by David Knop
“Nothing I can see,” someone said.
The deputies’ voices faded as they walked away.
Oso poked his head out of the cave, looked left and right, then back at me. He said, “Pokoh’s got plans for you and me. He’s gonna end it all. All of it.”
“What are you saying? How?”
“The constellations. You see him with stars in his hand?”
“Yeah. He told me he put ‘em in the sky.”
Oso crossed his arms over his chest. “The man’s a god and he’s gonna put a stop to the Ute-Navajo feud. He’s got stars in his hand, constellations, asteroids, for chrissakes. You know what asteroids can do to the Earth?”
“Killed the dinosaurs. Pokoh have something to do with that?”
Oso said, “Can happen again, right?”
“Maybe,” I said, stone-faced.
“Pokoh says he built the whole sky and everything in it.” Oso held out his arms, then leaned in like I was hard-of-hearing. “He’s got one heading this way now.”
“He’s got a small one coming in from the sun. Small enough so no one can see it. Gonna fuck up the hospital ground-breaking, for sure. Kill everybody there.” Oso waved a hand in my direction. “You’ll have plenty of time to think about it while walking. It’s fifteen miles to the trailer. Stay in the canyon. You’ll avoid being spotted.”
Oso stepped out of the cave.
“How do I know you ain’t bullshitting me, Oso. Navy says you’re dead.” I got no response, so I limped after him. He was gone.
Chapter 32
Sand and gravel made the bottom of the canyon easy travel despite the darkness and an occasional slap in the face from a low branch. Distracted, I tripped on a small log landing on my knees. I stood, brushed myself off and trudged on.
I tripped again and fell on my shoulder, swore, spat sand, and moved on. It seemed every case I have ever investigated injured me.
The morning sun warmed the nape of my neck, a welcomed relief from the night’s cold. The walls of the canyon seemed more distant and I began to breathe easier. Deep shadows and cold remained where the canyon switched course. My calves cramped as I put one stone-dead foot in front of the other.
Farms and fields replaced the cliffs, arroyos, and boulders as my descent exposed a broad valley.
My chapped, cracked lips tingled. Grit clogged my throat. The long night, the altitude, and the exhausting walk had dried me out. Mind games red-zoned my brain, weakened my legs. My feet had numbed to a constant pricking of needles. When I flashed hot and cold, I knew I’d approached meltdown. I wouldn’t make it to Reel’s command post. Out of beliefs, ideas, and steam, I sat on a rock.
I covered my face with my hands. A blue light filtered through my fingers. Blue? I looked at my hands. My blue hands. Blue like the high-altitude sky, blue like a far mountain range, blue as the alpine dawn. Blue as my cold, dark mood. Was I hallucinating or dying?
Rivulets cut the snow and formed a small stream that trickled away. I sucked handfuls of snow and waited for my energy to return. I examined my hands. My blue hands. The color led up my arms. I pulled up a leg of my jeans past my boot tops. My shin showed blue. My face tingled like being washed by a warm, tropical rain. This wasn’t frost-bite.
“Get off your ass, private,” a voice said. My DI, resplendent in Smokey Bear hat, ribbons, and creases. When my DI said jump, I jumped, but my rubber legs failed me when I tried to stand.
Hands on hips, my old drill instructor, said, “Winning is a mindset. It’s not about talent. It’s about effort. It’s not about sitting on your ass on a rock, Romero.”
“Sir, no sir,” I said, one of two responses ever allowed. My quads kinked up like cables. I pounded them with my fists looking for life.
“Winning is for champions. You throw a champion to the wolves, he returns leading the pack!” he said, voice grinding like gravel rolling in a drum. “You a champion, Romero?”
I still had stitches where the wolves had bitten me. I stood. It hurt, but I did it. “Sir, yes sir.” The second allowable response.
“Winning is what happens when champions tire of losing. You tired of losing, Romero?”
I was tired. “Sir, yes sir.”
In my face, breath like old coffee, he said, “Make sure your opponent knows you’re ready for war. Look him in the eye and make sure he knows you won’t stop. Look him in the eyes until you see his fear. And win. You want to win, Romero?”
“Sir, yes, sir!”
“I can’t hear you.”
I bellowed, “Sir, yes, sir!”
“Then move. Time is going to run over you like a tank. When the situation is impossible, charge, Romero, charge!” he said, then he was gone.
Fifteen miles. Blood rushed through my wrecked heap of a body and charged me. Even in my sad state, my former drill instructor had inspired power and wisdom. I put one foot in front of the other.
I raised my arms high. “Bring it.” The canyon walls echoed my voice. I inhaled the day, the scent of pine, clean sand, and melting snow.
And wet fur.
At the shuffling of gravel upstream, my heart jumped. Grizz bawled, a frightened and wounded animal. I quickened my step.
I made time as the trickling water developed into a stream cutting through flat, open land. Fields of grazing cattle spread out before me. Farmhouses and barns dotted the plains. In places, silos penetrated the high-country horizon.
Wailing from the injured animal animated my pace. I stayed concealed in the high-banked streambed to avoid being sighted by Lettau’s deputies, but I now trotted at a painful half-run. No matter how fast I moved, the howls got closer.
The stream bed, deep and narrow, hid all but my head. Twists and turns provided even more safety from detection. It also hid the location of the beast howling behind me and closing. I hurried as fast as I could.
The sun rose as the sides of the creek bed flattened. The flat, ranch country revealed a wooded area in the distance where Reel had hidden her command post. I still had a lot of walking to do across a wide bowl surrounded by mountains and exhaustion was setting in. Random thoughts of self-pity subjected my mind to images of driving my Jeep—my stolen Jeep—across the plain in front of me. The sound of the big engine’s glass packs rumbled in my ears until reality intervened.
Fifty yards to the front, a highway crossed a bridge spanning my stream’s course. Next to it, parked a La Plata County black and gold with three deputies on guard. Two leaned against the cruiser and Lettau sat behind the wheel. I stayed out of view. Grizz’s yowling grew louder, but the deputies seemed not to notice as they smoked and talked.
As I observed the men, I calculated my chances of making it alive across ground void of cover except clumps of grass, yucca, and cactus. Chances: zero.
To my front, the river bottom passed beneath the highway through a culvert too small to walk through upright. Passing through the corrugated pipe was too risky. I pictured Lettau’s posse blasting away at me from both ends of the culvert and leaving my hidden body to rot beneath the road. Probability of survival: less than zero.
The river bottom stayed shallow on the other side of the road. On the off-chance I made it to the other side, I would be spotted easily. Odds of escaping detection: zip.
The likelihood of surviving Grizz’s four-inch claws offered the best way out. I back-tracked toward the bawling sound. The twists and turns of the dry riverbed blocked my view, so I peered around the corners of each, until I found him. Grizz was sitting, panting heavily. When he spotted me, his eyes slitted and burned red. A low growl issued from his chest, then he roared. I grabbed at my ears. Birds exploded from the trees. When the grumble stopped echoing through the valley, I walked towards him. He stood on all fours.
I did what any Marine would do, what my DI said I had to do. I charged. At fifty yards, Grizz growled his menace, again. The animal favored his rear paws, holding each off the ground alternately. At thirty yards, I pull
ed up my sleeves and waved my arms to show my blue skin.
Grizz cocked his head, first left, then right, as if puzzled. He chomped his teeth, then charged.
Blue skin or not, I turned and ran, trusting I could outrun the injured animal.
The animal’s hot breath warmed the back of my neck about the time I made it into the view of Lettau and his guns. I ran straight at them.
The deputies startled, unholstered and fired. Bullets flew everywhere. Some whistled past my head, missing by fractions, others thudded against Grizz who lumbered inches from my heels. I flew between the deputies, Grizz swiping at my feet.
One deputy got off a round at close range that diverted Grizz’s wrath to them. Behind me, the crescendo of pistol fire faded and turned to screaming.
I crossed the road, running with all I had. Shrieks and growls faded behind me.
I ran until my legs failed. I dropped to my knees, then crawled until my arms gave out. I lay gasping on the sand until my heart and lungs settled down. Only then did I look back. The La Plata County Sheriff’s SUV was gone.
Too exhausted to rise, I watched the area for twenty minutes, but neither activity nor sound interrupted the soft hiss of the wind and the twitter of birds.
Hot pokers burned my ankle when I tried to stand, so I crawled to the scene. Two deputies lay mauled, deep gashes had opened their chests. One of them had been decapitated. Grizz had dropped off to one side with his legs spread out like a bear rug. Blood stained the fur on his face, front legs, and torso.
I hesitated to approach the animal and waited on hands and knees at a safe distance. Grizz was a great warrior and worthy opponent. This beast had tried to kill me several times over the past week but had never given up. Grizz, in life, was a magnificent creature worthy of respect and I mourned the passing of his soul. I created a chant in his honor.
But this bear was the last earthly embodiment of the skinwalker, Pokoh. I had also seen Pokoh the man, Pokoh as Deer and as Pokoh the spirit in all his constellation-juggling glory.
For years, Costancia’s mother told me stories about skinwalkers. I listened wide-eyed but Costancia couldn’t stand it. She said calling out the name of the creature for all to hear would dispel all the psychic energies of the creature who would then reveal his human form.
I was certain Grizz was the earthly embodiment of Pokoh but seeing is believing. I wanted proof and it couldn’t hurt to try.
“Pokoh,” I hollered. “You, Grizz, are the Ute, Pokoh.” I said it again, louder. No reaction came from the dead beast. I said it several times in English, then Keres. I chanted over and over a mantra containing all the spiritual power I could muster from a position on my knees.
“Your pathetic ditty didn’t work, Romero,” Pokoh said, from behind me, “and it isn’t over.”
I whirled, faced a scowl from a mouth twisted downward in an anger so strong, I could smell it. Despite his denial, his appearance confirmed the mantra had worked.
Pokoh, Ute god of the heavens, stared down at me, a man-vision dressed in beaded leathers and crow-wing headdress. The deity—from my hands-and-knees viewpoint seemed ten feet tall—juggled constellations and stars in his right hand. His left curled into a fist, close enough to hit me.
Pokoh studied his handheld stars, then me, with mouth pinched flat. His narrowed eyes revealed contempt, disgust and hate. “They are beautiful, aren’t they? Just lonelier than before.” He snapped the words, bit off the ends. The small asteroid previously circling his hand was absent from his cluster of glowing stars and constellations.
“Where is it, Pokoh?”
“Waiting.”
Before I could ask any more questions, he vanished.
Chapter 33
Pokoh’s asteroid. My mantra designed to destroy the skinwalker had not only failed, it might’ve escalated his power. Boxcars of questions piled up, one against the other in endless collisions of improbable events, irrational conclusions, and impossible consequences.
I stood as best I could. If I put little weight on my foot, the pain was bearable. I studied the two dead men and tried to separate the real from the unreal.
The men’s mutilated bodies were real. One deputy’s head lay next to the skid marks of the sheriff’s cruiser. Lettau had deserted his own men quickly, the SUV nowhere in sight. Real enough, for sure. Grizz lay where he’d died. Real?
I needed Reel. The Cherokee in her would listen, understand what I could not. She had a way of making sense out of nonsense. If she rejected everything I had to say out of hand, I still wanted to be near her.
I had ten miles to go but I didn’t think I could make it. I would have to wait for a ride, but this road was a secondary highway and lightly travelled.
The smell of death wafted past my nose and coated my throat. I considered staying with the dead men, but anyone coming here would end up pointing fingers at me, the cop killer. Despite claw-marked bodies, severed head, and a dead bear, I was the only one left standing, thus Suspect Number One.
Rattles and squeaks preceded a vehicle coming from the west. Out of caution, I headed for the drainage pipe crossing under the road, the only hiding place around here. As it neared, I recognized the vehicle, a Bondo and bailing-twine junker that must’ve caused celebration every time it started.
It was driven by the Peruvian who’d given me directions to Rafi Maestrejuan’s campito.
I waited by the side of the road and waved. The Peruvian slowed, studied the dead deputies, recognized me, then smiled. He stopped, stepped out, held out a hand. “Looks like you’ve been busy.” he said in Spanish.
“No, not me.” I said, pointing to Grizz.
He winked, asked if I needed a ride. I answered yes but his glee over the dead deputies and dead grizzly made me uneasy. “Anywhere you want,” he said, with a grin.
At our last meeting outside the bar, the Peruvian had made his distrust of white cops clear. Ordinarily I steered clear of cop haters, but I was in no position to refuse a lift.
The truck’s threadbare seat was the most comfortable thing I’d ever collapsed on. The water he gave me was the sweetest I’d ever swallowed.
We talked in Spanish about mundane things, but I eased the discussion toward things celestial. I asked if he knew about any Incan asteroid-throwing deity.
“Ombligo de la tierra, Señor,” he said.
Navel of the Earth. The term applied to the ancient Peruvian capital, Cuzco. In Nahua, Cuzco means “center of the world” in the same way the navel is the center of the body. All roads led to Cuzco’s gold-lined, emerald-studded structures until the Spanish pillaged the place, but his answer did not satisfy my question.
When I asked again, his eyebrows dropped, and his smile disappeared. Many Indians did not like to talk about their religion because of fear. Fear they would be ridiculed, fear they would be evangelized, or, worse, fear their religious beliefs would be stolen.
Inca religion was closely tied to astronomy. So, I said, “Tell me more. Start at the beginning. Tell me how Cuzco was founded,” I asked. I looked at him seriously and he seemed to understand I was. The Peruvian was not an educated man, but I did not want learned knowledge, I wanted myth. Myth is where Pokoh came from, and somewhere in the depths of timeless lore, I might find clues to Pokoh’s true capabilities.
The Peruvian launched into a legend about the city’s founding prior to the Inca. “Five thousand years ago, the Inca were born from the sun god, Inti, at the ancient city of Tiwanaku in Bolivia. They migrated to the Cuzco valley to fulfill an earlier prophecy claiming they would settle where a golden staff could be easily driven into the ground. With the help of stone giants, they defeated the local tribes and the great Inca capital was built.”
I listened as he told the story, using his hands lavishly to tell it, while driving on meandering roads. “…So, you see, Cuzco was placed by the children of the sun,” he said.
Children of the sun? Every tribe says that. No help.
<
br /> Then he said, “Our great empire fell to the Spanish as foretold by a great asteroid sent by the gods.” With suppressed excitement, I asked, “By the gods?”
“Sí, Señor. Los dioses.” By the gods.
Both Utes and Incas believed in legends of destruction from space. My cheeks burned. I wanted confirmation. I needed to talk to my Aunt Pris. She could confirm if the earth faced imminent danger. “I need a phone. Fast.”
The Peruvian found a Circle K in Durango and waited while I called. I went for the phone feeling like every eye in town was on me. I walked as fast as I could to an outdoor booth, probably the last one in New Mexico, and faced away from the street. I called collect to Aunt Pris’ home phone hoping she was not at work. The university would not accept a collect call.
She picked up on the fourth ring.
“I need your help,” I said.
“It’s the only time you call. And collect?” She exhaled. “What do you want, Peter?” she said, voice like icicles on my handset.
“I really need help. I need to know if there’s an object in space that could present a danger to Southern Colorado, Durango area.”
“You have a lot of nerve calling me after leaving Costancia like that. Shame on you, Peter.”
“She left me, Aunt Pris.”
“And you, Peter Romero, had nothing to do with that?”
I loved my aunt. She adored me but loved Costancia more. Everyone did. “She hated my job.”
Silence loitered like a bum on a busy street corner.
“Aunt Pris? Please?” I told her what I needed.
“Of all the requests over all these years, this is the most bizarre. Space objects? Really, Peter?”
“Really.”
“You know this is out of my discipline?”
Doctor Priscilla Romero, PhD anthropologist, was my go-to on all things ancient. “Yes, but you know people who know these things.”
“I really don’t have time for this,” she said.