 |
||
Book to be released to the public : ? |
||
(Please note this is just a sample cover) |
||
TONY HILLERMANNew York Times Best Selling Author |
|---|
RETURN OF THE BONES
(book excerpt)
Although the bones be thousands of years old,
They are still family.
For blood flows from generations to generations
And thus, the family line lives on.
Chapter One
Hollow-Woman Loretto rocked in a stiff Yankee chair at the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at Harvard University, and hummed a nonsensical tune her great-grandfather taught her when she needed to ward off the evil spirits. The tune worked when she was a child growing up at the Jemez Pueblo, but now she was in her thirties. She was childless so only a slight ache twisted her heart because she abandoned her husband in New Mexico three days earlier. Fear petrified the rest of her. Her stomach churned with worry as she hugged her giant purse stuffed with cash...borrowed...stolen... from the San Felipe Hollywood Casino outside Santa Fe. She didn’t steal for herself, to buy lovely clothes or a helluva good time, or a beautiful face, or even a new liver, or a loving heart, but to fulfill her promise to her great-grandfather. “You must search for the others, the ones who were stolen from their graves. With my death you are the last of the Pecos. A heavy burden falls upon your shoulders. Promise me,” he had whispered.
She had leaned her head into him because already life was fading from him, although she didn’t know this then when they stood at the ruins of the Pecos Pueblo two months ago. He had teetered on tobacco-stained khakis and high-top tennis shoes from which one petrified toe stuck through, and he had pointed to the family adobe ruins, the proof of a forgotten people. From his toothless, mud-cracked face he had hinted Pecos was a place of ghosts, and beheadings, and church burnings, and witch hangings. Yet he held back from her like he always did, even shrunken as he was. The wind slapped his greasy white braids across her face and the smell of the shell of a rattlesnake egg, mixed with raw honey from his bee hives assaulted her nose. Poison and sweetness. She resented him for asking such a promise from her. Nay. Demanding such a promise. What did she care for old bones and a pueblo abandoned a century and a half ago?
But he knew. He knew. He pleaded with her with his eyes to search for the bones. He cursed her with his eyes if she dared disobey him. The threat in his voice was real. Pecosan was a Shaman, a sorcerer, so he had the power to cross over from the grave. He vowed to haunt her in death, even more than he haunted her in life, if she didn’t find the Pecos bones.
She hated the old man as they stood surrounded by ghosts at the family ruins, dust swirling around her bone-thin ankles. Little did she know then that within a couple of hours her great-grandfather’s whispers would stop until all she could hear was wind blowing through her ears because she always had an empty head. She never suspected she had a hole in her heart until the old man, her only blood relation, died on the road from Pecos.
She hugged his cold body in her arms there in the front seat of her pickup, and she strained to hear the rattling of the old man’s chest. No kind last words to her. No confession of dying love. No begging for her forgiveness. No words of wisdom about life. Only a promise to search for wretched bones once buried beneath the rich red earth. Two thousand of the Pecos skeletons had been kidnapped nearly a century ago. One-by-one, their fragile bones were lifted into the arms of strangers. The skeletons were stuffed into acid-free boxes, loaded onto a crowded freight train, bones crunching and shaken, to be transported far away from their homeland. Bones rattling in fear along thousands of miles of railroad track, which is why Hollow-Woman traveled those miles herself to Harvard, and why she robbed the casino, to search for the bones on a bitter winter day.
She contacted Harvard months before and the university claimed to know nothing about skeletons stolen from Pecos. But they would lie about the grandest of thefts, the grave robbery of human skeletons. But Great-Grandfather had been an eyewitness to the theft, and that last day at the family ruins he handed her the diary of a Harvard Professor of Archaeology written in 1915. Her heart had beat with excitement...dread...when she later checked the records at the railway station in Santa Fe and discovered a barely legible shipping voucher that proved a Dr. Jameson Malcolm did indeed book a freight car for October 9, 1915 and paid in cash. There was a yellowed receipt for loading some boxes on a car headed for Boston and the train left Santa Fe on time. She could only assume the bones made their way across the country and ended up at Harvard. New Mexico is at the far southwestern region of the United States, a place of tumbleweeds, dirt, and dry hacking coughs. Dust blows across the tracks of time and ninety years buries a cold trail.
Hollow-Woman now lowered her head and her hair, like black curtains, opened to reveal only what she allowed peeking eyes to leer at, a scar on her face, two deep dents in her forehead. Once upon a time, when she was a child, a rattlesnake slithered across her bed, locked its eyes with hers, jerked its head back and attacked. The snake marked her with two fang bites right above her nose. The Pecos were of the Snake Clan so, she always rubbed the scar on her forehead when she was nervous and jumpy and she could hear the hissing of Great-Grandfather, “Here is your family in the red earth of Pecos.”
The poison was strong today and she dug her fingernails into the wooden arms of the chair. It was not she who was rude but the woman across the desk. It was not she who stared but the woman who gawked at her like she was the first Native American she ever saw in the flesh. It took all her will to keep from jumping up and slithering across the desk. What would this white-starched Harvard woman think of her if she confessed that besides her secret agenda of the missing bones, her primary reason for being at Harvard was a witch-hunt? She would try her best without sounding crazy. She explained with a smile that dripped with acid and in a voice that was a bit choppy, “I am enrolling in Harvard’s Continuing Education, Miss, to audit a class, Folklore and Mythology 107a, Witchcraft from Paganism to the Early Modern Era.”
“And what other classes do you wish to take?” the woman asked with a sneer on her face, probably because here she was in her mid-thirties, first time in college, and what was she interested in enriching her mind with? Witchcraft.
The woman stared like she just stepped off the boat of the muddy Rio Grande. Dusty suitcase with faded cactus print banging against one torn-jean knee. Her hand cupping and ner-vously tapping against the floor a tarnished silver ceremonial staff given to the Pecos people by King Philip III of Spain some time in the Sixteenth Century. She had to believe the staff was real silver else her life was a lie. The Pecos people were extinct except for her. Being the last of the species of a dying breed didn’t give her a rare priceless feeling but the feeling of being hunted because her family was cursed by a witch.
She traveled far to take this class. Her journey to Harvard was a physical journey as well as a spiritual one, filled with the promise of finding her family and in the process understanding herself. She withdrew her savings, what little money Great-Grandfather left her, and she sold her truck but still she needed more to see her through the spring semester at Harvard and possibly the four corners of the world, which is where the bones may have been scattered in the past ninety years. A promise made to an old man on the cusp of death can drive a woman to do the unthinkable. To finance her journey she stole money to get to Harvard from the casino where she worked as a cashier. Great-Grandfather’s dying words were, “I fear you are cursed, Granddaughter, and I’m scared for your future.” She suffered from Chronic Hepatitis C and the heartache of not being able to have babies. Besides her belt wrapped one and a quarter times around the waist of her jeans, the only other tell-tale sign she was not a well woman was the yellow color in her eyes instead of the white, which is why she hid her eyes behind dark glasses.
“One class is all I can afford,” Hollow-Woman now answered the woman.
“But you’re a minority. Surely some financial aid...”“My grades in high school were not good enough,” she snapped at the woman who should mind her own business. How could she explain to this woman how she was a wild teenager then? How she broke her great-grandfather’s heart with her use of drugs and alcohol to ease her pain? How could she explain that she never even knew what caused her pain, this hollowness she was born with? She could never describe her loneliness because she had no family except for Pecosan, and they were so different in body and soul. Even Steve, her husband, couldn’t fill the cracks in her heart.
“Do you have a place to stay?” the woman asked and looked genuinely concerned.
Yes. I brought my tipi with me, she felt like answering because she knew this woman wouldn’t know that in the year 1450 her people constructed four-story and five-story multilevel apartments surrounding a central plaza of community and family. “I’ve rented an apartment,” she said instead. “I found the place on the internet.” Hollow-Woman lifted the side of her mouth at the woman’s stunned expression.
“Well good luck at Harvard, Holly,” the woman told her and Hollow-Woman acknowledged her nickname which some people found easier to deal with.
Let them all stare. Hollow-Woman walked towards the exit on ragged tennis shoes flapping against the floor, looking like a bag lady with a yellowish tinge in her eyes and on her skin from liver disease. Marked for death. Born a princess. At five foot seven, she was tall for a Native American woman. Suitcase banging against one bony knee, one hand banging the blackened silver ceremonial staff against the concrete floor like she was really somebody, Queen of all Pecos, a ghost pueblo. A sovereign with no subjects save skeletons. She was a foreign ruler come to invade Massachusetts and seek out her skeleton subjects stolen from their graves. A dream catcher the size of a hula-hoop was looped around her narrow belt and the net of the dream catcher dragged against the floor, sifting the dust of Harvard with the dust of New Mexico.
She exited the building and her staff clattered against the sidewalk as she walked towards the bus stop. She froze. Footsteps behind her. Someone followed.
She spun around. Her only stalker was death and a pair of shiny black men’s shoes. A bit of white sock showed beneath the hem of a monk’s robe. Her eyes traveled up a long lean body to a face in shadows and a head covered by a hood. His hands were tucked into the arms of his robe. A wool robe. Brown. Of the quality of a hair shirt. The robe was stained and well worn. A large wooden crucifix was wrapped around his large waist. If not for his shiny black shoes, she could have sworn the monk was a ghost from another century.
When did he approach her, so that he now stood so close she could make out a scraggly graying beard mid-chest? She locked her eyes with a pair of burning reddish-brown eyes that pierced through a pair of round spectacles. He had a mouth shaped like a rosebud. His lips moved like a goldfish sucking up against a bowl and his round face, surrounded like that by his hood, looked like a goldfish bowl. When he talked, he sounded like he was under water. “Forgive me, my Dear, for staring but we don’t see many Native Americans in this part of the country.”
“Nor have I ever seen a monk,” she said.
He laughed and said, “I’m not a monk. I’m a priest.”
“Is there a difference, Father?” She announced his title in a tone that dripped with acid because his presence recalled the Catholic boarding school she attended in her youth and the harsh discipline physically enforced by the nuns and the priests. Try as the righteous might, they could not beat religion into her. She had the old man to thank for that. Pecosan weaned her on stories of murderous monks and torturous mission churches of the ghost pueblo of Pecos.
“A monk is usually cloistered in a monastery, away from the world,” he explained. “Myself and Father Daniel have a parish in Boston.” He recited the address in a monotone voice.
Ah. That church. The steeple just round the corner from her apartment building. She did not welcome him like a neighbor. She narrowed her eyes at him.“Oh, I see,” he said. “My clothing.” He rubbed rough-looking hands down the hairy front of his robe. “A friend of mine from Brazil, sent me the robe two weeks ago. I wear this because the wool is so warm and this winter is so harsh.” He startled her when he grabbed her hand. “You look like you can use a friend. Here.” Before she could pull back, he pried open her fingers, quickly dropped something into her palm, and squeezed her hand tight.
For some odd reason, she didn’t feel safe again until she could no longer hear his rosary beads clanking against his knees. Only then did she walk towards the bus. She looked over her shoulder now and then to make sure he didn’t follow. What was it about the man that spooked her? The marks on the side of his face like his skin was whipped with branches? Or the smell from his robe that reminded her of the centuries-old adobe ruins of the Spanish mission church at Pecos? There were only ghosts now at Pecos, the cursed Indians and the murdered padres. The padres haunted the burned-out mission, a relic of the Catholic Church and the Spanish Inquisition. Is it possible a ghost followed her here to Harvard? Don’t be silly. His shoes were black and shiny modern, not the ancient sandal like the leather straps she unburied at Pecos that had a petrified toe attached to the sandal. She shuddered when she thought of how Great-Grandfather frightened her that last day of his life when they visited the ruins, and he grabbed the sandal from her and ordered her not to touch the toe, else the owner would follow in her footsteps. Only Pecosan, in his zeal to protect her grabbed the sandal from her, which caused her to scrape her fingernail across the toe. When he threw the sandal in the air, the leather was missing the toe. She fell to the ground and she dug and she dug but try as she might, there was no toe to be found anywhere.
Was the owner of the toe even now two steps behind her?
She scurried up the steps of the bus. Quick. Turn your eyes down. Don’t look at the campus policeman strolling by. She almost lost her courage and didn’t come to Harvard but impulse fueled by desperation made her resort to thievery.The slot machines played their addictive song and dance number. No one paid attention to her look of desperation since all the gamblers had the same look, and she gambled she was running out of time due to ill health. So, she looked around and when only the wall-sized picture of Marilyn Monroe smiled down at her, she reached her hand into the drawer and stuffed her large purse with cash.
She walked quickly through the exit of the casino. Steve was parked in a handicapped space with the engine of the car running. She jumped into the front seat and they drove north to the train station in Santa Fe, some thirty minutes away. She made some nonchalant comment when Steve mentioned the sound of sirens and all the police cars headed South on I-25. She clutched in her fingers an e-ticket for a train headed East, a ticket issued in a made-up name. A distraction at the train station afforded her the opportunity to pass security without flashing identification. She had worn a tight scarf knotted under her chin. The coat of her trench coat was buttoned up around her neck. She wore gloves to disguise her thin-skinned hands. It was not like her to wear such bright red lipstick and so much color on her cheeks. With an eyebrow pencil she had thickened her eyebrows. She wore a pair of very loud ear rings that were striped like a zebra. She didn’t recognize the woman who stared back at her in the reflection of the swinging door. Neither would Steve, if he knew what she was up to. Steve hadn’t a clue she was abandoning him as he stood there at the train station with his fists in his jeans pockets. He stared at her like he already missed her.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. There was no going back on her crime but she felt justified as she imagined a man standing on the train platform, dressed in the sweat-soaked clothing of an archaeologist, counting the boxes of bones as they were loaded onto crowded freight cars.
Yeah. Good-bye. Love you too. Will miss you. Be back home in a couple weeks. Promise. When Steve kissed her good-bye, he thought she would only stay at Harvard a few weeks until the cash from the sale of her truck was spent and her savings. By now he must have learned she robbed the casino. The tribal police must have pounded their door down.She must have looked as sick as she felt when she waved good-bye to Steve. Death sat in the train seat beside her and stroked her knee. Steve urged her to get some help while she was at Harvard. “Boston has one of the best medical facilities in the world. Maybe they can cure you.”
She nodded her head yes, that she would, but she didn’t voice what she really thought. How could any doctor heal the Pecos curse? Even Great-Grandfather couldn’t stop the curse that killed every Pecos, which is probably why he was drawn to sorcery in the first place. And why did the old man live so long while all the other Pecos died out around him? And why didn’t the old man ever tell her he loved her? Was he afraid of getting too close because he feared she would die before him like the rest of his family? Or was his heart broken into so many pieces, there wasn’t a piece big enough to love her?
Hollow-Woman had blown her warm breath against the window of the train and the glass fogged up. She wrote her initials HW in the fog. She bounced up and down on the springy seat of the train and she grabbed onto the bar in front of her. The bouncing of the train reminded her of her pickup, when she drove her truck to Pecos for the last time with the old man bouncing up and down in the back of her pickup on a skinny mattress that must not have shielded his bones from the rough ride.
“Help me,” Great-Grandfather ordered before their trip.
She had turned to him with reddened eyes to see him standing in the hallway of her house, his mattress slumped across his back and him bent like a swaying tree. “Quit feeling sorry for yourself,” he had snapped at her. “Help me carry my mattress to your truck.”
“You’re leaving so soon?” she said and she shifted a distasteful eye to his filthy mattress.“I am going home,” he said. And that was that. He dropped the mattress on the floor to leave her to do the heavy work.
She had followed behind his short legs, bowed by nearly a century of riding horses. Now she was the one with her back bent by decades of resentment. Once outside, she let the mattress slide from her back and dragged his mattress through the mud, just to be ornery.
She shoved his mattress into the bed of her pickup, mud-side down. Br. It was cold so she opened the passenger door, but the old man climbed in the back and lay down on his mattress. He squinted at the bright New Mexico sun. He appeared like a shriveled cranberry on his flea-infested, booze-stained mattress dotted with tobacco stains. His hand shook when he clutched a blanket to his chin. Spittle dribbled down his neck. He had no teeth to speak of and was so skinny he didn’t even make a dent on the mattress. His fat was eaten away by a century, and he looked more than his one hundred three years and some months. His eyes were merely two slits carved into a face that looked like cracked mud. “I’d like to ride in comfort on my own bed for my long journey home,” he said with a deep sigh and smiled because he knew that she stared at him with an exasperated look.
“But, Great-Grandfather, you’ll freeze. Why don’t we wait until Steve’s day off from work so we can travel in his car?”
“The trip must be now.”
“You’ll catch your death of pneumonia. Why don’t you ride up front with me?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I only have three hours left of life. Oh, and five minutes. I wish to ride once more in the back of your truck to feel the wind and to breathe the crisp air. I will be dead soon enough and confined in a small box.”
“Don’t say that,” she whispered. “Don’t speak of death.”
“My heart will stop at 6:25 this evening,” he said, “and it will not be the elements that kill me but my own weak body. I look forward to death and the reunion with my family. Your new truck must be good for something. To carry my coffin.”
New truck? Four years ago a new used truck, yes, now her truck free and clear. She was proud she just recently paid off her pickup, but if she had known he would refer to her truck as a means to transport his corpse, she would never have chosen a black truck.
He wearied of this conversation and struggled with his last words. “Remember…build my coffin from the pine trees of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains at Pecos.”
She wondered then if he died and she looked at his chest to see if it was moving and she jumped. “Drive,” he barked at her and he banged against the side of the pickup with that silver ceremonial staff he claimed King Philip III of Spain presented to the Pecos Pueblo. King Philip III ruled from 1598 to 1621 and the silver was so tarnished, the staff was black.
Old as he was, he demanded, “Drive me home to Pecos.”
Home? No one lived at the Pecos Pueblo since 1838. Even years before this date, Pecos was no more than a ghost pueblo. Why would a man teetering on the crevice of death want to visit a place filled with ghosts? Why would he want to visit a home he never lived at?
Again, he read her thoughts. He flicked his eyelids open and he smiled slyly at her. “Pueblo is the Spanish word for people. Our family adobe ruins are the only proof of a forgotten people, save what I hold in my heart.”
Yeah. So she heard before. Family and ghosts and ancestors and...she believed the family was cursed though she never spoke of this, except to Steve. She cussed under her breath. She hated the Pecos ruins. She had never been to a more depressing place. It had been years...
“Bring my knapsack. It has my ceremonial pipe.”
She went back into the house and came back out carrying his knapsack.
“There is a burlap sack in my bedroom. Fetch it,” he said.
She gritted her teeth and marched back into the house.
She slammed the front door when she came back out, letting him know that was her last trip to his room. She frowned at the large burlap sack and shook it. There was something big and round in the bag.“Put the sack in the front with you,” he snapped at her, telling her with his tone of voice to mind her own business.
Stubborn old man. So, he refused to ride up front with her. She fitted a pair of fluffy ear muffs on his ears. She wrapped his neck with a muffler and pulled the wool to right below his nose. She shoved a hat on his head. She then wrapped him in a blanket and threw a sleeping bag on top of him and tucked his legs and hips into the bag so the bag wouldn’t fly off him. She zipped the bag up and blinked up at the sky. The bright sun was deceiving. Over to the east, towards Pecos, was a gathering of grey clouds. “What if it rains?” she said.
In answer, he once more banged that damn staff he was so proud of against the side of the truck. She frowned at the King of the Pecos who lay wrapped like a forgotten mummy in her truck. She touched his forehead. Thank goodness his skin wasn’t hot. For just a second she let her hand linger on his forehead. She stroked his withered cheek. “I’ll take you home to Pecos, Great-Grandfather, if this is your wish.”
He blinked his eyes at her. The tip of his nose was wet. Tears? His eyes were squeezed shut and his lower lip trembled. Was he in pain? The old man never complained, unlike her. He nagged at her but never about himself. He rarely asked anything of her, having to do with his needs. Now, he desired to travel to Pecos once more, his final trip he said to visit the home of his ancestors. His eyes had glowed and seemed wild even. There had been an urgency to his voice.
So, she cranked up her truck to drive the stubborn old man from the Jemez Pueblo, the eighty-plus miles to the family ruins. Like the Pecos Pueblo she and the old man seemed cursed. Oh, he lived a long life, but look what he had to show for it. The proud blood of the Pecos would die with her. She and Steve tried to conceive but their first baby she miscarried in her first trimester. The second baby, a little girl, she miscarried in her second trimester. The third, merely watery blood that burst from her womb at two months.
She sat up tall and looked in the rear view mirror. She could see Great-Grandfather spread eagle in the bed of her pickup. Sections of Blue Bird Mesa was unpaved and so the road was rough and she cocked her ear to the back of the pickup for any sounds of groans coming from the old man. She didn’t know whether to speed the truck up towards the paved New Mexico highway 4 or slow the truck down. Prolong his agony or make the pain worse while she sped along the bumps? The silence coming from the back of the pickup and the urgency in the old man’s voice when he spoke of Pecos made her shove her foot down harder on the gas pedal.
She merged onto I-25 and headed north towards Santa Fe. She passed the capital and the truck climbed towards the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. She could make out a bit of snow covering the tops of the pine trees, and she worried about Great-Grandfather lying in the back of the pickup. She only hoped the sides of the bed of the truck and the blanket would keep the cold air from penetrating the old man’s bones. She should have covered his entire face with the blanket but she feared she might smother him. He had a tendency to nap at will and she wasn’t sure the oxygen in his lungs was strong enough to blow his breath from his body, if his face was covered by heavy wool. When she jammed her foot on the brakes, she twisted her head around to the back of the pickup and she thought he died on this journey, his final journey he said. He knew he was dying. He claimed his heart would stop at...what time...this evening? But then, he was a Shaman and the only mystery he had yet to solve was how to die in peace.
“We’re here, Great-Grandfather,” she said and she slammed the door of the pickup and peeked over the side of the truck to see if he survived the journey.
He sat upright and looked around while she unhooked the back of the bed of the pickup. She helped him down and covered him with the blanket. “You took off your earmuffs.”
“Bah. Why would I want to silence my ears?” So she shoved his black, round felt hat further down on his head. He wore this hat for decades but his head had shrunk due to old age, so the brim of his hat reached the tip of his white bushy eyebrows. The only update to the hat had been a new feather in the brim every few years. She bought him a new hat once but he refused the gift because he claimed his old hat was filled with the sweat of his magic. His hat didn’t look so magical now. The back of his hat was now smashed and the feather crushed due to the rough ride. How he managed to hang onto his hat while she sped along I-25, she had no idea.“Don’t forget to leave my mattress in your truck for my coffin, so my bones will have a smooth ride to Pecos after I die,” he said.
“You wish to be buried at Pecos? Why? It’s a ghost pueblo and so far from Jemez.”
“It’s where our veins were opened and our blood is spilled. Our heart beats here still because the Pecos is where we began. Life and death should come full circle.”
“But there’s not even any graves here,” she pointed out to him. She kicked the red dirt and wanted to scream her frustration.
As usual, he simply smiled in that mysterious way of his.
She supported his left arm while they walked. The tarnished royal ceremonial staff of the people supported his right side. The staff was the pride and the joy of a people who were no more, except for the old man and thirtyish woman who walked by his side.
They stood at the ruins of the Pecos Pueblo which consisted of a few adobe walls, and about twenty ceremonial kivas. The kivas were merely holes in the earth big enough to hold a couple dozen people. Ever since she was a small child, Pecosan drilled into her the story of how man was created in Shipapu, the dark lagoon beneath the earth. Eventually, man made his way up to the Fourth Womb of Existence, the red earth of Pecos, where Father Sun and Mother Moon smiled down upon their children for the very first time.
Looking at the holes, no one would believe the spirits of the gods dwell below the kivas. The Pecos Pueblo appeared to have been deserted by not only the gods of the Indian but also the God of the Spanish. The jagged adobe rust-red ruins of the Mission Nuestra Senors de los Angeles de Porcíuncula still dominated Pecos and rose above the pueblo, but what remained of the Spanish Catholic Church were merely ragged pieces of adobe wall yet...yet if she closed her eyes she swore she could hear the ringing of the church bells. She could see ghosts of Franciscan friars clothed in monks’ robes, rosary beads clanking against their knees, hoods bowed, chanting novenas as they entered the ruins of the church. This was no mere church but the first Spanish cathedral in New Mexico. There were once three towers on each side of the cathedral. There were hollow walls so wide, services were held in the thickness. But now...now...only ghosts worshipped at this site and the towers were...well she plopped down on one of the towers and she crossed her knees. She clasped her gloved hands and tongue-in-cheek, she blinked her eyes at Great-Grandfather.“Part of the covento where the padres lived still stands.” Pecosan pointed to a bit of wall. “The padres’ workshops, tanneries, stables, corrals, kitchen, gardens and dining room melted back into the earth from where they came. The padres enslaved and whipped our people to build their mighty mission from the mud of the Pecos.”
He waved his arm in the air and he encompassed the mountains that rose in the distance. “Sangre de Cristo. The blood of Christ. The blood of the Savior runs through the pine trees of these mountains, along with the blood of our people. Pecos blood flowed from broken skin and intermixed with pine cut from the Sangre de Cristo mountains when the men carried the heavy logs on their backs and their shoulders as they made their way back down the mountain. Many died from the back-breaking labor. Sangre de Cristo. The blood of Christ. The people’s blood mixed with the savior’s. The people surely were once the chosen ones. Look at rings of tipi marks that still show upon the earth, tipis that were set up for bartering in this land over centuries of prosperity. Pecos was once the crossroads of the world where plains Indians, other pueblos and even the Spanish came to trade their goods. Four hundred years ago Pecos Pueblo was the biggest town in what is now the United States. The white man brought disease with them that killed many. Raiding Comanches and Apaches slaughtered others. Drought caused a famine and many starved to death. Trade flourished here in the early centuries, but Hispanic towns popped up like ant hills and no one needed to trade at Pecos any more.”
He looked off to the distance, he thrust out his chin and he said, “By 1838, there were only thirty Pecos left and they abandoned the pueblo else all would have died and the people would be no more. You and I would not be standing here, Granddaughter. My great-grandfather, who was fourteen years old at the time set off on foot for the Jemez Pueblo, along with his friends, Dragon-Fly and Snow-Eagle-Down. Only thirteen survived the harsh journey. It was at this time that my great-grandfather received this ceremonial staff from his father who lay dying on the trail to Jemez, because his ribs stuck out of his chest from hunger. The curse of death did not lift from the people when they arrived at Jemez. My great-grandfather lived to watch his friends and his family dwindle to just me, as I have witnessed my family tree wilt to just you. Granddaughter, you are but a mere splinter from the pine trees of Pecos. I hoped that from a splinter a tree would grow with many branches but perhaps it is not to be. I fear the Pecos will die with you but don’t fret because it’s not your fault you have the curse of death in your womb.”
She held a hand below her stomach. “What curse?”
It was then he revealed to her the Pecos curse, which began with a promise made by the Inca ruler, Montezuma, or Moctezuma as the New Mexico Pueblo Indians called him. Moctezuma was really a great witch born in New Mexico at what is now the San Juan Pueblo. Moctezuma traveled to the Pecos Pueblo where he changed his name to Montezuma and ruled. Under Montezuma, Pecos flourished so the great leader decided to form other New Mexico pueblos. But before he left Pecos, Montezuma lit a fire at the altar of the sun to be tended by twelve virgins, so that Pecos would prosper until his return. The Pecos people promised Montezuma they would keep the fire lit at the altar of the sun and wait for his return. Montezuma then turned into an eagle and traveled south, founding more pueblos in New Mexico and ultimately the great Mexico City.
But Montezuma would never return because the virgins slept one night and the fire died out. From this day, Pecos burned less brightly and weakened more with each passing year, until one day the burning flame that was once Pecos was snuffed out and only ashes remained. It was then that the thirty remaining Indians, their eyes dull, their bodies cold, their skin graying like the ashes of the pueblo, abandoned Pecos. All they left behind were the ghosts of Pecos.
He finished his speech and the wind blew a silence across the ruins that sounded like crying. Or was it the old man who stood beside her, who communed with the wind and the red earth of Pecos so that his emotions swirled with the ruins of the pueblo? Great-Grandfather appeared to be made of the earth of Pecos, his skin the same reddish-brown in color.
He pounded the earth with the tarnished staff and he roared, “You are wrong. I will have company when I lie beneath the earth at Pecos. There are graves here buried deep below the earth. Six centuries of death and of living. Joy and sorrows have been sifted into the ashes. Strong winds have blown the dust of New Mexico across the Pecos and intermixed other pueblos with ours but deep beneath this layer of dirt lies our family. Ever since you were a little girl you complained that your friends had cousins, and aunts and uncles, and brothers and sisters, and that you had no one but me. Here is your family, in the red earth of Pecos.”
He scooped a handful of earth. He opened her hand and spilled the dirt into her palm. He closed her fist and he said, “Your family lived on this red earth since the year 1300. They were born here. They married here. They made love here. They died here. You say this is a ghost pueblo and you’re right. The Pecos Pueblo has been silent since some of the others were stolen from their graves and taken far away from the land that nourished them. Tears flow from the skies for the thousands who were ripped from the earth of Pecos. Can you not hear the wind sigh with longing? Can you not feel the earth shudder like a body racked with tears? Can you not see how moist the earth is by the tears of those left behind who mourn the stolen ones?”
Hollow-Woman swallowed and she looked around. She saw no ghosts. She heard nothing. She felt nothing. “What others?” she said.
“The white men returned to Pecos to find as you say, a ghost pueblo. Still, their greed was such that they dug beneath the earth to steal the pottery and baskets of Pecos. They were not content with only straw and clay. No. They searched for ivory but found only the bones of Pecos. They lifted the people from their graves and desecrated the land. The white man is not content with having chased us to the ends of the earth in life. They must come after us in death. Many skeletons were unearthed and taken from the land. The family circle is broken. My great-grandparents, my grandparents and my parents were once buried here, along with two brothers and a little sister. I often have nightmares they are no longer buried here at Pecos but were unearthed with the others and their bones scattered. You must find the bones so the people can be one again. If we must die out, then let us all be together.”
He wanted her to search for a bunch of old bones? How? Where? She didn’t know any of these people. They were dead and buried before she was born, most before he was born. And this family curse he spoke of? Even her mother died giving birth to her and her father killed himself days later, a selfish act she never forgave him for because it seemed her father’s deep pain transferred to her, just as her mother’s curse of death was pressed into her own womb. Her father abandoned her in the care of her great-grandfather, a powerful imposing Shaman who never taught her how to be kind and gentle.
The old man sighed deeply. “I see I have not touched you, Granddaughter. By bringing you here, I hoped to make you understand but how can you? I raised you since you were two weeks old and I failed to teach you about family. You were born with such a rebellious spirit and I have never been a patient man. I tried in vain to get you to understand the bond of one’s blood.”
He grabbed her hand and surprised her with his strength but then he always was an impressive force of nature, even now old and feeble as he was, his eyes still glowed with power. “Perhaps if you find the bones (Did she imagine a threat in his voice?) your curse of barrenness will be lifted and the Pecos will flourish once more. I have used all my powers, but could not help you and Steve conceive a healthy child. With my death, you are the last of the Pecos. A heavy burden falls upon your shoulders. Promise me...”
She knew she disappointed him again. She could see it in his eyes. How many times did she let him down? How many more wrinkles did she put on his face? She always remembered him as old. But her earliest memory of him was with grey hair. When did his hair turn white? Did his head whiten from shock because of her?
And now she couldn’t promise to look for some old bones that meant nothing to her. What was she supposed to do? Just quit her job and go looking for these skeletons he claimed were stolen from Pecos? His mother? His father? His grandparents? Others? He knew she wasn’t well. Didn’t he know he sent chills up and down her spine when he spoke about the Pecos curse? He filled her childhood with horror when he brought her as a child to this godforsaken pueblo and he spoke of death and bones, and churches being torched, and beheadings and blood spilling, and ghosts and witches, and poisonings. She always screamed in fear whenever he wanted to go to Pecos and finally she refused to go with him. Later, after she became an adult she made the trip with him only once more. She sat in his truck and refused to get out. If he was so concerned about her being the last of their people, then she should look to her own health instead of trying to find some old Pecos bones no one cared about except for him.
“How do I make you understand?” he said and he surprised her when he let the blanket drop from his frail shoulders.
Her own teeth chattered from the cold. “Great-Grandfather, you’re going to freeze to death.”
She bent to pick up the blanket and he barked at her, “Leave it.”
He reached behind his back to the large burlap sack and pulled out the biggest dream catcher she had ever seen. Her first thought was this dream catcher is made for big dreams.
He said, “As you know, the dream catcher sifts dreams and visions. A normal dream catcher is meant to catch nightmares in the web so bad dreams don’t get through during sleep, and the first rays of morning melt the nightmares from the dream catcher. The small hole in the center of a normal dream catcher allows good dreams to pass through and make sleep pleasant. The webbing is for strength and the feathers are whisperings of the spirit.”
“I’ve made this dream catcher for you, Granddaughter.”
And she could see Great-Grandfather bending a branch he placed a spell on so the wood would form a circle and he tied the ends together with a strap of leather. At one end of the circle he had placed coyote fur and at the other end rabbit fur. He had attached a buffalo tooth to each end. He then spun a circular net that resembled a spider’s web, him like a tarantula, his humped back rising up from his wrinkled neck and working his arthritic fingers like each hand ended in twenty digits with sharp nail-like claws. He had attached this net to the center of the circular branch and placed an arrow head and balls of silver and copper in the net.
She could see him walking down the dusty trail of Blue Bird Mesa carrying a white owl from his mouth with an eagle balanced on his shoulder. He plucked some feathers from the owl and eagle. Fom the circular branch of the dream catcher he hung the eagle and owl feathers. He attached a leather strip to the dream catcher so she might hang it above her bed. The dream catcher was his death gift to her, his great-granddaughter whom he single-handedly raised from an infant.
“I now make this dream catcher something you have never seen before,” he said.
He pulled his ceremonial pipe from his knapsack. The pipe was about a foot long and decorated with glass beads. Striped wool bands covered half the pipe. Silk ribbons of various colors adorned the pipe, intermixed with horsehair. He shoved the pipe between his lips, and she flipped open her cigarette lighter. She returned his dirty look. Yeah. Yeah. She knew. How many times did he yell at her to quit smoking given her ill health, but she needed the calm of a cigarette to help alleviate the stress of her illness. For each puff she took of a cigarette, a ring of smoke may circle her neck but it was the Pecos curse that threatened to hang her.
She brought the tip of her cigarette lighter to his pipe. He puffed until smoke rose from the bowel of the pipe. “When a vision came to me of my death,” he said in between puffs of his pipe, “I began to make this death gift for you. I finished the dream catcher this morning. I knew my time had come.” He lifted the dream catcher in the air and waved the net around. He blew sacred smoke through the net. He sang in their native tongue, Towa. He raised his arms into the air and he spoke to the spirits. “With this dream catcher I capture the history of my people,” he said in a thundering voice. “You have been sleeping and waiting for the stolen ones to join you once again. Now I need you to help my great-granddaughter find her family. She is lost.” He closed his eyes and he hummed.
She blinked her eyes at a mist of cold air that steamed from the ground. Or could the mist be the spirits of the Pecos who rose up from their graves and entered the net of the dream catcher? The feathers of the dream catcher blew lightly and she could hear whisperings in the owl and the eagle feathers...then...the net pushed out like a fist was shoved at its center. The net retracted with a whoosh and the dream catcher was as before, silent and still.
“Here is your family, my final gift to you.” He handed her the dream catcher. She reached out a shaky hand, and she held onto one end. He didn’t let go so they tugged at the dream catcher between them. “Promise me you will bring the bones home to Pecos,” he demanded. “I will not rest until you find the bones, Granddaughter.”He looked wild and his nose reddened with cold. Mainly to calm him down so they could leave this cursed land that chilled her blood, she said, “I promise.”
”Good,” he said, and he let go of the dream catcher, and she stumbled.
“This is a special dream catcher,” he said. “If the net spins clockwise, nightmares are trapped and only good dreams get through. If the net spins counter, then nightmares get through.”
She started to protest.
“Silence,” he said. “You must learn not only the happiness of Pecos but the sadness and terror of your people. If you love me, then you will find the bones.”
If she loved him? She felt trapped by the web in her hand. The old man was a Shaman and so what he said must be true. If the dream catcher spun counter clockwise, she would have nightmares. Did he hate her so much that he would give her such a parting gift? She couldn’t keep the resentment from her voice. “If the bones mean so much to you, why didn’t you find the bones, Great-Grandfather?”
“I could never make my way in the white man’s world.”
“But your powers...surely...and how do you know for certain...”
“I know,” he said and he thumped his heart with his fist. “The people were dug up from the rich earth of the Pecos that nurtured them. I was only thirteen winters old when this happened. I stood on that ridge over there.” He blinked his eyes and pointed.
She thought, surely his tears will freeze.
“I hid behind a tree and watched.” He pointed with a shaky finger to a tree that appeared to wilt compared to other trees that stood tall. “Skeletons lifted from their graves, their skulls so dry and brittle they could not cry out. Their bones were tossed into trucks. Men. Women. Children.” He closed his eyes and his breathing was labored. “My heart wrenched when I heard the crunching, and I knew some of the skeletons broke. I cried when the piles of bones in the trucks grew higher and I wondered if I knew any of the bones. My father? My grandfather? My mother? My brothers and sister? When the trucks left Pecos, I ran behind the wheels for miles until I collapsed, so weak I lay there on the ground for hours with my ear to the dirt and felt the rumbling of the earth.”
“When the rumbling stopped, I knew the bones were far away from Pecos. I still cry for the missing ones. If I, who was born in 1902, am so out of place in the white man’s world, then surely the bones of the Pecos, centuries old, are even more lost. The people cannot hear me when I call for them. You’re a sly girl. Find a way to bring the missing bones home. Perhaps this will help.” He opened his burlap sack once more and he handed her what looked like an old leather case. She peeked inside the case and saw it was filled with papers.
“I snuck down from my hiding place and took these papers that belonged to the grave robber. I cannot read but perhaps the thief left a clue to help you recover the bones.”
“Why did you never speak of any of this?”
“I remained silent all these years because I feared they would come for me, too, but now I am at the end of my life. If I told you the story before this, you would not have listened. Perhaps with my death you will want to learn more about your people.”
“Don’t speak as if you’re already dead.” She rubbed her arms because she suddenly felt the chill of early winter. “This haunted place gives me the creeps. I can feel the ghosts stirring and it makes me afraid.”
“Don’t say that,” he said and shook with anger. “Never say the ghosts of Pecos frighten you. Will you then be terrified if I were to visit you after death?”
How could she tell him he terrified her in life? He never struck her but he had such a temper. She remembered how he screamed at her when she first came across his pit of rat-tle snakes. How he shook her until her teeth rattled and he ordered her to never come there again. He barked at her to stay away from his bee hives. Oh, when she was older she realized then he only worried after her welfare but did he have to be so mean? Great-Grandfather was such a powerful presence. She was a shadow beside such a force of nature and spirit and will. She was a disappointment to him because of her frailty. If only he would have told her earlier about the Pecos curse and explained it wasn’t her fault she was born weak and not strong. It wasn’t her fault the babies she carried slipped from her womb too young to live. Frail like herself. Miserable like herself. Cursed by this precious dirt he loved so much. How ironic the red earth of Pecos appeared so healthy and able to nurture life while she was so pale and dying. It seemed as if the blood of the people flowed in the earth of Pecos, turning the dirt a rich red in color, and in her own veins only yellow sickness circulated. Well, she wouldn’t make any effort for some old bones and if the old man’s ghost should haunt her, then she would refuse to look at him. Pecos haunted him all his life. She would not let this place of ruin wreck what little grasp of happiness she had with Steve by talk of curses and bones and death.“No,” she lied, “I wouldn’t be terrified if you visit me after death. You’re my great-grandfather. Why would I be scared?”
She threw the dream catcher he made for her in the back of the pickup. She yanked open the front door of the truck. She pushed the old man into the front passenger seat. She threw the blanket at him and slammed the door of the truck. She forced the key into the ignition of her truck and floored the gas pedal. The engine roared to life. The red earth of her ancestors blew around the spinning tires of her truck, and she got the hell out of Pecos as fast as she could.
Hollow-Woman cranked up the radio so she wouldn’t have to hear any more lectures about family ties, nor bones, nor ghosts, nor death. She rolled down the window and breathed the fresh air of life, while at the same time she kept the heater blowing on high for the old troublemaker whose chin rolled around his chest. He napped all the way back to Jemez. Spittle dribbled down his chin. He didn’t look so powerful when he slept nor so scary, so she pulled the blanket across his chest. She made sure he was covered up to his bottom lip. His hat was still shoved low on his forehead so all that showed was his toothless mouth, stubby eyelashes, and crooked nose.When she brought the truck to a screeching halt, the sun was just beginning to set. “We’re home, Great-Grandfather,” she said in a weary voice. She reached out a hand and she poked his arm to awaken him. The spittle on his chin was frozen. He was already beginning to stiffen.
When did he die so silently beside her and so alone?
Hollow-Woman wrapped her arms around his corpse and hugged him tightly. She swore her tears would never stop flowing. She didn’t know where he died. Were they still at Pecos then? On I-25? Near Santa Fe? Or on Blue Bird Mesa? She could never say, Great-Grandfather died at Pecos. Or Great-Grandfather died near Santa Fe. Or Great-Grandfather died near Jemez. She would never know. She only knew he died in her truck, in her black pickup he claimed would made a good coffin for his bones.
She rubbed her damp cheek against his soft white braids and unbearable pain slammed against her chest because only now did she realize how much she really loved the old man, who had been the only father and mother she ever knew. She never told him she loved him, not for such a long time, not ever since he terrified her when she stood too close to his snake pit.
Hollow-Woman glanced at her watch. 6:45. He said he would die...at what time? She could never backtrack and discover where exactly she was when he left her.
And it was when he was nailed shut in his coffin built from the pine trees of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, as she combed his white head and neatly braided his hair, that she knew the only way she could ever prove her love for him now was to keep her promise.
***
Hollow-Woman slammed the door of her apartment in Boston and rested the back of her head against the door. She stared at the mirror across from her. She looked pale as a ghost.
She kicked off her shoes, and they bounced across the wooden floor. The furniture was shabby and the sofa still had the imprint of the last resident. No photos were in the living room, no sign anyone lived here, nor did she bring any photos with her. The apartment looked as it should be. Even the home she shared with Steve had no family photos but still it was home. It was the old man’s fault she was stuck here in Boston all alone like a fish out of the Pecos River with only public transportation. She sold her truck but she still had her extra set of keys, along with the key to her house in Jemez. The day she married, Great-Grandfather gave her a key chain with a silver and turquoise Kokopelli, the hunchbacked flute player called the Casanova of the Cliff Dwellers. The hump on his back was filled with male seed. Kokopelli was the God of Fertility and visited the pueblos, playing his flute. In warm spring, evening stars would dance and the music of Kokopelli would fill the air. Come morning, the crops would grow and the women could feel the stirring of new life within their wombs, some women anyway.
Hollow-Woman held her head in her hands and she rocked back and forth on the sofa. She didn’t belong in this big eastern seaboard city. Because of her failing health she didn’t have time to save up the money, nor was she rich enough to borrow the money. She wasn’t smart enough to quality for student financial aid, nor did she know how much further her journey to find the bones might take her. The bones were shipped to Harvard University some ninety years ago. Maybe Pecosan was right. Perhaps the missing Pecos bones were scattered to the four corners of the world by now.
She refused to ask the Jemez Pueblo for the money to search for the bones, even though an act of Congress in 1936 made the Jemez Pueblo the representative of the extinct Pecos Pueblo. The world had all but forgotten about her great-grandfather who kept his ancestry a secret in fear perhaps, that they would come after him, too. The Pueblo was a male-dominated society. The leaders would never just give her the money to find the bones, nor would they have given her permission to search for the Pecos bones on her own. The leaders would have sent a man to find the bones...but the promise was hers. His dying wish was for her to bring the bones home. The Pecos were after all...My family, but no, the thought of some ancient bones did not stir any feelings within her heart. Her family was the old man buried beneath a kiva at Pecos. What did she care for any bones but his?
She hung the huge dream catcher above the bed. Hollow-Woman tossed the rosary the monk-priest gave her onto the ceremonial staff. “Will you be my friend?” she asked the man on the cross who dangled back and forth. But Hollow-Woman said the words half-heartedly, yet sort of giggled when she said them because she had no real faith. She did believe though in the magic of Pecosan and in the Pecos curse. Her teeth chattered and goosebumps broke out on her body. The dream catcher spun above the bed. What was that noise? Voices?
The dream catcher still spun around clockwise. She didn’t disturb the dream catcher in any way, except perhaps by her presence. Nor was there central heating because her apartment was old and the furnace located on the floor in the hallway, so the dream catcher was not in the way of any draught or fans. Yet...there it was still. Whisperings.
She cocked her ear to the dream catcher. The feathers of a dream catcher are the whisperings of the spirit. The magic of the old man. She could hear the restless ghosts of Pecos. She was certain now the bones that were shipped to Harvard were here somewhere near this school. At least some of the missing bones were here.
The dream catcher changed directions and spun counter-clockwise and the whisperings turned to screams. This dream catcher was made not to spin dreams of sugar clouds and peppermints but to spin darkness and fill her dreams with nightmares. “Will you then be terrified if I were to visit you after death?” he asked her at the end of his journey in this life.
Was it her imagination or did a mist cover her bed as the dream catcher spun around? Or did she bring the ghosts of the Pecos with her, the ones not stolen from their graves?
These papers held the clues that might help her find the missing bones. She set the leather case filled with papers on the table next to the bed. She would read the papers again when she couldn’t sleep, if she would ever sleep again with that thing hanging above her bed. She could have stuffed the dream catcher in the closet, but Great-Grandfather went to all the trouble to make his parting gift. There was one more ghost of Pecos, a living ghost. Herself. Ever since Great-Grandfather’s death she felt this urgency that if she understood the Pecos more, then she would understand the old man more, and perhaps find peace herself.
She quietly closed the door behind her. She tiptoed around her apartment. Well at least she wasn’t alone. There is some comfort to this. Isn’t there?
