An Unearthly Undertaking

by Constance Barker

  “Is this another challenge that requires my superpowers?”

  “No, I can open the wine bottle.”

  “I mean the situation that needs my help.”

  Elle stopped. “Your dreaming stuff? No. It has nothing to do with that.... as far as I know. No, this is altogether different. I think.”

  That stopped her. “Really? The last time...”

  “This problem can't be solved with dreaming, even though it might be just as ethereal. It has to do with investigations and political correctness,” she said as she began filling the glasses. She handed one to Charli. “Let’s drink to political correctness and a way that we can promote diversity and cultural cooperation.”

  “I don’t have any classes this semester, so I don’t have to be politically correct.”

  “No, but I have to be all the time when representing the company. Besides, I thought you’d said you were unemployed again.”

  “I’m not unemployed, I just don’t have any classes for a semester.”

  “So they are paying you?”

  “No.”

  “In that case, my friend, you are officially unemployed.”

  “I'm just on an off semester.”

  "No matter how they put it, the reality is no work, no money, equals no job. No job means you are unemployed. Voila.”

  Elle was irrepressible. “You have a point.”

  Her friend beamed delightedly. “Ta da! And the Latin for that is ‘Ipso eras facto no tengo dinero’.”

  “That was either the worst Latin on the planet, terrible Spanish, or just plain gibberish.”

  “It contains some of the finest qualities of each lingua, sister. The point being, I have a job of work to do, and I know you have outstanding student loans. You could use an income stream, even if it was small.”

  She could. “How small?”

  “Tiny.”

  “Minimum wage?”

  Elle stuck out her tongue. “This wouldn’t be an hourly gig. You work too dang slow, girl. Even at minimum wage you’d put me way over budget. No, this is project-based consulting work.”

  “So you think you can exploit a friend? Consultants rake in the bucks, kiddo.”

  “Sure, some do. But not you. You are an anthropologist. That’s almost as valuable in the marketplace as a degree in fine art.”

  “Which is what you have, as I recall.”

  “But I got better. I supplemented my useless degree with a certificate that makes me a highly paid insurance investigator. It was a brilliant stroke of self improvement.”

  “Wasn’t that certificate from a school you found in an ad for in the back of a romance magazine?”

  She made a face. “The source of information is irrelevant. What matters is that it is accurate and useful. And it was a great school.”

  “Like those learn to draw schools.”

  “Not at all the same.” She raised a finger. “But we digress.”

  “Of course we do,” Charli said. “Whenever you come over, that’s what we do. If it weren’t for digressions, we wouldn’t get anywhere.”

  “But I was speaking of political correctness, of ethnic sensitivity.”

  “No, you only mentioned that first part.”

  “That’s because you rudely interrupted me before I got to my second point in the presentation. If you would allow me to finish...”

  “Fair enough.”

  “To put things in context, a Native American artifact of indeterminate value has gone missing.”

  Charli laughed. “In particular, an insured artifact of indeterminate value has gone missing. Insured by your employers, I assume.”

  She made a face. “Of course. Why else would I care? It’s some old bit of stuff in a museum in Santa Fe, for crying out loud. I’ve heard of the city, but I don’t even know where Santa Fe is.”

  “It’s in New Mexico. The land of my birth and, I learned recently, the Land of Enchantment.”

  “Really?” She wrinkled her nose. “Sand and cactus are enchanting? Since when?”

  “Get on with the story before you lose the plot—again.”

  She refilled the glasses, which were magically empty. “The plot is that the company issued a policy on a museum full of Indian stuff. I’m not sure why, but we did. It covers fire and theft and, oddly enough, considering that this is in, I understand, a desert, water damage. One of the items the museum has, or had, is some old Indian rattle. It’s some ceremonial deal that has been there for some time. But the other day it turned up missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “As in, not in its proper or in any other place they know of.”

  “How long had they had the artifact?”

  “I don’t know. But years. Lots of years. It’s old. What does that matter? What we care about is that the curator was making his rounds and found the case it was kept in empty.”

  “Empty?”

  “They had it in an airtight glass case to keep it from doing whatever artifacts do when they aren’t in a case like that. Anyway, the glass case was still sealed. Inside is nothing but dust. The museum filed a claim and here we are.”

  “Hold that last thought for a moment. Are you saying this thing, this artifact crumbled into dust?”

  “No I'm not saying that, although when I heard the story that was exactly my thought too. My next thought was that would be great, because we don’t insure against aging. But there wasn’t enough dust left to account for the whole thing. Just a tiny bit. Think pixy dust here, not the last of an old piece of Indian stuff.”

  Charli shook her head. “And Indian stuff is the technical term for this artifact, I assume? So much for ethnic sensitivity.”

  “Exactly. So the bosses remembered that I got you to help me with that missing person case. I must’ve mentioned something about you using your Indian heritage, because they told me to hire you to help us find it?”

  Charli laughed. “They want you to hire me to find it? What am I, a private detective?”

  “They want you to work as my consultant. For a tiny retainer.”

  “Because I’m so good at finding my keys?”

  “Not that so much. The important point being, they think you might come in handy if we need to talk to Indians or even go on a reservation.”

  “I might?”

  “Being Indian and all.”

  “Ah, the importance of being Indian. I think Oscar Wilde wrote that play.”

  “No. Oscar thought it was important to be earnest.”

  “So now we arrive at the ethnic sensitivity portion of the program.”

  “Right. And the political correctness as well. See it might not go down well for me to go to their house and suggest that someone from the tribe might have re-appropriated something from the museum that we appropriated from them back in the day. The bosses worry that the Indians in question might take offense.”

  “But if I’m the spokesperson...”

  “Right. It’s worth a few, paltry dollars to gamble on the idea that the Navajo in question, being questioned, might be a little less miffed if the one asking the questions is one of them.”

  “I wonder about that. About being one of them, I mean. First, my heritage is Mescalero Apache, not Navajo; secondly I don’t know the politics of that. For all we know, they hate Apaches. Or they might just see me as a female, native American equivalent of Uncle Tom.”

  Elle shrugged. “All to be determined empirically, as Professor Dower said back in college.”

  “Repeatedly. And you hated her.”

  “True. That doesn’t mean she was an idiot. But we do know that the Ramah Navajo have a reputation for being a fiercely independent bunch, even for Navajo. Putting the emphasis on the ‘fiercely’ part of that, the official thinking is that if they got riled about us poking around and decided to complain publicly, it would be a public-relations advantage to be able to point out that it was another Indian, however bogus, doing the poking around. And given the shortfall of Native Americans on the pa
yroll, they sent me here to seduce you into making the attempt.”

  “I’m not totally up to speed on the history of the Indian Wars, but just a superficial reading suggests that after what America did to the Navajo, as well as other Indian tribes, it’s rather hard to blame them to be a little touchy about their... Indian stuff.”

  Elle held up her hands. “I’m not taking sides here, just trying to carry out the mission with a minimum of carnage. I just had my hair done, so being scalped is way low on my list of things to do.”

  “I’m glad to hear of your awareness of and sensitivity to cultural mores.”

  “Hey, I wasn’t around at the time and haven’t read the books. The salient point is that the reservation is part of the sovereign Navajo nation, and the company believes having an honest-to-God Indian on the payroll might help solve this mystery and maybe even find the artifact.”

  Charli thought. Was this the call she was supposed to heed, assuming it was her that it was directed at? She was the only dreamer she knew, at least the only one plagued by powerful and unsettling dreams. “Fine. You’re right about me needing the money.” She sipped the wine and imagined the trip. It would be a chance to absorb the feel of the place... its smells and sounds. That might help her in her own quest and it would be on the company’s dime. “Do you have any leads at all or is this inquiry just for show?”

  “Not for show at all. They actually expect us to find out what happened. If possible, they want the artifact back.” Elle got out her phone and checked her notes. “According to the police report, the security cameras were on and functioning. Actually, it isn’t video. It’s more a time-lapse deal where they take a frame or two every couple of minutes. That’s enough to show that the artifact was there and then, abruptly, not there. And the not there part is what we object to.”

  “How does that lead us to the reservation?”

  “Seems there was a Ramah Navajo shaman who made regular visits to see the rattle. The curator said he’s probably the only person on the planet who cared about it, so...”

  Suddenly the politics became clear. “So, in the absence of real leads, you want me to talk to this shaman.”

  “See if he knows anything.”

  “And the insurance company will pay all of my travel expenses in addition to a pittance for my time?”

  “For both of us. I’ll go as the lead investigator, for what that’s worth.”

  “Which makes me the Indian negotiator.”

  “More or less. But those travel expenses have to be within reason, of course. We buy the plane ticket and give you a per diem although we will share a motel room. So at the end of the day you get a paid vacation in this land of entrenchment.”

  “Enchantment.”

  “Whatever.”

  Charli pictured doing what Elle was asking. “I assume you have a photo of the artifact?”

  She grinned. “So do you. I sent it to your phone along with the contact information for this Shaman, although it’s nothing but directions to a place called Ramah, New Mexico. Apparently, that’s a couple of hours out-of-town by rental car.”

  “And, if I agree to do this, would there be any problem with me doing a little research of my own?”

  Elle tipped her head. “Research?” Then her eyes lit up. “You want to look into the stuff, the people your mother won’t talk about?”

  “Exactly that. As long as we will be in the neighborhood and given that the compensation is tiny...”

  “No problem. I mean, not being Native American, how would I know what research is related to the case and what isn’t? You’re the consultant.”

  Charli raised her glass. “I need to let Roger know I’ll be gone. And then, unless he offers some compelling argument otherwise, and he won’t, here’s to being part of the company’s late-blooming affirmative action program for Native Americans.”

  Elle grinned. “Take progress where you can find it, Charli. And you won’t guilt me with that attitude, anyway.”

  “No?”

  “I’m bullet proof. I’ll have you know that my best friend is an Indian. A confused Indian, but authentic nonetheless.”

  “No lie? How liberal of you.”

  Elle refilled their glasses. “I can’t help it. It’s just the amazing way I am. Deal with it.”

  It was exactly the amazing way her egomaniac friend was, Charli decided. And she loved her for it.

  Chapter Five

  A Healing

  Charli walked across a large open area of scrub and sand, seeing the way heat rising from the desert floor distorted the air making it hard to be sure if what you saw was real.

  Overhead, birds called out as they circled, their wings almost motionless as they rode the thermals in the startling blue sky. These were turkey vultures; they floated aloft, watching for carrion, or unprotected young. But they were more than scavengers, they were symbols of death.

  Walking the hard-packed earth, Charli came across a woman lying limp on the ground. She looked out of place there, her arms and legs akimbo as she sprawled over the barren ground between the scrub trees. Her white blouse was stained red with blood that had run down from her face and now soaked into the ground. The blood came from a wound, a hole in her head.

  For all this, somehow the scene was one of peace, rather than tragedy.

  After all, the woman was not dead. Not yet. Her breathing was slow, but she still breathed. Around her was the presence of... she couldn’t tell what was present, but it was a living force. She turned. Behind her stood a manlike creature wearing a mask of feathers and beads and pain. Bare-chested, barefoot, he danced on the hard sand, shaking a rattle at the woman as he sang a sad, mournful song. The words weren’t words she knew, but in a foreign tongue, and yet, somehow she knew this was a chant of appeasement. Who they were sung to or what needed appeasing was another matter.

  Something low to the ground moved in the distance. Squinting through the haze, she saw an animal, something like a dog. It scurried closer, then sat on its haunches, watching, as if waiting for something to happen. The woman on the ground stirred slightly. Charli glanced at her and saw a silent moan escape her lips. She turned back to the animal.

  “Is she going to live?” she asked it.

  The animal cocked its head, staring at Charli now. Even at a distance she caught a distinctive gleam of intelligence in the animal’s eyes. It was studying the scene, and her as if it had to make a decision. Finally, it snorted, then turned and ran off into the distance.

  The man danced tirelessly, singing his chant, reciting his supplication. Some of the words seemed familiar now, and she knew he was repeating himself, beginning from the beginning, from the very beginning. The chant, the story it tells, goes back to the beginning of time, she thought. Back to First Man, to First Woman. They had much to do with this chant as did the mountains themselves.

  The woman moved on the ground, affected by the spell being cast. Slowly she seemed to regain her color, grow less pale. The wound in her head stopped bleeding. After a time she stirred, moaning audibly now.

  She heard a sound and turned. From the direction the animal had disappeared into, a small, wiry man with a mustache came walking up to the dancer and held out his hand. The dancer raised his rattle up to the sky. “Almost done,” he said, speaking directly at Charli. A flick of his wrist sent the sound echoing across the bleakness surrounding them. The rattle was another call to something. From the dancer’s other hand came a plume of smoke that billowed out with the gentle breeze but then settled over the woman.

  Then he handed the rattle to the mustachioed man who turned and disappeared just as the animal had, leaving Charli alone with the woman and the dancer. She was unable to move; not held in place, but transfixed.

  As the dancer returned to his chant, he circled the woman’s body. The animal returned then, coming from behind Charli and moving toward the woman. The dancer paid it no notice. Now Charli could see that it was not a dog. It came to her that it had to be a coyote
or a wolf. She wasn’t sure she knew the difference between the two. That was another failing of hers, an example of her ignorance. She felt ashamed. How could she not know one from the other? Roger would know exactly what the animal was, she thought. But Roger wasn’t here. He couldn’t be here.

  The dancer’s movements grew more frenzied. His long braid of jet-black hair swung out behind him like a tail of some kind, even as the animal wagged its tail as it came close to the woman. When it stood over the unconscious woman, looking down at her face, Charli felt a chill. What would it do? Every instinct told her to run to the woman and chase the animal off, but somehow she couldn’t do that. She was condemned to watch.

  Still ignoring the animal, the dancer changed his chant, shifting his voice up in pitch—up a perfect sixth, she noted, not sure how she knew—the animal put its face down to the woman’s face and licked her cheek. Charli’s stomach knotted, but the animal sat back on its haunches to stare at the woman. Her eyelids flickered, then opened. She smiled weakly up at the animal. It licked her face again and she raised a hand, moving it with a painful slowness to his muzzle. The animal licked the hand, and then she touched its head as you would the pet dog.

  “Thank you,” the woman said, her voice weak, reedy.

  Her eyes closed again.

  Charli realized that the dancer had stopped. He stood over the woman and his hand released another plume of smoke, this time blue smoke. The smoke covered the woman’s body, then sank low to the ground and drifted toward the horizon. As if he’d been waiting for this, the animal disappeared in the smoke. “We thank you, brother,” the dancer said.

  Charli peered into the smoke wanting to see the animal again but it was gone. When she turned back to the woman, she was gone too. Only the dancer was there, staring at her through that mask. “Show’s over,” he said. “You must go home now, Bonita. But remember your dream. You will need to tell what you’ve dreamt.”

  Charli felt confusion. The dancer had clearly been speaking to her, so why had he called her Bonita? There was something familiar about that name; she had a sense that she should know it, but...