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

by Belinda Vasquez Garcia

  Finally, he let go and with two fingers, she held out her gift with distaste, a dream catcher made not to spin dreams of sugar clouds and peppermints but to spin darkness and fill her dreams with nightmares.

  With a heavy heart, she threw her dream catcher in the back of the camper and wondered if peace would ever come between them.

  As he rode silently beside her towards I-40, she dreaded the next couple of weeks with the two of them confined in her truck like two battering horned buffalos.

  It should be enough she kept her promise.

  It was too much the Pecos ruins turned her life topsy-turvy, if even for two weeks.

  Well, she never gave her word about loving any of those bones that needed rescuing, and no dreams or nightmares could ever force her.

  How odd, he fashioned a dream catcher to teach her about the ancestors, yet he rarely spoke about her mother and father.

  The bleak ruins shrunk behind her in the rearview mirror. Clouds followed and she pushed harder on the gas pedal, just in case some of those restless spirits felt comforted today and transformed into cloud people. Pecos ghosts traveled with them in that damned dream catcher. She didn’t need any cloud people stalking her.

  Chapter Five

  I-40 is a historic route. Well, not exactly, but the two-lane road that runs alongside is the old Route 66. I guess you could say the road connected New Mexico to the rest of the country in the 1920’s. During the depression migrants with possessions piled atop their cars, drove west across Route 66, escaping the great Dust Bowl, looking for work. Did you ever travel any of the routes in the old days?” she said.

  “Bah! I do not steer my horse along paths set by others but forge my own way. Other’s travails do not depress me because I mind my own business. I have my own dust to contend with and it is not so great. What about the Indian trails or should I say trials? Are they not historic enough for you?”

  “Governor, are you sure…? We’re getting close to the state line. You look tired.”

  “Want some fruit?” he said.

  “I can still drive you back to Jemez.”

  “I would rather die here in your truck than bear to watch the dust of the road take you far away, Granddaughter.”

  His words touched her so much; she about choked on a piece of apple.

  “Besides, how can I entrust the bones to such a stupid woman?” he said.

  She gripped the steering wheel tighter and forgot to offer him a nap on his mattress.

  They didn’t quite make Oklahoma City but stayed at Red Rock Canyon State Park located off 281. Other travelers claimed all the picnic tables so they sat on the tailgate and ate, him swinging his short legs beside her like a child.

  After feasting on Aunt Faye’s beans, fried chicken and corn on the cob, she built a fire, unfolded a chair for him and covered his shoulders with his blanket.

  She dropped to her feet, snuggled against his legs, and opened Alfred Kidder’s diary.

  She imagined a thirty-year-old antiquities hound sitting in his tent dressed like in the picture, in standard gear of a 1915 archeologist. Tan khaki pants flared out at his hips. Boots planted firmly in Pecos dust. Sleeves of his tan khaki shirt rolled up. Wide brimmed hat pushed back on his sweating forehead and wisps of hair sticking out of the crown. Spectacles halfway down his thin nose. He chewed a pipe he forgot to light. He bent over a makeshift desk scribbling in his diary.

  “March 1, 1915.

  In the desert-like landscape of New Mexico, I have discovered the ruins of the Pecos Indians. For over six hundred years these Indians lived scattered about in mud and rock villages. Then some time in the Fourteenth Century the natives left these five or six villages and united to form the Pecos Pueblo, which by 1450 they constructed into an extraordinary complex of four and five story buildings built in a terrace structure. Imagine thousands of rooms under one roof nearly two centuries before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock. Not bad for savages.”

  Grandfather scoffed and she kept reading.

  “Pecos Indians were among the first North Americans to come in contact with Europeans and a different way of life. My historian tells me there are Spanish documents in Santa Fe written by a visitor in 1591 who describes the apartments here which housed a couple of thousand Indians. The visitor must have been with the illegal Gaspar Castaño de Sosa expedition. Like other Spanish expeditions before him, the Spaniards demanded food and clothing from the Pecos Indians and punished them for not complying. There were probably some public hangings and kiva burnings before the Spanish sacked the pueblo for whatever they could find of any worth. The Spaniards always looked for precious metals but found none.

  The Pecos Indians must have chosen to build on this high rocky ridge for self-defense and to look out over the green valley at the southern end of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. From here they could see down below any approaching plains Indians not as civilized as they.”

  The word, civilized, satisfied Grandfather and he nodded his agreement. He motioned with his hand to continue reading.

  “There is a stream on each side of the ridge. I imagine they fished from the Pecos River which is a little over a mile away.

  We are currently digging for any adobe buildings, once four and five stories high, but all we find are jagged walls and the remains of but one story. Centuries of wind pushing against the adobe walls, and rains and snow washing away a bit of mud each year, have taken its toll so we feel lucky to have found anything at all left of the buildings. Jack found a broken ladder once used to climb from story to story as one pulls the ladder up and then reuses the ladder to climb to the next story and so on. It’s difficult at times to distinguish what was actually part of the pueblo buildings since the Indians utilized the sun-baked mud to build their apartments and any lumber they used disintegrated with the elements. Damn sun is so strong the rays penetrate a man’s head until his brain sponges and sweat pours down his shirt.

  We’ve killed many rattlers in this area and as bad luck would have it, a snake bit my servant, who lay gravely ill before expiring, so I always wear my boots. I hired a local English-speaking native to replace my servant, Peters, who worked for me five years. The man is Navajo and we have a communication problem but yet we manage. He’s a hard worker and I must confess Peters was a bit lazy.”

  She could see the diary upset Grandfather.

  “I will read more when you are not so tired, Governor,” she said, patting his knee.

  “It is because of this thief that the Ridge-nosed snake is endangered.”

  “The archaeologist killing a few snakes eighty-four years ago would not have made the Ridge-nosed extinct today.”

  “Bah,” he said, walking off to use the bathroom.

  “Take the flashlight,” she yelled.

  “I can see with the eyes of an owl. What uses have I for your artificial ways?”

  Nevertheless she pointed the flashlight at his back and did not breathe easy until he returned on his wobbly legs, smelling a bit like piss.

  He smacked her hand offered him for help to climb into the camper bed.

  His snores sounded as mean as him.

  She plopped down on the chair and wrapped his blanket around her shoulders. This was the same blanket she knitted for him, the one he kept all these years. Did he save the raggedy blanket out of sentimentality or thrift? Most likely, he kept the blanket same as he kept that ancient hat of his. He had always been dirt poor, his only riches worthless relics and those damned stolen bones, precious ivory to him. He cared so much for the bones that jealousy stirred within her. She brooded into the fire and remembered the morning after her seventh birthday and snake bite.

  “Come,” Grandfather had said.

  He gripped her hand and helped her to rise from bed and dress. He let her stuff her mouth with all the bread and honey she wanted and drink two glasses of goat milk.

  He bundled her in his truck and drove, zigzagging down the back roads and highways since he had cataracts in both e
yes, was seventy-two years old, and did not drive so well.

  He slammed on the brakes and she landed on the truck floor.

  She reached her head up like the snakes in his den and made a face because they stopped at some ugly old pile of rocks and raggedy walls and holes in the earth.

  “This is our home, the Pecos Pueblo. I brought you at the age of three but you do not remember. It is time you learn more about where you come from,” he said.

  “I hate this place and won’t ever live here, even if you make me,” she said and stamped her foot.

  His eyes looked as desolate as the rubble, so she patted him on the knee to comfort him.

  “There are no roofs to protect us from the rain, Governor. Just a few zigzag walls. The buildings aren’t done.”

  He yanked open the door, grabbed her arm and dragged her from the truck. He shook her, though more gently than on her birthday, mindful of the red and raw scar on her forehead.

  “Has the snake poisoned your brain? This land is the ruins of our family. Only you and I are left,” he shouted.

  “I’m not an endangered species,” she screamed, kicking at his snakeskin boots planted bow-legged in the earth.

  He picked her up and hugged her so tightly his heart stilled, and the same coldness froze her own heart so it seemed they were already dead, her and the old man. They slithered among the ruins like two Pecos ghosts.

  He carried her to his truck with her face buried in his shoulder. She inflated her nostrils and sniffed. He bathed once a month and never during the winter months, but he always smelled of stinky horse, sweet beehives, and spices, the herbs of a medicine chief intermixed with Old Spice Aftershave, his only nod to vanity. His was a heady scent of artistry and masculinity.

  She hugged him tighter around his neck and squeezed his whitish-grey ponytail, smiling at his discomfort.

  He set her gently down on the passenger seat, and grinned.

  He wasn’t mad at her but by the time the seat leather creaked on his side of the truck; a wrinkle furrowed her brow because his smile had been secretive.

  She shifted her eyes two generations across from her to a bona fide prehistoric Indian, the real thing, not one of them bored wooden statues lounging outside a cigar store. A filthy bandanna kept his shoulder length, greasy hair neatly framing his weather-beaten face. His hair was the color of iron-grey, like a choo-choo train, making him appear like he was going places, if only he could see where he was going. His eyes appeared crazed and his cataracts made him look like an alien. They would never bridge the gap separating them, he of the old Indian ways and the crumbling Pecos Pueblo, while she longed to be a modern 1971 child and lusted after her own television set, and all the wonders of a world outside the reservation.

  Usually he chugged down the interstate about twenty-five miles per hour but he now drove recklessly, fish tailing across I-25 like a trout. He clenched the steering wheel with white fists and thrust out his chin. With heavy wrinkled eyelids it seemed he drove with his eyes closed guided by an Indian ancestor, one born before cars were invented. The pickup swerved in and out of traffic, crossing yellow lines before swinging back over to the shoulder, barely missing the moving targets. The pickup backfired, exploding like Fourth of July fireworks or serial farts after a satisfying meal of pinto beans. When the pickup missed, sparks flew from the exhaust.

  Her right hand grabbed the window frame and her left hand grasped the torn seat. She hung on for dear life, the wind blowing her hair about her face, and feeling very much alive. See. She was not Hollow-Woman, even if it did take the excitement of a wild ride to make her heart beat. The ancient family ruins drooped behind them, looking forlorn, and just to be ornery she threw a dirty finger at the back window of the truck.

  His body stiffened.

  Ha-ha! He would never mold her into what he wanted. She was too much like him, a free spirit stamped with a snake’s fierce pride, and stubborn as a wild animal captured but never tamed.

  “Governor, I’m hungry.”

  He refused to look at her. He hunkered lower in his seat and glared at the road.

  A beastly grunt came from him and she accused him of farting.

  He jerked the steering wheel at the Santa Fe exit and cursed.

  Good. Her mouth watered and she rubbed her stomach, squeezing her eyes tight, crossing her fingers and wishing he would buy her a hamburger like the one she licked in a magazine.

  He swung the truck right and skidded into a parking lot. Instead of a hamburger sign, the words, St. Mary’s Boarding School for Indians, screamed back at her. She swallowed her appetite and bile rose to her throat. A hollow feeling emptied her stomach so her belly button touched her spine. She turned in her seat and stared out the back window, and watched with wide eyes him yank a worn suitcase from the truck bed.

  She jumped down from the truck, clung to his legs, and begged him not to leave her at the school. She would be good. She would not look for snakes. She would not throw dirty fingers again. She would stop cussing. She would never smoke a cigarette again nor would she ever beg for a taste of wine. She promised to go back to Pecos and live with him in the ruins with the ghosts, and the feathered serpent, and the blood, and the witches, and the headless priests.

  “But please, please don’t leave me here all alone in this strange place.”

  “Governor, please come back.”

  “Come back!”

  “Grandfather,” she pleaded.

  “I’m sorry I killed my parents!”

  When his dust cloud cleared, he was gone like in those cowboys-and-Indians movies where the hero rides off in the sunset. He had given her a gift for her seventh birthday after all, the gift of living apart from him during the school months with nuns dressed in bad habits, black material swatting against thick ankles as they lifted rulers and brought the metal down upon her knuckles and the backs of her legs. The words the nuns screamed hurt more: heathen, granddaughter of a witch, snake girl, spawn of the devil, spoiled brat. We’ll beat the evil out of you, Girl.

  She cussed and screamed at the ladies-in-black that, I am a witch.

  The nuns shivered and crossed themselves, except for the meanest one, Sister Catherine, who once brought a large metal crucifix down upon her head and gave her a slight concussion.

  She suffered a headache, a black out and then a wake up in the infirmary where the man with sad eyes, hanging on a cross, stared back at her and then she had some stuttering to do. She didn’t really mean anything against Him but fumed at his servants. She hardly even knew Him but hated Grandfather for leaving her with the nuns because she didn’t want to live at his ghost pueblo. Nights of crying into her pillow, days of watching for his truck, Grandfather was the master of broken promises.

  So why in heaven’s name was she here, years later, at Red Rock Canyon keeping her promise to him?

  She sat hunched by the fire, hugging that same suitcase, only a rope now held it together. She choked on memories of St. Mary’s until embers turned to cold ashes. She hated the bones and struggled not to resent an old man set in his ways and unable to ever change. He was who he was, and she didn’t know who the hell she was, the nuns saw to that.

  She wearily climbed into the camper and fell on the booze-stained mattress, scooting as far to the left edge as possible. Naturally, he would claim the right, just like his smell made the camper his own. Tobacco, wine, horses, sweat and grease clogged her nose.

  I miss Steve and my own bed, my job, even my boring routine.

  She spoke to Steve earlier without saying, I love you; I miss you. She took after the old man, stubborn, demanding, insisting on having her own way, manipulative. Sometimes she wondered if Grandfather gave Steve a love potion so that he would fall in love with her.

  Moonlight shone in from a camper window and illuminated the ceiling. The dream catcher’s shadow spun above her. The old buzzard must have hung it from the ceiling while she stared into the flames, wanting to avoid him and waiting for him to sleep soundly
.

  Her eyes grew heavy as her dream catcher twirled around like a pocket watch dangling from the hand of a hypnotist. The dream catcher spun clockwise and glowed in the dark, growing brighter with each 360 degree turn.

  With each spin a mist blew from the net and covered the camper until a fog enveloped her.

  The smell of damp earth filled her nostrils and paralysis engulfed her limbs. She was awake, yet not awake, seeing, yet dreaming. One nostril filled with mud; her other nostril had only a pinhole for air. She sank fast into the soft earth. If lack of air didn’t kill her, panic would.

  Through the fog appeared visions…the ruins of the Pecos Pueblo beneath a grey sky.

  Bones rattled and the earth shook.

  From the Pecos dirt, skeletons formed as part of the natural landscape; ribs protruded from dust; skulls appeared like mounds of anthills; bony feet popped through the earth.

  Thunder cracked in the sky. Lightning scorched the ground, striking across their skulls. Like Frankenstein come to life, the skeletons’ ribs moved up and down.

  Skeletons pushed through their graves, stood on bony feet and shook off the dust. There must have been a couple thousand skeletons staggering amongst the pueblo ruins.

  The clouds moved northward and the sky lightened. The skeletons turned their skulls to the sun.

  A mighty wind blew covering the ruins and skeletons with dust. The taste of dirt sickened her stomach and the wind blew her about, so she moved restlessly on the mattress.

  Dust whirled, blowing the covers off, leaving her shivering, and clearing the air so at last, she could breathe. Her mattress lay in the center of a large plaza, surrounded by ceremonial kivas. Swirling dirt dampened to mud and plastered itself to stones until a quadrangle of apartment-like buildings formed on an enormous rock.

  A ladder appeared and her nightgown blew around her ankles as she lifted her hands from rung to rung and climbed from the camper to the second story of one of the adobe buildings. She heaved herself up the opening big enough for just one person.

  The architects had laid out houses in back-to-back blocks. Each story had pathways around all the houses. She walked around the entire second story, using a pathway built like a wooden street with covered protection from the rain.