Wild Penance

My eyes were wide with a combination of anxiety and disbelief. How did this old woman know about the fashion show, and about the attack on Nora?

“Tomorrow, you will need to go to the velorio-the wake, you know? You will need to be in Truchas early in the morning to honor your friend the father. So we must work quickly so this cura has time to work and also time to leave you before morning. You will not be riding on la yegua tonight, Mirasol. You will not be strong enough.”

“I didn’t know that Father Ignacio’s funeral is tomorrow. I’ll go, but I have to ride tonight.”

“You will not ride tonight, I assure you. You will need to go to the corral in a minute. We will talk until you do, and then when you go to the corral, you will need to leave after. I will put something for you on the stump by the horno, and you will take that with you when you go. Now you must listen to me. There is an old sad story here that is not finished. There have been very bad feelings about something that happened a long time before, and no healing has been done, even though many winters have passed. You must look into the past, look at los ninos. Any answers you want will be there. It is the only weapon you have to defend yourself against this Black Thing. You cannot stop now, or go back. You can only go to the next place. The people over here do not like it when their secrets are unfolded, but your heart is clean, so you have been given protection. It is the Black Thing-the one that hunts for you-that the people over here fear. That is the thing that will end it all. The people know this, but they are in the time of La Cuaresma-you know, Lent?-they cannot raise their hands at this time. This is a very tender time for the people, and they are convinced that you mean them no harm. That is why you have been given protection. You have an angel, and that is who has brought you the gift that I will leave for you by the horno. Do you have to go to the corral now?”

All the while she had been talking, my gut had been growling, and now intense cramps threatened to make me lose control of my bowels. I felt dizzy and weak. I was sweating and cold at the same time. I stood up and felt the world shift. The room was sitting at an odd angle, and all the lines were distorted. The table was undulating. I moved for the door and felt as if I were wading in chest-high water.

“Down beyond the willow there.” She pointed as she followed me out on the portal. “Watch out for the macho cabrio-he doesn’t like strangers! And don’t come back to la casa. I have another cura to do now.”

I made for the willow, saw the corral with the goat and the privy just beside it. The door of the outhouse had a cutout shaped like an owl. I sat on the splintered seat until my insides were empty. The goat pawed at the side of the privy time after time, his sharp hooves making a thunderous sound on the old, dry wood. Finally, I stopped sweating and felt my belly relax.

I left the privy and went to the horno. At first I didn’t see the stump Esperanza had spoken of, or any gift I could recognize as such. The world still seemed to be wavering and sitting at strange angles, the tea having had a hallucinatory effect on me. A large yucca behind the horno moved as if it had been stirred. I heard the rustling of its razor-sharp leaves, but I saw nothing that might have brushed it. I looked at it again, and the sword-shaped leaves of the plant seemed to rise up, as if to open its arms to welcome me. Oh, boy, Jamaica! You’ve tied one on with a teacup!

Again the yucca shifted its leaves, and then I saw the low stump behind it, and on the stump… my book!

I approached with a strange mixture of awe and trepidation. What if the yucca is feeling territorial about the book?

I could feel the plant as an intelligent presence. There was a strange but exciting heaviness to the air between us, thick, sweet, like a celestial stew-a heath of infinite life possibilities ready to pop into form-the plant palpably breathing and emitting an energy field into which I was about to intrude. I held my breath and moved my palm, open and extended as if in friendship… slowly… slowly… toward the yucca.

Again, the leaves rose slightly, almost so slightly that I might have imagined it, except for the rustling sound and the faint trace of purple tails of light trailing the leaves like the sheer wisps of Salome’s veils in ultraslow motion. I kept moving my hand, my pace crawling, the plant still breathing, its scimitar fingers rising… and falling… rising… and falling… I could hear it breathing now: low, erogenous, carnal, quivering, and reverberating a message beyond the comprehension of a mere two-legged being, something about life: sweet-loss-sacred-death-gift-fear- pleasure-pain… not this, more than this… something about harmony: love-joy-holy-all… not this, more than this… something about presence: Now, Only now. Only. One. Not this, more than this… none of this.

May I have my book?

The leaves relaxed. I picked up the book, its cool deerskin cover a living thing in my hand, the eyes of the deer in my mind, deer looking through my eyes, then one with my eyes, the buds of my antlers sprouting in sweet spurts of pain from my head. As I willed the book toward my chest, I kept my pace snail-like, solar, tidal, seasonal, millennial, my arm having swung out into the yucca’s world like a pendulum and now coming back as evenly and as languorously, as calculated and measured as Moon’s slow cycle of death and resurrection as she plods across the night skies from one month to the next.

The yucca was finished with me.

I took the book into my arm and held it next to my chest. No deer there. I felt a sweeping sadness that our interlude-mine and the yucca’s-was over, that I didn’t fully understand what it was relating, that I could never understand.

I turned and went down the slope toward my Jeep, which waited near the arroyo, light-years from where I had just been.

27

All That Remains

By the time I got back down the mountain to the turnout area in front of the church, my Jeep was the only car there. I was feeling too odd to talk with Regan, so I headed toward home. But on the way through Taos, I had another attack of cramping and queasiness, so I stopped by the BLM offices to use the facilities.

There were two notes in my message box. One indicated that Christine Salazar wanted to talk with me. I phoned her from the cubicle in the back where I normally made out my reports.

“You asked me to keep you informed,” Salazar said. “So I wanted to let you know that the body of Father Ignacio Medina, or to be more precise-all that remains of him after the autopsy-has been released to his family.”

“Actually, I just learned that the services are tomorrow in Truchas,” I said, my gut still growling. “Have you heard anything else?” “No. I’m afraid that I’m pretty well out of the loop now because the OMI has released the remains. I’m not going to be a good resource from here on out. Sorry.”

The other note was a pink slip with the name “Mrs. Suazo” and a phone number. I tried calling the number, but a message said the line had been disconnected or was no longer in service. I felt churning in my stomach that may not have derived from Tecolote’s cura. Had Santiago Suazo gone home after our confrontation and taken out his ire over what I had done to him on his poor wife? I hoped not. I tried the number again. Again, I got the “out of service” message.

I walked out to the lobby where Rosa was doodling on her calendar/ desk blotter. Even though I thought it was probably a futile effort, I held the pink slip up and asked Rosa, “Did you take this call?”

Rosa looked at the slip skeptically, then said, “Am I in trouble if I did?”

“No, I just wondered if you remembered anything about the caller, Mrs. Suazo.”

“What about her?”

“How did she sound when she called?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did she seem afraid or worried?”

Rosa took the slip from my hand and studied it, as if the answer were there on the paper. “I don’t think so.” She handed it back to me.

“Did she sound like the matter could be urgent?”

“Oh, wait a minute. I remember her now,” Rosa replied. “No, she didn’t sound like anything was wrong at all.