Gabriel's Stand

by Jay B. Gaskill

  Ten minutes later, her head rose over the canyon wall. Spread out before her was a tiny sub-alpine valley, filled with piñon, juniper, sage, and a few taller conifers. The narrow valley rose sharply on the closest side to a steep rise, leading to an ever more densely forested hillside. She had entered a sharply colder environment cloaked in the rapidly deepening dusk.

  A shape darted through the brush in the mid distance. A deer? Yes. Where am I? It was followed by four others, a buck, two does, and a fawn, all five leaping up the hill and into the dark between the trees. Feeling the chill, she made a shelter near the forest out of pine boughs and curled up next to the rough bark of a tree. It was already too dark to read or write and she realized she had nothing to say anyway. So she had listened until sleep quickly overtook her.

  Snowfeather had gotten up to urinate, walking in impossible, moonless blackness, a few feet away from her pine-bed. Stepping into the open, she had looked up. The sky had stunned her, then, the sharp stars bringing back childhood memories.

  Later, she sat fully awake in her tree shelter, thinking about the evening conversations with Roberto. “Gaia is idolatry,” he had said. But what does that mean for our tradition?

  The next morning, chewing slowly on some salmon jerky, she made her first journal entry:

  We found the spirit in the trees, the grass, the sky, the water, and the animals. We were connected to the spirit elements as a child is connected to childhood and as an adult is connected to adulthood. We knew the Great Spirit in each spirit element and we lived in the deep connection of all spirit. We did not need to talk about monotheism. That arose among the non-indigenous peoples because spirit was counterfeited in the service of conflict, and the knowledge of the deep connection was forgotten. But we didn’t have to name this insight, because we were Indians.

  Soon after dawn’s light, her first day entirely alone, she explored the valley, hiked halfway up the hill, counted deer, squirrels, spotted a coyote and became very hungry and thirsty. As dusk returned, she began to worry. How the hell can Loud Owl find me here?

  Eventually she made herself another shelter, a mile or so from the first one and sat down. Positioned in the diminishing sun, she rummaged through the pouch, measuring the water and jerky supply against the prospect of even one more day at this.

  A shadow fell across her lap. She looked up. Blocking the setting sun, Loud Owl had appeared from nowhere, in complete silence, carrying a small woven basket. He beckoned with a crooked finger.

  “How did you do that?” His answer was to walk along the edge of the hill for about a hundred yards, then to turn sharply left into a clearing she had somehow missed in her day’s exploration. Loud Owl spread out a cloth on the pine needles, and motioned to sit down. He produced a fresh bottle of water, which he substituted for the one in Snowfeather’s pouch, then, from another container, poured two glasses of sweetened birch tea. Pemmican, dried cheese, and an orange completed the meal. Snowfeather ate hungrily at first, but slowed in response to Loud Owl’s leisurely pace.

  Finally, Loud Owl seemed ready to speak. He reached into his basket at the end of Snowfeather’s meal, and produced two tiny loaves of bread. “Eat this,” he said, taking a bite of his own piece. Reaching into the basket, he removed a stoppered bottle and refilled the empty glasses with an amber liquid. “Cider,” he said. “It has a little bite, but, trust me, it is not some hallucinogenic.” Chewing the bread, she picked up the glass cautiously. “Drink it. Remember the occasion, because I must go.” As he stood, he swiftly gathered up everything, gently lifting the glass from Snowfeather’s hand as soon as she had drained it.

  She tried to follow Loud Owl’s path as he left, but, in the deepening gloom, he had silently blended into shadow, lost in seconds.

  Chapter 45

  In Snowfeather’s dreams, her memory movie, the night passed. As the sun rose, Snowfeather’s hunger was a constant background to her morning, gradually disappearing as she became engrossed in her surroundings. She had decided to explore the forested hill in depth. After high noon had come and gone, near the crest, she thought she could hear the sound of trickling water in the distance. As if to confirm her suspicions, the foliage became denser and greener as she made her way through conifers and birches on the downward path. The other side of the mountain, she thought. The spring was almost invisible in a tangle of grasses and brush, but the tiny creek made a distinct meandering path through a rocky outcropping, then it fell at least six feet in a miniature waterfall, before it seemed to vanish into damp underbrush and tiny flowers.

  Snowfeather crept reverentially to the spot, finding a place to sit where she could feel the healing wetness on her face. She crawled forward and reached out tentatively with her left hand, putting it in the running water of the creek. It was startlingly cool. She touched the water to her face, then she sat, her hands folded across her lap, silent, in a quiet envelope. No great insights crossed her mind. She simply experienced a deepened sensual being, a poetic state suspended against all the troubles of her life and the larger world. As she sat there, two deer—a doe and fawn, cautiously approached, but held back. She averted her eyes, and sat as still as a stone. But the pair left. Eventually, Snowfeather crept away, yielding this special place to others.

  She sensed Loud Owl’s distant presence—or did she imagine it? At any rate, she felt comfortable and secure. Snowfeather ate a few pieces of her dried meat, then slept soundly and dreamlessly in a shelter on the hillside, in a spot half an hour further downhill from the creek.

  She was awakened well after dawn by the hawk, a red tail, dancing near her feet. “What is it?” she asked, before the absurdity of the spoken question hit her. This is like an old Disney movie, she thought. But the hawk didn’t immediately take to the air. It continued to dance about just out of reach, until, flapping noisily, it hovered at eye level. Snowfeather she got to her feet, and the hawk flew a short distance to a nearby bush. It squawked at her.

  Fine, she thought, I’ll share my food. Reaching into the pouch, she tore off a piece of the salmon jerky and tossed it to the bird. The hawk flew down, scooped it up in a single graceful movement, and dropped it at her feet. It continued to dance just out of reach.

  She picked up the jerky and the pouch and stepped toward the bird. It flew to a tree nearby, swooping down at her, then returning to the tree. As she approached, it retreated, always maintaining contact. This process continued for several minutes until Snowfeather realized she was being led further down the hill. She shrugged; then she continued the game at an even faster pace; and the hawk seemed to oblige by picking up its own pace, too. About forty minutes later, she entered a clearing, nearly out of breath. The hawk circled overhead in silence.

  She opened the pouch and sipped water from the bottle. The hawk still circled overhead.

  The sound. At first it was so faint at first that she was certain she had imagined it. Then it repeated. “Help me…” A high, frail voice from the woods.

  “Hello!” Snowfeather shouted, and she began running toward the tiny voice. Now the hawk seemed to follow her as she slipped between tree and bush, treading softly, stopping to listen. Then something alien reached her nostrils. Engine oil? Snowfeather noticed that several trees were sheared off in the distance; then she spotted the glint of metal behind twisted branches.

  Snowfeather began running and almost tripped on a broken piece of the airplane wing, an aluminum and steel fragment of the Cessna that had crashed in the night while she slept deeply two and a half miles away.

  A little girl! Dirty and bruised, a child of five in a tattered yellow dress just appeared next to a tree as if by magic. Spotting Snowfeather, she opened her arms wide. Like a doll. In several strides, Snowfeather was at the girl’s side. She knelt and gently picked the child up by the waist. The little arms enfolded her.

  “Are you my angel?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Snowfeather said, without thinking.

  “My uncle’s airplane is broken and he won�
��t wake up,” she said.

  ——

  Loud Owl had located the two of them at dinnertime, sitting together in the middle of a meadow, under a hawk circling high overhead.

  “Hello, you two,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “How did you do that?” the little girl said.

  “I am the picnic fairy,” Loud Owl said, sitting down.

  “There’s a single prop two-seater three miles from here,” Snowfeather said softly. “And one little survivor.”

  “My name is Loud Owl,” he said. “What is yours?”

  “Sally,” she said. “Can I go home now?”

  “Mom and Dad weren’t on the plane,” Snowfeather said.

  Fred Loud Owl crossed himself.

  Four hours later, after the Sheriff’s deputies had cleared the scene and the little girl was taken to a town over the New Mexico border, Loud Owl and Snowfeather were alone in his pickup.

  “You want to go back, finish the Journey?”

  “No. I got the message. One little girl was rescued. Just one. And the spiritual retreat was over for me. It hit me that the Sisters and their followers won’t stop until all the children and their mothers and fathers are dead. I lived with that evil, not quite believing it was real, not accepting that it was a threat to everything I care about. Now I must do whatever it takes to stop it. Whatever my talents, whatever my skills, now is the time to put them to use.”

  “I agree,” Loud Owl said. After a long, mostly silent drive, Fred pulled his truck into the driveway of a ramshackle ranch house. “Before Roberto arrives, I have something special for you.”

  Snowfeather had sipped hot tea in silence while Loud Owl disappeared into the back of his house. Idly, she thumbed through the pages of her new journal. She had written much more than she realized.

  We have always known about the role of the Great Spirit in the life of the earth. And we have always known about the magic in our world. Even as we lose our separate tribal identities, we are becoming conscious of ourselves as the American Indian nation. As a people, we know that for every magic event there is an explanation that leaves something unexplained. And we know that the magic always survives explanation.

  The non-indigenous people have broken their relationship with the other life. Some of us have followed them. The Gaia worshipping dead-eyes would not heal this. They would simply cut off all the people.

  This cannot be allowed.

  Loud Owl returned with a packet. He pushed it across the table towards her.

  She smiled. “You want me to open this now?”

  “Please,” he said. Inside was an Arizona Drivers’ license bearing her description, a similar date of birth, and her picture. The name was Helen Alicia Hawke. There was a matching passport. “You will need these, I think.”

  “Hawke? With an ‘e’”

  “Like your mother…with an ‘e’.”

  “Of course. Thank you. I might need a new ID, at that.” Snowfeather noticed that the address was Roberto’s campus office.

  “And this is a contact you might find very helpful.” Fred handed her a business card. Allan Gardiner. The address was an office in Manhattan. “He’s a secret catholic Bishop.”

  “There’s no such thing as a secret bishop. You’re kidding.”

  “Sort of. Allan is a real bishop, but his mission is secret. He’s part of something he likes to call ‘The Human Conspiracy.’”

  “Sounds like my kind of conspiracy,” Snowfeather said. “Can I join?”

  “Consider yourself recruited. There is a scholarship that goes with this.”

  “Where?”

  “Upstate New York. The study of indigenous spiritual belief and practice, and other religious traditions. And street-level advocacy. It is an unofficial seminary, plus an activist training center. I just want you to think about it. It may be a choice for you or it may not. But it certainly will be a refuge.”

  Snowfeather had carefully slipped the card into the larger envelope. “I don’t need a refuge. I need a staging area. If you think my skills will be useful there, count me in, thank you. I was getting low on options.”

  “If this particular group of Gaia fanatics gets much farther with their agenda, we will all be low on options,” he said.

  “I have been thinking about that a lot.” She paused expectantly. When it was clear that Loud Owl wasn’t going to speak, “What do you think?” she asked.

  Loud Owl took a moment. “What do I think? It was once said that by its fruit, the tree reveals its nature. Give these fanatics time to bear their fruit. We wait for now, until their malignancy is clearer to everyone. Waiting is the trick of the hunter.”

  Chapter 46

  In Idaho, Snowfeather awakened briefly, in total blackness. As her eyes accommodated, the night sky presented a miracle bowl shot through with stars. Where am I? she wondered, then fell fast asleep. She had a comforting dream of a little girl who rode on an angel’s back on a long, long walk through the forest. She was both the little girl and the angel.

  At early dawn, Snowfeather could smell the smoke from her father’s fire. She sat up slowly; her muscles stiff, her body cold, and she smiled inwardly at the blanket that had been placed over her. Startled, Snowfeather saw her father standing at the bottom of her perch, looking up at her with a twinkle in his eye. “Are you going to eat breakfast while it’s hot or perch on that rock until it gets cold?”

  As she came down, Gabriel reached out for his daughter’s hand. “I’m sorry if I seemed cross last night,” he said. “I slept on it. Of course you will take the path best for you. And I will cheer for you, okay? Alice will, too…when she gets used to the idea.”

  Snowfeather groaned. “I relived my Spirit Journey all night. Did our noble ancestors sleep on rocks?”

  “Only the stupid ones,” he said.

  Over a breakfast of fried eggs and hot coffee, Snowfeather looked up. “Dad, I have been thinking about the great warrior tradition of our people. We’ve volunteered to serve our country in disproportionate numbers in every war from the Civil War forward. Thousands and thousands of braves put aside family life until their service was over. How could I do otherwise?”

  “So you are not willing to give up family life?”

  “Of course not. I am young, I’m not giving it up at all. But we need a world good enough to bring children into. I’m still in my early twenties, Dad. Fred Loud Owl might explain it better than I can. I will have the option of being ordained into a special Deaconate.”

  “Even Roman Catholic Deacons can marry.”

  “Of course. I told Fred I wouldn’t do this any longer than it takes to get us out of this nightmare.”

  “Sounds like The Human Conspiracy.”

  Snowfeather brightened. “Wow. You’ve heard of it?”

  “Fred Loud Owl used the term. I thought it had to do with something John Owen was getting into.”

  “Loud Owl didn’t mention Dr. Owen.”

  “Fred is pretty closed-mouthed. So this isn’t to be forever, then?”

  “Think of joining the Navaho Code Talkers in World War II. ” Snowfeather’s eyes were shining. “I’m excited about this. I will come in on my terms. If I make this work, I will be able to keep alive our own spiritual traditions. And I will get back at the Sisters.”

  “For that gig, at your age I’d sign up myself,” Gabriel said. “And Alice would approve. By the way, where did Fred get those new ID papers for you?”

  “I guess this Human Conspiracy outfit has its own resources.”

  Gabriel looked at his daughter intensely. “Did you remember Fred? You were so young.”

  “I did. But it was a strange thing, a lucky accident. When I was on the ferry after I’d seen Senator McKernon’s body, I met this law professor from New Mexico named Roberto Kahn.”

  “Gabriel smiled. “I know about that. I worked with him on the Habitat. He was a young man right out of law school.”

  “The same one, only older and with a school-ag
e son. He sheltered me for a while until Loud Owl took me in. How long have you and Mom known Loud Owl?”

  “Oh, we’ve known him since I was called Little Bear. He’s mostly Navajo. Fred Loud Owl was a teenager when I was a toddler. He was very close to my father and to your mother’s side of the family. We all knew him.” Gabriel paused, considering something. “Actually, he baptized you when you were a few months old.”

  “He’s a priest? Boy, he’s the strangest one I’ve ever run into. No wonder you flipped when I talked about taking up the cloth.”

  “Fred never was an ordinary Catholic priest… Or was he even? This church business is outside my experience, Princess. Come to think of it, Fred always acted as if he belonged to a kind of renegade, offshoot branch of the church.” Gabriel paused, thinking. “So…he’ll be at this secret seminary/trouble-maker training camp?” Snowfeather nodded, smiling. “Not sure how he ever reconciled everything he said he believed. You knew he was the shaman who guided me through my sweat lodge ritual, right?”

  “Of course. He is quite striking, like the old Indian pictures. I got a good look at him in the distance when you came back, and I sort of recognized him from family gatherings, I think.”

  “So how long will this process take?” Gabriel asked. “And are you in the Indian branch of a church or what? I don’t know what to call it.”

  “I don’t know, either. You don’t even have to be Christian to attend, but some of the Christian graduates are in a special order that the Vatican secretly recognizes.”

  “Why haven’t I heard about this?” Gabriel asked. “Stupid question. This is a secret deal, right?”

  Snowfeather nodded. “More so now since they’ve become all-out revolutionaries. Loud Owl actually lectures there sometimes. He’s some kind of test case, I think.”