Wild Penance

by Sandi Ault

  I sat astride Redhead at the top of a knoll overlooking the four-wheel track. A thin line of fiery orange still edged the top of the Jemez range as the sun tried to paint blazing colors in a sky heavy and dark with impending snow. Behind me, the full moon would rise unseen, behind rumpled blankets of black and blue vapor held back by the tips of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

  To the east, up the slope and through the trees, the Boscaje morada would be empty tonight, according to what Theresa Mendoza had told me. Its members would have gone to Truchas for the rituals, in fear for their safety. Beyond the deserted morada-somewhere higher up-the Calvario would also be abandoned. This was the place where the Boscaje Hermanos would have directed their procession, following the fourteen stations of the cross-and perhaps even raised a cross on which one of their own was hung.

  In the old days, this ritual would have been done at noon on Good Friday, after the procession to the church. There, the stand-in for Christ would have his last earthly meeting with his mother, portrayed by a bulto of the Virgin Mary carried by the women of the village. All would then proceed to the graveyard for the crucifixion. But, as Father Ignacio had said, the intrusion of outsiders had forced many moradas to hold clandestine midnight rituals in remote places carefully guarded by villagers.

  All over the Rio Grande Valley, in villages, towns, and pueblos, the faithful were going to mass at this hour for the consecration of the Eucharist, representing Christ’s flesh and blood, reenacting the Last Supper in the ritual of communion-the last time this would be done until Easter Sunday. Tonight, their world would enter a figurative darkness, symbolizing the betrayal and crucifixion of their Savior. The threatening weather seemed perfect for this.

  In the past, my book, my job, even the spartan comfort of my little cabin, were all things that shielded me from the feeling that I was utterly alone. Now even this country-this beautiful corner of northern New Mexico that was the only place that felt like home to me-offered me no protection. Its wild beauty made me feel helpless, assailable. I had been unable to sleep in my cabin, afraid of another attack, robbery, or violation. In my heightened vulnerability, even my budding relationship with Kerry-which had both thrilled and terrified me-seemed bound up with this string of mysteries now.

  I wasn’t even tired anymore. A vague, unnamed fear had taken hold deep within me and begun to expand. Some hidden accelerator inside me had been pressed hard to the floor, causing my breathing to grow short and my skin to tingle in a random pattern of synapses.

  I rode the fence line south, climbing in elevation. The air felt heavy, wet, and cold. It was going to be a hell of a snow. There had been a sickly cast to the last remaining light, like the slick, blue-gray underbelly of a snake, so that I was glad to see it ending. I was only planning to ride a short way. On a night like this, in this rough terrain, a person could get trapped in a blizzard and die just going out to check the mail.

  Redhead was skittish, as horses are before storms. She jibbed and volted, feeling the wildness in the weather as her mustang ancestors did, wanting to outrun the storm. She bridled and we halted.

  “Shhhhh. Are you going to calm down, or are you going to wear your bit through your gums?”

  She whistled, shaking her head, fussing with her bit.

  “Well, all right then. Getup!” I gave her a tiny press with my heels.

  She balked. Then she whinnied loud and snorted, her nostrils flaring back in fear.

  “What is it?”

  I waited, senses alert.

  I smelled smoke-not unusual in a land heated by woodstoves and fireplaces. Then, as I scanned the horizon, I saw the red glow. Fire! There was fire in the forest land above me. I gouged Redhead with my heels. She was ready and took off like a bullet. As we bounded up the slope, I knew in my heart what was burning. I made straight for the Boscaje morada. Small limbs smacked into me as I tried to guide the horse at top speed through the dense thicket. The foliage switched my face, stinging it with sticky juniper sap. It was getting so dark I couldn’t see where I was going. Redhead slowed, nervously pulling her head back to avoid vicious swipes from low limbs. Reluctantly, I dismounted and led her, picking my way along through the forest with one hand outstretched. Finally, as I neared the meadow, I could see the golden flames coming from the morada’s roof and slapping the low sky, hissing at the cold moisture. The perfect black silhouette of a cross stood at the center of this high hat of yellow fire.

  The inhabitants being away at the morada in Truchas, a lone man was hurrying into the morada. I let go of Redhead and raced to the door, just as he came out again. He was carrying a large carved figure, nearly half his height. “Here!” I yelled, beckoning him to hand it to me. Our eyes met, and in the glow of the fire, I recognized him. I had seen his picture only a few hours before, and here he was. “Manny! Are there any people inside?”

  “No people. Save this!” he snapped. “There are more!” He shoved the bulto into my arms and went back in the door of the morada. In spite of its size, the cottonwood bulto was light. I looked around for a safe place to set it and saw the cart that had been parked a few yards away in front of the morada. I went to it, put the figure on the ground beside it, and was returning to get the next one when I heard the high whine of a rupturing viga, one of the wooden beams that spanned and supported the earthen roof. There was a terrible sharp squeal, the vicious dogfight sound of dense wood tearing, and then a heavy thud. Sparks flew up in the doorway, and a great cloud of thick smoke caromed out.

  “Manny?” I screamed, trying to see in. Fierce heat boiled out of the opening, and I held one arm over my face and forced myself to step inside. The light of the flames inside the morada made the whole shrine seem like a flickering candle, the walls glowing yellow gold, the micaceous flecks in the adobe sparkling. The huge black and red ember of what was once a viga had severed in two, its stems like wicks in the ground at the center. The roof was torn open above this, and flames rose toward the night. Dust of broken adobe and earthen roof danced in the scorching hot air. “Manny!” I screamed, trying to make my voice louder than the roar of the fire.

  I couldn’t see him. The blaze seemed to be centered at the rear of the room, away from the door, and so I edged my way along a wall, the air making my lungs feel like they were roasting in a furnace each time I breathed. The smoldering viga was starting to gush smoke now. I pulled my muffler over my face and tied it behind my head to screen the air. I moved in front of a long bench that had been set against the wall. “Manny, where are you?”

  “Here!” he grunted. The sound was ahead and to my left, just beyond the downed viga.

  I saw him then, in its shadow. He was sitting on the floor before the altar, which was covered with a woven cloth embroidered with small black skulls, like the one covering La Arca. On the altar stood a bulto of Saint Francis, another of the Holy Virgin, and a human skull. Manny was still, his expression pained. He was holding a huge crucifix, its face against his chest, the top of the cross extending at an angle over his head, the arms stretching as if to embrace and comfort him. The splintered base of the cross passed like a stake through his right leg and pinned him to the floor.

  “Oh, no!” I screamed, and ran to him. I straddled his legs with my feet, bent my knees into a deep squat for leverage, and pulled up on the crucifix, extracting it from his flesh. Blood pooled in the hole left by the cross, and the shards of Manny’s broken femur poked through the leg of his pants. He looked up at me with fear in his face.

  I loosened the knot in my muffler and pulled it off. It took some maneuvering, but I got it to pass under Manny’s thigh, and found it soaked with blood as I pulled the end through. I tied it off above the break, and the pool of blood stopped growing.

  “We gotta get you out of here!” I urged, trying to figure out how I would lift a man twice my weight.

  “I’m not going without the crucifix.” He coughed, and then gasped as he inhaled smoke.

  I winced from the heat. There was no way I coul
d lift that big cross and help him, too. “Manny, we have to get out of here!”

  “Not without the crucifix!” he shouted. He pulled at the altar cloth behind him and dragged the bultos on it toward him. Again, he started coughing.

  I looked around, frantic. Then I spotted a square table in the corner. I rushed to it, turned it upside down, and slid it across the floor. “Let’s get you on this.” I reached down to turn him around.

  “I can get on it myself! You get the crucifix!” He gathered the two bultos and the skull into a bundle and tied the ends of the cloth around them. He pushed down with both his hands and raised himself slightly off the floor, turning himself as he did so. He repeated this movement, edging himself over the lip of the table’s framework and cried out in pain as his broken thigh met resistance. I moved to help again, and he barked at me, “Get the crucifix, or I swear to God I will get up and get it myself!” He pulled the bundle onto his lap.

  I hoisted the great cross again and carefully placed it beside him, then moved to the other side of the table. I leaned forward and-using the power of my legs-pushed on the upturned frame, sliding Manny, one thrust at a time, across the floor toward the door. This worked surprisingly well. The smooth adobe floor offered only a little friction, and Manny was reaching out with his hands on the floor to help, pushing each time I pushed. We developed a wrenching rhythm, each of us throwing our pain-filled voices into it as we ahhed and ughed our way across the shrine. Each time I inhaled-heat searing my airways-I blew out hard, using the same force to contract my abdomen and give everything I had to the push.

  Halfway across the floor, I had to stop. “Wait, wait!” I said, holding my sleeve over my face. My eyeballs felt like they were broiling. The room was an inferno; there was no air. A flaming torch of splintered wood rocketed out of nowhere, barely missing me, and I used this as impetus to move on. We pushed… breathed… pushed… and just as we reached the doorway, another viga began to cry out in pain.

  I was dizzy from the smoke, hacking and gasping for air as we finally thrust outside. Heavy, wet snow had begun to fall and had already whitened the ground. I shoved one more time, and the table slid like a hockey puck on the snow. “The cart!” I yelled above the snap and roar of the flames. “Let’s get you on the cart!” I pushed him to it.

  “¡No, señorita! No, that is the carreta de la muerte!”

  I ignored him, picking up the crucifix and throwing it onto the cart. “Come on!” I yelled. “You’re getting on the cart!”

  “Oh, Dios mío,” he cried, “please forgive me!” He crossed himself, then he twisted himself to one side and rolled onto his one good knee and his two hands. The bundle fell from his lap and unfurled, the skull rolling away from him like a ball. I moved in close beside the useless leg and pulled beneath his arm. He was up. He hopped once and cried out as he did so. He eased himself backward onto the cart, which wobbled precariously as he put his weight down on it. I checked the tourniquet I had made, loosening it slightly. The blood began to pour. I tightened it up again and went off to catch Redhead.

  I was panting. “Come on, girl.” I held out my hand to pick up her reins.

  She volted to one side. She did not want to come, spooked by the fire.

  I kept after her, whistling and talking as softly as I could and still be heard above the blaze. “Come here, baby!” I made a little clicking sound with my tongue.

  She kept a pace or two ahead of me, torn between loyalty and fear. “Redhead, come on, girl.” The snow was accumulating so fast, soon none of us would be able to get out to the road. “Redhead. I need you.”

  She stopped, fascinated with an expanse of drifting snow at her feet. I caught hold of her reins. She balked, but I led her back to the cart, soothing her as I went. “You’re such a good girl, yes, you are. I need you to help me, Redhead. I can’t do this without you. Don’t be afraid.”

  The fire had stopped growing, and instead popped and spit like a huge crackling woodstove, the flames contained within the adobe shell. The vigas and wood furniture would have been all there was to consume in the earthen structure. A worse threat now was the relentless, pelting snow.

  The horsehair harness attached to the front of the cart had been designed for a man to lash around himself at the chest and then over his shoulders several times, to feel its biting discomfort as he pulled the great weight in penance. I tugged frantically at these cuerdas, untwining them so that they would reach the length of a horse. Finally, I had a makeshift system, which I tied around the saddle horn. Manny had been moaning as I fought to untangle the cords, but now was silent. The tongue of the two-wheeled cart had been wedged between the arms of a short, F-shaped post. I turned the post to the side, freeing the tongue, and the cart immediately tipped backward, the tongue rising up in the air, Manny’s weight pulling the back of the cart down. Redhead complained loudly and began to stamp and try to free herself.

  I went to her. Her eyes were gleaming black saucers. Her neck rippled with tremors. “Calm down, girl.” I patted her, pacified her. “Calm down. We’re going to make it out of here. Just calm down.” Then I went back to see if Manny could be moved forward. He lay on his back in the teetering cart, holding the crucifix again across his chest. The figure of Christ on the cross had slipped sideways and was dangling from just one wooden hand. Manny’s feet were hanging close to the ground. Blood dripped into the snow beneath them. He was unconscious.

  I managed to use my weight on the tongue, and the begrudging cooperation of Redhead, to gradually turn the cart so that it could proceed away from the post. Then there was nothing to do but climb onto the front of the cart behind its driver to balance the weight. The carved wooden skeleton nailed to the seat of the cart grinned hideously from under the hood of her black cloth robe, her ribs protruding through its open front. She had long black human hair, garishly oversized human teeth, and eyes made from mother-of-pearl, which gleamed in the firelight. She held an ax in one hand, and her two long, bony legs dangled over the front of the cart. I stood behind her, my arms around her, and flapped the horsehair braids across Redhead’s rump to get her going. “Come on, baby! It’s just us two big, strong women now! Let’s do it.”

  We rode out of there encrusted with a thick coat of snow. The brim of my hat collapsed under the weight, and a landslide of white fell down my face, cooling my scorched skin. I had pointed us toward the Forest Service road above and to the north of the morada. I knew the snow would be heavier in the higher elevation, but I didn’t think Manny had much time. There would be a ranger posted somewhere up there, and we might be able to get help.

  Redhead amazed me. A horse trained for trail riding, she was sensitive to the slightest pressure of my knees, hardly needed a bridle. But she was certainly not trained to pull a cart, and especially not from a drag on her saddle horn. In spite of that, she lowered her head and bulled into the storm, pulling us behind her as I yelled encouragement. “That’s it! Come on, girl. Good girl. Come on, Redhead!” The snow accumulated on her backside, on the cart, even on the horsehair ropes between us, and it piled into high drifts around us. Redhead plodded on, barely visible in front of me. Between my extended arms, La Muerte smiled and kept her silence.

  As we neared the road, a streak of blue heat raced past my face at the speed of light. Behind it, a moment later, came a far-off crack, like a chair leg breaking. Gunshot! Oh, God! Someone is shooting at me! My rifle! I sent out a desperate searching look through the curtain of white ahead of me, as if my eyes could close the gap between me and what lay impossibly out of reach. I’d left my rifle in the holster attached to Redhead’s saddle!

  Another shot whizzed past me. The horse lurched to a stop. I jumped out of the cart as the front tipped up again, and ran behind it for cover. Redhead! There was a loud choomfff, and shards of wood flew as a shot hit the skeleton. La Muerte slumped backward and slid down the bed of the tilted cart, her wooden spine severed at the waist by the bullet, her outstretched bony arm tractioned back and towar
d the ground by the weight of the heavy steel ax. I heard another shot crack and Redhead reared up and screamed at the danger. I looked out again, afraid of what I would see. I could barely make her out. She was standing amazingly still. She looked like she had her head down, but I couldn’t be sure. I could see nothing but snow. From far off came the sound of an engine grinding in low gear on the Forest Service road farther to the right of me, and beyond.

  I waited. The shooter had stopped firing. I listened for the engine; it was still in the distance, but moving closer. I heard the whine of the wheels slipping, spinning, the sound of the driver trying to rock it out of the mire by alternating between drive and reverse. I looked at Manny, the ribs of the skeleton wedged against his head, the skull against his shoulder, La Muerte’s macabre eyes looking past me. Manny’s eyes were open now, too-and peering at me. I put a finger in front of my lips and mouthed a silent Shhhhh. I could see blood from his leg dripping off the back of the tilted cart again, in spite of my makeshift tourniquet. I heard a dull thud, felt the earth shake. I bolted around the edge of the cart, screaming, “Redhead!”

  She was down, but before I could get to her, a figure came running toward me, covered in snow, a rifle pointed at my chest. The fur rim on the hood of the parka was coated with white, and the face within the hood was in darkness. Instinctively I backed up, my hands in the air, until I was standing behind the cart again. The shooter followed. “Get down on the ground,” he grunted.

  I knew that voice!

  He pushed me hard, shoving me face-first into the snow. He placed the tip of the rifle barrel on the bare skin at the back of my neck, under my hat. “Where is La Arca?” he demanded.

  “I don’t have it,” I choked, my mouth filling with snow as he pressed me down into a drift with the rifle.

  “You have it!” he yelled, pushing the barrel so violently into my neck that it snapped forward and my face hit hard against the ground, buried in the mound of white crystals beneath me. I felt a rent open on the inside of my mouth, and blood pooled behind my lower lip. He let up pressure with the rifle barrel and I raised my head and gasped for air.