The Christ was already gone. He sang my name as I ran after it. Moving across the hot flatland covered with snow among the trees of thorn taller than a man. There was no road, the white burden on the land went out everywhere. I followed in his footsteps. The night sucked the Sun out of the Sky and blew the Moon across the heavens. I followed through snowpiled clumps of sagebrush. The cold coming up and stabbing my face. The ice glare of the stars on the snow showed the beginning of trails. Trails cutting in every direction. The frozen trails of Cattle. His footsteps lost themselves in the trails. I stumbled over the white crust of the Earth in search of him, “Christ! Oh my Christ!”
His voice sang back to me and I ran after it, “Antelope, join hands, it is the end of the beginning.”
“Christ! Don’t lose me!”
“Antelope. Lock hearts!”
“Christ! I come!”
The fire jumped before me, its flames burning the Earth free of its white burden in a muddy circle. The Christ stood with sparks shooting off into the darkness around him, his forefinger pointing upward, then pointing to the dark Earth in the Sign of the Chief. He was surrounded by the people. They had awaited his coming. There were seven men standing at the side of his staff bound bright in white Horsehair, and next to the Eagle feather tied at his elbow stood a woman. A shelter of dogwood shimmered in the firelight. The Christ passed into it and sat at the crescent of the Moon hollowed in the Earth. The Christ placed the buttons of Peyote medicine on the Moon as he sucked his stonepipe. He smoked the prayers of his clouds around my head as the drums came up beating on the Earth, the Eagle feathers storming the air, I could hear the piercing mew of Waterbabies flowing in the pond of the Sky, through the Milky Way, the long dazzled Road of the Ghost. “Christ don’t lose me!” The wind goes by my head. The wind stirs the willows. The wind stirs the grasses. The wind calls my name as I run after it. There is dust from the whirlwind. The green dust comes up and chokes my heart. The dust blows through my dry body. The green dust spits from my lips. The vomit shoots from my mouth. Vomit cleanses. My heart grows green. My heart is a green plant. My dreams are a red paint. A green plant. A red paint. My dreams are that color. The Sun is dead. The stars are dropping from heaven. The Moon darkens. We must survive until the Sun rises. He is coming down! He is Coming! He appears in the clouds with His bride on a white Horse with the blood of the Spirit on its chest. He walks along the lake of the Sky in the new Rabbit Robe. Sparkling his image on the quiet water. He is the son of my flesh. The Native Ghost returns. Every eye sees him. All tribes on Earth are rising up in high places everywhere with great glory and power. Hallelujah he Comes. HALLELUJAH! My son is Coming. He walks along the Big Lake of the Sky with antlers growing from his head, sparkling his image on the quiet water. He walks with three Ancestors, they come with Rabbit Robes cloaking their bodies. They come with antlers of Antelope growing from their heads, long hair spilling down under their bone crowns and flowing over their shoulders. My son is Coming. He is rising up all the dead hearts. He is rising up all the people across the land. The tribes of the Earth will stand in great glory and power. Glory and Power. My son will Come. Into the future I see him. He is coming. Wait. He is. Coming. Rocks are ringing. Red plant blooms through green paint. The rattle shakes. Jesus talks. The mountains are ringing. Mountains are ringing. Vomit cleanses the heart. “Christ! Christ! The Morning Star! Look up! Look up! We have danced the night! Look up! It is I who wear the Morning Star on my head! I show it to you! I show it! I go to greet the Sun! I go! I go to the people!” I called the people up to the mountain. They came from across the land, from Woodfords, Genoa, Carson City, Minden, Tahoe, Truckee, Honey Lake. “Get together,” I called. “Bring your blankets and your rifles. It is Gumsaba. It is the Big Time. It is a Big Time for all Indian peoples!” I drove the FORD out of the valley up on the mountain among the people gathered into the Big Meadow. They came around and surrounded me, there were at least twelve men, five women, and their six children. I sent my words out over their heads, “Hallelujah! Jesus is upon the Earth! Jesus moves as in a Cloud! The dead are all alive again. I have seen the Ghosts. I have danced in a circle until the souls came back. I almost died but I didn’t. The Native Ghost walks among us. I heard all the buried hearts weeping. They are rising up. High water rises to cover the chasms and wounds of the Earth. Those who see the Crow will hear him singing. Those who leave the Whiteman’s Road will be saved. The Whiteman’s Road is a Thieves’ Road. Those who follow that Road will lose the vision, the dream deserts them, they are dying away from the Earth. We must take the old trail to survive. Those who follow me follow the true way. The Road going is the Road coming. The river runs stiff again with Fish and we can walk on water to the other side. Do not turn your hearts away from me. I will lead you through the years to the Big Time once again!” I held my rifle in the air and walked back and forth on the hot hood of the FORD before the people. I raised the rifle to the swift clouds and swung it straight down, aimed at the FORD, and fired three bullets right through the metal hood. The ricochet of the bullets crashed away through the trees. I started the FORD. The engine jumped, spluttering and choking, the tin sides shaking, the exhaust pipe barking, then it died. “The FORD is dead!” The people in the Big Meadow cheered around me. I lifted the rifle to the swift clouds above them, “The Whiteman’s Road is a Thieves’ Road. We will follow the old way. We will take only his rifle. He has robbed our bows. Our Mother is the bow, our Father is the arrow. Woman is cloud. Man is thunder. You cannot cut a cloud with a knife. You cannot chop thunder with an ax.”
We went down from the mountain and across the land on the old trails, following the spawning runs through the highest rivers. We speared the leaping bodies from fast water. The thunder of warm days sent much rain down upon us and grew up a good crop of pigweed along the Iron Road. We followed the Iron Road to the rolling hills of the Sacred Piñon groves to celebrate the Gathering Year and found sharp fences stretching over the skin of the Earth. We could see white Sheep grazing in the groves. We boiled Grasshoppers and sucked sunberries outside the fences. At night the women went through the sharp wires and gathered the fruit of the Sacred Piñon tree into gunnysacks and the dreams began coming to me. The Antelope running in the Sky. Moving many times through the trees. Always the trees. Brown bodies turning. The wind caresses the closeness of their fur, holds their thin legs to Earth. I stood among the people and directed a finger to the Sky, “There, that is where I smelled them. Tasted their scent. Heard their hooves beat beneath my eyes. You must follow me who will follow them. To the place where hunger ends forever. If I dream true Antelope waits us in the valley of small winds. It is long, it is hard to come into that valley. But we are sly. We are swift. We can gorge ourselves on the flesh of our Brother before the white days fall. It is the Season of the Hunt. I am the Antelope Dreamer. What I dream is true. My power is not false. My dreams are my power. We will go see if I dream true.” We traveled east to west into the high Mountain House. The Moon dreamed itself from night up over the trees. We followed our own footsteps through the forest. Coyote talks to the night. He alone cries when the Sun has fallen from the Sky. He alone sings up the new day. Antelope waits for me to slip my knife into his Spirit. Antelope is a great magician. I will cut the flesh from his sides and feed the people. I am the Boss of those that allow me to feast. I am the Antelope Charmer. I am coming to take my sweet Brother home. I am going up to the Antelope. His quick ears flinch. His wet nose pushes into soft Earth. The Antelope is a great magician. But I am sly. I am swift. I lead the people to the place where hunger ends. My dreams are filled with the Musege of Antelope. The power of power. Stronger than all my medicine. I am walking to you Antelope. I come to ask you for your flesh. The people need it to survive. Our bones are weak. We are all dead or dying. We need your power. We need your power to stay alive. We see heart to heart. We are coming. I am the Antelope Charmer, what I dream is true. My power is not false. My dreams are my power. If I have dreamed right you are over
the mountain lip, down in the valley of small winds grazing on shortgrasses. If I have dreamed straight I will charm the flesh off your Spirit. You will give us a feast on your power. We make camp here. We watch through the trees for the first light. The men are building the high corral. I pray over my tobacco, over my head dawn strikes like a rattling Snake. I lead the people up to the Hp of the mountain and we look down into the valley of small winds and weep. The people fall to the Earth and the sorrow of their white blown tears flows everywhere. I alone still look into the valley of small winds. It is covered with water. Water come up and drowned the trees. Water come up and smothered the plants. Water trapped in the valley by a curved blade of concrete. The Whites have trapped the power of the snows and send it over the land in long wires locked to walking towers of steel climbing from the concrete dam through the mountains and down into the distant low valleys where all the Birds are dead. I sit on my crossed legs and look over the flooded valley, the white blown tears begin to fly from my eyes. Beneath the weight of fifty winters’ snows the Antelope are buried. The water moaning through their longskulled heads. Their Spirits drowned. All the dreams are dead. The people are dead or dying. Their Spirits rot in a land sunk to the heart. We wander down from the Mountain House. The dreams have deserted us. We are as empty as the day Coyote molded the Earth. There is no power for tomorrow. Tomorrow will kill us because we cannot go out to meet it. We walk along roads humped with cold clots of Frogs run over by the cars passing us. The forests are smoking with fire. All along the road leading down from the Mountain House the flames of trees join the Sky. The forests are burning. There is no way to save the trees. We turn around and look back. America is a burning house. The dreams are dead. We do not have the power to dream another day. Two trucks are coming along the road. They pull off and circle us. The men get out and put their white faces against us, their eyes fading away into their heads. The women go to them and open their gunnysacks, stretching out handfuls of pinenuts. A white face with a silver star from the Earth’s metal pinned over his heart comes to me. He looks away at the trees, the wind of passing cars slapping his billowing pants.
“Are you the one called Hallelujah Bob?”
“I am Ayas. I am Antelope.”
He shoved his boot around in the gravel before him, the leather of his buttoned gun holster cracking like a saddle, he looked up with his eyes fading away in his face, “Where’d you get the buck, Chief?”
I lowered the hides slung over my shoulder and untied them, exposing the meat. “In the Mountain House. We have walked many days. The leaves are falling. The meat of this Deer is rank. His taste jumps in the mouth. It is not his time. It is too late to take him. He is too bitter to eat.”
“Let me see your California deer-tags. I want to see this year’s, 1931.”
“The Deer is our Brother. In the Mountain House the Antelope are all gone. Deer gives us the power to live. In the Mountain House we are all Brothers.”
He kicked the gravel, I could hear the air break from his lungs like a big white cloud as his shoulders slumped with a sigh. “I guess you’ll have to cash in your chips Chief.” His eyes disappeared in his face and he turned away.
The people were all herded into the trucks behind the metal tailgates with FORD stamped across them. The engines began. The trucks pulled out into the road. The wind whipped and sang around the trucks. The people were watching. The long hair spilling down their backs as they looked up to the power in the Sky. Musege. An arrow of Ducks flying upstream. Power. The Sky Sky is faster than the Eye Eye.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas Sanchez lived for many years in Key West, Mallorca, San Francisco and Paris, where the French Republic awarded him the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. He is the author of King Bongo, Mile Zero, Rabbit Boss, Day of Bees and Zoot-Suit Murders.
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