The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  CHAPTER 47

  I left on my walk this mid-August morning just before the Sun rose over the Catalina Mountains. All the rain and cool summer brought out the yellow five-petal flowers which the plant guide calls “desert senna.” Everywhere I look I see the bright yellow five-petal blossoms. The senna family has unusual stamens, each with a terminal pore that requires bumblebees to hang upside down in the flowers and buzz to shake loose the pollen, which sticks to their bodies.

  As I approached the Thunderbird Mine I saw an odd sight: a grasshopper of ebony black with lines of white along his head and legs. He was perched on top of a pile of coyote dung almost as dark as he. He appeared to be eating the dung. Later I read that the black grasshoppers are poisonous so birds don’t eat them; the article said the source of the poison was unknown, but I’d say coyote dung might be one of the sources.

  The rain left the prickly pear cacti plump with moisture, thick with buds and luminous waxy flowers of yellow and yellow orange. Once the blossoms dropped, the green bud pods began to fatten; the ripe fruits are the brightest luminous carmine red and as lovely as any blossom, and this year they are the size of chicken eggs and in their abundance they lie scattered everywhere. Birds and rodents feast on the cactus fruit but so do the coyotes and even the bobcats and the mountain lions.

  In the sandy bottom of the arroyo bunches of red three-awn grass send out feathery purple red tufts on the end of each stem after the rain. Fountain grass with its silvery tufts grows next to the red three-awn grass, and they appear to be related, but the fountain grass is an invader species from South Africa that was introduced about fifty years ago.

  The feathery tufts of the grass glitter with tiny droplets from last night’s rain. With the dark gray basalt and light-colored boulders of tuff and limestone, the glittering stalks of grass are magical.

  A short distance past the bunches of grass I stopped because I heard a strange sound that might be air rushing out of a cave, or the low hum of a great hive of bees—the sound of the Earth breathing. I listened carefully. The sound seemed to come from behind the basalt boulders surrounded by thickets of catsclaw and mesquite.

  I glanced up at the sky above the cove formed by the thickets and the basalt boulders; strands of low clouds swirled away from the cove. I checked the rest of the sky and none of the other clouds were moving like that. I thought about walking back to the cove to take a look, but something about the sound made me think of a sacred place I should stay away from out of respect. A Lakota story about the coming of the bison to human beings involves a cave with wind rushing out of it.

  I continued my walk in the arroyo to the flat top boulder with the old petroglyph; like the other flat top boulder only a short distance away, the stone on top of the boulder had been chiseled out to form a rainwater cistern.

  At Old Laguna village the natural cisterns in the expanse of light yellow sandstone are still carefully protected as a blessed place. In long droughts, the river and even the springs dried up, but the hard, fine-grained sandstone cisterns caught the least rain or snow that might fall from the meager clouds.

  I found something really amazing and beautiful today. I decided to walk down to the arroyo to photograph the old petroglyph on the boulder instead of working on the manuscript. Too many disruptions early in the day put me in the wrong mood for writing.

  Now that I had rediscovered the petroglyph I wanted a new photograph to compare to the photograph I made more than twenty years ago. Anyway, the morning was too beautiful to remain indoors at my keyboard. Last night a cool rain came and filled the big rain barrel half full and left the air smelling wonderfully of rain. So I got the camera ready, grabbed my hat, my belt with a water bottle, an emergency whistle, the ultralight .38, and off I went.

  On my walks I’d noticed interesting rocks that washed down javelina paths from the top of the bank into the arroyo. The rocks I’d noticed were hard fine-grained quartzites of yellow or light orange or off-white, very unlike the other rocks that were mostly dark basalt. Moreover these stones were smoothed and rounded and fit my hand perfectly for crushing and grinding seeds. I thought the stones were a sign of human occupation but I never detoured to find out. But now that I’d rediscovered the petroglyph on the boulder only a short distance away, I knew what I’d suspected was true: thousands of years ago people lived here in the Tucson Mountains.

  On my way to photograph the petroglyph I had to pass the rainwater cistern carved in the top of a boulder. The rain the night before had filled the rock cistern, and when I climbed up to its edge I found a small feather, an owl feather. I left it where it was, where Owl the Warrior Scalp-taker, the Sacrificer, had left it.

  I’d photographed the cistern long ago for my fictional photo narrative about sacrificial altars. During the ten years I wrote Almanac of the Dead I did a great deal of thinking about the Maya and the Nahua ancestors. The photo narrative was concerned with the way words modify how we may see a photograph. Photographs need only resemble slightly what the words with them described for the viewer to “see” whatever the words describe. For the purposes of my photo narrative, the boulder top made a perfect altar; the carved-out rock cistern looked like it would catch sacrificial blood.

  I decided not to go straight down the wash to the boulder to photograph the petroglyph but instead to walk along the bank above the arroyo where I felt the ancestors had lived.

  I had to pass the rubble that marks the place where a “real estate developer” used a bulldozer to subdivide the land—not to be confused with the man who gouged boulders from the big arroyo with his machine. Nearby the rubble I saw signs of the ancestors’ home—dark basalt and pale quartzite grinding stones that had been overturned and everywhere tiny pieces of colorful chalcedony, chert, jasper and flint. I picked up a small piece of bright red jasper and saw it had been hand-chipped; I looked at the others, and then I looked all around and saw colorful unique stones and pebbles the ancestors gathered. Unfortunately the blade of the bulldozer had cut a crude road through the site and most of the hand-chipped stones and other artifacts had been buried under a heap of torn plant debris and dirt.

  Only once, years before, I had found a perfectly chipped arrow point of fine-grained basalt near my gate down the hill. Back then I didn’t realize the ancestors lived here—I knew they used to hunt here, but that’s all. I thought all of the ancient people lived down along the Santa Cruz or Rillito River, not up here in the hills. I had a neighbor two miles away who had found arrowheads near Broken Springs Road, but this was the first indication that the ancestors had lived near my house. No wonder some nights I saw figures in the darkness or heard women’s voices singing grinding songs.

  I walked a short distance between the skinny greasewoods and I looked down and there on the ground, surrounded by many small stones and chips off rocks that were dark hues, I spotted a white quartz the size and shape of an elm leaf: it was a knife. I was thrilled by its perfection; it was so thin, so finely chipped I knew it belonged to the ancient ones.

  I felt a great blessing from the ancestors who lived here and made stones into tools thousands of years ago. The white quartz knife was so prominent among the other small chips and rocks it seemed to me it had been intentionally left there—perhaps on the last night the people ever carved there or danced in the circular area above the boulder-top cistern?

  The ancient people here managed to survive the great heat and the droughts, and made their living by the rocks and stones they chipped into knives and awls which they traded for food, just as my Paguate ancestors traded the sandstone griddles for corn in lean years.

  I walked around the area and found awl stones used to make holes to sew hides together, and I found sharp-edged stone axes. I found many colorful cherts and blood red jaspers and pale chalcedony, clear rock crystals and even glittering pyrites, but I did not find any turquoise rocks. The ancestors must have found them in the big arroyo as I still do, but I imagine that the turquoise rocks may have been too valuable fo
r the people here to keep and were traded away to the south for macaw feathers or food.

  To reduce weight from their packs on the long journey south to Mexico, the indigenous traders scraped the chrysocolla from the copper-bearing rock and powdered it. This “soft turquoise” powder was packed in small dry gourds the traders wore around their waists. The cabochons of chalcedony-impregnated chrysocolla must have brought the traders a good price because it is rare, denser and harder than turquoise.

  From Mexico City all the way to Guatemala, the powdered soft turquoise was made into sacred blue green paint to adorn those chosen to be made into “jewels” for Tlaloc, Lord of the Rain.

  CHAPTER 48

  Regal Chapulin, ebony Chapulin, blackest obsidian, black diamond, black jade. Lord Grasshopper your life span is the length of the ripening of the prickly pear fruits, and the mesquite beans that nourish the coyotes who supply you with the smelly potion which protects you.

  I never had seen an ebony black grasshopper before. I thought the shiny black creature with elegant thin white stripes on its legs might be a rare species of grasshopper. But when I searched the Internet, I found many wonderful photographs of black grasshoppers (though none as intensely black or marked as beautifully as the grasshopper I saw on the coyote dung). The web search found three million ninety thousand web sites which have the words “black” and “grasshopper” but which have no relation to the jumping insect. There are shoes called “Grasshopper” which appear to be much desired by web-users.

  A number of human beings wear elaborate grasshopper costumes of spandex and latex with large Plexiglas helmets or masks that have antennae and saucer eyes. All of them appeared to be men in grasshopper costumes.

  If I’d had more endurance I might have searched long enough to find a woman in a grasshopper suit and insect helmet mask, but I only made it to page twenty-three in my web search of the three million ninety thousand pages of sites with the words “black grasshopper” on them.

  The costumed grasshopper people look archetypal in an action comic sort of way. Spider-Man meets Galactic Traveler. I wonder if the grasshopper people attend conferences or throw parties in public gardens.

  I was reminded of my series of Chapulin’s portraits, and I smiled to think other humans are similarly “arrested” by the regal grasshoppers.

  The photographs of the black grasshoppers on the web sites were the efforts of people who appreciated the beauty and size of the creatures. The killers of black grasshoppers posted no photos with their accounts of frenzied assaults on the clouds of insects destroying their gardens.

  I had no idea of the significance of black grasshoppers until I read two or three of the web sites maintained by state agricultural departments to help farmers in their states combat the insects. I learned the black lubbers lay waste to all living plants and crops in their path.

  One of the web sites concerned a short story by Ernest Hemingway in which the protagonist saw a black grasshopper after a forest fire and believed a green grasshopper was turned black by the fire. Hemingway was mistaken about the fire and the black grasshopper, but he made the black grasshopper a symbol of transformation anyway. He was right about transformation—infestations of the insects quickly turn plants and trees to skeletons.

  Lord Chapulin who visited me last year was green, but some black grasshoppers are green; so it may be that Chapulin is only a rare visitor to the desert which explains his stopover to eat rain lilies at my place. He got blown off course on his way to the farms in Yuma and ended up here in the Tucson Mountains. Apparently the black lubbers are around farming areas all the time, although catastrophic infestations occur at seven year intervals.

  The most beautiful grasshopper in the world is the color of the rainbow and lives in Madagascar.

  It’s August 21. This morning I turned the kitchen faucet and there was no water. My heart sank. I always fear the well will go dry. But it’s been a wet cool summer and our consumption of water was moderate. I know all wells will run dry eventually, but I have a feeling the well is not dry; instead some equipment failure has occurred that’s bound to cost me a thousand.

  The electricity reaches the pump but it isn’t pushing any water, the well and pump specialist tells me. This is good news because I thought lightning might have struck the pump, but it still runs. A new pump would be a huge expense. He thinks it is a hole in the pipe. The new pipe and the two workmen and the rig truck won’t be cheap. I may run out of money before the well runs out of water.

  I called the water truck man and ordered two loads of about four thousand gallons of water to take care of us until the well pump gets fixed. What a pity I didn’t have my rainwater storage system in place this summer when we got so much rain. My hope is to eventually use rainwater for all my needs except drinking water. I prefer hard water from the well for drinking.

  Today was quite a day. First no water; later Old Green, our 1971 Chevy truck, rolled into the ravine. Just after Caz parked it, the transmission slipped out of park and it rolled backwards down the driveway then turned and went down the steep slope in front of the house. Old Green came to rest in the old rusty tin cans and broken glass of an old ranch dump at the bottom of the ravine. The old ranch had a number of dumps, but this one is the biggest.

  The run-away pick-up crushed a small saguaro and a number of jojoba bushes and two ocotillos; it hit a big palo verde tree at the bottom where it came to rest. It is a miracle the truck didn’t smash down any of the large two hundred year old saguaro cacti in its plunge.

  I had my headphones on and was working on this manuscript when it happened so I didn’t hear anything. I saw by the expression on Caz’s face that something awful had happened. I assumed it had occured in the city and Caz had come to tell me. I never dreamed it had just happened on my driveway. Caz tried to stop the truck from rolling and was skinned up from being dragged by the truck. He might have been killed so we were very lucky after all.

  The ocotillos can be replanted, but the rest of the damage, especially to the rocks and dirt, will leave a scar that will last for years, because the desert soil is so thin and fragile here. I don’t want to see any more damage done to the desert, so I am inclined to leave the truck in the ravine with the other ranch refuse. To hire a tow truck to remove it will only do more damage to the desert.

  Old Green has a good color to blend in with the surrounding desert bushes and plants. I’d like to paint prickly pear cacti covered in red fruit, and palo verde and catsclaw in bloom on it to camouflage Old Green even more. I’d paint desert shrubs on the windshield and windows so the sun wouldn’t glare off the glass. It would make a perfect reliquary for my ashes when the time comes, but Robert and Caz aren’t amused.

  PART FIVE

  Lord Chapulin

  CHAPTER 49

  The blue silver clouds pushed in from the south and covered the sky and the eye of the Sun. A hurricane at the edge of the Baja sent us these rain clouds overnight, and now a cool breeze moves out of the southeast from the direction the hurricane took.

  As I sat watching the clouds, the white-eared hummingbird came to the feeder on the mesquite tree, but after one taste he flew away—the sugar water was too stale and full of gnats. Ashamed, I immediately took the feeder indoors to wash it and refill it with fresh sugar water.

  One morning when I first started my walks, I left before I refilled the hummingbird feeders, and the male white-eared hummingbird followed me on my walk, chirping and scolding me for a mile before he turned back.

  The hummingbirds around my house have been here for years yet I know very little about them. All female hummingbirds are similarly colored an iridescent pale emerald green so I haven’t learned to distinguish them. I keep a guidebook handy but so far I can only recognize the male white-eared hummingbird, the male Lucifer hummingbird, and the male Costas hummingbird. The Costas has black and white feathers in his tail.

  Once years ago on a cool November morning I found an emerald green hummingbird, dead, I
thought, outside the front porch window. I leave my windows unwashed so that birds don’t break their necks or skulls against the glass, but dirty glass didn’t work this time. I felt such regret.

  I picked up the little green-feathered creature to give it a burial of some sort and when I held it in the palm of my hand I felt the rapid beating of its tiny heart. I held it in both hands to warm it, and the heartbeat seemed to get stronger. After a couple of minutes I felt the hummingbird move and when I looked into my hands I saw he was awake, so I offered him my finger and he perched on it. I watched him recover more and more while he sat on my finger, and when I thought he seemed ready, I took him to a flowering brittlebush and he stepped off my finger onto the bush. I stayed nearby and watched until he recovered enough to fly away.

  Hummingbirds are very territorial and the ones that live around my house spend a good deal of time chasing one another from the three or four feeders I hang in the trees of my front yard. Among the old-time Pueblo people Hummingbird was considered a great warrior and hunter, in the same category as Eagle and Owl. Hummingbird can’t survive in the desert on flower nectar and pollen alone, and must hunt gnats and other tiny flying insects in order to survive the months the desert has no flowers.

  This year the abundance of the prickly pear fruit extends beyond the cornucopia spilling around the cactus plants. Coyote dung is black with prickly pear seeds; the ants retrieve the seeds, and outside the entrances to their palaces, thousands of tiny black seeds are kept temporarily until the ants make storage space down below.

  As the trail nears the Thunderbird Mine I pass the small barrel cactus I replanted a few years ago. Would-be cactus rustlers dug it up and left it lying root up by the trail to remove later, but never returned. I couldn’t find the spot the rustlers dug it from, so I found a place where rainwater flows past and a small jojoba grew to give the cactus some shade. I replanted it there and now this morning the small barrel cactus had five or six blossoms on it, a sign the cactus is happy with its location.