Return of the Bones: Inspired by a True Native American Indian Story

by Belinda Vasquez Garcia

  She scraped her fingernail across the ancient toe.

  The now toeless sandal sailed through the air.

  She ran after it, dropped to her knees and dug with her fingers, throwing dirt about, not caring if dust struck her face. But nothing, the sandal and toe vanished.

  She wrapped her arms around her waist and rocked, cuffing her hands to her ears and screaming. Oh, God, a toeless Pecos ghost will haunt me. Her vertigo worsened so she stayed plopped down, crossed her arms and fooled him so he did not know she pressed against her chest. He must have tied her with a dozen invisible rubber bands.

  His damn promise will be the death of me.

  “I’m not Pecos; I’m Jemez,” she said as if this sort-of fact would grant her absolution.

  Acute pain crossed his face at her words.

  She lowered her head and picked at a thread on her blouse, but her eyes stung like needle pricks.

  Damn this guilt. Damn him.

  She sprang up, dragged him to the truck, yanked open the front door and pushed him onto the front passenger seat.

  His blanket caught on the door so the corner dragged against the ground.

  She forced the key into the ignition and floored the gas pedal. The engine roared to life. The red earth of her ancestral home blew around the spinning tires, and she got the hell out of Pecos.

  The old troublemaker bounced beside her on the springy seat, him too short to hit the ceiling with his head.

  She turned on the radio to drown out any more lectures about family ties, bones, ghosts, or death.

  Soon, his light snoring blew puffs of air between his lips. Spittle dribbled down his chin.

  She rolled down the window and breathed the fresh air of life.

  The heater blew on high for the old man whose chin rolled around his chest. He did not look so almighty when he slept nor so scary, so she shoved his hat low on his forehead so only his stubby eyelashes, crooked nose, and toothless mouth showed.

  The truck descended away from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

  She merged onto I-25 and headed south towards Santa Fe.

  The lights of the capital vanished from her rear view mirror miles back…When did his snoring stop?

  She stole a glance at his still chest.

  “Grandfather!”

  She poked his arm.

  His head fell against the windshield with a crack.

  She jerked the steering wheel over to the shoulder and slammed on the brakes, bringing the tires to a screeching stop.

  “Wake up,” she begged, shaking him gently. “Please wake up.”

  The sun was just beginning to set. The spittle on his chin was frozen. He was already beginning to stiffen.

  She threw items out of her purse until her fingers grasped her cell phone. Moonlight lit up the numbers 911. “He’s dying,” she cried out.

  She cursed in Towa. The operator couldn’t understand her choppy English accent and asked her not to grunt into the phone. The phone trembled as she slowly repeated, “He’s dying. I think he’s dead. He’s not responding. Please hurry. What? No, I don’t know exactly where I was when he died.”

  Three times she recited a description of her truck, her license plate number, more or less her location, then pressed the end button on her phone. The disconnection sounded like a heart monitor flat line.

  She pounded her face against the steering wheel and moaned. She whizzed by about sixty miles of the eighty miles between Jemez Pueblo and Pecos Pueblo and could never backtrack to discover exactly where they were when he left her. She only knew that he left his heart at Pecos.

  He claimed death shadowed him, yet he had no kind last words for her, no confession of eternal love, no begging for her forgiveness, no words of wisdom about life, only his damned promise to search for wretched bones.

  With shaky hands, she reached for a paper sack and the shimmer of an unbroken seal of a whiskey bottle, but a pain so unbearable slammed against her chest that she grabbed for him instead.

  “I’m sorry, so sorry,” she said, rubbing her damp cheek against his soft white braids.

  She wrapped her arms around his cold body and cradled his head to her breast, berating all the times she lashed out because she had no family except for him.

  “Old man, old man, the only father and mother I have ever known,” she said, rocking and howling like a wounded dog. She had not told him she loved him for such a long time, not since he screamed at her when she stood too close to his snake den at seven years of age.

  I should have listened to your life. I could have watched for your death. I would have touched your heart, right there. She placed her hand over his chest and swore she felt the heartbeat of a Pecos warrior but it was probably the trembling of her hand.

  “Even in death you smell like magic, Governor.”

  He proclaimed he would die how many minutes after sunset? She glanced at her watch and shook her wrist, as if she could turn back time.

  “Oh, Grandfather, when did you die so silently beside me…and so alone?”

  Chapter Two

  “He’s not dead; he just had a slight heart attack,” Steve said. She cried in Steve’s arms and peeked over his shoulder. Ah, look at the old man with no teeth and puckered lips; so skinny, mostly bones. His white hair swept his heart. He lay in a coma in an oxygen tent with tubes running into his chest, arms and stomach. He also suffered a slight stroke. The doctors marveled that at his age he held his own.

  A priest arrived to administer the last rites, shoving her aside while he blessed his forehead.

  “He has not worshipped Catholicism for years ever since he secretly joined the Native American Church,” she said, pushing him back and quivering with anger that this man would just assume.

  “Ah, so the poor soul is not Christian then. No wonder he worships in secret,” the priest said.

  “The American Indian Religious Freedom Act has allowed him for twenty-one years to practice his peyote religion openly. Our church believes in the Bible but we use peyote to commune with Jesus,” Steve said.

  She glared at the priest.

  He spun on his heels and hastily left the room.

  With shaky fingers, she covered Grandfather with another blanket. “He always complains of the cold and the swamp cooler. He’s not going to die. That priest…” With long strides she hurried towards the exit and ran down the hall, holding a hand to her mouth. This Clorox-stinking hellhole must have a damned bathroom.

  She barely made it to the toilet, folded over and emptied her stomach.

  Steve waited for her at the bathroom exit. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder, led her to a chair, and grasped her hands in his.

  “He knows you love him, Holly,” he said.

  She wiped her eyes, remembering Grandfather’s wish for her to act strong and shuffled back to his room.

  The case he gave her at Pecos had words engraved on the leather: Dr. Alfred V. Kidder, Professor of Archaeology, Harvard University. The case contained a black and white photo with the words, Pecos Bones, scrawled across the back along with the date December 23, 1915. The photo showed a slender, recent Ph.D. grad, an Indiana Jones wannabe, with burning ambition in his eyes that bespoke of a hunger for fame. He stroked his moustache with a delicate hand. The Pecos ruins drooped in the background of the photo, not as time-ravaged as present day. Dust caressed old-time trucks parked in the distance. Tents poked out from the earth like giant ant hills. He stood with hands on hips and puffed-out chest by a pile of bones. One booted foot rested atop a skull like a trophy, yet his furrowed brow and eyes reflected a sadness that revealed his conscience. The photo showed wear, not just due to age; Grandfather apparently twisted the picture in his hands many times.

  She dropped the papers and with shaky fingers gathered the diary into her arms and shoved the photo into the case.

  Grandfather fluttered his eyelashes and moved his lips. His fingers grasped at the bed sheet.

  She ran out the door with Steve at her hee
ls.

  “He’s awake,” she yelled at the nurses.

  The first thing he did when he gained full consciousness was motion her to come closer. He spoke in a voice slurred by his stroke but between her and Steve they understood.

  “Did you bury me at Pecos? My heart beats there still because the Pecos is where we began. Life and death should come full circle,” he croaked.

  “Governor, didn’t you hear the doctor? You can’t die yet. I’m going to bring home the bones. You have a reunion to look forward to.”

  In his confusion he must have misunderstood her words. He thrashed about the bed and the attendants tied him down.

  He cried something about his rusty magic. “Why does my spirit linger in the crossbow of life?”

  Chapter Three

  Four weeks had passed since he returned to the living. Two weeks earlier the hospital moved him to a rehabilitative center. Thanks to stroke therapy, the slur in his voice had lessened until he spoke almost normal.

  He sat in a recliner while she combed his white head and braided his hair.

  “I’ve brought you bread baked from my horno oven. I have my oven shaped like a bee hive; you have your bees; together we can make honey bread,” she said.

  “Your bread does not smell like the cow and the bee as Old-Woman’s did. Butter skated across her yeast while honey ruled her rise like a queen. How I miss her legumes and stews. She sat on my lap when I lay in your truck with one moccasin in the grave. Odd, none of my wives floated over to welcome me. I would have married her had she not lost patience and left to look for a dead husband, one more talkative than I,” he said, laughing.

  “My old honey is still single and wants me. My magic failed else I would be dancing at my wedding right now. There will be no wedding guests. You will regret after my death, that I cannot in clear conscience become one with the Cloud People and float up to Kachina Village, while they are lost,” he said, crossing his arms and thrusting out his chin.

  “I’ve wanted to tell you, but your doctor advised me to wait. I’ve called NAGPRA and we have a right to claim everything Dr. Kidder took from Pecos.”

  “This man was no kidder but a thief,” he said.

  “The Pecos land was privately owned in 1915 so he legally stole for science,” she said.

  “The land is red because of our blood and why Pecos has always belonged to us,” he said, spitting and wiping his mouth with a shaky hand.

  Hopefully, her news about NAGPRA would calm him down but he swatted her hand away like a fly. She swore not to argue with him and bit her lip.

  “Where is Steve? You should be home seeing to your husband,” he said.

  “He’s at work. He has orders to fill. You know what a fine jeweler he is and his turquoise designs are in high demand.”

  “You are not a good wife.”

  “I’m trying to be a good granddaughter so I visit every day to make sure you don’t frighten the nurses off.”

  He promised to eat all his dinner but like a child, he turned his mouth away from the spoon she offered.

  “Fine, don’t eat,” she said, stomping out of the room without even a good night.

  Chapter Four

  He moped about the house for six weeks and she swore at times he spied on her and eavesdropped on her every conversation. Then suddenly, he set to work like an ant scurrying around a bread crumb.

  She spied on him not to be malicious but because of concern for his health.

  While washing dishes, she watched him stroll up the dusty trail of Blue Bird Mesa carrying a white owl with an eagle balanced on his shoulder.

  She tiptoed to his shed and peeked in the window.

  He cut a chunk of coyote fur. Taking needle and thread, he sewed the ends together to form a tube, which he twisted around a tree branch. At the other end of the branch, he twisted rabbit fur, similarly sewn as a tube. He then placed a spell on the branch so the wood would form a circle. He tied the ends together with a strap of leather and attached a buffalo tooth to both the coyote and rabbit fur.

  He spun a circular net that resembled a spider’s web, him like a tarantula, his humped back rising from his wrinkled neck and working his arthritic fingers like each hand ended in twenty digits with sharp nail-like claws. When he finished, he worked the net through the inside rim of the circular branch and tightened the strings taut as the strings of a bow. He attached to the net an arrowhead, and silver and copper balls. He plucked feathers from the owl and eagle and hung the feathers from the circular branch.

  Of course! He created his latest concoction—a dream catcher which is a mystical configuration resembling a handleless tennis racket with a tiny hole in the center.

  Lastly, he attached a leather strip to the dream catcher to hang it from above his bed.

  A dream catcher was meant to trap nightmares in the web so bad dreams do not get through and invade sleep. At least, good dreams would keep him company while she collected the family bones.

  It was a good time to pack for tomorrow’s trip while dreams occupied the old man. Steve just arrived with a few friends to help him place the camper shell on her pickup.

  After a month of stroke therapy and six weeks on the mend, Grandfather reverted to his sour self so pity Steve’s Aunt Faye who moved in to help care for him while she drove to Boston.

  Hidden beneath her underwear in her dresser drawer was a photograph, twisted like the picture of the bones, only she was the one who ravished this picture Grandfather never knew she found of her mother who died when she was born. She and her mother looked sort of similar, with the same hollow look in their eyes, except a snake did not physically mark her mother’s forehead. A delicate necklace glowed like the sun and hung around her mother’s neck. Five tips swirled around a heart protruding in the middle of an unusual silver shape. Perhaps her father had been a jeweler and fashioned this necklace for her mother. She looked everywhere for the necklace, except Grandfather’s snake den and beehives, but never found it.

  She also possessed a doll made by her mother, carefully packed away in her suitcase, tucked in a zippered pocket for safe keeping.

  Jesus! He snuck up on her like always, making her heart jump.

  Quick, she hid her mother’s picture behind her back and held her breath. Thank goodness he failed to notice her nervousness.

  He stood with his fists on his hips, legs spread apart, chin thrust out like a petulant child, ready to throw a temper tantrum.

  Aunt Faye cowered behind him, holding an old suitcase tied closed with a rope.

  “I am going with you to this Harvard. I don’t need taking care of,” he said.

  “You can’t go with me. You’ve been ill and your age…”

  “This is my purpose. It is why Pautiwa would not let me cross the bridge to the other side because I must bring the bones home myself.”

  “No way,” she said.

  “All the time I floated in this so-called coma, I visited with Pautiwa. We smoked together and he told me that he sets a table with food for the missing ones. Every night he neglects the others in Kachina Village and eats alone with a table set for thousands. In the morning he must throw the food out. It is such a waste.”

  “No.”

  “My going is the only way to retrieve my honor and prove to the bones that I am no coward; though I am feeble, I brave the miles they once did. Else, how can I bang my fork and spoon on the table in Kachina Village? Better to be a dog and hang my head for table scraps. I am going with you,” he said, lifting his chin proudly but dullness flattened his eyes.

  So that was that.

  “Okay, but we’re going to fly. I’ll sell my truck to pay for the tickets,” she said, sighing and lifting her hands in surrender.

  “I will not fly under anyone’s power but my own.”

  “Right, and naturally, I can’t fly on your back now that you’re old.”

  “You will drive me on my last spirit journey. Before I die, I wish to cross my country and see the ocean on the ot
her side.”

  “I’ll drive you to Boston to claim the bones, but you are not riding on your mattress in the back of my truck, I mean camper since it now has a shell, sorry though it is. You’ll ride up front with me. Though it is May, the days might be cool.”

  “The wind and the sun are not the same as on the path to Pecos so I do not care if I ride in the back on my mattress or beside you.”

  She felt like a bride, something borrowed, something blue, something new. The shell was borrowed. The blue was her turquoise good-luck ring. The new was her, patient and kind and sweet to Grandfather. She showed her teeth in what could pass as a snarling smile. “No mattress.”

  The next morning he must have grabbed her truck keys because he sat in the truck with his magic hat leaning jauntily on the side of his head. He straightened the feather best he could but it still hung like a half-ass television antennae made from a clothes hanger. He rested his hands on the ceremonial staff and stared straight ahead at the empty road before him.

  He still insisted on taking his mattress. Steve loaded it in the back of the camper.

  She jerked her arms into her robe and scurried outside.

  “Whoa, Baby, I would not have left for work without kissing you goodbye,” Steve said.

  “I don’t want that thing in my truck.”

  “Chill out. You’ll rest more comfortably in your sleeping bag on the mattress than on the metal of the truck bed. This defiance against the old man has to stop.”

  “I suppose when you put it that way, the mattress makes sense. I’m really trying with him but he doesn’t make it easy,” she said.

  “I’ll miss you,” he said.

  She nodded her head, too choked up to speak. They would return in a week or two but tears flowed down her cheeks and shocked her when Steve drove away. She normally hid her soft side but the old man’s illness upset her equilibrium and the thought of driving so far scared her. Her panic turned to dread of a lecture for having overslept for ten minutes, so she swallowed the eggs and bacon Aunt Faye fixed, dressed in record time and ran out the door, still feeling uptight and not looking forward to a road trip from hell.