The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel Read online

  Well, the wave of the future had carried him clear down here, to the Sonoran desert. Sterling tried to tell himself it wasn’t the end of the world. Look at Geronimo, who got tossed clear to Oklahoma.

  The twilight was luminous pearl-gray. Sterling sat down on the five-gallon gas can by the corner of the toolshed. Something about ending up down here at this place was causing him to think more. Something really had happened to the world. It wasn’t just something his funny, wonderful, old aunts had made up. It wasn’t just the scarcity of eligible brides or dependable women. People now weren’t the same. What had become of that world which had faded a little more each time one of his dear little aunts had passed? Sterling dabbed at the tears with his shirttail. They ran down the tip of his nose and caused an itch.

  The short time he had been in Tucson, Sterling had begun to realize that people he had been used to calling “Mexicans” were really remnants of different kinds of Indians. But what had remained of what was Indian was in appearance only—the skin and the hair and the eyes. The cheekbones and nose like eagles and hawks. They had lost contact with their tribes and their ancestors’ worlds.

  Inside, he piled up pillows and pulled his reading lamp closer to the bed. He needed to get his mind off such thoughts—Indians flung across the world forever separated from their tribes and from their ancestral lands—that kind of thing had been happening to human beings since the beginning of time. African tribes had been sold into slavery all over the earth.

  He needed to get his mind off this subject. All the magazine articles he had ever read on the subject of depression had urged this. So he rummaged under the bed for some magazines that he had found when he first moved into the room. The good thing was they were full of pictures. The not-so-good thing was the words were all Spanish. But he only needed something to look at until he fell asleep. The pictures were grainy and blurry black-and-white, and on some pages the smear of the ink on the newsprint gave them the appearance of cartoons or drawings. He could make out the date and the place; 1957, Culiacán, Sinaloa. Sterling could not make out who was who or why, but a beetle-back, gray ’49 Plymouth was skidding around a corner on two wheels in pursuit of a black ’51 Ford coupe sideswiping parked cars all along a narrow street. On other pages there were victims lying where they had fallen, but the blood looked more like motor oil or tar spreading under the corpses. Sterling fell asleep wondering if Mexico had produced any criminals as outstanding as John Dillinger or Pretty Boy Floyd. His knowledge of Mexican history was sketchy, but Sterling did not think they had had anyone like Geronimo since Montezuma. And then it got very confusing because it seemed as if the Mexicans were always having revolutions, and he knew that although the winning side usually executed and jailed the losers for being “criminals,” both Police Gazette and True Detective magazines disqualified crimes committed during wars and revolutions.

  HOLLYWOOD MOVIE CREW

  IN HIS DREAM Sterling was running after the big white Chevy Blazer, yelling for them to stop. And that was when the Mexican gangster magazines toppled to the floor and Sterling woke up with light bugs all over his pillow. He shook the collection of moths and flying ants and tiny hard-shelled insects onto the floor and snapped off the reading lamp. His heart was still pounding. He felt around on the floor by the bed and found the 7-Up. He didn’t care if it was lukewarm. He sat up, sipping 7-Up in the dark. He wished the Hollywood producer and his snotty cinematographer had gotten their heads blown off by the gate guards at the mine. Sterling’s sheets were soaked with sweat. At least the nightmare had truth in it: the entire incident was the fault of the dumb shits from Hollywood. Stupid assholes! He had learned a number of new cuss words during the weeks he had been around them. What horrible white people! Some of the worst white people on earth was what Sterling had concluded.

  It had been a setup, from the start. Even if he had managed to get old Aunt Marie to talk about the last time the tribe allowed a Hollywood movie company to film on tribal land, he would probably not have been saved. Because all the officers from all the villages had conferred with the tribal councilmen, and they had decided Sterling must do it. The whole Tribal Council had voted to appoint Sterling Laguna Pueblo film commissioner, and he could not say no. Sterling had tried in the most gracious way to decline the honor but no one on the Tribal Council seemed to want the position of tribal film commissioner. That should have been the tip-off, his warning that he had been set up.

  Four hundred dollars a month. It hardly seemed worth it now because he was paid almost that much each week in Tucson. All he had to do was skim dead lizards off the surface of the swimming pool and hose dog shit off the kennel runways. For four hundred dollars a month, Sterling’s job as a film commissioner had been to keep the Hollywood film crew away from sacred places and from stepping on sacred land. The first week had not been difficult because all the filming was done on sets built down by the river. But Sterling was only one man, far outnumbered by the Hollywood film crew. The second week Sterling had not been able to maintain control. Although Sterling had explained and explained which areas were “off-limits” and why, the movie crew people seemed only to understand violence and brute force. Reports came that prayer sticks left for the spirits at sacred shrines had disappeared. The third week an assistant director attempted to snap photographs inside the kiva, three actresses sunbathed at the sacred water hole, and the script supervisor squeezed a Volkswagen convertible through the northwest entrance to the main plaza—all on the same afternoon.

  Sterling had seen the production manager throw the best boy into the front seat of the big Winnebago one morning when the crew was running late. His head had left a little halo of crackled-glass stars on the windshield. Everything was rented, so no one cared. As far as the movie people were concerned, the reservation was rented too. When the prayer sticks had been recovered, the nude sunbathers driven from the water hole, and the Volkswagen convertible removed from the plaza, Sterling told the producer Snell he was going to the tribal headquarters to resign. Snell had been on the phone arguing and pleading with his executive producers long distance, but when Sterling said this, Snell had put the receiver down dramatically and said, “Sterling! You can’t do this to me!” “I have to live around here after you’re gone” was all Sterling had said. But later, as he looked back, Sterling shook his head bitterly. Because even as he had been resigning, and trying to explain to the tribal governor the impossibility of controlling a Hollywood film crew, it was already too late. Out the windows of the governor’s office they could see the exit ramp from the highway, and the dirt road to the river where the movie company had pitched their tents. A steady stream of New Mexico State Police cars, official government cars, were skidding and careening toward the film crew’s headquarters with sirens and lights flashing.

  But worse than the raid by state and federal drug-enforcement agencies, and the incident that had actually determined Sterling’s fate, had been the attempt by the cinematographer to film the giant stone snake. The governor, the tribal officers, and the tribal judge had all criticized Sterling, although he was actually an elder to many of them. “Living as long as you did in California,” one of the younger men asked, “how come you didn’t catch on to all the drugs those movie people had?” That had been the moment when Sterling had come the closest to tears. Standing in front of the tribal governor and the Council and the tribal judge. “I don’t know why you are blaming me,” Sterling began. “You act like I should have known everything just because I lived off the reservation. But I was working for the railroad. I was living in towns like Winslow and Barstow, not Hollywood. How was I supposed to know why they all had runny noses?”

  The older men who served on the Tribal Council admonished the young governor and his colleagues to go easy. Some of them had worked for the railroad and had been acquainted with Sterling then. The older men agreed no one, not even Sterling, could have been expected to know that conspirators in Hollywood had been sending vials of cocaine with the reels o
f “dailies.”

  Sterling knew the answer he had given the Tribal Council was feeble, but by that time it had been six-thirty at night, and Aunt Marie was probably worrying and angry because dinner was getting overcooked. Sterling felt defeated and weak. He said, “I didn’t have any kind of experience with that sort of thing. I thought they were all just friendly with one another.” One of the elder councilmen had then remarked that someone had better explain to him why Sterling was ever appointed film commissioner in the first place. A terrible silence fell over the Council Chamber. Then another old councilman saved them from that question by raising the fatal issue of the giant stone snake.

  THE WATER BED

  AFTER THE GIANT STONE SNAKE had been discovered, medicine people from many tribes had hurried to the site. There had been a great deal of controversy over the interpretation of the stone snake. The concern of the Council and the elected tribal officials had been focused on the theft of the stone idols eighty years before. What was to prevent such a loss of the giant stone snake now that the Hollywood people knew where to find it—now that the whites had photographed it? Sterling looked down at the feet he knew were his, but which did not feel connected to him at that moment. He didn’t have an answer, and one after the other, all the old-timers recounted the story of the loss of the stone idols. The Tribal Council building, instead of emptying at dinnertime, got more crowded. The old women were beginning to show up, and one of them launched into the story of how, one night, many years ago, jealous neighbors had smashed open the beautiful lake that gave Laguna its name. The giant water snake that had always lived in the lake and that had loved and cared for the Laguna people as its children could not be found after the jealous ones had drained the lake. Mention of the lake, or stone idols or the painting of St. Joseph, always brought out a great deal of anger, and Sterling wanted to say they should not blame him or get upset with him over deeds others had done. But just then someone had started talking about the wrongful detention of the oil portrait of St. Joseph, and the angry feelings buzzed around Sterling like wasps.

  Even then, Sterling had realized he might have escaped with only severe reprimands, years of community service and a heavy fine, if it had not been for Edith Kaye. She rose up from the one and a half chairs she occupied in the visitor section of the Council Chamber. Edith Kaye was a widow three times. The joke that was told in every village was how Edith Kaye had killed those husbands through overexertion as they attempted to satisfy Edith’s sexual appetites. Edith Kaye had had her eye on Sterling when he first returned to Laguna to enjoy his retirement. She had had her own ideas about exactly how he should enjoy retirement. But Sterling had made a serious error with Edith Kaye, and as Aunt Marie had warned him, again too late to do any good, Edith Kaye was one of those women you did not want to cross.

  Sterling was still horrified to think what a narrow escape he had had from Edith Kaye’s king-size water bed. She had gotten very ugly when Sterling tried to explain that he didn’t know very much about water beds. Actually the matter was allowing her to get on top of him. But Edith Kaye had flown into a fury because he was hesitant about her riding him.

  “The water bed,” Edith Kaye had yelled at him, “the water bed, you stupid man! This water bed sinks down! It isn’t like a hard mattress! It sinks down! I won’t hurt you!” But the way she had been yelling and the hatred in her face had terrified Sterling. When he tried to crawl away from her and escape off the other side of the bed, he remembered reading an account of combat soldiers who described how endless ten or twelve feet were. He floundered and sank like a horse in quicksand. The water bed really did sink down, and Sterling could never quite reach bottom to brace a hand or leg to get out. In the end, all that had saved him was Edith Kaye’s fury and her feverish maneuvers to reach him. Great waves began tossing Sterling until suddenly he found himself free, lying on the floor. He had carefully avoided all possible encounters with Edith Kaye since that night. In fact, one of his motives for taking the film commissioner position had been so he would have some excuse if she insisted he come over to the house for dinner again.

  So Edith Kaye had ranted and raved, waving both hands, pointing out to the Council it was sacrilege to allow outsiders to make an image of the snake on film. Why, this sacrilege might even be worse than eighty years ago when the stone idols were stolen. Because once outsiders saw the great stone snake, they would want to steal it or destroy it. Sterling was consoled a little by the discomfort the others in the Council Chamber displayed as Edith Kaye raged on. He saw he was not the only one who feared saying no to her. Finally, after she had for the fourth time stated her belief that Sterling had conspired to steal the giant stone snake, Edith Kaye sat down panting.

  OLD AUNT MARIE

  STERLING HAD limped home in the dark. He had always developed a mysterious limp whenever he got too tired. Aunt Marie had gone to bed and turned off her light to express her displeasure with him. But the warming oven in the old wood stove was full of warm plates of food wrapped in clean cotton dish towels. He rummaged around in the drawer for a fork and spoon. Aunt Marie had called from her bed “Is that you?” and he had managed a miserable “Yes, Auntie.” He had meant to sound weak and sad, although he realized she was very old now and would not last much longer. He was happy and relieved when she came slowly into the kitchen, carrying her glasses in one hand, blinking and rubbing her eyes with the other. She was in her long flannel nightgown and her long white hair was in a single loose braid down her back. As long as he lived, he would remember how much he had loved her at that moment and how much he was going to miss her when she was gone. He wanted to throw his arms around her and have her hug him close as she had when he had been a child and she had whispered “Ahh moot” over and over again softly. But he was fifty-nine years old and he could tell she was upset about something.

  “Sterling!” Aunt Marie began. “Everyone is saying that you were using drugs with those Hollywood people!” Sterling had been buttering a piece of bread. He groaned. He had forgotten that the worst that would be said about him would not be said in the Tribal Council Chamber. The worst charges traveled in wildfire gossip propelled from village to village by imaginations so uncontrolled and so vivid that ordinary and innocent actions were transformed into high intrigue. Sterling himself had never cared much about television because he had grown up with village gossip for entertainment. Sterling had never seen anything on television to match Laguna gossip for scandal and graphic details. And as for speed, Sterling was one who could never understand the need for telephones in Laguna houses unless it was for long-distance calls.

  “Auntie, I never used drugs. I never even saw any of the drugs. All I ever did was ride around and tell them where they could or could not make their film.” Aunt Marie continued. She said the story was going around that he had been involved in the love triangle involving the young man who claimed he was an Indian. The story alleged Sterling had known the young man previously in California. “California! California! Why does everybody on this reservation get so worked up against California?”

  If only Sterling had not mentioned the giant stone snake to Snell. Sterling hung his head. Aunt Marie poured two cups of tea and set one down in front of him. She stirred sugar in hers and said, “They say you were going to help the movie people steal the stone snake so you and the movie people could buy more drugs with the money.” Sterling didn’t speak. He just sat there shaking his head, tracing little patterns with his finger on the oilcloth table cover. Sterling had only mentioned the stone snake because it was relatively new to him too; it had been discovered only a few months before Sterling had retired and returned home. On the other hand, as Sterling had tried to argue earlier before the governor and Tribal Council, there had been a number of young Laguna people employed by the film company. One of them might even have told the cinematographer about the stone snake and where to find it. The answer, of course, had been that regardless of how they had learned of the sacred shrine to the snake, Ster
ling had been appointed tribal film commissioner to prevent just this sort of incident from occurring.