Forests of the Heart

by Charles de Lint

  Bettina grinned. “Adelita,” she said, starting to turn. “Did you hear? We’re—”

  Abuela touched her arm, stopping her.

  “Not your sister,” she said. “Only you and me.”

  “But—”

  “It’s Chehthagi Mashath,” Abuela explained. “The month of the green moon. And we are going on a pilgrimage to Rock Drawn in at the Middle.”

  Bettina’s eyes went wide. “But will the O’odham let us?”

  Lying west of the Tucson Mountains, the Baboquivari Mountains were a sacred place to the Tohono O’odham, for hidden at the base of the cliffs that formed the walls of Baboquivari Canyon was a cave that was considered a tribal shrine. This was where I’itoi Ki lived, the Coyote-like being responsible for bringing the Desert People into this world. The cave was an antechamber of an enormous labyrinth winding under the Baboquivaris—an image captured by O’odham basketweavers with the design of a small man standing at the beginning of a circular maze.

  Because Baboquivari Peak towered over the cave and could be seen from almost every village on the Tohono O’odham reservation, it was considered the heart of the O’odham universe. The Desert People called it Waw Kiwulik, “Rock Drawn in at the Middle,” referring to a long ago time when the granite obelisk was twice its present size. Wishing for more land, tribal elders had gone to I’itoi to ask him to move the mountains and make the valley bigger. He did so, toppling the upper half of the peak. The whole mountain range moved, widening Wamuli valley, but also angering Cloud Man who lived higher up in the mountains. Because of the people’s greed, Cloud Man refused to supply water to the new land, so the O’odham were never able to cultivate that part of the valley.

  “Ban Namkam is taking us,” Abuela assured her. “And besides, we’re all Indios.”

  “Oh, I like Ban.”

  “Sí,” her abuela said, dryly. “That has always been rather obvious.”

  Bettina blushed. Lewis Manuel was the son of Abuela’s friend Loleta, a handsome young O’odham that she’d first met at a saguaro fruit-picking camp last year. He was only six years older than her, but he might as well have been a hundred for all the attention he’d paid to her. Among his own people he was known as Ban Namkam—Coyote Meeter—because coyote was the animal he’d met in a vision while undergoing one of the four traditional degrees of manhood. Like most young men today, he probably wouldn’t attain the fourth, since it consisted of killing an enemy tribesman.

  “Does Mama know we are going?” Bettina asked to take her grandmother’s attention away from the dismal state of her love life.

  “Of course,” Abuela said. “I told her we are going to stay with Loleta for the weekend.”

  “But you said—”

  Abuela shared a conspiratorial smile. “Chica,” she said. “You know how your mama worries.”

  Yes, Mama worried. And perhaps with good cause, Bettina thought.

  Last year Abuela had taken her on another pilgrimage, down into Sonora, Mexico, to fulfil her manda, a secret vow she had made to San Francisco Xavier. They had walked from Nogales all the way to Magdalena, accompanied by dozens of other pilgrims. Each October, during the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, Desert People have made their pilgrimages to the reclining statue of St. Francis which is kept in the church of Magdalena de Kino, in Sonora. The confusion of feast days arose from the disorder that followed the replacement of the Jesuits by the Franciscans some two hundred years ago. The Desert People had been introduced to St. Francis Xavier by the Jesuits. When the Jesuits were expelled, they assumed that the St. Francis of Assisi the Franciscan priests spoke of was the same man.

  Bettina had come expecting a fervent religious experience, and she hadn’t been disappointed. The plaza surrounding the cathedral had been full of pilgrims, the new arrivals waiting in line outside the catafalque on which the statue of San Francisco rested in recline. They gathered around the child-sized statue, touching it, thanking him, offering up silent prayers, pinning milagros to his brown Franciscan habit. When her turn came, Bettina had found herself filling up with a great sense of serenity and mystery—more potent than anything she’d known under the desert skies.

  This was before Abuela had taken her into la época de mito, when myth time still belonged to stories, rather than experience. That day Bettina felt more magic in the catafalque than she’d ever experienced before, and she realized her first difference with her grandmother. Yes, the desert was holy, but to her mind, the church, with its saints and the Virgin, was holier still. On their return to Tucson, she began to attend mass more regularly, which pleased Mama to no end. Bettina had thought that Abuela would be upset, but her grandmother had merely smiled and said, “It doesn’t matter where we find the Mystery, only that we do find her and bring her into our lives.”

  But for all the holiness in the cathedral, the fiesta was also a secular affair, an early Papago/Pima harvest festival to which the missionaries had merely attached some Christian motifs. When Bettina and her abuela stepped back into the sunlit plaza, it was to see a Yaqui deer dancer preparing to dance, the antlers of his stuffed deer-head mask bedecked with ribbons, rattles of dried cocoons tied to his ankles. From other plazas, and outside the small town, they could hear the rumble of the fiesta as several thousand people celebrated the Feast of St. Francis in their own way, lifting their voices in many languages against a backdrop of mariachi and norteño bands, merchants hawking their wares with amplified loudspeakers that were only a rumbling squawk against the cacophony of carnival rides.

  Abuela had taken them first to where the herbal medicines were being sold, replenishing her own stock with herbs grown in wetter lands, necessary medicinal plants that she couldn’t harvest herself in the desert. Then they walked by the booths selling trinkets, hardware, religious paraphernalia such as milagros and postcards of the saints, leather goods, and food. They bought gifts for those back home: cotton print scarves, postcards, a bottle of tequila for Bettina’s father and his peyoteros. Bettina sampled the carnival rides; Abuela haggled with merchants. They admired the fresh produce stands, filled with corn, red chiles, striped squashes, and quinces, and feasted on stuffed chiles, fresh corn on the cob, and bowls of calabacita—boiled squash, chopped up and fried with onions, tomatoes, and asadero cheese. Abuela allowed Bettina a small glass of beer, and they finished their meal with barrel cactus candy and alegrías, cakes of popped amaranth seeds that, except for this fiesta, never reached farther north than Mexico City.

  After night fell, they made their way to Calle Libertad, meeting up with friends from home in one of the open-air dance halls where a mariachi band blared tunes on a mix of brass instruments and violins. Bettina tried to stay awake, but by how she’d had a second beer and the mix of the unfamiliar alcohol and the long day finally took its toll. She fell asleep on a chair at the back of the hall. The last thing she remembered seeing was her grandmother happily dancing polkas with her friends.

  When they returned home, Mama had been furious, but Abuela, as usual, was unrepentant. Mama hadn’t spoken to Abuela for a week after that, filling the house with a dark silence that touched everyone. Bettina wasn’t eager to repeat that part of the experience.

  “Wouldn’t it be better to tell her the truth?” she said to her grandmother.

  Abuela shrugged. “¿Como? And when she forbids your going? We don’t do this for her, chica. We do this for you. That you learn the old ways. That you are introduced to the spirits whose companionship and help you will need in the days to come. This is curandera business. You must trust to my judgment in this.” She looked past Bettina’s shoulder. “¡Hola! Adelita,” she called as Adelita and the other girls approached. “Do you want to come with us to visit the Manuels ?”

  Adelita pulled a face. “I don’t have to come, do I?”

  “Of course not, chica,” Abuela said.

  “Vamos a mi casa” Gina, one of the girls accompanying Adelita, said.

  “Sí,” Abuela said. “Go with your friends. We wi
ll see you on Sunday night.”

  Bettina and her grandmother watched the girls saunter off down the dirt sidewalk that edged the road.

  “You see?” Abuela said. “She doesn’t even want to come.”

  “You didn’t say anything about Rock Drawn in at the Middle,” Bettina said.

  Her abuela gave her an innocent look. “But we are going to visit the Manuels. As I told your mama.”

  Bettina had to smile.

  “And if we decide to take a drive later, perhaps a walk in the desert— would that be so wrong?”

  Grinning now, Bettina got into the cab of the pickup.

  “I’ve brought you some sensible clothes,” her grandmother said as she pulled away from the curb. “For the desert. You can change into them on the way.”

  Ban Namkam appeared at his mother’s house early the next morning, startling the Gambel’s quail and doves into flight and a momentary silence. He stepped out of a pickup that was older, more battered, and even dustier than Abuela’s, a tall and ocotillo lean man in faded jeans, a short-sleeved white shirt and well-worn cowboy boots. His long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, his skin richly darkened by sun and genetics. When he smiled at Bettina, her pulse couldn’t help but quicken. Compared to the boys at school Ban was all presence and bigger than life. But while he was as handsome as ever, he remained just as oblivious to Bettina’s admiration now as he’d been the first time they’d met. When he casually ruffled her hair by way of greeting she could have bitten his hand.

  Don’t say it, she willed, but of course he did.

  “I swear you get taller every time I see you,” Ban told her.

  Bettina could only grit her teeth. No soy una niña, she wanted to tell him. See, I have breasts and everything. But of course she didn’t say a word, only hung her head and stared at her feet, feeling stupid and impossibly young. Then she caught her abuela grinning at her and that only made her more self-conscious.

  Discreet questioning of Ban’s mother the night before had allowed that, yes, he was still very much unattached. Unfortunately that was enough for Bettina to become the recipient of much gentle teasing on the part of both Loleta and Abuela for the remainder of the evening, not to mention this morning as well.

  “Look, nieta” Abuela said when they saw the dust of Ban’s pickup approaching the house. “Here comes your boyfriend.”

  Bettina’s warning glare had only made her abuela smile, but at least she said nothing now.

  Truth was, Bettina wasn’t sure she even liked him anymore anyway. At least so she tried to convince herself. Look at him. He was obviously too full of himself, too caught up with his own importance to even notice that she was quite grown up now, thank you. Yes, his uncle Wisag Namkam was a calendar-stick keeper, marking saguaro ribs with cuts and slashes to help him remember important events, his father Rupert a medicine man, but so what? A man should be judged by his own deeds, not by the importance of his family.

  Bettina sighed. Except Ban’s deeds did speak for themselves. He followed the traditional ways, but he was also working on a doctorate in botany at the University of Arizona. He was handsome, smart, kindhearted, loyal. She sighed again. And totally oblivious to her. It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t she be more like Adelita? Her sister always had a boyfriend.

  “Are you still in this world?”

  Bettina blinked, then realized that her abuela was speaking to her.

  “Sí,” she said quickly. “Where else would I be?”

  Abuela gave Loleta a knowing look and they both rolled their eyes. Happily, Ban didn’t notice. He was looking off into the distance where the Baboquivaris rose from the horizon, their tall and stately peaks towering high above the surrounding bajadas.

  “I haven’t been to the cave since Papa took me when I was a boy,” he said, turning back to the others. “I hope I can remember how to find it once we reach the cliffs.”

  “Bettina will help you,” his mother said. “I hear she has an affinity for lost places and causes.”

  Abuela snickered.

  Ban looked from her to his mother, aware of undercurrents, but unsure of what they were.

  “Why don’t you ask Rupert?” Bettina said.

  Ban shook his head. “He’s out at the rainmaking camp till the end of the week. They’re rebuilding the roundhouse for this August’s ceremonies.”

  Bettina knew that. She’d just wanted to switch the focus of conversation to anything but herself. She gave her grandmother a pleading look.

  “I’m sure Ban will find it just as easily as his father,” Abuela said, relenting.

  Loleta nodded. “Probably better, if the peyoteros are at the camp.”

  They drove to Ali Cukson—Little Tucson, a Papago village just a fraction of the size of the sprawling metropolis of Tucson some fifty miles away—and then up into the Baboquivari Mountains, a special permit on the dashboard of Ban’s pickup since neither Abuela nor Bettina were tribal members. Above the white wake of dust stirred up by their wheels flew turkey vultures and Harris hawks. Coyotes watched them from the ridges, roadrunners darted across the road in front of them, and a bobcat was startled into immobility by the unfamiliar presence of the truck before it faded away into the brush.

  At the end of their road they came to a canyon that held an abandoned stone cabin with a flood-water field, the latter overgrown now with mesquite, catclaw, creekside desert olives, and wild chile bushes. Ban parked the pickup and they stepped out to stare up at the cliffs rising hundreds of feet above them. Bettina hoped for a glimpse of a coatimundi, the raccoonlike animal that Ban had told her could sometimes be found here. This canyon, he told her, was one of the few places in the States where it could be found—it and the five-striped sparrow. But neither made an appearance today. There was only a crested caracara, floating high up on a thermal, long-necked and long-tailed against the bright blue of the desert sky.

  Shouldering backpacks, they started up the canyon on a narrow trail leading through the dense undergrowth, flushing quail, startling the Mexican jays and phainopeplas. Further up the canyon they walked among the Mexican blue oak, mulberry, and enormous jojoba that prospered here in the more humid narrows. They passed by puddles of standing water in the otherwise dry wash, continuing to follow it until a white-necked raven flew by with a laughing cry. Ban watched its flight for a long moment.

  “A guide?” Abuela said.

  Ban smiled and nodded, then led them away from the creekbed, up a steep slope, leaving the shade behind.

  It was hotter out in the sun, walking along the exposed slope. The bajada here was all thorn and spine as they wound their way between ocotiilo, cholla, prickly pear, barrel, and saguaro cacti. But if the way grew harder, the view became ever more spectacular. They could follow the paths of all the drainages that led down from the western slopes to empty into Wamuli wash. To the east, the sharp peak of Rock Drawn in at the Middle rose to its awesome height.

  They rested there for a while, drinking from their canteens, rendered silent by the panorama—even Abuela, who almost always had something to say. Finally they turned their backs on the view and climbed the last stretch to the cliffs. When they reached the thornier scrub at their base, they were a thousand feet above the desert floor, with the cliffs rising up behind them another thousand feet.

  This part of their trip had been simple, if arduous, but finding I’itoi’s cave was another matter entirely. They spent a half-hour searching, finding only small overhangs and caves—nothing like what I’itoi’s cave should be.

  “You have been here before?” Abuela asked Ban when they finally took a break.

  He nodded. “But only that one time with Papa and he led us right to the cave. I thought I’d have no trouble finding it, but everything seems different today…” He shrugged.

  “Y bien,” Abuela said. “I’ve not come this far to give up now.”

  Bettina’s heart sank. What had been an adventure this morning had lost much of its luster by now. She was hot an
d tired, scratched, and more than a little frustrated that the entrance to the cave remained so elusive. Usually a foray into the desert with her abuela was a much more relaxed affair—rambles rather than such formidable treks. For the past half-hour she’d been more than ready to head back down the forty-five-degree slope to where they planned to camp in the canyon.

  The white-necked raven they’d seen earlier flew by once more, still laughing—at them, Bettina decided—but its presence made Ban smile.

  “I remember something,” he said. “There were white streaks on the cliffs and my father led us past them.”

  They turned back, following the base of the cliffs, more eastward this time, in the direction of Rock Drawn in at the Middle. They found the streaks, stark against the darker rock, but dusk fell and it seemed they had to give up. Finally, Bettina thought, but then she caught the flash of the sun’s last rays on a crevice in the rock, just the other side of a large jojoba bush.

  “There,” she said, pointing.

  The sun dropped out of sight, but Ban had marked the spot. In the deepening twilight they made their way to the tall slit in the rock. It began at waist height so they had to step up to it, then awkwardly squeeze sideways through the narrow opening.

  “Wait,” Ban said once they were inside.

  Bettina could hear him rustling about in his backpack. He struck a match, lighting a candle, and her eyes went wide with delight. The candlelight pushed the darkness back from the opening of the cave where they stood, illuminating a tangle of offerings that hung from the ceiling above them: rosary beads, ribbons, chains with milagros and rings wound into their links, shoelaces, belts, scarves. On the floor were small statues of terra-cotta and unfired clay—oddly proportioned toads, lizards, dogs, birds—jars of saguaro cactus syrup and preserved jams, a single shoe, dried bunches of marigolds, the red flowers of desert honeysuckles, and pink fairy clusters. In little niches in the walls people had stuck bullets and shotgun cartridges, cigarettes, chewing gum and hard candy, hair barrettes, medallions and coins, Mexican pesos, American pennies, even an English pound.