by Sandi Ault
“Tst-tst. You not stay long, keep them company,” Anna said.
I widened my hands in a sort of half shrug, half surrender, then untied the scarf I had draped over my hair, which I had been instructed to wear during sacred times at the Pueblo. I also removed my coat and hung it on the hook behind the door.
Momma Anna had taken off her blanket wrap and folded it over the back of her chair. “Wash hands. You sit there,” she said, pointing to another chair at the table. “You eat.” She carefully flipped an egg in a cast iron skillet and then dished this up atop some posole.
I went to the sink and dipped my hands into the water in the blue speckled enamel pan. I washed with the big wedge of goat’s milk soap kept in a dish in the window sill beside the peyote plant. Momma Anna used to make soap herself, but lately she had been buying it from the Hispanic women who lived in the villages in the mountains, one of many small signs that consumerism was beginning to infiltrate the total self-sufficiency that had for centuries sustained this ancient pueblo. I took my place at the table and my medicine teacher set a plate before me.
“Eat.” She sat in the chair opposite me.
“You’re not having any?”
“I wait for my parents, my brother. They leave me bite, I maybe eat that.”
“Oh. If you want me to wait, too, I can eat the leftovers…that is, if there are enough.”
“There be plenty. You eat now. I already fix you plate.”
With a chunk of the bread, I broke the soft, intensely yellow yoke of the egg which had probably been laid by one of Momma Anna’s chickens less than an hour before. I took a bite. “Thank you so much, Momma Anna. This is delicious. I was really hungry. I was up most of the night and didn’t have time to eat before I got here.”
“You skinny, look like stick. You little bit round that next other time, look more nice, pretty. Not this time. You need eat.”
I thought about Kerry telling me I was too thin, asking me why I’d lost weight. My clothes were too big lately; I had to cinch in my belt to keep my jeans up.
“You get full belly, maybe you sleep good when it dark.”
I spooned posole into my mouth and nodded. “This is so good.”
When I had finished my meal, I got up to wash my plate, and Momma Anna watched me. “Your boy go away,” she said.
“Yes. He went back to his job in the northwest.” I looked at her and tried to smile, but felt my eyes grow moist.
“You got sad heart.”
“I do. I dreamed about him last night. It was as real as if he was right here.” I held my fist to my chest.
“You put food out, that one. Him maybe come visit in nighttime. Might put a baby in that belly so you get round, next time.”
I opened my mouth, but didn’t speak. I didn’t know how to respond to her suggesting that Kerry might impregnate me from a distance in my dreams. I waited a few seconds, and then decided to take a stab at getting some information I could use. “Momma Anna, I am trying to find someone.”
She gave me a guarded look.
“This woman I am looking for was said to have come to the pueblo, but now, no one can find her. I thought maybe you might know her.”
“This Quiet Time. You not insult old ones.”
“I won’t. I’m not. I’m not asking questions. I’m just telling you what I’m doing.”
Anna Santana stood up, as if she might want to be ready in case she needed to flee the room.
“I’m going to say the woman’s name to see if you might know her. If you might have seen her. If you might be able to give me some ideas about how to find her.”
She didn’t move.
“The name of this woman is Adoria Abasolo. This is who I’m looking for.”
“Spanish.” She gestured vaguely toward the south wall of her kitchen. “You maybe ask you friend up there. I not know that one, that name you say.”
“Adoria,” I said again. “Her name is Adoria.”
“You ask that healer.”
“Tecolote? You know that she lives in the mountains a long way from here. They say Adoria came to the Pueblo the last time anyone saw her. Now she’s missing. I think I need to be talking to people here.”
Momma Anna considered this for a few moments. “You maybe got some money.”
I reached in my pocket. “A few bucks.” I gave her a questioning look.
She jutted her chin upward in the direction of the window. “You maybe feed him, talk him.”
I wrinkled my brow, wondering if she meant one of her ancestors. Then I remembered the time she referred to her peyote plant as him, and said we had to feed him coins because we had talked about him. “Oh. Oh, I get it.” I fished around in my pocket some more and came up with a couple quarters. “All right. Just feed him, right? Like before?”
“You feed him. You talk him.”
I went to the windowsill and put the quarters on the dry dirt in the pot next to the peyote plant. “I’m looking for Adoria Abasolo.” I felt utterly ridiculous, but no less determined. “Please give me any information that might help me find her.”
“Now, you go,” Momma Anna said, picking up her blanket and putting it around her shoulders before escorting me to the door. She pressed against my back to hurry me along. I grabbed my coat and scarf off of the hook, but she gave me no time to put them on before she had opened the door and was ushering me through. “You cover that yellow hair,” she scolded, and she closed the door almost on top of me. A moment later, the door opened just slightly, and I didn’t see Momma Anna, but Mountain barely squeezed through, and the door shut behind him.
4: The Boss
When I got in my Jeep, a gust of wind blew up out of nowhere and brushed past me, hurrying to get into the car and see what it could stir up. I had left the folder of papers President-elect Garza had given me on the passenger seat and—animated by this stiff blast of air—the blue cardboard file sprang open and the sheaf inside shuddered with a sound that reminded me of a deck of cards being shuffled. Several white sheets flew out of the stack and hurriedly smacked hard against the passenger side window, flattened and trembling, as if they were desperately hoping for someone outside to see them and help them escape. I managed to pull the door shut behind me before any more pages took flight. As I gathered them back into the folder, I noticed a photocopy of a receipt from a chain store in Española. The printout of itemized purchases was so faded that I could only make out a few things on the list:
Santa Fe Tortillas
Colby cheese
Blue Sky Almond Milk
Natural American Spirit Loose Tobacco
On the bottom of the receipt, a poem had been written in small letters so neat and even, they might have been rendered by an architect:
I won’t sleep tonight.
Tonight, they are coming again,
I feel it.
One more time, they will show me
the glowing root
That connects them
A beautiful new race of beings.
I am the missing stalk.
I returned this to the folder and then reached into the back for my backpack. I set it on top of the folder in the seat to prevent the file’s contents from fleeing again. As I drove the narrow dirt road that led west out of the pueblo, my BLM-issued cell phone rang, startling me. It had such a loud and unpleasant tone that I had dubbed the device the Screech Owl. I punched the hands-free button on the wheel of my Jeep. “Wild, Resource Protection.”
My boss Roy asked, “You’re back from vacation today, right?”
“I am.”
“You anywhere close to the office? Where are you?”
“Just minutes from you, Boss. I’ll be right there.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
When I entered Roy’s office, he was on the phone. I sat in one of the chairs in front of his desk while Mountain ran around behind it to greet Roy. The Boss absent-mindedly patted the wolf, then groused at the party on the other end of the phone line: �
��What do you mean you can’t find him? He’s got to get those cows out of that meadow.” He paused a moment. “Well, tell you what: you go down to that little café there and you get yourself a big old cup of coffee and then you hang around there while people come in and out for sopapillas and breakfast burritos, and you watch for him. And if you don’t see him, you spread the word that we’re going to confiscate his cattle if he doesn’t get them off of that meadow right away, and we’re going to have us a big ol’ barbecue right here between the offices of the Forest Service and the BLM and cook us some beef. See if that doesn’t get him up there to get those cows.” He slammed down the phone receiver.
“Lemme guess,” I said. “Somebody didn’t renew their grazing permit.”
“Worse than that. It’s that Eddiejoe Ibanez. He does this every year—brings his cows down in winter and leaves them someplace without a permit. This time, he’s put them right outside the ranger station in Peñasco, behind that meadow where they graze the stabled horses. He’s either cut or beat down the fence back by the tree line so his cows can just wander out into the horse pasture. So now, when the rangers put out extra bales of hay when it snows, his cattle just mosey on over and get them some of the high-priced chow, too. That Ibanez is a real piece of work.”
“Why is that our problem? That’s Forest Service land, right?”
“Aw, it’s one of those gawdang grey areas. That meadow is Forest Service land, but on two sides, it abuts BLM land, and the cows have wandered from our land through the fence onto theirs. So we get the ball. Ain’t we lucky?”
“Well, hopefully your idea will work, and Ibanez will come get his steers. You wanted to see me?”
“Not me. None other than his royal highness, the Deputy State Director from Santa Fe is in the conference room waiting to talk to you.”
I rose from my chair.
“Wait, before you go, I got a little news. Remember last month when you were riding fence lines down around Rinconada and you reported that dog that was bit by a bat?”
“Yes. I took the bat to the lab and called animal control about the incident. I’m hoping the dog didn’t test positive.”
“Well it did. Thought you'd want to know.”
“Oh, no. I hope they can save the dog.”
“They got it quarantined. I’m sure they’ll do whatever they can.”
“If you hear any more, keep me posted. So, what does the director want with me? And why’d you let me sit here and listen to you for so long with him waiting?”
“I just like you, I guess. And I don’t mind keeping his majesty on ice for a bit, seeing as how he hasn’t set foot in this office for years, and now all of a sudden, he comes by in person to pilfer one of my people even though he darn well knows we work on a skeleton crew around here all winter long. Didn’t come to see me, no. Instead, he says he’s on his way to Farmington and thought he’d just stop in and brief you on the way. Now you know as well as I do that Taos is not on the way to Farmington from Santa Fe.” He raised his eyebrows at me, looking for a reaction.
I realized this must be about my new covert task to find the missing poet, so I tried to act nonchalant. “Well, I better not keep him waiting.” I reached down to touch Mountain, who was already standing up. “C’mon, Mountain.”
Roy stood, too, but he wasn’t quite ready to let me leave. “The director says you’ll be on assignment out of the Santa Fe office for a few days. I figured since he was here to purloin one of my crew, I’d guilt him into signing off on those new vehicle decals with the BLM seal. We’ll try to get your Jeep into the shop in Santa Fe to have them put on in the next day or two while you’re down that way.”
“Okay. Just give me a shout.”
Roy stalled me again. “Evidently some archaeologist surveying up around Picuris Pueblo doesn’t know how to get along with the Indians and needs your help. So when you finish staving off the next Indian war, let me know. I might have a problem with a bear up where you’re going.”
“A bear? Now? Usually they’re hibernating this time of year.”
“I know. I figured it could wait a few days for that reason—I can’t tell what’s really going on. Over the New Year’s holiday, an emergency crew for a cellular company was working on a tower up that way, and reported that a bear had broken into one of those caves at the mica mine. Said it was all boarded up one day, then the lumber had all been tore through and it was open the next, and that scared them half to death.”
I wrinkled my brow. “That doesn’t sound right. If it warms up enough for black bears to come out at all this time of year, they’re half asleep—and if they don’t find an easy food source, they go back in their dens until spring.”
“Yeah, could be they were smoking a little too much Bob Marley, it being a holiday weekend and all. Anyway, that road into the mine is supposed to be closed with a gate across it so folks can’t go in there and get into trouble. But the cell tech said the gate wasn’t locked. They were able to go through without a key. Wouldn’t hurt to check it out when you’re done.”
“Wouldn’t this be something for the mine’s people to look into?”
“Mine’s been closed for months now. They boarded it all up and went out of business. It’s on BLM land, which used to be reservation land before some bureaucrat took a payoff decades ago and issued the mining company a permit. We still manage the mining lease. Anyway, don’t worry about this now. You go take care of whatever it is the higher-ups want, and I’ll have you check out the bear report when you get done with that.”
“All right, but if it was a bear, she’s probably back in her cave fast asleep now.” I headed down the hallway toward the conference room with the wolf scampering behind me.
5: Off Book
The Deputy State Director was sitting in the conference room when I came in. He got to his feet. “Miss Wild?”
I was a little nervous about how this was going to unfold. I extended my hand and walked toward the director, Mountain behind me. “Please, call me Jamaica.”
“I’m Wade Nichols. I stopped by to give you a temporary change of assignment.” As he held out a copy of orders transferring me to the Santa Fe office as a loaned asset, he glanced down at the wolf. After his face registered initial surprise, he did exactly what I preferred for people to do when they first encountered Mountain—he ignored him completely. “For the next few days, your assignment states that you will be assisting a field archaeologist named Prescott who is dealing with a land boundary issue between the BLM and Picuris Pueblo. He’s there in the field. Just stop by and see him, if you have a chance, so long as it doesn’t interfere with what you’re already doing.”
“So do I check in at the Santa Fe Public Lands headquarters, or do I go directly to Picuris?”
“You are not required to report to anyone. Just stop by and say hello to Prescott if you have a chance. Roy will be looking for you to come back to work here by Friday, but until then, you will be on your own schedule. You’re off book, as far as the BLM is concerned.”
☽
After I settled Mountain into the back of my Jeep, I pulled out of the BLM parking lot and drove to the nearest gas station. I parked on the side and retrieved a small black pouch from my backpack. Agent Coronel had given it to me after I met with the president-elect and told me to open it when I got my new assignment. I used my pocket knife to break the seal. Inside was a smart phone and a car charger. It startled me when it began vibrating in my hand, making a buzzing sound. I pressed the screen with my finger, and before I could speak, I heard the faint sound of a woman’s voice: “Good morning, Miss Wild.”
I held the phone to my ear.
“You will see a GPS position of interest when you open the maps application. Should you need to contact me, dial zero. Have a safe and productive day.” She hung up.
I pressed the Map icon and a rendering of northern New Mexico filled the screen. I pinched and spread my fingers to zoom in, and recognized the area immediately. A red dot hove
red southeast of Picuris Pueblo, between the tiny villages of Ojito and Peñasco. “Hey Buddy,” I said to Mountain, “We’re going up the High Road.”
The dot on the map led me into the heavily-forested mountains of northern New Mexico, via a stretch of high-altitude two-lane highway rolling through switchbacks and S-curves and small villages still living partly as they did when the Spaniards first came to settle this land. Because these mountain enclaves were so remote, this part of New Mexico had been slow to modernize. In the tiniest hamlets, a solitary dirt and gravel road led to a church and a few surrounding homes that constituted the community, and these rustic routes closed with snow through the winter and became too muddy from the melt-off in the spring to travel except by foot or horseback. Even ATVs bogged down in deep snow or in the thick, slick mud known as La Mugre to the locals. Villagers here still spoke an ancient dialect of Castilian Spanish as their first language and carried on religious rituals from the time before the Vatican ruled against self-flagellation and other means of mortification of the flesh. Although time had begun to march forward here in the past few years, its progress was slow and uneven along the High Road.
The map led me to a short stretch of gravel road that was the sole access to two parallel plots adjoining a large tract belonging to the Mountain Mission, a monastery populated by a dwindling order of Trappist monks. One of the lots was undeveloped, a meadow with a gated, grown-over two-lane dirt track. A low necklace of fog hung over the trees at the end of the trail, and beyond it I could see the Picuris mountains, their peaks white with snow. In contrast, the drive to the southern parcel looked well-used and the steel gate had been pushed back to the edge of the lane and left open. I could see a structure on a low ridge, set back into the tree line. I turned onto the drive and took it toward the house. At the end of the lane, a cleared parking area had been spread with pea gravel and lined with young trees planted in neat rows. Beyond this, an adobe wall, with an arched wooden gate that stood slightly ajar. Through the narrow opening, I could see a hacienda-style adobe house, shadowed by the trees. It was cold here in the mountains, and I felt a chill creep under my clothes and settle next to my skin.