THE AMERICAN STORYBAG

by Gerald Hausman

  And got back into the tent, soft as a mouse, so as to not waken the stranger in the dark.

  I got comfortable. Glancing at my watch, I was surprised to see it was almost five AM. I’d wasted a perfectly good night’s sleep over – what? Nonsense. Scaredy cat nonsense.

  The last thing I remember seeing before sunrise was Etienne floating in a dense blue, incandescent fog a couple feet off the tent floor.

  Talking Adobe

  Talking Adobe was published in New Mexico Magazine in 1993. But long before I wrote it, I heard it. The teller was Baldamar Coca, who also speaks on my audio book Stargazer. Baldamar called his story The Talking House and he said it was well-known among Taosenos. I built --with my cousin Peter and my brother Sid -- our adobe house in Tesuque, and on one of our forays we met an old adobe-maker who put parts of his children's discarded toys in his mud when he made adobe bricks. His stories were like that, too -- made of mud and sand and the echoes of children's voices. The walls only talk if you listen. But if you listen, the walls don't always talk.

  Spanish legend holds that the devil dwells in the mountains of northern New Mexico. This is because the mountains running south along the spine of the Rockies were called by the Conquistadors, Sangre de Cristo, Blood of Christ. Which, evidently, is where El Diablo, the host of darkness, likes to dwell: within the dark heart of the mountains of Christ's blood.

  So goes the mystic legend.

  Andrew was thinking about this one day, driving on the Dulce road down to Taos when he spied an old man with a crooked back and staff. He was not exactly hitchhiking, but he leaned out into the road as if to lure a ride.

  His ploy, if such, worked.

  Andrew stopped. And gave him a ride all the way to Taos Pueblo. They went along a secondary dirt road, and Andrew brought him right to his door, for which he thanked him by asking Andrew into his house to have a bowl of chili.

  He was a banged-up old outskirt Indian, living in the willows that grew around the river. His face, rugged and Plains-cast, suggested that this northernmost Pueblo had intermarried with the people of the prairie, farther to the south.

  A mile down the road the Pueblo raised itself out of the rosy glow of late afternoon, thin streams of smoke rising from the adobe chimneys. Inside the old man's house, it was dark, musty smelling, a peppery taint of chili and wood smoke engraved in the mud-plastered walls.

  As soon as they got inside, the old man went around, as if blind, feeling the walls with his hands.

  "What are you doing?" Andrew asked.

  "Seeing if the walls have anything to tell me," he replied. He placed his head against one of the walls, listening and smiling.

  "They do," he said.

  Andrew considered his comment the eccentricity of a strange old man, and left it at that. The old man busied himself then with starting a fire in his woodstove, and heating up the chili he'd made the day before.

  Presently, from within the old iron stove there was born the heartbeat of heat, the expansion of iron, the prattle of pine consumed in flame. Andrew noticed that the old man wore a pair of beaded deerskin moccasins.

  "Some people say it isn't possible," he said, stirring the chili with a wooden salad spoon. He laughed to himself, not to Andrew; then, looking up, he added: "They say that walls can't talk."

  "My experience," Andrew said, thinking of his many adventures with Johnny Thunder, "tell me that all things can, and often will, talk--but we have to listen."

  "Ahh," said the old man appreciatively. He raised his chin and brought it down several times. "That is the problem with the world," he said sadly.

  Then, after a while, he remarked: "You can, if you like, put your ear to my talking adobe."

  Andrew gave him a quizzical glance.

  "Do not be too surprised what you hear," the old man said jokingly.

  He paused in his stirring to see how this was taken.

  Andrew gave him a nod, a smile, and pulling his chair near the wall, leaned over.

  And listened.

  There was an immediate stirring that came to his ear. It sounded like bumblebees, buried somewhere in the wall. He listened a little longer, and the humming changed.

  And it seemed to him there were the rudiments of linguistic sounds in there, far off utterances of Tanoan tongues. The bumblebees joined, mating in the cores of the mud walls.

  And then again it sounded like the underlayment of woven voices you sometimes hear on a wintry night when the telephone line is being battered by snow; not white noise, in this case, but rather, its opposite--red noise, old, old Indian talk.

  Andrew remained, ear to adobe, until the old man called him to the table to eat. He left the wall puzzled, wondering what it could be, as the rational mind tried to get control of the intuitive heart.

  "So, now you know," he said, handing Andrew a clay pottery bowl of steaming chili. He seemed very proud of the wall, pleased that the right person had listened to it; and that, now, along with himself (and who knows how many others) the talking adobe had spoken.

  And then, while they ate, he told Andrew a story.

  "It is all magic earth," he said, "all of it. You see, long ago, before the Pueblo was here, some Indians were camped over there under the mountains. These were my ancestors. One day they saw a man ride out of the pine forest on a white horse. He was tall, well over six foot. He had a beard, yellow in color; his skin was white and he had clear eyes, the color of the sky.

  "Now this man rode right up to my ancestors and he said that he had come a long distance, and would they be so kind as to share some of their food with him. This they did. After he had eaten with them, my ancestors asked the man how far he had come. He told them that he had come from a distant star. Pointing at the heavens, he showed the great distance he had come.

  "My ancestors then asked him why he had come to their land. The man looked surprised. 'Do you not know?' he said. They shook their heads, for they did not. 'I have come to help you make a settlement on your land,' he said. And he went on to say that what he wanted to do was help them make a very large and very tall lodge that all of their people could live in together. He said he knew how to do this, and that he was sent by the Sun Father to help them accomplish it."

  The old man paused in his narrative and got up to make some coffee on the stove, which he fed some more pinon logs. Andrew waited and when he returned he told me the rest of the story.

  The chili was hot and burned Andrew's mouth. The coffee was hotter and burned his mouth again. However, each, as well as the old man's story, warmed Andrew's heart.

  Shortly, he went on to say that the strange white man, the visitor from a distant star, showed his ancestors how to build Taos Pueblo.

  "That is why," he said, "the Pueblo is so tall. And it is the reason why it resembles the buildings on the old island of New York. It is," he laughed slyly, "our own little skyscraper."

  "Did the man with the beard stay with your ancestors?" Andrew wondered.

  He shook his head, sipped his coffee, frowning.

  "He left."

  "But did he ever come back?"

  The old man seemed reluctant to say more.

  "Who can say?" He shrugged. "The whole thing's just a story."

  "Some story."

  "Yes," the old man repeated, "it is some story."

  It appeared that he wanted to say a little more, but that he was not certain that he should, or would. He paused, pursed his lips.

  "Our windows," he said, "face the direction the man went when he rode away and returned to his star. And our earthen walls still speak the way he spoke so long ago. His story is in our walls."

  "I see," Andrew said. But he did not; not fully.

  "Yes," the old man added gently, knowing that Andrew did not understand. For understanding does not come with hearing, but through listening with the heart.

  They then sat in polite silence.

  After a while, Andrew got to his feet and thanked his host.

  The old man fol
lowed Andrew to his car.

  Andrew slid into the front seat.

  The old man said, by way of leaving: "One day he will return."

  "Why will he do that?" Andrew asked.

  The old man looked to the north where the fir trees quilled the mountains.

  "One day he will return to finish the Pueblo."

  It was almost dark, the pumpkin afterglow lingered on the woolen hills in back of the five-story prehistoric structure known as Taos Pueblo, the oldest, continually occupied home in the old New World.

  The farthest mountains were russet in the last light of day; beyond them the great sleeping mountains, whitened with snow, and now, at sunset, blood red in sun-glow.

  "Who was the man?" Andrew asked.

  The old man chuckled, his eyes shining. This was the thing he had wanted to say, and now he could say it, for it had been asked of him.

  "They call him" he said deeply, "Jesus on Horseback."

  Let’s Not Tell Anyone About This

  This is one of those is-it-true-tales. Unpublished and untold, I'd completely forgotten about the old flying chair until my cousin Kyle told me about it the other day. Then I remembered, and wrote it down.

  My cousin Kyle said to me, “Do you remember the little room on the third floor of Granddad's lodge overlooking the lake?”

  “I remember it --not much bigger than a closet. There were two pieces of furniture -- a marble table and an old rotten, horsehair chair.”

  Kyle said, “When we were five we’d go into that secret room when no one was looking.”

  “It was at night," I echoed.

  "Our parents thought we were fast asleep." Kyle laughed, a little hysterically, I thought, but, yeah, it was kind of funny the idea that we were together in the shadow room with the big gloomy chair.

  “Mmm,” Kyle purred, “the big chair was our secret sharer. Remember?”

  “It's coming to me -- something weird about that," I admitted. "Did the chair have . . . powers?”

  It was coming back faster than I could think. The narrow steep stairs winding up to the third floor. The creaky door to the secret room. The knotty-pine nearness of the walls. The absence of air. The dust. The forbidden secretness. The horsehair smell. The moon on a thousand year old, threadbare oriental carpet.

  There was the old chair, so vast and solid, a kind of personage that beckoned children to sit on it. Yes, it had powers, all right.

  We crept up to the chair and inched our way up onto the sprung horsehair cushion. The chair smelled ratty and rotten. The room so airless and close, as if whatever lived within the walls needed every bit of oxygen that was available, and none left for a couple of errant and disobedient kids.

  It was clear to me why the chair was so special.

  The chair transported us to places we didn’t want to go.

  Settled into its cavernous shell, the chair somehow blasted off like a rocket, flew us out of the Lodge and skimmed us across the lake.

  Not only that, it skimmed us under the lake. Then it soared us into the clouds, and above the clouds, took us into outer space, sent us galumphing into the Milky Way where we tailed the tails of comets.

  And then, always and forever buried in my memory, the old chair turned around and brought us home.

  We'd blink -- and be in that stuffy, small, airtight empire of dust.

  I remember that, one night, Kyle met me in the darkened hall in front of the secret room, and she whispered, “Tonight we’re going to do something different.”

  “What will it be?”

  “I’ll show you.” Kyle was mysterious and mischievous. Sometimes I forgot she was my cousin. For she was more a magical, dream friend.

  Soon we were seated, elbow to elbow, in the chair.

  I remember how the chair was woven of twigs, millions of strands of twigs and it was, in reality, a once upon a time tree that was now a square, squat painted tree that looked like a chair and had horsehair cushions, bottom and back.

  We sat together, Kyle and I, and the chair rocked out of the secret room and into the open night of sundry stars.

  All was well until Kyle hissed -- “Let go of the chair!”

  I would not -- but she did.

  And went spiraling into space.

  Tumbling into eternity, she spun away from me while I gripped the fat arms of the chair until, at last, the chair upended me.

  And there I was -- tumbling the heavens with Kyle.

  Flying.

  There was the white noise of moonlight.

  We were not flying so much as we were flight.

  The thought of flight.

  And always, at the end of the ride, the old trustworthy chair scooped us up and brought back to the airless attic room.

  “We mustn't tell anyone about this,” Kyle warned. She was younger than I but so much wiser. I wanted to tell the world; sadly, I agreed not to tell.

  However, the weird thing is, as soon as we left the room, we forgot about the chair. We forgot about flying. We forgot about the thought of flight. In time, we even forgot ourselves, or perhaps the idea of ourselves as cousins with a magical chair.

  Some time passed. Granddad lost almost all his money -- or so we were told by our parents. The great Lodge was sold for petty cash.

  The horsehair chair went with the Lodge.

  Nor did we think of the strangeness of this. The Lodge where we'd grown up -- gone. Not occupied by us, inhabited by . . . strangers.

  More time passed. We grew up. We forgot.

  On all, some sixty years went by in a twinkling.

  Kyle and I became grandparents.

  A few months ago, we were sitting, Kyle and I, on the dock by the lake below the hill where the Lodge had once been (it burned to the ground in 1976) -- and an eerie wind came out of nowhere.

  Kyle’s beach chair, and mine, didn’t move because we sat hard upon them, waiting for the wind to blow by.

  And it did, finally. But it soon returned and pushed both of us into the lake.

  Kyle laughed, and said, “Can you hold your breath like you used to?”

  “I think so."

  Kyle said, “Let's find the chair!”

  I said, "What chair?" but she didn't hear me.

  I followed her underwater. The lake was as clear as air.

  We swam around and held our breath for what seemed many minutes at a time. We saw seaweed, beer cans, stones, bluegills, sunnies, bass, pickerel and pebbles of all kinds.

  We surfaced and breathed. "The chair!" Kyle cried, treading water and looking down.

  She dived.

  I followed.

  Kyle pointed at something dark and gray with her finger.

  In the amber glitter of the spring fed lake, the hunkered shape

  resembled an immense mossy stone.

  There it was -- our old friend, the horsehair chair.

  Kyle and I were flying overtop, looking down.

  First she, and then I, touched the twiggy, woven arm, then the sprung matting of the cushion . . . and, then, it happened all over again.

  We sat in it --

  -- and flew across sunlit coves and sullen caves.

  And the chair rocked the rookeries of the swamp, scattering turtles and herons, and ferrying us far and wide across the lake where the water was dark and green and deep and there we abandoned our bones and entered the preternatural realm of pure chairless flight, the thought of flight, holding on to nothing but our breath which never diminished, for like a fish we breathed without knowing it.

  When, at last the chair brought us home, we watched it bubble down out of sight. We climbed on the dock, our fingers pulpy and white.

  I started talking about the underwater ride.

  But Kyle put a finger to her lips, whispering, “Let’s not tell anyone about this.”

  And I haven't until . . .

  just now.

  To the Blue Mountains of Jamaica

  Roger Zelazny, science fiction master, was not only a friend -- but, when
we wrote the novel Wilderness together, he became my best friend. This story is based on some of our conversations together as well as a dream in which the things I describe here happened the way I have written them. Roger always wanted to go to Jamaica with my wife Lorry and me. In my dream and in this story, he did just that.

  In my most recent dream of Roger, he stands before his home in Santa Fe, an adobe house at the top of a steep rise that looks out on the Sangre de Cristo mountains.

  Not surprisingly, Roger doesn’t talk about himself; he talks about his children.

  “How do you like Trent’s story?” he asks me.

  “It has the iron stamp of success.”

  “From the old forge.” He chuckles, looks slantwise at the sun.

  I see that Roger seems to be busy doing something. Then he turns back into the shadow of his adobe castle, which is, itself, overshadowed by a blue-green, serpentine mountain.

  “There are some people waiting for me.”

  The mountain stirs, blurs, time ripples across its infinite sinews. It slides off into the void, and is gone. Roger is gone, too. I waken. Wondering, as ever, why I cannot stay and talk more with this friend of mine, this man who is so deeply wedded to my unconscious, my spirit mind, my writer’s heart.

  Once, more than ten years ago when Roger was still on this earthly plane he told me, “I believe in the bardo, that sequestered zone of death-in-life where a man, having just passed, may ready himself, through thought and divination, for the next experience.”

  I am surprised when he speaks of this because we are not talking about the Egyptian Book of the Dead or even his version of it, Creatures of Light and Darkness.

  “How long does the bardo last? What length of time?” I ask.

  Roger pauses for a moment, then says, “Of that I’m not certain. Might be it’s different for each person.”

  I see Roger quite often now. He is the same as he was in life. I am the one who is different, I suppose. Last night I saw him writing, typing the way he always did with his portable manual typewriter on his lap, his concentration greater than my ability to summon him. I stand and watch him type.