The flickering campfire highlighted the dabbler musicians like strobe lighting on a Nashville stage. Pete was testing the fiddle, Morgan tuning the guitar, and Joshua fingering the drum. I glanced at Ben, who sat eyes closed with a harmonica on his knee, and Dr. Mendez, equally reposed with the flute on his lap, and wondered what the makeshift band would do.
Morgan started by picking a wordless country tune on his guitar and the rest of the group joined in, hesitantly at first, and then with gained confidence. When the melody ended, Morgan asked. “Anyone know “Cattle Call?”
“Sure do,” Pete said. “It’ll take a bit of yodelin’, but I’ve got it covered.”
After singing about cattle prowlin’ and coyotes howlin’ and doggies bawlin’, Pete yodeled. “Doo, doo, do do, do doo,” reminding me of the cowboy reruns starring Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. And I loved it.
Morgan then sang “To Make You Feel My Love,” and though he didn’t look my way, I fantasized that he was singing it just for me.
During the next song, the doctor’s flute took center stage, sounding like a bagpipe in its lonely call. Ben joined in on the harmonica, followed by Joshua on the drum, and I decided that the simplicity of the Grand Ole Opry songs of old were appropriate out here somehow.
Everyone, except me, joined in while Morgan crooned “South Wind of Summer.” They sang of the wind singing through the trees and hanging low in the breeze and strong hearts flowing over, while my eyes filled with tears.
Veronica changed course by asking the crew to play “Powerful Thing.” After she finished bellowing out the accompanying words, I said, “You have a beautiful voice, Sis.”
“And you don’t?”
“Actually, I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? Are you saying that you don’t, or that you can’t, sing?”
I should have kept my big mouth shut. “Both. I think.”
“And I thought I was screwed up,” she said.
Veronica instructed the musicians to play “Paper Wings” and then poked my shoulder with her knuckled fist. “Join me.”
Gillian Welch had performed this song in a movie I’d once seen, and it had affected me so deeply that I’d memorized the words. Now, as my voice blended with my sister’s, I sang for the first time in as long as I could remember.
And it felt good. More than good, actually. It felt magnificent.
Morgan ended the evening by singing, “Red River Valley,” and his voice touched me, as he touched me in so many ways.
For a long time, my darlin’, I’ve waited
For the sweet words you never would say
Now at last all my fond hopes have vanished
For they say that you’r going away.
When he finished, all was silent, except for the crackling of the fire, gurgling of the nearby stream, and call of the night animals.
An owl hooted, hoo-h’HOO-hoo-hoo, and I whispered, “Amen.”
Chapter Thirty-four
IT WAS LATE WEDNESDAY MORNING, April eleventh, and the tour was nearing its end. Having promised something special as a grand finale, Pete led us to an ancient cave. “A spiritual site,” he called it, “with a surprise inside.”
Jake stayed behind with the horses—and the cat, while Pete, Morgan, Ben, Dr. Mendez, Veronica, Joshua, and I trekked the last leg of the journey on foot. We stomped across tall grasses, around bushes and trees, over and between boulders, and through a small stream. “Hang in there,” Pete said, his breathing heavy. “What you’re gonna see is worth the trouble gettin’ there.”
The huge sandstone outcropping, which Pete referred to as a cave, revealed itself slowly, camouflaged as it was by a periphery of bushes and trees. Rays of sunlight filtered through a break in the clouds and highlighted the flattened soil in front of the rock shelter’s rough, oval mouth, creating what appeared to be a massive welcome mat. However, I felt more than welcomed. I felt drawn, hardly able to resist the urge to break from the group and sprint through the shallow cave-like opening.
The shelter’s interior was in shadow, so it took several seconds for my eyes to adjust. Even so, I glimpsed only a dim and distorted view. Pete pulled out a pocket flashlight and flipped it on. Instantly a beam of light exposed details of the inner cave walls that incited a collective gasp.
“There they are,” Pete said, “straight ahead, right in front of us.”
Hands, a great family of hands, hands of all shapes and sizes, intertwined and pointing in all directions, were imprinted on the overhang’s interior wall. As we approached for a closer look, Pete said, “It’s an ancient mural created by the Esselen. Beautiful, huh?”
We could spend hours here and not fully appreciate the significance of the archaeological treasure now exposed to our eager eyes.
I sensed Pete’s excitement at sharing this ancient artwork as he pinpointed the white and ochre colored dots, lines, even modern graffiti, interspersed around and between the hands. “This rock art, painted back as far as 4,000 years ago, contains messages sent from the grave. The Esselen believed that ev’rything is alive, including rocks, and that ev’rything has a spirit. What I think they’re showin’ us here is their belief that the invisible world is full of mystical forces, prob’ly what scientists in modern times would call energy.”
“Too bad about the graffiti,” Morgan said softly, pointing out some recently imprinted initials.
“Yeah,” Pete said. “Technically speaking, these rock art sites are open to the public, but the exact locations are usually kept secret to keep out looters and vandals. Once these caves get damaged, they stay that way forever. Anyway, the Esselen believed that rocks hold memory and that if ya put your hand over a hand carved or imprinted onto a rock, ya can tune into ev’rything that ever happened there. We’re not supposed to touch the rocks ’cause the bacteria and oil on our skin causes the pictographs to deteriorate, but it’s okay to hold your hand an inch or so away from the wall’s surface, if you’re into givin’ the tunin’ in thing a try.”
He set the flashlight on the cave floor and held up his hands to demonstrate. Joshua and I walked up to the wall and, without touching its surface, swept our out-stretched hands over the ancient hands, each attempting to find a print similar to our own. Energy surged through my fingertips and palms as my hands hovered over the exact spot where an Esselen, possibly even one of my ancestors, had left his or her mark.
Joshua closed his eyes and started to tremble as if no longer in control of his arms, legs, and body. The sight disturbed me, and I turned to Dr. Mendez with the silent question. What should we do?
He shook his head and pressed a finger to his lips.
In an attempt to discover what Joshua was experiencing, I, too, closed my eyes, and almost immediately opened them again. “Mother!” For a moment, I had imagined that the woman who’d given birth to me twenty-eight years before had come back and touched me through the hands on the wall.
I sensed rather than saw Veronica’s jolt of surprise. “Who did you hear or see?”
“No one,” I said, reaching for Joshua and pulling him close. “I heard and saw no one.”
“No offense,” Veronica said, “but this place reminds me of a huge, dark birthing chamber, with all the hands shooting out of what appears to be a Yoni fertility symbol, which would explain your reference to mother.”
“I don’t know,” I said, unable to explain what I had just experienced.
“Come to think of it,” Veronica said. “It would be kind of hard for a woman in labor to manage the long trek getting here. Even a strong Esselen woman used to such tough conditions.”
“The reason the cave’s mouth isn’t lettin’ in more light is ’cause of all the bushes and trees blockin’ the sun,” Pete said defensively, probably misinterpreting Veronica’s comment and my reaction as criticism and disappointment, rather than appreciation of his big surprise. “It’s big enough for a small tribe to hold a ceremony,” Pete co
ntinued, “like bringin’ in young men for fertility rites when they’re goin’ from boyhood to manhood. Guess we’ll never know.”
Dr. Mendez touched the small of my back, signaling that it was time to leave the large grotto-like shelter. “Come on, Joshua,” I said. “Better head back to camp before dark.”
If Veronica, too, had sensed something out of the ordinary, she wasn’t showing it. My sister was, after all, an expert at masking her feelings and thoughts.
When Morgan came out of the cave, he took me into his arms and rubbed my shoulders and back. “I’m here if you need me. Always remember that.”
Pete took off his hat and slapped it against his thigh. Dust misted out in a cloud of disappointment. “Might as well set up camp and call it a day.” He glanced at me and then looked away. “No entertainment tonight.”
The lack of entertainment didn’t bother me. I had other things on my mind, like what had happened to Joshua and me in the cave and how the clouds had turned dark and the air moist and chilly. Morgan and Ben exchanged glances. Veronica looked at the clouds and shook her head.
After dinner, Pete joined Joshua and me next to the campfire. “I meant for the hands in the cave to be a big surprise and that you’d get a real kick out of ’em the way I do.” His lips moved as if he were talking to himself and then his face brightened. “Ever heard of Robinson Jeffers?”
“The poet?”
“He lived in Carmel . . . built himself a house outa rocks and called it Tor House. Even though I didn’t get much schoolin’, I like his poems. Can’t say I understand ’em all, but I like the sound of ’em. He wrote a poem about the hands in the cave.”
“You’re kidding,” I said, glad that his mood had lifted.
“I tried to memorize the lines for my tours, but . . .” Pete paused and studied his hands.
“What would you say if I told you I’ve been hearing and seeing things?” I asked.
“You mean things other people don’t?”
“Something like that.”
Pete scanned the troubled sky. “Out here, a person can believe almost anything. I’ve heard some mighty convincing stories about spiritual sites and such. Some have scientific explanations like positive and negative ions, but not all.”
If the collective consciousness theories Dr. Mendez had talked to me about bore any truth, it would be possible for some kind of energetic whorl of lingering memory to gather in such sites, consisting of the thoughts of all the people who’d previously visited or meditated there. Coherent memories of intense moments of like-mindedness would be available to tap into by anyone with the ability to do so.
“Joshua and I sensed something in the cave,” I said. “Right, Joshua?”
I felt rather than saw Joshua nod.
“You mean somethin’ bad?” Pete asked.
“Gosh no. The experience was exhilarating, like the surprise you promised as a grand finale. I loved the hands. They had energy and seemed to be sending a message from thousands of years ago.”
“Did you like the hands, too? I asked Joshua.
He huddled closer to me before giving another nod.
I squeezed his hand— “I thought so” —and then turned back to Pete. “Tell me more about the poem.”
Though Pete’s smile was no more than a lipless slash, it clearly expressed his pleasure in sharing Jeffer’s message. “The first two lines go like this:
Inside a cave in a narrow canyon near Tassajara
The vault of rock is painted with hands . . .
“Sorry, can’t remember the rest.”
Softly, as if carried by the breeze, Dr. Mendez recited the remaining lines of the poem, which spoke of a multitude of hands and questioned whether the brown, shy people who painted them intended religion or magic with the sealed message.
I savored the words, not wanting to let them go.
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