The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel Page 3

  The stone figures were stolen from a kiva altar by “a person or persons unknown” according to the official report. A ring of anthropologists had been crawling around the Pueblos all winter offering to trade for or buy outright ancient objects and figures. The harvests of the two preceding years had been meager, and the anthropologists offered cornmeal. The anthropologists had learned to work with Christian converts or the village drunk.

  The people always remembered the small buckskin bundles with anguish because the “little grandparents” were gone from them forever. Medicine people at all the Pueblos, and the Navajos and Apaches too, were contacted. All those with the ability to gaze into still water or flame to locate lost objects or persons, all those able to gaze into blurry opals to identify enemies sending sorcery, began a search. The gazers had all agreed the stone figures were too far away to be seen clearly. Far, far to the east.

  Years passed. The First World War broke out. The elder priests had all died without ever again seeing their “little grandparents.” Fewer and fewer remained who had actually seen the “little grandparents” unwrapped on the kiva altar, smooth stones in the swollen shape of female and of male.

  Then a message came from the Pueblos up north. Go to Santa Fe, in a museum there. A small museum outside town. The spring had been wet and cold and only increased the suffering caused by meager harvests. The federal Indian agents didn’t have enough emergency corn rations to go around, and reports came from Navajo country of people dying, starving, freezing. In Santa Fe the state legislature was two years old, and did not concern itself with Indians. Indians had no vote in state elections. Indians were Washington’s problem. A muddy wagonload of Indians did not attract much attention. The Laguna delegation had traveled to Santa Fe on a number of occasions before to testify in boundary disputes with the state for land wrongfully taken from the Laguna people. The delegation’s interpreter knew his way around. A county clerk had told them how to find the museum.

  The snow had melted off the red dirt of the piñon-covered hills except for the northern exposures. It was early afternoon but the sun was already weak as it slipped into the gray overcast above the southwestern horizon. An icy breeze came off the high mountain snowfields above Santa Fe.

  At the museum, the interpreter for the Laguna delegation left the others waiting outside in the wagon. The old cacique was shivering. They built a small piñon fire and put on a pot of coffee. Museum employees watched out windows uneasily.

  “Yes, there were two lithic pieces of that description,” the assistant curator told the interpreter. “A recent acquisition from a private collection in Washington, D.C.” The interpreter excused himself and stepped outside to wave to the others by the wagon.

  The glass case that held the stone figures was in the center of the museum’s large entry hall. Glass cases lined the walls displaying pottery and baskets so ancient they could only have come from the graves of ancient ancestors. The Laguna delegation later reported seeing sacred kachina masks belonging to the Hopis and the Zunis as well as prayer sticks and sacred bundles, the poor shriveled skin and bones of some ancestor taken from her grave, and one entire painted-wood kiva shrine reported stolen from Cochiti Pueblo years before.

  The delegation walked past the display cases slowly and in silence. But when they reached the glass case in the center of the vast hall, the old cacique began to weep, his whole body quivering from old age and the cold. He seemed to forget the barrier glass forms and tried to reach out to the small stone figures lying dreadfully unwrapped. The old man kept bumping his fingers against the glass case until the assistant curator became alarmed. The Laguna delegation later recounted how the white man had suddenly looked around at all of them as if he were afraid they had come to take back everything that had been stolen. In that instant white man and Indian both caught a glimpse of what was yet to come.

  There was a discussion between the assistant curator and the Laguna delegation’s interpreter, who relayed what the delegation had come to say: these most precious sacred figures had been stolen. The museum of the Laboratory of Anthropology had received and was in the possession of stolen property. The white man’s own laws said this. Not even an innocent buyer got title of ownership to stolen property. The Lagunas could produce witnesses who would testify with a detailed description of the “little grandparents” as the people preferred to call them. For these were not merely carved stones, these were beings formed by the hands of the kachina spirits. The assistant curator stood his ground. The “lithic” objects had been donated to the Laboratory by a distinguished patron whose reputation was beyond reproach. As the head curator was out of the office, the Laguna delegation would have to return next week. When some of the members of the delegation raised their voices, and the interpreter had tried to explain the great distance they had already traveled, the assistant curator became abrupt. He was extremely busy that day. The Indians should contact the Indian Bureau or hire a lawyer.

  The delegation led the old cacique out the door, but the war captain lingered behind, not to whisper to the stone figures as the others in the delegation had, expressing their grief, but to memorize all the other stolen objects he could see around the room.

  Outside, the old cacique acted as if he had drifted into a dream. While the war captain and the tribal governor and the interpreter argued over starting another lawsuit, the old cacique was rocking himself on his heels in a blanket close to the ashes of the campfire. The governor was right. Of course they could not afford another lawsuit.

  All of that had happened seventy years before, but Sterling knew that seventy years was nothing—a mere heartbeat at Laguna. And as soon as the disaster had occurred with those Hollywood movie people, it was as if the stone figures had been stolen only yesterday. Each person who had recounted the old story seventy years later had wept even harder than the old cacique himself had, and the old guy had not even lasted a month after the delegation’s return from Santa Fe.

  There were hundreds of years of blame that needed to be taken by somebody, blame for other similar losses. And then there was the blame for the most recent incidents. Sterling had already gone away to Barstow to work on the railroad when uranium had been discovered near Paguate Village. He had no part in the long discussions and arguments that had raged over the mining. In the end, Laguna Pueblo had no choice anyway. It had been 1949 and the United States needed uranium for the new weaponry, especially in the face of the Cold War. That was the reason given by the federal government as it overruled the concerns and objections the Laguna Pueblo people had expressed. Of course there had been a whole generation of World War II veterans then who had come home looking for jobs, for a means to have some of the comforts they had enjoyed during their years away from the reservation. The old-timers had been dead set against ripping open Mother Earth so near to the holy place of the emergence. But those old ones had been dying off and already were in the minority. So the Tribal Council had gone along with the mine because the government gave them no choice, and the mine gave them jobs. They became the first of the Pueblos to realize wealth from something terrible done to the earth.

  Sterling had not quit his railroad job, as many other Lagunas had, to return to the reservation and to work in the mine. He had no close family there except for Aunt Marie. Once Sterling had got settled into his railroad job, and his life in Barstow, he did not want to go to all the trouble of moving again to work in a uranium mine. So Sterling had avoided being caught up in the raging arguments made by the old-time people who had warned all the people would pay, and pay terribly, for this desecration, this crime against all living things. The few times Sterling had come home to visit at Laguna fiesta time, he had been relieved that his railroad job saved him from being involved in the controversy. Aunt Marie and the old clan mothers in the kitchen used to predict trouble because of the mine. Sterling had listened quietly while they talked on and on. The old ones had stuck to their predictions stubbornly. Whatever was coming would not necessarily
appear right away; it might not arrive for twenty or even a hundred years. Because these old ones paid no attention to white man’s time. But Sterling had never dreamed that one day his own life would be changed forever because of that mine. Those old folks had been right all along. The mine had destroyed Sterling’s life without Sterling’s ever setting foot near the acres of ruined earth at the open pit. If there hadn’t been the mine, the giant stone snake would not have appeared, and the Hollywood movie crew would never have seen it or filmed it.

  The film crew had not understood what it was they were seeing and filming at the foot of mountains of grayish mine tailings. To Sterling’s thinking this meant the secret of the stone snake was intact. But to the thinking of the caciques and war captains, the sacrilege had been the story of the stone figures all over again.

  Sterling had tried to reason with the Tribal Council members. Nothing had actually been stolen or removed. Sterling had tried to argue a good many points. But nothing could be done. The Tribal Council had appointed Sterling to keep the Hollywood people under control. They had trusted him. They had relied on his years of experience living with white people in California, and Sterling had betrayed them.

  Seese looked puzzled and shook her head. They had banished him forever, just for that one incident? Sterling had been coiling up the garden hose by the pool filter. He let out a sigh Seese could hear clear across the pool. “It was the last straw,” Sterling said, looking mournfully into the water. “But the other things hadn’t really been much—.”

  THE RANCH

  STERLING PROMISED to tell Seese the rest of the story another time. There was too much to tell right now, and Sterling had thought about it over and over. The magazine articles all seemed to be in agreement: to cure depression one must let bygones be bygones. Sterling unfolded the magazine clipping on mental hygiene from his billfold. Seese looked, but did not seem to be listening. She was intent on the lower left corner of the page, which wasn’t even the article on depression. Suddenly big tears filled her eyes. She looked at Sterling hopelessly, shaking her head, then shoved the magazine clipping back into his hands. Seese ran toward the house. Sterling felt all his strength drain away through his feet. His legs felt heavy. Maybe he would not be able to stay here after all. Some days he felt as if the atmosphere in the house was electric with tension. After years of working on the railroad section gang, Sterling knew better than to ask questions about the bosses. He fought off a wave of discouragement. He was still new to this place. Here the earth herself was almost a stranger. He could see the desert dip and roll, a jade-green sea to the horizon and jagged, blue mountain peaks like islands across the valley. When he worked in the yard with his rake, he was amazed at the lichens and mosses that sprang up on northern exposures after the least rain shower. The few times Sterling had ventured off paths that led to the corrals or water storage tank he felt he had stepped into a jungle of thorns and spines. Strange and dangerous plants thrived in these rocky hills.

  For a moment the expanse of desert and sky was motionless. No hawks circled. The coyotes were silent. No sound out of the day dogs patrolling the arroyo and foothills or the night dogs in their kennels. Sterling had a great urge to stretch out on the chaise lounge by the pool.

  But it would be no good for the new Indian gardener to be found asleep on the job, even if the old boss woman and her fat, strange nephew had more important business to tend to. Sterling felt safe in his room at the back of the toolshed. The small outbuilding near the corrals was easy to dismiss. But he had a space for his bed, and the other area contained a toilet with a tiny refrigerator and a two-burner stove. The shower was in the corner of the room near the tools and storage shelves. The pipe wrenches and screwdrivers had been lying untouched for a long time. Gallon cans of dried-up paint lined an entire wall of dusty shelves. Sterling was waiting to get nerve enough to ask Ferro or the old boss woman if they might want him to clean out all the no-good stuff in the shed.

  His bed was comfortable, although Sterling thought the mattress was probably softer than the experts and doctors had recommended in their magazine articles. But whenever Sterling sank into the softness, he always slept without waking until morning. Yet that afternoon, by the time he had got to his room, the drowsiness he’d felt by the pool was gone. He could not stop thinking about the poor blond girl who had suddenly got so sad, who seemed even more alone than he was. She had started crying when she saw an article below the report on depression. The article was about a woman who had murdered three of her own babies. The police detective who had finally cracked the case had noticed a silky, white, stuffed toy dog sitting on a shelf in the nursery. Silky, white fibers had been found in the dead babies’ nostrils and mouths, and snagged on their tiny fingernails. The woman had persuaded everyone—husband and relatives, doctors and police—that her babies were victims of crib death. Sterling could understand how such an article might have upset a young woman such as Seese. Sterling himself had not been able to read the article without imagining a poor helpless baby struggling to breathe while its own mother pressed a toy dog over its face. Sterling had never liked dogs of any kind—stuffed or alive. He got chills each time he remembered those poor babies and the ugly glass eyes of the stuffed toy dog.

  Paulie was in charge of the dogs at the ranch. Sterling had only been instructed once by Paulie, but with attack dogs such as these, Sterling vowed never to forget. No one was allowed to feed the dogs but Paulie. Sterling had to wait until Paulie opened the kennels, one by one, for Sterling to sweep and hose down. If for any reason Sterling were ever to find himself in an outer perimeter where the dogs patrolled, he was to stand perfectly still when they spotted him. If a dog attacked, Sterling was to lie facedown, motionless, knees drawn up to his belly, with his hands and arms protecting his neck and head. Paulie had rattled off the instructions in a low, mechanical voice as if he couldn’t care less if Sterling got torn up by dogs or not. Later on, Sterling had asked Seese what she thought about Paulie. Sterling himself thought Paulie would really like to see the dogs get somebody. Seese did not answer, but Sterling could tell by her expression she had noticed Paulie’s contempt for her and Sterling. “Yeah, the dogs. Well, just think about their names,” was all Seese had said. The only names Sterling could remember for the attack dogs that patrolled the property were Cy, Nitro, Mag, and Stray; and there were eight other dogs whose names were too hard to remember. Cyanide, Nitroglycerine, Magnum, and Stray Bullet were the day-shift dogs.

  Sterling had asked Seese if she was afraid, but she had only shrugged her shoulders. “Those collars are electronic,” Seese told him. “They have radio transmitters in them. Lecha says one of them wears a bigger, heavier collar. A TV collar.”

  Seese laughed. “She says they can stop the dogs by remote control. Give them little electric jolts. Give them signals and commands.”

  Later Sterling had watched Paulie adjust and tinker with the dogs’ collars. The only time Sterling had ever seen Paulie’s face relax and soften was when he was handling the dogs. Paulie had whispered to them in a low, baby-talk voice and had stroked them before he commanded them in or out of the kennel. He stroked them while he completed the transfer of a collar from a day-shift dog to a night dog.

  The dogs were Dobermans with ears cropped so short their heads looked more snake than dog. Even so, the dogs came off their shifts with cactus spines in their ears, and between the pads of their paws. Paulie, who usually moved so fast, worked with infinite patience to remove the spines and dress the wounds. Paulie had caught Sterling watching him and had given him a glance so murderous Sterling had stepped in a big pile of dog turds in the kennel he was cleaning. Paulie did not want anyone to see how carefully he probed and examined each dog. As time went by, Sterling began to realize Paulie was perhaps more strange than anyone, more strange even than the two old women or the man, Ferro.

  It had been around Ferro that Sterling had felt the strangeness of Paulie most clearly. Paulie’s pale blue eyes avoided all fac
es, yet never left Ferro’s face even for a moment. Ferro had a habit of abruptly turning away from Paulie’s gaze. Sterling always felt a load lift off his chest when Ferro and Paulie drove away. The day dogs barked and howled at the four-wheel-drive truck as it passed through the succession of electric gates. Even the old boss woman and her sister did not make Sterling as uneasy as the two men did. The old boss woman had not cared about anything except that he was not an Arizona Indian. She would not hire somebody who would have hundreds of relatives nearby, dozens of in-laws who would make the ranch their second home.

  Zeta had looked pleased when Sterling said he was alone in the world since his aunt Marie had died. Ferro had even asked what mail Sterling expected to receive. Ferro’s expression was indifferent as Sterling began with his railroad pension check. He did not expect letters. Then Sterling rattled off his magazine subscriptions. Ferro turned away abruptly before Sterling had finished. There was no mention of days off or trips into Tucson. After Sterling had got settled in his new job, it might be nice to go to town once in a while. He wanted to get a library card. He was curious about the town itself because Tucson had a notorious history. Besides Tom Mix, other famous people had met their downfall in Tucson. Geronimo and John Dillinger to name two. Old Mafia godfathers and their loyal lieutenants retired to Tucson where they waited for strokes to carry them away in their sleep. Sterling would like very much just to stand on the sites of these historical events.

  Sometimes the Police Gazette ran specials on famous crimes of yesteryear. These had been his favorites. He had been most excited the time they had the special on Geronimo. Geronimo was included with John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd and Billy the Kid. Sterling had often heard Aunt Marie and her sisters talk about the old days, and Geronimo’s last raids, when even a platoon of Laguna “regulars” had helped patrol New Mexico territory for Apache renegades. Somehow Sterling had never quite imagined old Geronimo in the same class with Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Geronimo had turned to crime only as a last resort, after Mexican army troops had slaughtered his wife and three children on U.S. territory in southern Arizona. Despite the border violations by the Mexican army and the murder of Apache women and children who had been under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of War, no U.S. action had ever been taken against the Mexican army. Geronimo had been forced to seek justice on his own.