Wild Indigo

by Sandi Ault

  I slid into her passenger seat. “What do you make of this one?” she asked, not hesitating to get right down to it.

  I was cautious. Di and I had worked on a cattle mutilation case before, but I really didn’t know her that well. “I don’t know. I guess it could have been a suicide. But I think there’s more to it than that. Don’t you think it was strange the way they just wanted us gone, like nothing else mattered?”

  “Yeah, that rang my bell, you know—that, and what you said, that he acted like he might have been drugged. Of course, he might have hopped himself up, too.”

  I turned away from her and looked out the window. Across the gentle slope at the foot of the mountain, I could see the flicker of several tiny bonfires where a few pueblo families gathered against the sinking chill of the evening, a tradition that was as much a part of the Tanoah Pueblo culture as the adobe their homes were built of. It was, however, generally forbidden to light fires outside during Quiet Time, unless there was ritual need of it. Perhaps these fires were to light the way for the recently departed and represented family members of the deceased. I turned back to my companion. “If I didn’t know Santana, I could go with maybe he did drugs himself. But I knew the guy.”

  Diane shifted to face me. “Look, Jamaica, I’m going to be straight with you here—there’s not much we can do on a hunch alone. Yeah, they act funny, like they could be covering something up, but then it is Quiet Time and there are all kinds of kiva doin’s right now. They don’t like whitey around when that’s going on. Afraid we’ll steal their culture—and they have every right to feel that way, they have a few hundred years of experience to back that up. Anyway, that could be what all the hush-hush, hurry-up-and-get-out stuff was about.”

  I was quiet.

  “And another thing: you can know someone and still not know everything about them. Just because you never saw Santana like that before doesn’t mean he never used drugs. He might have done drugs sporadically, not been a regular user. He could have been real good at keeping it hidden. Or it might have been a thing he did in the past and something triggered him to do it again after years of not using. You never really know people.”

  I still didn’t speak.

  “I didn’t see any signs, no track marks, anything. Yeah, his pupils were dilated, but that could have been adrenaline, fear. Or it might have been peyote. They do that.”

  “I know. I thought about that. But they don’t do it just to get high. They do it as a religious ritual, in ceremony. They don’t take it and go wandering out in a herd of buffalo.”

  “Maybe he was vision questing or something.”

  “In the buffalo pasture?”

  We were both quiet after that. Then Langstrom spoke again: “You know, you look great. What do you do to stay in such good shape?”

  “I run. Sometimes I press a few weights.”

  “Ever try hapkido?” she asked. “I’m looking for someone to spar with.”

  “I never tried it.”

  “Well, maybe we’ll work out together sometime. Did you see how they acted, coupla babes like us in charge of the investigation?” She chuckled. “They didn’t know whether to have a hard-on or be afraid.”

  “Yeah.” I grinned. “I get that a lot.”

  “Me, too. Anyway, Jamaica, all I got is what you said, that he might have been drugged. I mean, I didn’t personally see anything to support that. There was nothing on his person, there were no needle marks or anything, no smell, no signs of any kind. There’s just no evidence of a crime, no hard data. Even peyote, I have to have something, a reason to bring that up. I mean, it was clear he was killed by stampeding buffalo, whatever his state of mind.”

  “What about those welts on his back?”

  “They do that sometimes, I guess, in the kiva. Whip themselves, or have others whip them.”

  “True, but we don’t know that he got those in the kiva. Or that they came from a whip.”

  “You’re right, but I’m not interested in even trying to find that out. Because let me tell you, it would be a political nightmare. We’re getting into their religious rituals, that’s a major taboo. I’d have to have a note from God to go there. The war chief, Rael, he said those marks were from religious rituals, and then he clammed right up.”

  She looked out through the windshield now, watching the flickering bonfires, too, and moments passed. Then suddenly she dropped her forehead into her hand. “Aw, I’m full of shit. I’m trying to talk myself out of this because I can see looking for the truth’s a losing cause, and even if I did find the truth, there’s no way to prove it. I mean, why was he in the damn buffalo pen if he wasn’t either high as a kite or just plain trying to die? But if that was a suicide, it’s the strangest way to do it that I ever saw. I mean, most people, they want to do themselves in, they’ll make sure it gets done. There’s a lot better ways than a buffalo stampede. Jump off the gorge bridge. Take some sleeping pills. Drive over a cliff. He could have just been gored or trampled and still survived. Which leads back to he had to be blottoed. It stinks somehow.”

  I let her talk, didn’t say anything.

  “I got a buzz on this one. It’s weak, but it’s there.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “What can I do? There’s no evidence. I’d have to have evidence to get an autopsy order, some way to justify my suspicions. The Albuquerque office was real clear on that. I better do everything by the numbers. I could get my butt stationed in the northernmost tip of Alaska investigating baby seal kills, I shake too many trees. I guess I’ll mention ‘possible drug related/no evidence of foul play’ and file the damn thing. It will get shuffled upstairs and stuffed in some black hole. All I can do after that is keep my eyes and ears open. What are you going to do?” She looked at me again.

  “Same thing, I guess.”

  We were both quiet after that. Then she shook her head. “God, Jamaica, I would not like to have your job after this. They acted like you had the plague and they couldn’t get rid of you soon enough. That’s got to make it hard to do what you gotta do every day.”

  “Well, normally it’s not like that, but I sure wasn’t winning any popularity contests today. They were pretty mad that I was out at the pueblo when this came down. I couldn’t help but notice that it seemed more important to them than a man’s death.”

  “Looked like it to me, too.”

  “Okay, so we’re playing it down then?”

  “What?”

  “You know, the buzz.”

  “What buzz?” Not looking at me.

  I grabbed the door handle. “Right, well, we’re done here, then, yes?”

  “Yeah, we’re done here. For now, anyway. But I just wanted to say…I guess I just wanted to suggest that you watch your back.”

  “What do you mean?” I turned toward her.

  She met my gaze. “I don’t know. Just be careful.”

  “You do the same,” I said and got out.

  Diane backed the Crown Victoria past me, and then turned out onto the narrow county road.

  I stood there alone in the dark for a few minutes, looked again at the tiny fire lights on the foothills. This time, I told myself, I’m going to play it straight. For once in my life, I’m going to make it easy on myself, and stay out of trouble.

  Walking back to my car, I said out loud, “Buzz? What buzz?”

  4

  The Wolf

  When I got home that night, my place had been ransacked and many of my personal effects destroyed. The culprit in this event was my wolf cub, Mountain. Unaccustomed to being left alone so much, and—as all wolves do—suffering from separation anxiety anytime he felt divided from his “pack,” the wolf had seen my leaving as permanent abandonment. He attacked me the moment I came in the door, raising up on his hind legs like a bear and throwing his upper body into my chest, knocking me down. His breath was quick, hard, and shallow, and he whined. As he wagged his tail and pawed at me, he urinated submissively on the floor, his
ears down with a combination of fear and anger. When I managed to get back to my feet, he pressed his haunches into me, his tail beating against my legs, and he continued to huff as if he couldn’t get enough air. He whimpered and cried and vocalized angrily.

  “I’m so sorry, Mountain,” I said, pressing my hand at the junction between his abdomen and his hip, which seemed to have a calming effect sometimes, though he was clearly too upset now for it to matter.

  He yelped in response. More puffing, his tail battering my legs, pounding against the open door, knocking over the jackets on the coatrack, and the rack itself, which crashed to the floor. Surprised by the loud sound and the sudden animation of something he’d never seen move before, the wolf yelped and circled, burying his tail deep between his legs. He scooted over toward the table in the center of the room, hoping to hide beneath it, but he was too large.

  I went to him, put a hand on his hip, and held it in place. “I had no idea I would be gone more than a few hours. Something happened. I didn’t mean to leave you for so long.”

  Another yelp. The wolf raced in tight hoops around me, panting. In his extreme agitation, he was shedding—and hair was flying everywhere, adhering to my jeans and even my hands when I touched him. He was so upset, nothing seemed to console him.

  “I’m so sorry,” I kept saying, over and over, as I maintained constant touch, never breaking contact between my hand and some part of his body.

  He continued to circle around me, breathing hard, rubbing his haunches against me, and whining, nuzzling his neck into my thighs.

  “Poor baby,” I cooed.

  He whimpered time and again, made occasional eye contact, and panted, unable to calm himself.

  Finally, I coaxed him outside, and he moved only slightly away from me to pee, then raced back to rub against my legs. We went back into the cabin, and I surveyed the damage.

  He had ripped open my pillow and its case, so a white snow of down covered my bed and most of the cabin floor. He’d pulled four pairs of shoes and a pair of cowboy boots out of the closet, and he’d managed to dismantle and devour the better part of one of the boots and all of the shoes. He’d overturned a big potted plant, pulled the vegetation out by the roots, and dug to the bottom of the pot, spreading soil in a wide wake, then tracking brown prints everywhere, including across the top of the small kitchen table. The two chairs that normally sat tucked beneath the table were both turned on their sides, and the backrest of one of them had a good dent where the corner had been chewed off. There were deep grooves where he’d scratched the inside of the door and the wood on the windowsills, probably trying to get out.

  There was a horrible smell, which I tracked to a puddle of urine and a huge pile of shit on the bathroom floor, and there were paw prints in the bathtub where he’d tracked some of it.

  Gagging from the stink, I used a dustpan and paper towels to gather up the moist pile and dump it into the toilet. All the while, the wolf watched me and whined, still breathing fast and heavy from fear. I used more paper towels to mop up the urine and then bagged those up and took them out to the trash behind the cabin.

  Mountain followed my every step, never more than a yard from me. It took me almost two hours to clean up the place, the wolf shadowing me the whole time. Although he seemed concerned that I’d be angry, he was also clearly proud of his handiwork and had no shame.

  Six months ago he’d been rescued by one of our wildlife rangers outside Yellowstone—his mother had been killed by a rancher, and Mountain was the only cub who had survived. He and I had been almost inseparable ever since. The ranger who had worked with me on the adoption process had warned me about wolves’ separation anxiety and urged me to keep Mountain with me as much as I possibly could. “To wolves, abandonment is death. They’re pack animals, they never spend any time alone unless they’re put out of the pack. When that happens, unless they find another family that will accept them, they die. Wolves hunt together, raise their young in community, and are very social. They mate for life, and they’re fiercely loyal to their pack. Don’t leave him unconfined if you have to leave him for any length of time. These animals are tremendously destructive, and he’ll take his anger out on the things around him for what he perceives as your abandonment. Get as good and strong a crate as you can, and lock it down tight if you can’t supervise him directly. Best thing, though, is to try to take him with you everywhere for the first year or so, until he settles into the idea that you’re not going to leave him.”

  I found the biggest dog crate that I could. In the first few months, Mountain managed to bend and distort the slim metal bars, so I used baling wire to reinforce the joints where the top panel met the sides. But soon, the wolf discovered that he could hurl himself at the door, and eventually, the springs and latches would bend enough to permit him an exit. I bought stainless steel S-hooks and began latching him in with those and a pair of pliers. By the time Mountain reached his six-month birthday, he weighed well over a hundred pounds, and his strength was much greater than any dog of that size. The last time he stayed in that crate while I ran an errand, Mountain broke the metal bars across the top and along one side, and bent the whole apparatus into a new geodesic configuration. After that, I found that it was easier just to take the wolf with me almost all the time, even if it meant leaving him in the car for an hour or two sometimes, which he typically didn’t mind.

  And I began working on the separation anxiety problem from a new perspective. I started by choosing a time when Mountain was tired from a walk or a run with me: I’d let him settle down and fall asleep, and then walk out of the cabin for a few minutes. I would watch through the window, and when he became agitated—usually in a minute or two—I would come back in. I did this time and again, gradually increasing the time he was inside the cabin alone. Finally, I added a new element—getting in my Jeep and driving down to the end of my road and back, then coming back in the front door. I worked on it steadily, stretching the interval by one or two minutes each time, until I could safely leave the wolf for an hour or two without any adverse effect to either him or my cabin and its contents.

  But in the end, no matter what, if I left the wolf for more than an hour or two, the consequences were disastrous. This was the longest we’d ever been apart, and the damage he did meant little to me compared to the trauma my best friend had suffered. I never wanted to upset or worry him like that again. I would need to get my Jeep fixed so that I could take him with me. Those few times when I left Mountain at home usually resulted in an episode like tonight’s. I’d lost a lot of my personal effects to that wolf.

  With the cleanup complete, I did what I always did to comfort Mountain—and me. I got down on the floor beside him and stroked him and cooed to him. I caressed his face, his ears, and ran my hands along his strong back, the beautiful long ruff at his neck. He began to calm, to breathe a little more easily. He let out a long sigh, then another whimper, still huffing from time to time as he quieted down.

  Then I moved around behind him on the floor and lay down on my side. I pushed the front of my body into his back, spooning him, and I put my arm around him and rubbed the top of his chest, between his front legs. I could feel his big heart beating in his breast, still rapid. His eyes remained wide with fear, but he was starting to settle a little. I kissed the back of his head and sang to him, as I always did, from the first night when I put him in his crate as a tiny pup. It was a silly little song I’d made up then, and sung to him hundreds of times since:

  Stars shine on us,

  Wind sings to us,

  Moon smiles on us,

  You and me.

  No more lonely,

  We are family.

  I opened my heart

  And in you came

  You gave me wild,

  I gave you tame.

  No more lonely,

  You and me.

  No more lonely,

  We are family.

  5

  Talking with the Stars


  My body was stiff from lying on the cold ground. I sat upright, pulled the edges of my Pendleton around me, and continued to watch the stars twinkle and fall across the night sky. I could smell the mountain sage and the spicy incense of trementina, the sap of the favored piñon wood the locals loved to burn in their fireplaces and woodstoves. Here in the mountains of northern New Mexico, the late summer nights were already growing cold in contrast to the hot days created by the intense, high-altitude sunlight. Momma Anna had taught me that this was the time called Paw’ epana, Lake Moon time. Mountain lay beside me on the ground, his long legs trembling as he dreamed of the chase. He whimpered a little and I reached out a hand to soothe him, stroking his thick ruff.

  An owl hooted softly in a grove of junipers on the slope above my cabin. The local tribes believed the owl represented either death or witches. It seemed a fitting tribute to have one singing to me tonight. The meteor shower I had been witnessing all evening had seemed like a heavenly sendoff with fireworks—but the owl’s persistent voice haunted me like the images of Santana’s death.

  A rustling sound on the ground to my left forced my attention from the sky, and I watched as a lone coyote emerged from some scrub and padded across the flats toward the rocks and higher ground above my cabin. Mountain woke instantly and rolled onto his stomach, ready. He raised his head and then lowered it, ears back, watching. “Shhhhh…,” I told him, my hand on his neck. “Let coyote go.”

  And then we heard the sound of a car approaching in the darkness. The wolf’s ears rotated, alert. The vehicle came from far away, its engine growing louder as it turned and barreled down my long, ungraded dirt and rock road. Lights flooded over me as the automobile pulled in front of the house. The engine stopped, the lights died, and a car door opened and closed. Steps came toward me, and the figure of a man emerged from the shadow of the cabin walls. Mountain got up and ran to greet him, tail wagging. The man came toward me and stood above me, looking down. We were both silent. Finally, he spoke. “I saw you in my headlights when I was coming down the road.”