Wild Penance

by Sandi Ault

  “Where is it?”

  I took another breath. “I’m telling the truth. I don’t have it.”

  I felt his hand seize me by the back of my coat and pull me up fast, turning me toward him, like a puppet. The rifle barrel found the ledge of my chin and pushed hard against my jawbone, forcing my head back. His hood had fallen away from his face a little. His brows were tipped with ice crystals, and his eyes were like gleaming black glass. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  “No.” I spat, tasting blood.

  He laughed, threw his head back. “I should have known!” He shook his head back and forth, still laughing.

  I strained to keep my chin above the rifle barrel, edging almost imperceptibly to one side. He pulled the nose of the gun away. I slumped a little in relief and used this motion to block my left hand with my body, wishing it could have been my right. The shooter tilted his head to one side, his face suddenly sober again. “I’ll find it. And when I find it, I’ll destroy it, just like I destroyed that morada back there! You’re going to die now!” he screamed.

  I grabbed the ax with my left hand just as he released my coat. He shoved my chest hard, pushing me backward to the ground. He raised the rifle and readied to shoot.

  As I fell, I drew back the ax and flung it as hard as I could. But La Muerte had not surrendered her hatchet to me. Instead, she flew with it-the upper half of her anyway. In the split second between the time I hurled the weapon and the moment it struck, I saw my assailant’s startled look of incredulous fear as the hideous face of Death came speeding toward him, with her irregular, oversized human teeth and shining, milky white eyes, her stream of long, black hair sailing behind her splintered ribs like a veil. The blow knocked him off balance and caused him to turn and then lurch into a sidestep. The ax had hit hard, but it had barely penetrated his parka. He fought to regain his balance and raised the rifle again, backing up to take aim.

  Behind him, in the still-tilted cart, silent as the snow, Manny rose like an angel onto his one good leg, his arms extended to the sides, like wings, balancing him. He was covered completely in white and looked like a great, hovering bird. Having gained his balance, he raised up the huge crucifix, which he held in his right hand, moved the left hand to grasp it also, and drove the splintered end of it down into the back of Andy Vincent.

  The two then tumbled forward toward me in a kind of slow-motion swoop. I scrambled to the left to avoid being crushed, and their fall to the earth made a soft whoomp. I hurried to Manny, who had slid to one side as he fell. I rolled him onto his back and put my hands on either side of his face. His eyes looked at me with a kind of strange joy. “I was supposed to watch over you,” he said. “I was your ángel.”

  “I know. Don’t talk!” I begged him. I moved to tighten his tourniquet, the muffler now completely saturated with blood and stiff with ice crystals.

  “Señorita,” he said, “you cannot keep something alive that is meant to die.”

  I looked at him. “There’s help coming,” I pleaded. “Just hold on! I heard an engine on the road! Someone’s coming!”

  His face collapsed in my hands.

  “Manny.” I patted his cheek fervently, as if to revive him. “Manny!” I screamed. I felt his neck for a pulse, but his heart was silent.

  “Jamaica!” a voice yelled from somewhere behind me. “Jamaica, are you all right?” It was coming closer.

  I stood up. A Forest Service truck sat humming less than a hundred feet away, its yellow headlights like beacons of gold through which snow was driving into the clean white field ahead. The truck’s wipers beat a dull rhythm as they struggled under the weight of thick globs of ice. A familiar hat, with patches of white already beginning to accumulate on its brown brim, tilted into the driving blizzard as its wearer hurried toward me, the face beneath the hat obscured.

  I turned back to Manny, who was disappearing into the snow. The figure of Christ had fallen from the crucifix and landed facedown on his chest. Beside him, a white covered mound that had once been Andy Vincent was topped with a tilted cross.

  I ran to Redhead, who was lying on her side on the ground, blood draining from a hole in the front of her chest. Her eye was looking at me-a polished black globe full of fear and love. Her breathing was fast and rasped with the sound of fluid. She tried to lift her head as I came to her and threw myself onto her shoulder, my arms over her neck and head. Her neck quivered, and she tried to paw once. I lay there sobbing into her cheek as she drew her last warm, watery breath and exhaled with a deep, releasing sigh.

  “Redhead!” I screamed. “No, no, nooooo!”

  Hands clutched my arms and tried to pull me from her. I turned and saw Kerry’s face beneath a hat brim covered with snow. “Come on, Jamaica. We’ve got to get out of here while we can.”

  I turned back to Redhead and buried my face in her mane. “I can’t leave her! I can’t leave her here!”

  “Come on, Jamaica,” he said, pulling me upright. “She’s gone.”

  36

  The Secret

  There was almost no traffic on the roads of Taos on the morning of Good Friday. Snow covered the tops of buildings and cars and turned shrubs into white balls of soft cotton. The trees were heavy and silent in their thick, white coats and stood like sentient pillars, supporting the close ceiling of clouds. It was as if the whole world had fallen asleep under a blanket of white and lay there still as a child.

  Kerry and I had retrieved La Arca from the lockbox at the ranger station. I held it to me and looked around before we went inside his apartment. There was not another soul in sight.

  I set the bundle on the table, and Kerry helped me off with my coat. My face hurt from being roasted by fire, then frostbitten in the blizzard. A swollen knot inside my mouth just beneath my lower lip throbbed painfully. And my throat was bruised where Andy had shoved the rifle barrel against my jawbone. I was dehydrated, my lips were cracked from chapping, my back ached from pushing Manny across the morada. My whole body hurt.

  “I’ll make us some coffee,” Kerry said, dropping my coat on his bed.

  I waited for it slumped in a chair, my emotions dulled by deluge. While the coffee brewed, he brought me a glass of water. As I sipped, I looked around the room again at the photographs he had made. “These are so beautiful,” I said and took another drink of water.

  “You like my work, then?”

  I tried to smile. Ouch. “You know I do.”

  “Your mouth hurts?”

  I nodded.

  He picked up a dish towel, walked to the door, and opened it. He stepped outside, disappeared for a moment, then came back in, wiped his feet, and came over to me. He gently lifted my chin.

  “Ow! Don’t touch under there!”

  “Which hurts more? Your mouth or your chin?”

  “My mouth. No, my chin. I don’t know…”

  He put the cloth, packed with a handful of snow, against my mouth. It hurt. Then it felt better. “Here, take this. I’ll go get our coffee.”

  I drank in the calm, the quiet. After we had made our way down the treacherous Forest Service road from the conflagration and carnage, Kerry and I had spent the night at the ranger station giving statements and filling out paperwork. The blizzard had delayed everything, and a snowplow was supposed to make its way up the mountain today to create access so officials could even get to the Forest Service road. It might be another day or two before the bodies could be carried out. “Poor Manny,” I said. “Poor Redhead.” I began to cry.

  “Yeah.” He brought steaming coffee, set it on the table, examined my swollen, tear-streaked face. “Poor Jamaica.”

  I tried to smile. “Do you have any sage?”

  “You mean for smudging?”

  “Yes, you know-a smudge stick, anything.”

  “I have some local, from the pueblo.” He went to his dresser and brought a fat thread-bound sage bundle to me. “I’ll get some matches.”

  We smudged La Arca, the room, ourselves.
Then we sat down together at the table and I began to untie the horsehair rope. I told Kerry the story that Theresa Mendoza had told me, and also what I had learned from my trip to the Taos library.

  “Am I allowed to see it?” he asked, respectfully.

  “I don’t know why you couldn’t see it. They display it in the church on Easter Sunday in Truchas. But I would rather you didn’t touch it.”

  “I won’t. I understand.”

  When the mecates were undone, I stopped to compose myself. Just as Theresa Mendoza had done, I closed my eyes and drew within. I said a silent prayer to anyone who might be listening that I would be guided to do whatever was best. Then I drew back the embroidered cloth.

  Kerry inhaled deeply, his chest rising, his eyes like moons. “It’s beautiful! Wait! Let me get my camera!” He moved to get up.

  I shot out my hand to stop him. “No, don’t.”

  “But… for your book? Wouldn’t you like a picture of it for your book? You said it’s all right for people to see it.”

  “No. I don’t want a picture of it. Then people will come in droves to see it, maybe even try to steal it. I don’t want you to photograph it.”

  “Okay.” He sat back in his chair. “Now what?”

  “Now you go take a shower or something. Let me know before you plan to come back into this room.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he said, saluting as he got up.

  La Arca unfolded her secrets to me that morning in the cool, gray light of Kerry’s apartment. The smoke from the sage we had burned floated in a heavy haze in the soft hues of a snowy dawn. The sound of Kerry’s shower was like a distant, constant drumroll accompanying this ceremony honoring the victory of Passionate Faith over Evil.

  Within, La Arca was lined with old black velvet, crinkled and shiny with age. Antique photos showed above the lip of a velvet pocket in the lid. Some of these were quite large and made from old silver or copper plates. As I removed them, I read the dates the photographers had etched right on the plates in scrawling white handwriting: 1895, 1898, 1902. There were also several stacks of small zigzag-edged photos that had been made sometime later than the larger ones, their corners just peeking out above the pocket top. I pulled them from their nests and placed them in three piles on the table.

  In the body of La Arca, a small, ancient-looking brown book rested on top. I picked it up carefully and examined it. It was a cuaderno-a compact book written entirely by hand, including the words to the alabados-the hymns, written text of the teachings of the brotherhood, their prayers, chants, plays, sayings, rules. I thumbed through the yellowed, brittle pages, examining the elegant handwriting, the hand-sewn binding of woven cloth. It was written entirely in Spanish. I looked through page after page. I found the expression Father Ignacio had quoted at our meeting in Santa Fe, heard his melodious accented voice in my mind: ¡Ayuda a otros y Dios te ayudará! Help others and God will help you. It is an old Penitente saying.

  This cuaderno reminded me of my own handwritten, hand-drawn book. Cuadernos like the one I was holding were the means by which Los Penitentes had conveyed their culture and faith from generation to generation. Many Hispanos learned to read and write using their cuadernos. The old books were so rare now that only one was known to exist from before the turn of the century-because when they became worn, new ones were made and the old ones destroyed. This was probably a priceless artifact. But I put the book beside the photographs. It was not what I was looking for.

  La Arca held seven rosaries made with hand-carved wooden beads; each one had an ornate crucifix. And there was one large, silver cross with three transoms, the shortest one nearest the top, each of the next two successively longer. At the crux of the second transom was a large ruby. I set these things on the table also.

  Beneath that lay a sheaf of yellowed papers. I handled them carefully. Several of them were folded and sealed with wax, and they were so old and brittle that tiny bits of them chipped off the edges and fell into the box as I moved them. They would have snapped apart if anyone tried to open them.

  One item interested me, though, and I took great pains not to damage it. It was a small, handwritten ledger, its cover crudely hand-stitched from plain tan cloth, with only a few sheets of thick yellow paper inside. It appeared to be a kind of log, with over a hundred Hispanic names, each one with a year following. A few of them had the word muerto written after the year.

  More papers, all in Spanish, many of which looked to be official documents that bore an impressed seal, sworn to in both elegant and crude handwriting, some witnessed with simple X marks, others with flamboyant signatures. A name among the signatures on one document caught my eye: A. Vigil. Where had I seen that name? There were hundreds of Vigils in northern New Mexico. I could have seen it on an election billboard or a mailbox, anything. Still, it haunted me. I looked through more of the pages. There it was again: Antonio Vigil. This time, it was not a signature, but a document that contained the name over and over again-something about crimen colérico-an angry crime. And another name, Arturo Vigil.

  I heard the bathroom door open and Kerry’s voice called to me: “I’m just letting the steam out. Find anything important?”

  “Still looking. I wish I knew more Spanish.” I shook my head. I could smell Kerry’s shampoo, hear him brushing his teeth. I carefully set all the papers on the table.

  At the bottom of the box, I found what I was searching for. It was wrapped in a piece of crimson silk. I carefully unfolded the cloth and regarded the precious treasure within. In large, ornate black script, the title read, El Instituto Religioso de la Santa Hermandad. There were exquisite, block-cut, embellished letters at the beginning of each paragraph, and the printing on the yellow-gold parchment pages was antiquated and irregular. A hand-colored illustration of a man on his knees whipping himself bore the title Imitación de Cristo. The tract by Padre Martínez! It does exist! Here it is! I scanned it, handling it with the utmost delicacy, shaking my head back and forth in disbelief. Then I carefully returned the priceless prize to its protective silk wrapping and set it on the table.

  La Arca was now empty. I closed the lid and stood up. Then I gently turned the box over. On the bottom, carved into the wooden base, was the signature of its maker and the date it was made: Pedro Antonio Fresquíz-1831.

  At the library, I had learned about the santero from Las Truchas, probably the first native-born santero in Nuevo Mexico. As Father Ignacio had promised, this man-the one from the legend Theresa Mendoza had told me-and the sacred tract by Padre Antonio José Martínez, who was the first New Mexico Penitente to become a priest, had come together at last. Padre Martínez had virtually risked his life to defend Los Hermanos against the decrees the Church issued condemning the brotherhood when he printed this sacred document. This tract was his opus, and that source of power Father Ignacio had mentioned that someone had been trying to steal from Los Penitentes. It was their credo. And this sacred ark was probably the last work of art Pedro Antonio Fresquíz had made before he died. Its value alone-without the tract by Padre Martínez-was inestimable. Only a few pieces of his work remained in existence, and their distinctive style was prized by collectors of religious iconography the world over.

  I rotated La Arca back to an upright position and studied the beautiful, passionate carving, the deep, stainlike colors of the cedar wood’s variegations on the lid of this portable shrine. I began to replace the contents, one by one-beginning with the Martínez tract in its silk cover. Then the aging documents and the cloth binder with its ledger of names. Then the silver cross with the ruby, and the carved-bead rosaries with their crucifixes. And the priceless cuaderno.

  I turned then to the piles of photographs. I had seen photos like these in some of the books I had looked to for research into the brotherhood. Sadly, most of them were overexposed, not very clear, taken from a distance-showing Penitente rituals and processions. And even a few of crucifixions.

  The figures in the older pictures seemed unreal. The stark ligh
t of New Mexico’s midday sun shone on the harsh faces of rocks, making the black-clad figures in coats appear to be shadows, and the black-hooded, white-trousered Penitentes hard to make out against the strata and the bare ground.

  The newer photographs, those with the rickrack edges, were clearer. There were several of the ritual reunion of Christ with his mother. There was a series showing the stations of the cross. Many of processions. And eight pictures in sequence of the same crucifixion. They looked like they were hastily shot, the frames not well composed, some of them askew. They were taken from a considerable distance-probably in secret, from behind a rock-and then seized later. A few onlookers, also dressed in black, appeared in several of this series, tiny and hard to make out. I scanned these. Then I saw the face.

  It was a face I had seen in countless photographs, a face that, surprisingly, had remained very similar over the years.

  I quickly began to unpack La Arca again. I removed the cuaderno-and the rosaries and silver cross-looking for what was beneath them. There! I picked up the cloth-bound ledger and scanned the most recent dates. I found what I was looking for: Arturo Vigil, 1954-muerto.

  “Kerry, get ready, okay? I have to go.” I carefully restored to La Arca all her treasures. All but one.

  37

  The Shrine

  I asked Kerry and Jerry Padilla to wait at the bottom of the drive. “Promise me you’ll wait here for my signal.”

  “I don’t feel right about it, Jamaica,” Padilla said. “How do I know you’ll be safe?”

  I pulled my Sig Sauer pistol from its holster. I held it up to the deputy and raised my eyebrows at him. Then I tucked the pistol into one big pocket of my jacket, the photo into another. I patted my gun pocket. “I don’t think I’ll need this, but just to reassure you…”