by Lynne Hinton
“We’re closed,” a voice from outside called out.
Eve could barely make out an image of a woman standing on the other side of the truck. She was making the gesture of rolling down the window. Eve hesitated and then leaned over to reach the lever and manually lower the window. A woman with a wide-brimmed ranger’s hat looked in.
“You can’t park here,” she said, glancing around the inside of Eve’s truck. “There’s no camping in the parking lot.”
Eve nodded. “I wasn’t camping,” she replied, and then wished she hadn’t made that response, thinking that perhaps she should have just taken the instruction and driven away.
“No?” the woman answered, still looking around. She pulled out a flashlight and shined it in Eve’s face. “Then what are you doing here?”
“I just stopped for a little bit to rest,” she lied. “I didn’t know you were closed.” She put up a hand to shield her eyes. “I got information online and thought I’d drive down here for the afternoon.”
The ranger paused and lowered the light. “You from Albuquerque?”
Eve shook her head. “Madrid.”
The ranger studied her. “You got some identification?”
Eve reached in her back pocket for her driver’s license but then couldn’t resist a dig. “You need to see my ID just for coming to the site and parking in your lot?”
The woman walked around the front of the truck and within seconds was standing beside Eve on the driver’s side. She gestured rolling down the window again and Eve complied, rolling down the other window and handing her license to the uniformed ranger. The woman was close enough that Eve could read her name tag.
Park Ranger Rita Rachkowski was taking a good look at Eve’s information.
“Well, Ms. Divine, I am allowed to ask for the identification of someone trespassing on federal property.” She handed Eve back her license.
“It’s Divine,” Eve responded, correcting the pronunciation. “And I didn’t know I was trespassing. I just stopped in a parking lot to rest for a few minutes.”
“Uh-huh,” Ranger Rita replied. “Well, the monument is closed. We don’t open for six weeks. You’d have known that if you were researching us online.”
Eve knew she had her there. “Okay, I’ll just head back home, Ranger Rachkowski.” She pulled her seat belt back on and started to roll up the window and then she had a thought. “Do you have a phone I can borrow?”
“It’s Ra-CHK-owski,” the ranger said, making her own correction. “And no. There’s no signal out here. I only use my scanner. You can go back to the closest town, Mountainair. There’s a pay phone there.”
Eve shook her head. That was going to take her too far away from Barr.
“Here,” and the ranger pulled a brochure out of her back pocket and handed it to Eve. “For next time,” she added and smiled. “Have a good evening,” she said and stepped back.
Eve took the brochure and placed it on the seat beside her. She cranked the engine and slowly pulled away.
FORTY-FIVE
“Well, this certainly changes things,” Eve mumbled as she sat at the end of the driveway of the Salinas monument. Of course she wasn’t going home to Madrid or even returning to Pecos. She had come way too far to turn around and head back without any new information. At that point in the evening, the only direction she knew to take was the direction she had seen the man from Tererro take only a few minutes earlier.
She left the parking lot and drove down the unpaved road, heading south, following John Barr’s lead and moving in the direction of Claunch. As she pulled away she glanced in her rearview mirror and could see Ranger Rita watching.
“Sorry there, Ms. Ra-Chkow-ski,” she said, turning her attention to the road before her.
Stars were starting to flicker in the night sky and Eve flipped on her lights. Darkness had fallen upon the desert, and she was having a difficult time driving on the dirt road. There were lots of rough patches and potholes, narrow twists and turns, and Eve dropped her speed so that she could avoid the worst of the ruts and dips. She steadied the vehicle as much as possible to keep her father’s truck from veering off the road.
Once again, she felt grateful that she was not on her Harley and that the Captain had left his truck in the parking lot at the monastery. She patted the steering wheel as a gesture of her gratitude and her faith in the old Ford workhorse that had been her father’s reliable mode of transportation for years, and she said a prayer of thanksgiving as she drove farther into the desert, feeling safe and comfortable behind the wheel.
She tried to see the time on her watch, but unwilling to stop or slow down, she was unable to make out the face and its reading in the dark. Eve wasn’t counting the miles she had driven from the Salinas National Monument, but with the slow speed and the descending darkness, even though she hadn’t been on the road that long, it seemed as if she had been driving for an hour. She leaned forward and gripped the steering wheel with both hands, tapping on the brake from time to time as she sped ahead.
“Dear Captain,” she said out loud, wondering what her father must be thinking at that moment, the day now past and no word from her. “You must be beside yourself,” she added, wishing she had not lost her phone, wishing she had been able to call before leaving the Pecos Canyon to follow Barr.
She knew he had no way of knowing where she was. She was sure he hadn’t put a GPS on the vehicle; he hadn’t installed a tracking device. And she also recalled once again that she had not even really explained where she was going when she told him she was leaving the monastery. She had the best of intentions, wanting to keep him out of the loop, make it easier for him to be in conversation with Daniel or the other detectives, but now she questioned that objective. She was alone in the desert and he had no idea where to start a search. She had been careless, she knew, but she maintained the hope that she would find John Barr, find Brother Anthony, and before much more time had passed, be able to let the Captain finally know that she was safe.
She drove along, trying to remember how many miles she had to go to reach the ghost town at the end of State Road 55. She knew she was traveling through ranching country and that there were very few residences in the area, even though there were a number of gates with locks at the ends of paths curving and twisting away from the road. She recalled that the grazing land she was traversing used to be fields of pinto beans, and she remembered a trip as a child with her family to this very area, her father’s history lessons of the Indians and the Spaniards, the farmers and the ranchers, the way families had come and gone from the desert. She wished again that she could let him know where she was and that she was fine, but she knew that was not possible and shook away the thoughts of his worry and concern.
“Mr. John Barr,” Eve said out loud, thinking about the man she had encountered earlier. She was unsure if he had recognized her as a nun from the monastery in Pecos, and she also didn’t know if he had found her phone in his room and if that was the reason he had sped out of Tererro and headed to the southern plains of New Mexico.
She thought about the archbishop and learning of his search for the missing monk. She wondered if they had a better lead than she did or if someone from that office was following the same man on the same road. She wondered if, in fact, she might end up face-to-face with another representative of the diocese. With this possibility in mind, Eve recalled seeing the archbishop at the monastery, his apparent displeasure that she might still be working the front desk, the way he immediately dismissed her to speak to Daniel. She wondered what he had told Father Oliver, what new complaint was being lodged against the monastery or the nuns or the abbot’s leadership. She thought about the man who had only rarely attended a service in the community, rarely made an appearance, but who wielded such power over all of the monks and the nuns who lived there.
“Some things never change,�
�� she said out loud, thinking about Sister Maria and the suspicion placed on her by the leaders of the Catholic Church during the time of the questioning of her miracle of bilocation. Eve recalled once again the reports of the inquisition of the Spanish nun and how she had barely escaped the consequences that other mystics in the 1600s had faced.
Without actually casting herself in the same light as the Lady in Blue, Eve drove deeper and deeper into the desert, and for the first time began to consider the similarities between the nuns facing inquisitions at the hands of the church officials and her own story as a Benedictine sister being banned from the community she had called home for more than two decades.
She felt the disappointment rise within her, and for a moment the depth of it, as well as the articulation of the oppression of women within the church, surprised her. Sister Eve realized that she had not allowed herself to experience the full realm of her frustration and resentment regarding the circumstances that had unfolded at the monastery. She thought about the other sisters who had already left New Mexico. She had been out of touch with all of them. It was almost as if they had chosen not to speak to one another, somehow knowing that if they talked, if they shared their sorrow, it might lead them to actions that would be detrimental to their continued lives as nuns.
Eve wondered about the Lady in Blue, wondered if she was ever angry at the treatment she received at the hands of those questioning her. She thought about the contemporary critics of the Spanish nun, the articles and reports that claimed she could not have performed the miracles attributed to her, that she had erred in her thinking of Mary’s revelations, that she was a charlatan or a false prophet. And finally a question came to Eve’s mind that she had never allowed herself to ask.
She stopped the truck in the middle of the road, slamming on the brakes, feeling the weight of such a thought. Has there really ever been a place for women in the church?
Eve dropped her head onto the steering wheel, the tears stinging in her eyes. She had never put words to this emotion, never allowed herself to doubt her faith, her call, her devotion, a devotion not to an institution, she knew, but still a faith and call and devotion that were supervised by leaders in that institution, by men.
She shook her head and, keeping her foot on the brake, sat back against the driver’s seat. This revelation, she thought, was both unexpected and dangerous, and as she tried to find some resolution, some prayerful way to hold it in her mind and heart, Eve closed her eyes, never noticing the lights of the vehicle coming from a path through an open gate, speeding in her direction.
FORTY-SIX
“WAIT …” There was no time for Eve to say anything else as she felt her head slam against the driver’s-side window and then whip back to the headrest while she was immediately thrown to the side by the direct impact of the truck T-boning her from the passenger’s side. Her foot slipped off the brake and the truck continued to move ahead. Shocked and confused, she was unable to stop it as it veered across the road and down the bank to her left. She felt the road beneath her, the rough terrain and the hit coming from the front this time, her forehead smashing against the steering column. There was a huge bump as the truck traveled across the bank and crashed into a fence post, where it finally came to a stop.
Eve thought she heard a sound like steam building and rising somewhere ahead of her, but she felt paralyzed, having great difficulty opening her eyes or waking up. She moaned and attempted to lift her arms, her hands, tried to feel around her to touch something that would help her understand where she was and what had happened. Everything was off and confusing, and she felt foggy, unclear, and mystified about the sequence of events.
She was in the truck, she thought, in her father’s truck. She was driving somewhere, it seemed to her, driving somewhere in the desert.
The questions kept pounding in her brain. Am I alone? Was I with the Captain? Where is he? Was I following someone?
The answers felt like they were so close, that she could almost name the place and the reason she was there, but still, her brain was rattled and nothing was making sense to her at all.
She was finally able to lift her right hand and reach up, and when she did she touched her forehead and the left side of her face that ached, feeling a liquid that was wet and sticky. Her left shoulder throbbed and her neck and hip hurt. She had been in a wreck, she thought; she was injured from a wreck, but she still wasn’t able to name where she was and she couldn’t remember where she had been traveling when it happened.
She tried opening her eyes but there was only darkness around her, save for a beam of light shining ahead, cast from her own headlights, but revealing nothing that helped her place where she was. Just dirt and brush, a large trough, for water she supposed, rocks and small bushes. The desert, she thought, out on a ranch or field, but she still could make out no landmarks or familiar sights that might help her gain her bearings. She felt drunk and disoriented, lost, and in excruciating pain. The sound of the steam stopped and she heard nothing but the night wind.
Suddenly, just as she was about to lose consciousness, she felt the door open beside her, and a large, strong arm reached around her, unbuckling her seat belt and tossing it to the side, and then she felt another arm slide beneath her. The arms began yanking and pulling her out of the truck. The treatment felt harsh and severe, and she tried fighting because she could hardly stand the discomfort in her upper body and left hip. But the arms were too strong, and she could not fight or assist or think clearly about what was happening. She experienced only the sensation of being jerked and pulled, the horrible ache in her head and shoulder, her feet coming out of the truck and then her left ankle hitting the ground hard, the pain sharp and alarming, causing her to cry out.
She tried to pull away, tried to tell her rescuer to stop, to slow down just a minute and let her catch her breath. She wanted him to quit pulling her, quit yanking and manhandling her. She wanted him to stop and just let her have a little relief from the ache in her ankle, the discomfort in her head and shoulder, the agony from her left hip, as well as the distress she was feeling in so many places in her body. But the person holding her did not stop. He—or could it be she?—continued to pull and yank and then finally dragged her up the bank and then down a dirt road.
She tried desperately to open her eyes, tried to see who was pulling her along, but she felt so groggy and disoriented, so horribly in pain that she was unable to look up and behind to get a clear picture of who had her in their grasp. She fought as much as she could, struggled to turn around and see the person, but they were much stronger, forcing her arms down, her shoulders pinned, one of which felt completely dislocated, permitting her no movement at all. She could do nothing but submit.
Unable to fight back, Eve quit resisting and tried to imagine that it was Daniel taking her to safety, giving thought to the possibility that perhaps the Captain had been able to find her after all. She wanted to believe that she wasn’t far from home and that he had found her. She tried to imagine that she was out of danger as her father had called his old partner and together they had discovered her on a road somewhere.
She imagined they were getting her out of the truck and away from some accident she had been in. She tried to believe this was a rescue by a loved one. She was being dragged for her protection, being pulled as far away from her truck and impending danger as was necessary. She would soon be let down on the ground, she imagined, in a safe area, on a soft place where her injuries could be tended, the pain relieved, and where she could finally be given an explanation of what had happened.
“Thank you,” she tried to say as she was being dragged along the road, but she couldn’t quite shape the words, her tongue and lips struggling to form her expression of gratitude.
Soon, she told herself, soon the pain will stop and I can rest.
But the strong arms holding her did not let her go, and the sliding of her body across
the gravel and dirt didn’t quickly come to an end. She blacked out, her body relaxing and then, in what seemed to be only seconds, emerging to consciousness again. It felt like she was in a dream, more of a nightmare really, unable to wake up and unable to end the terrible pain she was feeling.
Finally, just as she thought she was blacking out again, the yanking and pulling stopped, and she felt the arms behind her release her upper body, her head then dropping hard on the ground beneath her. She felt herself groan again. She tried to listen, hoping someone would speak to her, but she heard only sounds, doors opening, a person breathing hard. Was it the man who rescued her? she wondered.
There were things being moved around near where she lay, objects tossed, a kind of shuffling. She opened her eyes and looked up, but she could see only the night sky above her, black velvet studded with pinpoints of light, stars and planets filling up the horizon. It was beautiful and familiar, and while she lay on the ground in pain, it was also deeply comforting. This was the sky she knew, the sky she had been born under, the sky where she had fallen in love with God, the sky of her mother and father, and the sky under which she knew she would die. This place with its black sky and its cool spring wind, this was her home. She closed her eyes again.
She did not struggle or resist this time as the warm body knelt beside her and the strong arms came under her. She leaned back into whatever or whoever was lifting her. She felt the words of a prayer on her lips and began reciting the familiar way she had always talked to God. She mumbled first the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray and then began the one she loved the most; she prayed to the Virgin Mother, the feminine presence of God, the one adored by all the sisters and saints.
“Hail Mary, full of grace,” Eve said softly as she was picked up, carried, and then placed in what felt to be the back of a truck. “The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women.”