by Sandi Ault
“I want to keep him lightly sedated for a while longer. He needs the time to heal. If he gets up and starts moving around, he could rip out some of his stitches. But I think your boy is going to make it. His temperature is fine, there’s no sign of infection. He’s got good pulse and respiration rates, his heartbeat is strong. And the dreaming eye movement and all the twitching in his extremities tell me that everything seems to be working so far. How are you doing? Did they give you something for your pain?”
“Me? Yes, I have some pills.” I didn’t mention the curandera’s gift, which had no doubt given me the strength and energy to do what I had done that morning. I took out the bottle of prescribed medication and showed him.
“Don’t drive while you’re taking those things. And be careful to only take what you need. They can be surprisingly addictive. Take it easy with them.”
I smiled. “I haven’t taken any for a while. But just the same, I think I need to find a driver, because I have someplace I need to go and I’m too exhausted to drive. Will Mountain be okay if I leave for a couple hours?”
“I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here with him.”
Dominic Gomez drove me in my Jeep to Agua Azuela. I showed him where to park behind the wall of the churchyard. When we got out of the car, two elders from the village approached. I was ready to explain why we had parked there, but before I could speak, the woman held out her hand, reaching for mine.
“I know you are una amiga de Tecolote.”
“Yes, I came to see her.”
The two villagers looked at one another, the woman still holding my hand in hers. “Ella esta muerta. I am so sorry to tell you.”
“She’s dead? No! When?”
“Ella falleció la noche en que vinieron los cuervos. Sabes, estuviste aquí esa noche.”
I looked at Dominic for a translation.
“She passed away the night the ravens came,” he said. “They say you know that, because you were here that night.”
This time the male elder spoke: “The birds stayed until you came back again so they could tell you. That’s why they were in her house.”
I was stunned. I couldn’t move or speak for several seconds. “But I didn’t even get to say good-bye,” I cried.
“Come. En el sanctuario,” the man said, taking my arm while the woman held onto my hand. They led me around the side of the church and through the front doors. I had been here before—several years ago, on the day I met Tecolote—and I remembered the ancient church’s cold, thick adobe walls, its narrow nave with the hand-hewn pews lined up in rows along one side, and the garishly painted hand-carved wooden santos, depicting the saints and the savior just as folk artists of the fifteen-hundreds might have done. They shepherded me to a pew, and I noticed that others were gathered toward the front of the church, talking quietly.
I said, “Is she…? I want to see her.”
The old gentleman gave me a sad smile. “I’m afraid you are too late. The undertaker just left.”
Over the next hour, one after another of the villagers came to speak with me, and Dominic continued to serve as my translator, since nearly every one of them found English a challenge. One man told me that his father had been delivered by Esperanza, who had served as the village midwife at the time, and that his father was now 106 years old. When I voiced my incredulity about this, he ushered me forward to a thick book, a wood-and-leather-bound handwritten register of births, baptisms and deaths. He showed me the date his father had been born, and then introduced me to his papa, a stooped, leathery old man, who merely nodded and gave me a toothless smile.
“But that would mean Tecolote was well over one hundred years old,” I said to the son. “Do you have a record of when she was born?”
The villagers shook their heads. “She was here before any of us can remember,” one woman said. “She has always been here. Agua Azuela will never be the same now that she has chosen to leave us.”
☽
News travels fast in tiny mountain towns like Peñasco. When we returned from Agua Azuela, Gomez and I discovered that Father Anthony, Brother Tobias, and several of the monks from the Mountain Mission had come to the ranger station when they learned that their neighbor and patron Adoria Abasolo had been found. And while the poet and her daughter had been rushed to a hospital in Albuquerque for treatment for exposure, dehydration and injuries, the brothers had brought big vats of soup and loaves of brown bread with cheese and soft butter from their own cows’ milk, and they served a hot and hearty morning meal to all.
Not partaking nor present were the FBI, who—once they had failed to find the kidnappers in the mines and broken their radio silence—had redirected their tactical team to the cliff edge above the cave and had taken charge of the final minutes of the incident, helping with the hoisting of Susan Lacy and of Abasolo in the litter, and finally, of me. Then they had moved on to execute a recovery operation for the bodies of the twins.
Other than the FBI and the SAR team, the rest of the members of the crew who had gone to the mines had come to the ranger station for a mission debriefing. And so, the brothers’ feast was delivered to a large crowd, including those who had remained at the station, the fire department volunteers, the members of Picuris and Tanoah Pueblo who had been a part of the adventure, sheriff’s deputies, and the BLM gang, as well as a few locals who had stopped in to see what was going on and stayed for a free meal.
I was glad to have some nourishment, and I sat in a chair beside my wolf companion and consumed three bowls of the soup and at least a half a loaf of the bread, slathered with the delicious sweet butter and topped with slices of salty white cheese. Father Anthony came to where I sat, and although I knew it was improper, I was too tired to put my bowl, spoon, and bread aside and stand up. He didn’t seem to take offence, and asked if he could join me. My mouth full, I gestured at a nearby chair, where one of the wolf watchers had taken leave of his post to go eat while I was there with Mountain.
“I wanted to see how you are doing,” the abbot said.
“I’ll be better when my wolf wakes up and we can go home,” I said, swallowing the last bite of my breakfast. “I haven’t been home in days. I just want to go there and sleep in my own bed for hours and hours. Maybe for days.”
“I also wanted to apologize. I’m sorry I resisted…I wish I would have…”
I interrupted him. “When someone comes for confession, and they’ve done something they feel bad about, what do you do?”
“I usually suggest some form of penance. An amend. A good deed. Something like that. And if they need to ask for forgiveness…well, that’s what I’m asking you. I hope you can forgive me for…”
I held up my hand. “I have something in mind that you could do that would also benefit someone else who needs to make an amend.”
I led Father Anthony to the small group of native Puebloans who had gathered near the door, about to leave. Yohe was adjusting the peyote chief’s blanket, while Paul spoke in a soft voice to Rico about something. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” I said. “But I wonder if you might give Father Anthony and me a chance to talk with all of you a moment.”
Yohe translated to the chief, and the elder Deherrera nodded his agreement.
“Young Federico has told me that he is eager to go home, but he recognizes that he needs to do something to show the tribe that he has learned his lesson. I think that he is looking for a way to do that.” I paused.
The Indians all nodded, Rico most enthusiastically. His face lit up and he grinned at me.
“Father Anthony is also looking for a way to do something to offer service. Isn’t that right, Father Anthony?”
The abbot raised an eyebrow at me but nodded ever so slightly.
“Then I suggest that Rico serve as a helper to the monastery on weekends for a time, but that you let him come home so he can resume school with his classmates next week when they come back after their holiday break. Father Anthony can send one of the brothers to
pick him up on Fridays and he can stay and work at the monastery through the weekend and perhaps you...” I gestured in Paul Deherrera’s direction, “could take him home and visit your uncle and your sister on Sunday evenings so he could be back in time to go to school on Monday mornings. If you are willing, perhaps Rico could keep to that schedule until you feel he has done enough penance to make up for his misdeed.”
Yohe muttered for what seemed like a small eternity into the peyote chief’s ear, Paul Deherrera looked at me and cocked his head slightly, smiling, and then clapped Rico on the back affectionately. All eyes turned to the elder in his blanket, who made a gesture with his palm parallel to the ground, crossing the space in front of him with a swipe of his arm, indicating the deal was good.
I looked at the abbot and he smiled, and Yohe giggled out loud. “White girl make good bargain,” she said. Paul and the abbot shook hands and began discussing details, and Federico came up to me and started to give me a big hug.
“Careful!” I held up my hands and pulled away. “I’m hurting pretty bad right now.”
“I promise, I’ll be careful, Auntie Jamaica,” he said. And he tenderly encircled me with his thin brown arms and then put his head against my shoulder. “Thank you,” he whispered.
I felt a vibration in my pocket and realized it was Buzz, my Secret Service phone, which I had set on silent before I descended into Picuris Canyon on the rappel rope. I turned away from the group and pulled the device from my pocket. “Agent Wild,” I said into it.
“Come outside,” Hank’s voice said.
“Outside where?”
“Outside the door,” he said, and I looked through the glass windows in the front of the ranger station and saw him standing on the walk near the entry. I pressed to end the call and went out the door.
“I’m leaving, but I didn’t want to go without saying good-bye,” Hank Coronel said to me.
I handed him Buzz. “I guess I won’t be needing this anymore.”
He took the phone and tucked it into the pocket of his jacket. “Is Mountain going to be all right?”
“He’s going to live,” I said. “I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but I’m hoping he’s going to recover completely. I’m going to take as much time off as I need, until we’ve both fully recuperated.”
Coronel nodded his head, thinking about this. “Just to update you, I have this to report: Abasolo has a broken ankle, but no other major injuries. But she’s very weak, mostly from dehydration, starvation, and exposure. They set the ankle, they’re giving her IV fluids and nutrition, and it looks like she’s going to be fine.”
“And Susan Lacy?”
“Totally torn ACL. She’s a little dehydrated, too, will have to have surgery and rehab for the knee, but she’s otherwise good. I wanted to thank you, on behalf of The Bartender. It was requested specifically that I come tell you that in person. And The Bartender will be in touch with you directly soon.”
I made a little saluting gesture. “Happy to serve,” I said. “But I hope ‘in touch’ just means a thank you note or a box of chocolates or something. No offense, but I don’t want to do this kind of thing again.”
He looked at me for a long minute and said, “I enjoyed working with you, Jamaica Wild.”
☽
It was a few hours later before it was quiet enough around the ranger station for me to go back to the break room and lie down on one of the cots. I was exhausted and eager for sleep. But before I allowed myself to rest, I had a call I had to make.
Kerry answered on the first ring. “Is Mountain going to be okay? Are you okay?”
I told him the story of the past several days, and he murmured sympathetic and comforting comments and asked a few questions as I unfolded the barest details. When I finished the brief recap he said, “Where are you now?”
“I’m at the ranger station in Peñasco. I’m not leaving Mountain again. I’m here until he wakes up, and then we’re both going home together. I’m going to take as much time off as I need to until he’s all better.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Kerry? Are you still there?”
“I’m going to lose you any minute now,” he said. “You know how cell phone coverage is around here.”
I sat bolt upright and cried out with pain as my abdominals exacted the price. I felt my arms tingle, the hair stand up at my temples and on the back of my neck. “Where are you?”
“A little over a half hour away. I’m glad you called when you did or it might have taken a lot longer because I was headed straight for Taos. But you were just in time. I’m about to turn onto the High Road down by Chimayo,” he said.
“Really?” I swiveled my legs over the side of the cot so my feet were on the floor. I wasn’t about to go to sleep now.
“Your message said you needed me but couldn’t talk until morning. I got on a plane, got a rental car in Albuquerque. I’ll be there before you know it.”
46: Feminine Rising
In the days that followed, Mountain and I did a lot of healing and a lot of sleeping, though my sleep was often troubled by dreams—and Mountain’s was, too, evidenced by frequent whimpering and shaking in his sleep. Together with Kerry, we spent some time every day walking—limited distances at first, and then ever increasing ones. I enjoyed variations of Kerry’s two signature dishes: Ranger Stew, and flapjacks with butter and warm maple syrup. And to entice the wolf to eat and gain strength, he made a rich broth from bison bones with plenty of meaty bits floating in it, and served it warm. Kerry did everything for us: kept toasty fires going in the woodstove, changed Mountain’s dressings and gave him his antibiotics, tended the scrapes on my shins and calves, interpreted hilarious Rorschach meanings from the ever-changing patterns of bruising on my abdomen while tracing their outlines with his finger, massaged my shoulders, brought me books from the library and even read some of them aloud to me, told me stories of his recent adventures in the northwest, and when he went into town for groceries, he brought home newspapers to keep me up to date.
The FBI was given credit in the media for rescuing the poet laureate and her daughter, and I was relieved that I was never named personally in relation to the matter. Nor was the Secret Service. When the citizens of Peñasco learned that their town had been the focus of such a sensational crime, and the faces of the twins appeared in the papers and on television, a quartet of locals came forward with information that answered one of the unsolved questions in the case. Apparently the two couples had gone line dancing in Taos the night before the borrowed Blazer exploded. Late getting back to their village on the High Road, they spotted the red-coated couple tinkering with a car in the otherwise-empty parking lot of the Ranger Station. One of them had suggested they pull over to see if help was needed, but he was overruled by the others’ desire to get home and get to bed before dawn. This aligned with the fire inspector’s report that a gas-soaked rag had been stuffed into a crevice in the engine of Gomez’s Blazer; the authorities surmised that the twins had done the deed to try to cover their tracks after asking Dominic so many questions about the local caves.
Abasolo, hounded by the press, finally agreed to do one exclusive interview, for a weekly in-depth television news show. It was filmed at a medical facility where the poet was recovering, and she appeared wearing a cast on her broken ankle and still notably weak from her ordeal. The details of this dialogue were recounted throughout the press for the next few days, and I read about it in the paper. In her candid conversation with the female journalist, the poet explained that she had come to this country at the tender age of sixteen to escape an abusive father. Soon after arriving and beginning classes at the university in Los Angeles, she met and fell in love with Videl Quintana, who insisted that she erase her personal history to liberate herself from her past, and taught her how to do so. When she later became pregnant, she had experienced enough of Quintana and his cult to know that she could not bring a child into that environment,
and yet, she had no skills or economic power to raise the child herself. So, using what she had been taught, she once again erased her personal history so that Quintana could not find her, and she became Adoria Abasolo. Though it pained her, she did what she felt was best for the baby in giving her up for adoption, and then pursued an education so that she could live a better life and give something meaningful to the world. She said that, after decades of using the name Abasolo, she was going to keep it for as long as she lived, that it had become who she was. The fortune she was set to inherit from Quintana’s estate would form a new foundation with the goal of educating, empowering, and supporting women to have better lives and serve larger roles in the world. Her daughter, Susan Lacy, was poised to become the managing director of the foundation, and together, they intended to do great things for women in the United States and around the world. And they had reached out to Lacy’s half-sister, Quintana’s other daughter Nona Dodd, and invited her to share in this endeavor. The poet laureate was not yet well enough at the time, (and I guessed the controversy over her past was great enough), that she did not travel to Washington to perform at the inauguration of her longtime friend, the first woman president of the United States.
The news media quickly moved on to that event—novel because not only was a female taking leadership in the White House for the first time, but a Latina, at that—and also for the first time, there would be no first spouse. After the initial sensation of Abasolo’s interview, and a series of blips and blurbs for another week or so, the story of the poet’s bizarre past and the events of the kidnapping rapidly began to fade in the media as more newsworthy events emerged in the country and around the world.
As for me, it was only one day after the inauguration when something happened that drew me once more into the matter. Kerry and I were just returning from walking Mountain on a long lead down the road. The idea was to give the wolf just enough exercise so he would continue to strengthen without taxing him too much as he recuperated. In fact, the lead was hardly necessary. Mountain limped and dawdled and seemed years older than he had been just weeks before, his energy low, his curiosity diminished, and his pain from the wounds still obvious. I was grateful he was alive, and I held out hope, but I feared my beloved Mountain would never be the same again.