Wild Penance

As a matter of fact, she sounded very happy.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Eeeee! Did I forget to write down that she said she wanted to tell you some good news?” Rosa grabbed the pink message slip from me again and studied it. “I guess I didn’t put it on there. I’m sorry.”

On the way to my cabin, a gnawing pain started to work in my stomach. It felt like a dull meat grinder was working its way through my midsection. By the time I was halfway home, I knew Tecolote’s prediction about not being able to ride that night was already true. I stopped at the cafe on the highway a few miles from my place and used the pay phone to call Roy. I asked him to relay the message to the ranger station in Penasco so Kerry would know.

When I finally got home, I was doubled over from the pain. I hobbled into my cabin, propped a chair against the door under the doorknob, laid my rifle and pistol on the bed, and collapsed beside them, without removing clothes or boots.

28

The Funeral Day

As I drove to Father Ignacio’s funeral the next morning, I was more keenly aware than ever of the abundance of small crosses along the roadside that spoke of mortal tragedies. The highways of northern New Mexico are trimmed with ornamental remembrances of death. These memorials are usually composed of a crude wooden crux held upright by a cairn of small stones, and any of several sorts of brilliantly colored adornments: artificial flowers in electric hues, neon fake-flora funeral wreaths, ribbon banners emblazoned with Beloved Son or Love Forever in gold glitter. I have seen rosaries dangle from many of the crosses, sometimes gold chains, and Purple Hearts, Silver Stars, or other military insignia. These shrines are carefully tended. For Nuevo Mexicanos, these places are sacred, full of grief. Unlike other parts of the country, the Land of Enchantment cannot contain its sorrows and losses in neat, tidy parcels of land. Loss is everywhere. La Muerte grins from the shoulders of highways, the intersections of dirt lanes, the cattle guards across county roads.

Driving around a curve where a cluster of crosses marked multiple calamities, I wondered if all this carnage might not be due to the wild landscape that loomed in the darkness, ready to steal back its power from those who would conquer it-on the very roads they’d made to do so. Or perhaps it was due to one of the highest per capita incidences of alcoholism in the fifty United States.

Although I was driving more than eight thousand feet above sea level, I was less than two-thirds as high as the tallest crests of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that scaled onward to the east when I entered the wide alpine mountain valley cradled between the High Road and Trampas Peak. On the western ridge of the basin, the High Road passed through the village of Las Truchas, which means “trout,” so named because of the wealth of these fish in the mountain streams.

Just before arriving at the village, I went by a cemetery overlooking a breathtaking vista of pinon and pine forests as far as the horizon. The graves in this campo santo were embellished with the symbols of the culture. A shiny helmet and the front half of a Harley Davidson Sportster rose, half buried, over a grave, angled toward the sky, ready for the departed to don headgear and gun it hard into the next life, popping a wheelie as he took off. Intricately carved granite crosses were draped with chains, dripping with fuchsia fabric flowers. Statuary of saints and the Blessed Virgin had artificial bouquets of impossible colors at their feet-turquoise, lime green, neon pink, and red, red, red. White picket fences, scrupulously painted and repainted-and others made of chain and poles-staked out turf for the deceased. Hand-carved cottonwood crosses, some of them nameless, others with etched appellations worn smooth by sandblasting winds, tilted blanched and weathered in tenacious weeds.

The death of Father Ignacio created more loss, more sorrow, than the tiny community of Las Truchas could contain. The outpouring of affection from so many mourners meant that the tiny sanctuario could not hold all those who wished to attend the funeral mass, and more than a hundred people waited outside the church in the raw, frozen air, slapping the arms of their thick coats and breathing cold vapor clouds until the mass was finished. Even the large churchyard, surrounded by high adobe walls, could not accommodate the throng. Clumps of people huddled together all along the narrow dirt road through the village.

Since I’m used to being out in the cold, it wasn’t the chill that was making me uncomfortable. It was standing for more than an hour in a pair of dress boots that looked good with my long black skirt but did my feet a disservice. That, and the wailing of Las Dolientes.

From the thick adobe walls of the chapel the sound of their cries rose to the rim of the nave and then crept like a fog out the cracks in the mortar, around the seals of the windows and doors, bringing with it the weight of a thousand hearts suffering the ultimate sorrow.

After the mass, Father Ximon Rivera pulled on a long, dark coat as he stepped outside with an elderly woman I presumed to be Father Ignacio’s mother. Two priests dressed in splendid vestments came out. These two waited with the mujer and watched the mourners file out, while Father Rivera followed the pallbearers with their charge to the old wooden horse-drawn wagon that served as a hearse. A group of Carmelitas brought an exquisitely embroidered white cloth and draped it over the coffin. Then the Hermanos came from the church, each carrying a rosary, and they took up positions before the cart.

I stood just inside the dilapidated wooden gates, which sagged open from their hinges in the adobe wall. The arch above them supported the old iron church bell and was crowned with a simple white cross. The morning sun, just cresting the high mountains to the east, cast a long, blue shadow of the rood across the front of the church. As everyone filed forward on their way to the cemetery, the procession came right past me. A group of more than thirty men-mostly elders-dressed in long, black coats from another era, walked together in silence toward the road, the first three of them carrying crosses high above their heads-one a large crucifix, the polychrome figure of Christ distinctively New Mexican. Eight younger men came behind them, also dressed in antiquated dark clothes. Two led the horses, and the six pallbearers remained in formation as they had while carrying the coffin, each with one hand on the cart, the other holding a rosary. Some of them looked like they were having trouble walking. They all wore pained expressions, as if their clothes were hurting their backs. I felt the heaviness of despair in my neck and shoulders as these Hermanos trudged past me.

Behind them came Las Carmelitas. At the front of their group, five Veronicas carried a platform bearing a bulto of Our Lady of Sorrows. In two disciplined rows behind them, Las Hermanas followed, with seven women in a cluster taking up the rear-Las Dolientes.

Los Penitentes led the procession to the campo santo. The long, slow walk through the village seemed to take hours, the canticos, or chants, of Los Hermanos drawing time out like molten lead, blue-gray with the heavy weight of this gruesome, incomprehensible tragedy. Periodically, the brothers halted the procession and the elderly were directed to sit in the folding chairs that had been set up along the road at each of these descansos, or resting places. Members of the family or friends of the deceased placed small crosses at each of these spots, piling up rocks to support them. Las Carmelitas decorated each of these with white roses that had been dipped in wax, and each time flowers were laid before a crux, it raised a new rash of wailing from Las Dolientes.

At the campo santo, the hermano mayor, the elder or leader of the brotherhood, waited respectfully until the group of priests completed their graveside ceremonies. When they were finished, he began singing in a clear, deep baritone that seemed to well up in his round chest and come out in tones the color of dark beer. He sang an alabado that repeated the phrase adios al mundo: good-bye to this world.

While the hermano mayor sang, Las Carmelitas came forward with three long, purple satin sashes and handed them to the younger Hermanos, who eased the coffin from the wagon, placing the sashes beneath it as they did so. They held the embroidered ends of the sashes and lowered the coffin into the ground as