Wild Penance

by Sandi Ault

  “Do you know about El Instituto Religioso de la Santa Hermandad-the Religious Institution of the Holy Brotherhood?”

  I wrote as quickly as I could, trying to keep up. “You mean the tract that was supposed to have been published by Padre Martínez sometime around the 1830s? The one defending the Penitentes when the Church was issuing decrees condemning them?”

  “The very same.”

  “I have read about that, but there are no known copies. It might even be just a legend.”

  “Oh, it is not just a legend, I assure you.” He looked beyond me toward the door. He nodded his head at someone there.

  I turned and looked behind me at a large man in a long black coat. He nodded at me and the padre, then turned and left the coffeehouse. I twisted around again and looked at Father Ignacio.

  He shrugged apologetically. “That is my driver. I have only a few more minutes. Then I must leave.”

  “So about this tract…”

  “Do you also know about a man named Pedro Antonio Fresquíz of Las Truchas?”

  “Wait-say that again?” I scribbled as Father Medina repeated the name for me.

  He pointed to the i in Fresquíz. “There is an acute accent there. Look him up. Bring the two things together.”

  I looked at him, confused.

  “Fresquíz and the tract. They will come together. If you search hard enough.”

  “Where would I find-”

  “There is something going on right now. I cannot speak about it. It is not safe. But Los Penitentes are… someone is trying to steal their power. I can say no more.”

  I gave him a puzzled look. “I don’t understand.”

  “There are not so many members these days, fewer and fewer of Los Hermanos de la Luz,” he said. “There is also little interest in the true nature of their belief, their role in community life, their bond as brothers, their commitment to service. Instead, they are widely regarded by the general population, and even by some in the Catholic Church, as some sort of cult. Even I am being discouraged by my superiors in the Church from my work in this area. Some of the holy icons have been stolen, others denounced as idols. Moradas have been broken into and vandalized. The sacred oaths of the brotherhood have been betrayed by traitors. And right now, no one trusts anyone.” He pointed his finger at me. “No one is going to trust you as you try to find answers to your questions. You must be very careful.”

  He reached for his coat on the banco beside him and began to get up. But he stopped, sat back, and gave me a curious look, tilting his head slightly to one side, his lips pressed together in a tight, thin line. “I am satisfied that your intent is well-meaning, but I wonder if you are capable of finding the gentle, loving story of community and service in Los Penitentes.” He pondered a moment. “Or if you are merely attracted to their suffering.” He waited.

  I didn’t speak.

  “An enlightened person will come to realize that they are both the same. But you are young, Miss Wild. You are young, and you did not even grow up here, and also, you say that you have no faith. What do you know of penance?”

  His words demanded a reply, but I had none. I held his gaze without flinching for what felt like an eternity. Finally I spoke. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s the thing I’m supposed to learn about.”

  He was quiet a moment, never taking his eyes from my face. “Yes, perhaps that is so,” he said softly. He smiled tenderly at me, then stood and started to put on his coat.

  I stood, too. “Father Ignacio-”

  He held up his hand to stop me. “If I don’t see you again, señorita, please be careful. There is danger surrounding Los Penitentes right now. May God be with you.”

  “But I have so many questions…”

  He reached out and took my hand and held it. “I think, Miss Wild, that you are very lonely.”

  I gasped, his words stinging.

  “Do not be so alone. Always remember, my child, ¡Ayuda a otros y Dios te ayudará! Help others and God will help you. It is an old Penitente saying.”

  4

  Joint Venture

  After our walk out onto the bridge, Agent Ebert and I returned to the parking area, where he introduced me to two other members of the crime scene task force. The Taos Pueblo police detective was most concerned about where the body had fallen in order to determine whether he had jurisdiction, which seemed unlikely after some discussion. Deputy Sheriff Jerry Padilla was someone I had worked with before on two separate incidents requiring arrests on BLM land. Padilla listened to Agent Ebert’s briefing, then spoke to me. “Jamaica, you probably want to scoot on out of here before the media arrive from Albuquerque. It’s a good thing for you it takes so long for them to get here from down south. Come on, I’ll walk you back across and you can get your vehicle from the rest area. I’ll tell the officer over there to let you drive back through. You’ll be the first car on the bridge since we shut her down.”

  “So the forensics team is done on the bridge, then?” I said.

  Padilla’s leather holster squeaked as he walked. “Yup.”

  “How long will it remain closed?”

  “Oh, I suspect shortly after you drive through we’ll open her up to vehicle traffic only. No pedestrians, though. Not until the incident is terminated and the body has been transported to OMI-the Office of the Medical Investigator down in Albuquerque. We’ll keep a uniformed officer here, right through the raft retrieval tomorrow, to keep pedestrians off the bridge until it’s all done.”

  “Thanks for letting me get out of here before the press-”

  He cut in: “We determined that we’re not going to release your name as a witness until we have more information on this crime. Matter of fact, we’re not even going to say we have a witness right now. Until we know more about who did this and why, we are going to keep a tight lock on things, and we want you to do the same. We don’t want you to discuss this with anyone who’s not involved in the case until we give you the go-ahead to do so. Might be good if you didn’t mention it to anyone outside of the task force, if you can swing that.”

  “My boss knows. I had to tell him why I would be late.”

  “Well, I’ll tell him what I told you, and let’s keep this thing under wraps. If the bad guys don’t know you saw them do the deed, they won’t be out looking for you. And they won’t know we’re out looking for them.”

  At the BLM, behind the counter in the main lobby, Rosa Aragon served as receptionist, answering the phones and greeting visitors. Rosa was the river ranger who’d been rescued last fall after a dramatic search of the Rio Grande Gorge that brought the attention of national television to Taos. A chopper sweeping the gorge the morning after she had gone missing finally spotted her brightly colored gear spread out for maximum visibility on a sandbar. This was sixteen hours after her raft had capsized, smashing her against a rock and fracturing her leg in three places. A crew went in at once and got her.

  As I had mentioned to Agent Ebert, I was part of that search and rescue mission, because it was one of the BLM’s own. But instead of finding Rosa, I discovered the fresh remains of a suicide jumper who had hoped to make the media with his last earthly act. He leaped into the gorge and landed headfirst, smashing his head in two like a burst watermelon. Unfortunately, since it no doubt happened in the wink of an eye, no one was actually observing the bridge at the moment he made the jump (or at least no report was made). His body then washed rapidly downriver, unobserved, and found its way into some reeds just in time for me to come upon him while patrolling the banks of the Rio Grande near the Orilla Verde Recreation Area, as part of the search mission for our river ranger.

  Since then, Rosa had been putting in clerical time until her leg healed. I had been putting in time hoping the haunting nightmares and Technicolor memories of that jumper’s broken-up corpse would one day leave me. They hadn’t yet. After today, they’d have company.

  “Roy in?” I asked Rosa.

  “He’s in his office. But you missed all the f
un. He had this forest ranger guy in here with him this morning. Eeeee! That guy was cute.”

  “I missed all the fun, huh?”

  Rosa winked. “He was really good-looking, I’m telling you.”

  I headed back to Roy’s office and knocked on the door, even though it was open.

  The Boss looked up from the list he had been making on a notepad. His thick mass of short, silver-blond hair was mussed from his recently removed hat. “Hey, there. Come on in. Have you had lunch?”

  I walked in and slumped into a chair in front of his desk. “Lunch? I haven’t even had breakfast.”

  “You want to go get something to eat?”

  “I don’t think so. I doubt I could eat right now.”

  Roy got up and closed the door. He stood beside his desk and looked down at me in the chair. “You want to talk about it?”

  “I’m not supposed to talk about it. There’s a special task force investigating, and they’re not going to release any details, including that there was a witness. So you’re not supposed to talk about it either.”

  “Padilla called me and told me that. I’m not going to say a word, unless you need to debrief with someone.”

  “I think I’m better off trying to put it out of my mind, Boss.”

  “Okay, then. Maybe that’s a good idea. Let’s talk about something else. But before we do, I just want to make sure you know that if you need to take some time off-”

  “No, I’m good. I’ll be better off if I stay busy, keep my mind occupied.”

  “All right, then. I got an idea for keeping you occupied, if you’re sure you’ll be all right.”

  “I’m all right. Go ahead, shoot.”

  “Have you ever rode the section up by Cañoncito?”

  “Sure. I did a couple months up there from Pilar to Chimayo last fall during the no-burn enforcement. That was a cold tour of duty, let me tell you, without being able to build a fire when I camped.”

  “That’s right, I remember that now. Well, we got reports that there’s been some fence lines cut up there, and there are four-wheel tracks leading into the protected wilderness area. The Forest Service says there’s also been heavy use on the mud path in through the forest from Cañoncito headed toward Las Trampas, and trucks or whatever have torn the road all to hell. Something’s going on in that area. I had Art sweep that section last week, but I think we better go back again and maintain a presence there until we know what’s happening.”

  “That’s pretty remote country. Not that I would complain, but are you trying to tuck me back out of sight, by any chance?”

  Roy smiled. “Hell, I’d like to keep you out of trouble, Jamaica, but I don’t know what that’s going to take. Lord knows, I’ve tried, and nothing has worked up to now.”

  “You can’t blame me for today, Boss. That wasn’t anything but me being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Nobody’s blaming anybody for anything. It’s just that there’s something about you. You’re like a magnet; you draw things to you.”

  I raised my feet up and propped my boots on the front of his desk. “That’s ridiculous. I just think I’m more curious than most. I see things that other people miss.”

  “Well, go get curious and see if you can find out what’s going on in this case.” He turned and pointed to a map behind a sheet of Plexiglas on the wall behind his desk. “I want you to take a truck and a horse trailer-not your Jeep-and ride the fence from a point several miles north of Chimayo to Cañoncito on horseback.”

  “What am I looking for?” I asked.

  “Whatever you can find, I guess. Just find out what the hell’s going on. Somebody’s cutting fences for a reason. And I want you to bust anyone you catch driving in that protected wilderness area. We have every trailhead posted for no vehicles, on- or off-road. Whoever is doing this is just spitting in our faces.”

  “You know it’s Lent; next week’s Holy Week. That’s right in the heart of Penitente country. Maybe it’s all those pilgrims going to the Sanctuario in Chimayo. Or maybe it’s thrill seekers looking for a glimpse of some Penitente action.”

  “I don’t think so. The pilgrims go the highway, always have. And the gawkers usually don’t show up ’til Good Friday, or the night before. Seems unlikely they’d be looking for much action this early, and even if they were, they’d just take the High Road up through Trampas and Truchas.”

  “Well, are you thinking poachers or wood cutting or what? You know, even though it’s the first week of April, the temperature still drops below freezing at night. This time of year, anyone who could provide enough firewood to get folks through until spring could make a fortune.”

  “Yeah, well, even though it’s still cold at night, it warms up during the day. As a result, we’ve had enough snowmelt to make all those roads up there muddy and impassable, even with an ATV. I think it’ll take a real good rider, so that’s why I’m sending you. We’re going to work with the Forest Service on this one. I met with one of their rangers today. His name’s Kerry Reed. Have you ever met him?”

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

  “You’ll like him. I think you two will make a good team. And since you’ve already put in nearly half a shift today, I figured you might as well wait and start tomorrow night. I told Reed that, too.”

  “Okay, Boss,” I agreed. I sat up and removed my feet from his desk.

  “Oh,” he said, reaching into his vest pocket and pulling out a piece of notepaper on which he had scribbled a few lines. “Almost forgot. Here’s where he’s going to meet you and when. And you two will have to keep any radio traffic to a minimum, not that you can get much signal strength up in that country anyway. But if someone’s up to something, they’ll monitor our radio traffic, so we need to keep things quiet or we’ll never find out what’s going on. Now get on home. You’ve had a tough enough day, no need to hang around here just to pass the time.”

  On my way out through the front lobby, Rosa stopped me. “I forgot to tell you before. Some guy called for you. He was asking a lot of questions. He asked for your phone number at home. I told him you don’t have a phone. He wanted to know when he could call you here. I told him I don’t know, you’re not usually here. He said it was personal and he didn’t want to leave a message. You got a new boyfriend?”

  “When was this?”

  “About an hour before you came in. Sorry, I forgot. I wanted to tell you about that forest ranger guy, and I didn’t think-”

  “And he didn’t leave a name?”

  “No, I asked, but he didn’t want to leave a message.”

  “Did he say he would call back?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t remember.”

  “Rosa, you didn’t write anything down?”

  “What was I supposed to write down? If the guy don’t want me to know who he is, then I don’t know who he is! I don’t know what to write.”

  5

  Medicine Woman

  I left the BLM at noon, and the rest of the day was wide open. I didn’t want to go home, didn’t want to have to go back through the command post on the east rim of the gorge, didn’t want to have to go back across the bridge.

  To pass the time, I decided to go visit my medicine teacher. I drove five miles north across Grand Mesa. At the Tanoah Falls Casino, I turned off the highway and headed in the direction of the mountains along a winding, narrow road through the tiny village of Cascada Azul, almost deserted now with ski season over. Tanoah Pueblo took a backseat in tourism to the larger Taos Pueblo, with its massive adobe architecture. The little walled village of Tanoah had its own ancient earthen apartment-like structures, but was smaller, off the beaten path, and less well preserved.

  Anna Santana, an elder of the tribe, lived in a small adobe home outside the walls of the main part of the village. She had taken me under her wing at an art show just a few months before, at Christmastime. I helped her prevent a calamity when her display of handmade jewelry, dreamcatchers, an
d pottery almost collapsed. On that first day, moments after we met, she had asked me about my mother. When I told her that my mother had left when I was very young, the Pueblo woman had insisted that I call her “Momma Anna.” And she invited me to share the Christmas feast with her and her family at Tanoah Pueblo, and later, King’s Day and yet another Pueblo feast day. Soon I began coming to her house now and then just to pass time with her as she cooked or made pottery or performed any of the dozens of hardworking endeavors that filled her life. A month or so ago, Momma Anna had announced that she was my medicine teacher, and that she was called to teach me “Indun way.” However, I had no sense that any formal training had begun. At least not yet.

  When I pulled up in front of her house, I noticed a plume of blue-gray smoke coming from the back, on the side nearest the acequia, the irrigation ditch that carried water from the rio to the tribe’s fields. A pack of mutts came to greet me, and I stopped to pet heads and scratch ears. I walked around the house and saw a small brown woman bent over, scraping live coals out onto the ground from the floor of the horno-a beehive-shaped outdoor adobe oven used for baking. Momma Anna straightened when she heard my footsteps. She turned, looked me up and down, and then gestured for me to come to her. “You come. We bake pies.”

  On the table under the portal behind her house, four trays of folded and crimped, prune-filled pastry pockets huddled under cotton dish towels. These little triangle-shaped pies were a favorite of the Tanoah, and Momma Anna made some of the best I had tasted. Her dough was always crisp and flaky; the filling, which she made from wild plums that grew along the acequia, was chewy, tart, and sticky, never too sweet. I brought the trays over, and we shoved them into the horno, then closed the door almost completely, leaving just enough of an opening so that the heat inside would not burn the pies.

  Anna Santana drew up straight after the door was in place and again looked me up and down. “Today we start,” she said. With the shovel she had used to remove the live coals from the horno, she scooped up a burning ember and carried it carefully before her as she made for the back door.