttoning his coat, waiting for me to move.

  “Okay, I guess.” I closed my notebook and scooted it around to the other side. I took a seat in the chair opposite him.

  He ordered black coffee. His gaze panned the room, came back to me, zoomed in. “I have studied all the things you sent to me. I will admit, I was very impressed. You have done some interesting drawings of some very old and little-known shrines, and you have apparently done a lot of research about them for this sketchbook of yours. It is good.” His eyes narrowed. “But when I look at you, I cannot help thinking-you will forgive me, I hope-that you are a very lovely young woman, Miss Wild. Why does a young lady like yourself have such an interest in Los Penitentes?”

  “You mean an Anglo?”

  He smiled. “Yes, that. And-well, perhaps I was expecting someone… older. Perhaps someone from an academic background. You don’t look like someone who spends all her spare time doing research, drawing, writing.”

  “Well, you know what they say about judging a book by its cover.”

  He laughed. “I know. I know. But when I saw the drawings and read the essay you sent to me, I guess I pictured you… well, it is different now that I see you. You seem to look at these things with a wisdom beyond your years.” He looked up abruptly and focused his attention on the door of the coffeehouse.

  I turned and looked over my shoulder. A man had just come in. He stood at the counter, his back to the room, waiting to give his order. I turned back to Father Medina, who tasted his coffee, looked at the door, then at me, and within a moment, at the door again.

  I took a drink from my cup and studied the old priest who sat before me. He was a small man with a beautiful, thick head of blue-black hair streaked near a prominent widow’s peak with a wave of pure white. His caramel skin bore deep grooves across the forehead and at the corners of his dark eyes. He continued to look past me at the door.

  “Are you expecting someone, Father?”

  He smiled. “Perhaps.” He pointed toward my notebook. “Is this beautiful book your manuscript?” His hand reached out.

  I hesitated.

  “May I see it?” His arm remained extended, his palm open.

  I tapped my fingers on the book, tamping it down as I tried to diminish its appeal. “Well, it’s not really a manuscript. I don’t even know if it will become one. It’s just all my notes and sketches and…”

  His fingers wagged impatiently toward it.

  I moved my arm over the top of the book, as if to protect it. I felt my pulse quicken as I tried to deflect his request. “I was just hoping to ask you a few questions. I really wasn’t planning…”

  The father’s palm remained outstretched, but his face softened from a demand to a plea.

  Moments passed, the two of us unmoving, my fingers lingering on the edge of the cover. Finally, I relented and handed him the book. I had never let anyone else look at it. It was a binder filled with pages of original drawings and essays. I had made a tan deerskin cover for it and used tight, perfect loops of chocolate deerskin thong to round-braid seams all around the outer edges. He held the book up carefully in his two hands. “I’m just going to look at it,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt it.”

  I forced a smile.

  He set the book down carefully on the table, not opening it. Instead, he looked at me. “Tell me what you do for the BLM.”

  “I’m a resource protection agent. A range rider. I mostly ride fence lines in the backcountry. In the winter months, I do a lot of odd jobs-handling grazing permits, maintaining gates onto public lands, wildlife rescues, things like that.”

  “So you’re a cowgirl?”

  I grinned. “I guess you might say that.”

  “Are you married?”

  �
�No.”

  “In love with someone?”

  “No.”

  “Then you live with your family.”

  “No, I don’t have any family.”

  He was quiet a moment. “You live alone, then?”

  “Yes.”

  Father Ignacio opened the book and began browsing through it. “Look! You have drawn maps and everything,” he said approvingly. “It is obvious that you are in love with your subject.” He studied one of my drawings. “I like the sketches you’ve done of the shrines. This one-it’s in Agua Azuela, no?”

  I nodded yes.

  “I remember that one, I know it.” He stopped to read a little of what I had written. Then he closed the book and placed it on the table between us. “But you have never answered my question. Why do you have such an interest in Los Hermanos? That is how Los Penitentes refer to themselves-the brothers, or La Hermandad-the brotherhood.” His eyes searched my face with intensity.

  “I’ve never really thought about why I’m interested in them. I just am.” I looked away from the intimacy of his stare.

  “I have a feeling you are afraid to tell me the truth, Miss Wild. What do you think will happen if you do?”

  “I don’t know how to say it, exactly.”

  We were both silent for a minute. He sipped his coffee. “Why don’t you try?” he suggested, setting his cup down.

  “Well…” I thought a moment. I looked directly into his eyes. “If I’m drawn to something, it usually has some kind of lesson for me. That’s been true since I was a kid.”

  “And what is the lesson you have gotten from your study of Los Penitentes?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  He studied my face. “And you have had these kinds of experiences since you were a child?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give me an example.”

  “You’re going to think this is crazy, but it started with a possum hand I found when I was a kid. It had been left behind by a predator. It was completely dried and perfect, all the hair on it, even the little fingernails. And the possum’s palm was lined, and there were even fingerprints-just like a person’s.”

  His face sobered. He tilted his head to one side, regarding me carefully. He didn’t speak.

  “I couldn’t help myself, I picked it up and took it home. It was- don’t be offended by this, Father, please-but it was hideous. And fascinating. I finally sewed that paw on a little deerskin medicine bag I made. I still have it.”

  Father Ignacio’s eyes widened. “So Los Penitentes are like that for you? Just some kind of novelty? Some ‘hideous fascination,’ as you said?”

  “No! Oh, I didn’t think you’d understand it.”

  He held up his open palm. “Well, then, enlighten me.”

  I drew in a slow breath. “Maybe this won’t make any sense to you at all. But I think sometimes you have to embrace the things you are most frightened of. I could tell, even when I was just a child, that the possum hand was some kind of powerful medicine for me. Just the strength of my reaction told me that.”

  “And what was it that you learned from this ‘powerful medicine’ in the possum hand?”

  I leaned over the table toward him. “I learned not to be afraid of it. I let the possum speak to me and I learned that there is a kind of genius in his nature. I learned that what may look strange or foreign to you at first can prove to be amazing when you get over your fear of it. But you have to get over your fear, or your revulsion, to get to the lesson it is trying to teach you.”

  “And this is what you have found in Los Penitentes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “It started last year when I saw a procession of novices.”

  “Yes,” he urged, leaning closer, his eyes drilling into me.

  “They were performing penance. Whipping themselves as they marched. I thought it was terrible. But I couldn’t take my eyes off of them.”

  “Yes, yes, go on!” He gestured with his hand for me to keep it rolling.

  “I just wanted to know what made them want to do that. Is that faith?”

  He looked directly at me, his eyes wide. “What kind of faith do you practice, Miss Wild?”

  “I don’t… have any faith.”

  “Ah!” He looked down at his coffee, picked up a spoon, and began to stir in it. There was a long silence punctuated only by the rhythmic, metallic ring of the utensil against his cup. He appeared to be considering what I had told him, but I worried that he might be thinking that I should be committed to a mental facility. I knew my story about the possum hand sounded foolish, even irrational. Finally, the priest spoke: “Miss Wild, you are not just trying to find a way to witness a Penitente crucifixion, are you?”

  My mouth fell open. “Do they still do that?”

  “Have you ever seen the rituals of Los Penitentes during Holy Week?”

  “Well, only the public ones. I’m an outsider. I’m not Catholic. I only know enough Spanish to be dangerous. I’m looking at this from the point of view of a stranger in a strange land.”

  “Yes. Now you have gotten to the heart of it, have you not? You are an outsider. Your home is somewhere else, no?”

  “No. This is my home. Well, I mean, I was raised in Kansas, but my family is all gone. This is the only home I have.”

  “Just the same, you see, you can never truly understand this faith. You have not grown up eating and sleeping and breathing these traditions, attending these rituals.” He looked over my shoulder at the door, then leaned over the table toward me, speaking as if in confidence, of something privileged: “I do not think you will be allowed to observe any of the old rituals. Only a few moradas-you know what moradas are?”

  “Yes, the places where the brothers meet and worship or practice rituals or whatever…”

  “That’s not what I mean. The word morada comes from the Spanish word for ‘dwelling,’ which comes from the verb morar, which means ‘to live’ or ‘to dwell.’ It is the home for the spirit, the dwelling place for the soul while it remains on this earth. Los Penitentes consider their moradas to be holy places.”

  “I know the ones I’ve seen are usually off the beaten path. Not on a major road, some not even near a road, and never in an obvious place,” I said. “You really have to look for them to find them.”

  “There are only a few moradas left which carry on the old practices, and they have been forced to become more and more covert. It is vital to the spirit of the ceremonies that the penitent ones be anonymous. These rituals are for them and for their community; they are not some circus sideshow for ignorant Anglos converging on the villages, hoping to see a religious spectacle, perhaps even a crucifixion. The attendance of uninitiated onlookers has only added fuel to the sensationalism surrounding the rituals, and that draws more onlookers. It was never meant to be that way.” He shook his head in frustration and took a drink of coffee. He checked the door, then looked back at me. “You know that Los Penitentes were once excommunicated by the Church?”

  I nodded.

  “You will find a tentative peace today between the Church and Los Hermanos de la Luz-that is another name for them, the Brothers of the Light. In some of the larger towns, there might be a procession, a pale imitation of what it once was. The activities will be centered around the church, although a ceremony may be held by the brotherhood in the morada, especially the Tinieblas-the ceremony held in darkness on Good Friday. But it will be nothing like…” His voice trailed off. He knitted his brows, making a chevron of grooves across his forehead. He peered at me through squinted lids. “Do you know what made me finally agree to our interview?”

  “No. I wondered-I’ve been trying for months.”

  “It was one of the pieces you sent me-the one you wrote about that procession you happened to witness near the Chama. When I read it, I was very moved, almost as I would have been if I had been there myself. Where did you learn to write like that?”

  I thought a mome
nt. “I don’t know. Maybe I inherited it from my mother. She wrote poetry.”

  He glanced intently at me. “What you wrote about is an ancient tradition-making penance. But there are also the traditions of giving, of service to the community, of charity, of healing. All the traditions of Los Penitentes and their sister order, Las Carmelitas, have been tenderly taught from generation to generation in these tiny villages. And some believe that these lovingly maintained customs come from even before we came here.”

  “Tell me about that, Father.”

  He waited, tilted his head to one side to see the door. Then he began speaking almost in song. I was mesmerized by his voice as he told me the story of how Spain had sent Franciscan brothers to colonize the lands that early conquistadors had claimed for the king. Unable to reach all the outlying villages when a priest or brother was needed, they had cultivated a tertiary, or Third Order of lay leaders of the church, who called themselves Los Hermanos de la Luz. The practice of self-flagellation and excessive penance was common in medieval Spain, and some believed that the Franciscans may have introduced these practices here, hence the name Los Penitentes. When the Mexican Revolt cast the Spaniards out, the Franciscans were called home to Spain, leaving Los Hermanos to fend for themselves in religious matters. The unique and exotic practices which developed, including ritual crucifixion, were a result of the remote and isolated nature of the land itself.

  “Of course there is yet another theory,” he said. “Some say that the practices and the brotherhood came up from Mexico in the late 1700s. Many scholars believe this is the more correct of the two. However, there are certain moradas that maintain they were given their original charter in the 1500s. So it is hard to say which is true.”

  I propped my elbow on the table and rested my chin in my hand as I listened to him with fascination.

  “I have a suggestion for your book.”

  This roused me. I sat up at once and pulled the notebook to me, turned to a fresh page, and picked up a pencil.