Curva Peligrosa

by MacKenzie, Lily Iona;

  Y te agarrare tu mano.

  Duermete sin temor.

  Cuando tu despiertes,

  yo estare aqui.2

  Soon Victor was asleep, and Henry gave a huge sigh of relief. You’ve got the magic touch, he said.

  Curva just smiled and nodded her head. Sí, señor. Wild things like me. This son of yours, he’s very wild, too.

  Henry just stood there, looking bewildered, not sure what to do with this woman who casually leaned against the table, unperturbed by the mess on its surface. But he soon learned. That day marked the beginning of Curva and Henry’s relationship. She let both father and son suck on her large nipples, sometimes unable to tell the difference between one and the other, the boy’s teeth as sharp as his father’s. She couldn’t produce milk, but her breasts were better than a pacifier for the child and had a similar effect on the father.

  In the midst of helping Henry care for Victor, Curva was also building a new outhouse. She planted it in concrete, determined not to have this one fly away.

  As for the bones that turned up in town, the strange happenings didn’t bother her. She’d seen more frightening things than skeletons in her life. Her travels on the Old North Trail had exposed her to scorching heat that sucked all the water holes dry and bitterly cold blizzards that concealed dangerous precipices. She also had run into bandidos avoiding the law, bears, wild cats, wolves, snakes, and plenty of dead adventurers who had lost their way or been attacked by wild animals.

  Bones also had other connotations for Curva. They reminded her of those she had dreamt of in the outhouse, especially the one that gave her so much pleasure. Even Suelita Flores—laughing and grabbing for that bone, wanting to try it herself—acknowledged its size was unusual.

  Curva on the Old North Trail

  Hola, mi estimado Xavier,

  While I was sleeping, something loud roared next to my ear and woke me in the middle of the night. I had been dreaming of you. I thought you were alive and playing a trick on me. You used to do this a lot at night, remember? Pretend you were an animal, growling and waking me up. Then you would laugh and hold me tight. Oh mi hermana, you would say. I scared you. But this roar wasn’t you, unless you’ve come back as a mountain lion and want to attack me. Yes, a mountain lion.

  I roared back. The animal snarled in response. Dios barked loudly and ran around the inside of the tent growling and sniffing. Manuel and Pedro, my parrots, tried to imitate the roar. It came out a shriek.

  I grabbed my gun, checked to be sure it was loaded, and then opened the tent flap a little. My flashlight pierced the dark and lit up a pair of eyes that glowed like Halloween lanterns. The beam frightened our visitor and it took off into the trees, tail between its legs. A close one. Maybe you helped scare it away. Muchas gracias, mi hermano.

  These letters make me feel closer to you, though I am not utterly alone. I have my animals to talk with. They cock their ears and listen to me. Nod their heads at the right moments. The parrots speak a little. Remember the horses we bought when we sold the casa? I call them Melosa and Alanzo. They are good listeners.

  I found the perrito digging in a garbage dump before I left Berumba. He looked lost like me and we both needed a friend. I named him Dios. If there is a god, he must feel very lost and lonely with no one to talk to. Dios looks like a jumble of different dogs (or gods). Some German shepherd. Maybe a little husky. A Scottish terrier. Who knows what else?

  The animals are good company, but I still miss being with you. I can’t believe you are gone and I won’t see you again. The thought that I might run into you on this trail keeps me going, though I worry you might be consumed by hatred for me. Even so, I expect you to appear at any moment around a bend in the path. You have too much life in you, Xavier, to just disappear forever.

  Do you remember when I hid in Ernesto Valenzuela Pacheco’s workshop? I was afraid he wouldn’t allow a mujer to view his experiments, so I took cover behind a curtain and watched him sift some strange-looking liquids and solids of dazzling colors from one beaker to another. He mixed them together and they changed into new combinations.

  He burst out laughing and said, I know you’re there, Curva. I hear you breathing. He threw aside the drape and exposed me. Show yourself, señorita. You’re too big to hide.

  I started to laugh, too, and joined him. After that he let me help him mix chemicals when I had some free time, but he never explained what he was doing. He worked silently, grunting now and then when something pleased him. Or he threw his arms up in the air in frustration and shook his head when an experiment didn’t go well.

  He helped me to discover a passion for transformations. But, mi hermano, I don’t think these changes just take place in a laboratory. They are happening all around us in nature. I don’t need special glass tubes and chemicals to know that. Everything witnesses it. One day I hope to find a magical potion that will prolong life indefinitely. Or definitely. Making death disappear would be the best transformation of all.

  But for now I’m busy just staying alive and not joining you in the grave. Sometimes I think that might be a better place to be, especially when I feel loneliness and despair of ever reaching the end of this trail. At least if I died then we would be together again. I tell these thoughts to vete. This life has too much to offer. I’d be a fool to abandon it.

  Recently, I found another wilderness, Xavier. I don’t know how to tell you this. It sounds like I’ve really gone loca. Being alone for weeks at a time in this wild place makes me sensitive to every sound I hear. And I don’t just hear the usual noises the birds and the beasts and the weather make. A tiny voice inside my head says Curva, Curva, listen.

  It isn’t your voice I’m hearing. It isn’t someone else on the trail. At first I could hardly make it out. Just a little meow, like a kitten wanting to be fed. Then it got stronger. More like a mountain lion demanding to be heard. Curva, it said, Let’s be friends.

  I looked at Dios, at the parrots, fearing they were playing tricks on me. But no. They were sleeping. So I said, Why?

  A reasonable answer, no? Why would this voice want to befriend me and why would I want to befriend it? The idea of some stranger trying to make contact gave me the creeps.

  Then I thought Don Quixote might be trying to connect with me.

  Si, I know. You’re wondering about this Don Quixote. I can feel you getting jealous. Don’t! He’s just an old man I found in a book I borrowed from the Pachecos’ library before I left. It’s in English and Spanish. I use it to teach myself this new language I’ll need to speak in gringoland when I get there one day. Don Quixote thinks some bad hombre turned the windmills into giants and he tries to attack them. He’s lucky they didn’t hit him back, but they weren’t really giants. They were just windmills. He seems loca at times but he’s really not.

  Don Quixote’s a good instructor and muy divertido. He makes me laugh a lot with the crazy things he does, and I need that right now.

  But the voice wasn’t from Don Quixote. It didn’t have a name. It wasn’t even really a voice. There were just these words appearing in my brain, as airy and delicate as butterfly wings. I wouldn’t have noticed them if I were surrounded by city sounds. It was more like a light pressure inside my head that I gave shape to when I wrote.

  Hola, I said.

  Hola, was the response.

  What do you want from me?

  The soundless voice said, Look. Open your eyes.

  These words insulted me. I always look at my surroundings and I said so.

  No, Curva. You only see what you want to see. You don’t really see what’s there.

  Angry, I was ready to draw my gun and start shooting. What right did this bodiless voice have to criticize me? Who was watching me so closely?

  I glanced around the tent again. My supplies filled most of the space. My bedding, Dios, and the parrots took up the rest. What was I not seei
ng? Dios was curled up next to me. His ears twitched, as if he heard something I didn’t, but his eyes were closed. His grey and black coat shimmered in the lantern’s glow. His nose looked damp and he drew in deep breaths. Before he descended again into the well of sleep, his eyes flickered open briefly.

  Dios is my guide along this puzzling and overgrown trail. There rarely is a clear path. I have to look for signs along the way that confirm I’m actually on or near the Old North Trail. No one has put up markers that say WELCOME CURVA. THIS IS THE OLD NORTH TRAIL.

  I know, such big words you must be saying, but this Don Quixote is teaching me mucho. And so is Dios.

  Is this what the voice wants me to see? How dependent I am? I already know that. Dependent and very small like an ant on this grande earth. But I won’t let that idea stop me. Even ants make progress and don’t easily give up.

  * * *

  2 Close your eyes little one and sleep. And dream while the angels watch over you. I will hold your hand.

  Billie One Eye Takes Charge

  Though eager to rebuild Weed, the townspeople couldn’t ignore the Blackfoot burial ground or the Blackfoot themselves—their reservation just a few miles from Weed. Nor could they disregard what had surfaced among the Indian remains. When the Edmonton authorities had completed their inspection, dinosaur bones had turned up, too.

  Chief Billie One Eye investigated the situation, claiming the bones—all of them—and the land they were on for his people, insisting it was a sacred area that homesteaders had stolen from the tribe. When the locals resisted, claiming the town couldn’t be subdivided to accommodate the Blackfoot, Billie temporarily set up a tent trailer next to the burial ground so he could watch over his ancestors’ remains. Billie was a bit of an oddity in his black eye-patch, baggy blue trousers, green-checkered shirt, and long red hair tied back in a ponytail. Cross-legged, he planted himself in front of the tent day and night, nodding off periodically, waiting for his assistant, Joe Laughing Creek, to return from the Office of Indian Affairs in Edmonton where he’d gone for help.

  The government officials supported the Weedites, insisting that the Blackfoot had no right to the land. Billie asked Adam Stillwater, his long-time friend, to take over his post at the burial ground. Then Billie took off for Edmonton and camped out at the Indian Affairs’ Office for several weeks, refusing to eat until someone reviewed his case. The Edmonton Journal learned of his demands and published several articles about Billie and the tribe’s quest. The stories captured the attention of Edmonton’s more liberal residents, and they joined Billie in pressing for control of what they thought was rightly Blackfoot land.

  Overwhelmed with these vocal protesters, the Indian Affairs’ Office finally conceded, proclaiming that the townspeople must accommodate the Blackfoot, and the rebuilding of Weed should take into account their land. The resurrected Weed would embrace a cemetery and much more, a potential archeological dig—except no one was digging. A judge determined that since the relics were part of the hallowed Blackfoot burial ground, archeologists could not collect the dinosaur remains. They stayed under the tribe’s domain and only the Blackfoot had a right to unearth the ancient relics.

  Curva didn’t pay much attention to this new wrinkle, though she did hear her neighbors complaining about it when she went into town or when they visited her. Giving the Indians so much power didn’t sit well with Weed’s elders, who weren’t eager to submit to the tribe’s authority. Nor did the Weedites want the Blackfoot in their midst; they preferred them to remain culturally and physically isolated on the reservation—mostly out of sight. Catherine Hawkins complained that the residents of Weed were no longer in charge of their own affairs. Edna and Ian MacGregor thought the bones were unsanitary and could cause an outbreak of some dreadful disease.

  Curva just shrugged her shoulders and said, Cuál será, sera, though the remains intrigued her—the artful way they arranged and rearranged themselves stimulating her curiosity about the dead. Billie also interested her. While keeping watch over their bones, he made drawings of his imagined ancestors. It amazed her that he could bring them back to life in this way, in his art. Here was a transformation she hadn’t anticipated, another way to resurrect the dead.

  But the townspeople wanted to be rid of the bones. Period. Indian or prehistoric. They gathered in Smart’s General Store and chewed over the curve the tornado had thrown at them. Nathan leaned on the counter, resting his elbows on its surface, clearing his throat before speaking: Why should we make room for these outsiders just because some remains have appeared on our doorstep?

  The others nodded, glancing nervously outside from time to time, not wanting to break any laws.

  Ian said, Bones are bones. Who can take them seriously?

  Billie for one. He believed his ancestors and the dinosaurs had turned up for a purpose. He just didn’t know yet what it was. Meanwhile, nothing could destroy the petrified fossils. They’d taken on a new life in his mind, something permanent, a kind of immortality because of their age. He wanted to be part of it and refused to let professional diggers make off with them. The dinosaurs as well as his ancestors deserved a proper resting place. Billie hoped to provide it. He envisioned a museum, a center for educating Indians and whites alike about Blackfoot culture and the prehistoric times that preceded them.

  He imagined a kind of massive teepee near the burial site, appearing to hover, its profile visible for miles around. While living with the West Coast tribe, the Squamish Nation, he had learned about totem poles; he wanted them attached to the structure to guard the periphery. The hollow centers would contain some of the ancestors’ remains, and the dinosaur bones could be displayed inside the building. The money from the exhibition would create employment opportunities for the youth in his tribe, making them proud of their origins.

  And this unusual venture would help Billie carry out his plans as chief.

  More Bones

  At night a great deal of howling and yelping flooded Weed and the surrounding area. Packs of coyotes and wolves circled the perimeter, prowling, sniffing, sensing the town’s vulnerability and something else—bones. Not just ones from the Blackfoot burial ground but the massive bones that had appeared with them.

  Dinosaur bones.

  Calling to wolves.

  Waiting to be dug up.

  Curva felt drawn to the bones as well. She wasn’t sure why. Perhaps Suelita Flores, who was fascinated with any kind of bone, had put the idea in her head. Whatever the reason, in the middle of the night, Curva found herself atop her caballo, galloping over the plains to town. Once there, she picked her way through the disturbed graves, shining her flashlight on the remains and shooing away the occasional curious dog or coyote. She wondered why the dead couldn’t replicate themselves as seeds did when placed in fertile soil.

  Or maybe they did. She remembered her mother mixing animal remains with her potting soil. This may have been the secret to her lush garden: it contained fruits and vegetables of miraculous proportions.

  So many bones! And the fossils hadn’t lost their power to frighten, in spite of being disjointed and only partly recognizable. Massive claws gripped clumps of earth, and teeth the size of an elephant’s tusk protruded from gigantic heads, dwarfing the human remains. Some of the ancient fossils resembled black rocks, preserved in dark sediment, making them difficult to see. It was like discovering another world among the living. The human skeletons had been covered with flesh once, eating and fornicating, working and dreaming. Another village had thrived in this spot, the women raising both babies and vegetables. The men had hunted game and hung out in packs, not much different from the animals they sought. How could they just disappear?

  The full moon cast an eerie light on this scene, adding another layer of mystery to it and illuminating the area around her. Curva prodded the earth with her toe, striking a fossil. An electrical charge ran up her leg, as if she had
uncovered the former current of life that once animated these creatures.

  A small bone called to her. She picked it up, holding it in the palm of her hand. It seemed to thrum, pulsing as if it were still alive. She could be communing with something that had lived millions of years earlier. What would a dinosaur think of a human? Of a woman? Maybe it would be more frightened of Curva than she of it. Or did it even know fear? It probably would open that huge mouth and swallow her in one gulp.

  Xavier’s guitar hung from her saddle—never far from her fingers. Something riffled its strings, causing them to vibrate. She jumped. Her hand went to her hip, groping for her .38, but she hadn’t brought it with her.

  Then she realized the wind had caused the sound. Relieved, she strode to her caballo, grabbed the guitar, and strapped it over her body, plucking the strings with her fingernails and slapping the wood shell, allowing a song to emerge. At these moments, she always thought of her brother, her fingers becoming his, strumming, finding their own life.

  A melancholy tune in a minor key rose around her; she hummed along with it. The coyotes and wolves joined in, and the skeletons rose slowly from the earth, twitching and extending their limbs in a stately, elegiac dance, assembling and disassembling, their movements speeding up as the music did. Even the fossils got caught up in the rhythms, tossing and turning in the dirt, sounding like muffled castanets.

  Not to be left out were Berumba’s residents—Suelita, Ana Cristina Hernandez, Ernesto Valenzuela Pacheco, and many more. They emerged from the shadows, looking just as Curva remembered them, but when she stopped playing for a moment and reached out her hand to touch Ana Cristina, Curva’s fingers passed through the woman’s body. Curva plucked the guitar strings again, excited by the sound’s intensity. Everyone moved faster, the rhythms constantly changing. They snaked through the gathering, showing their approval with shouts of Olé.