Chapter 3
Dusk had deepened while we changed clothes, and the temperature had dropped at least another ten degrees with the setting of the sun behind the mountains. I crossed my arms tightly and hurried ahead of Shannon, willing myself not to feel the cold seeping up from the bare earth through my bare feet.
Looks Far Guzmán stopped us at the fire pit. The flames had burned down, but the remaining coals gave off waves of fierce heat. Shannon and I stretched our hands toward them gratefully.
The old man had stripped to the waist; I tried not to stare at firelight playing on the ropy muscle under his slack flesh. He still wore the feathered headpiece, but he had braided his hair in a single queue down the back. “Has either of you experienced a sweat before?” he asked us. I shook my head; Shannon nodded hers.
I looked at her, surprised. “When was this?”
“Remember when I went to Sedona last summer? That’s how I knew about the fasting, and the clothing we’re supposed to wear.”
“I know the man in Sedona who conducts those sweats. He is not Indian, and his sweats are a little different than what we do here,” Mr. Guzmán told Shannon. “Not very different. He is more careful to follow the traditional ways than most white men. But our sweat today will be a little different.
“The sweat is a sacred rite to the Indian,” he continued. “Discomfort is part of the rite, but extreme discomfort is not necessary for it to be beneficial. If you begin to feel overcome by the heat, lift the bottom of the tent and bend over, so that your face is in the draft. I will pass around a cup of water from time to time; please drink some, to avoid dehydration.
“One more thing,” he said. “A sweat occurs in sacred time, but it is not conducted in silence. I will tell some stories and ask some questions, and I will sing from time to time. I encourage you to respond to the questions and to sing with me. Part of being a medicine man is to keep each of you safe while the sweat is underway. Your responses will help me.”
“That makes sense,” I said. “If we’re delirious, our responses won’t make any sense, and if we’re unconscious, we won’t be able to respond at all.”
“Yes,” Mr. Guzmán said. “Now we are ready to begin.”
I had noticed Joseph emerge from the sweat lodge while the old man was speaking. Now he stood beside his grandfather. He too had changed clothes; he had traded his jeans for a pair of gym shorts, and like his grandfather, he was shirtless. The men were similar in build, with muscled arms and shoulders, but Joseph was a little taller and a little more slender. His skin tone was bronze and his features were strongly Native American – the classic high cheekbones and sharply defined nose. But in the firelight, his hair appeared to be a shade lighter than the usual raven-wing black. He had pulled it back in a ponytail but not braided it, and it curled under on the end.
Joseph gestured to the fire tender. The man rose and joined the circle between Shannon and me. He stuck out his hand. “George Lofton,” he introduced himself.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking hands. “Naomi Witherspoon. This is Shannon McDonough.” He shook hands with Shannon as well. He was about the same age as Joseph and about the same height as the old man, but built meatier than either of them, with a slight paunch.
Our small group fell silent for a few moments. Then Looks Far Guzmán spoke. Raising his hands toward the vast plain behind me, he sang a few words in what I assumed was Ute. “He’s calling the Spirits of the Four Directions, asking them to protect us during the sweat,” George informed us in a whisper. Still singing, the medicine man turned toward the road we had come in on, which lay south of where we stood. And so on – facing the escarpment to the west; then facing past the wickiup to the north; then to the sky; and, crouching, to the earth, both hands flat in the dirt.
After another moment of silence, he lit a bundle of sage that had been placed next to the fire. “I will smudge you, one by one, to purify you,” he said to us, making sure the bundle had caught sufficiently before blowing it out. “You will walk three times around the inside of the lodge before you sit. Then George will begin handing in the stones with this.” He indicated a shovel next to the fire pit. “We will do three sessions, each longer than the last. Following the third session, we will break our fast.” He motioned to his grandson. “Joseph is first. Follow him and do as he does.” The old man then began to sing as he used a feather to waft the sage smoke around his grandson. As Joseph entered the lodge, Shannon stepped up. Then it was my turn. I breathed in the smoke with pleasure as I was smudged – sage is one of my favorite scents. Still singing, the medicine man motioned me toward the lodge flap.
It was pitch dark inside the lodge, and the roof was so low that we were all forced to bend over. I heard Mr. Guzmán come in behind me, and then we began a slow shuffle, three times around the inside perimeter of the lodge. By now, my eyes had adjusted somewhat to the gloom, so I could see when Joseph took a seat on one side of the entrance and picked up a drum. He began to pound it in rhythm as the old man’s song changed. The new song must have been George’s cue; he began to ferry in the glowing rocks on the shovel. When several had been carefully placed in a pit in the middle of the lodge floor, George dropped the flap from the outside. The medicine man sprinkled some herbs on the hot rocks and doused them with several cupfuls of water from a bucket next to the entrance.
What with our body heat, our exertion in the curious parade before we sat, and the glowing rocks in the pit, the temperature in the lodge had begun to rise. The water hissed as it hit the rocks, turning the place into a steam bath. I had progressed from the “glistening” stage to full-bore sweating even before the rocks had been doused with water. Now rivulets ran down the sides of my face and between my breasts. I considered pulling up my skirt a little, just so my shins could get a breath of air, but decided to save that tactic for later, in case I got really hot.
Mr. Guzmán broke off singing and told us the story of Blood Clot Boy, a Ute creation myth. It’s about an old couple who are blessed with a son who is born to them from a clot of buffalo blood. The boy grows fast, and is soon big enough to hunt for his family. He kills a different kind of beast each day and always sends his father out to fetch his kill. After just a few weeks, the boy becomes a man. He leaves his parents, but not before providing them with several dead buffalo and instructing them in how to preserve the meat and hides. He then travels to a nearby village, where an elder identifies the boy as being of the buffalo tribe. The members of the village persuade Blood Clot Boy to stay with them and marry the chief’s daughter, which he does. He also provides the starving tribe with a herd of dead buffalo, just as he had provided for his parents. But then someone says the wrong thing, and Blood Clot Boy runs off to join the buffalo, turning into one as he goes.
“And so the buffalo are sacred to us,” the old man said. “They provided us with nearly everything we needed to survive. We had a good life here, in these mountains, before the white men came.” He paused for a respectful interval. I bit back an urge to apologize. The message had been delivered as a simple fact, devoid of judgment or condemnation. If Looks Far Guzmán were the type to hold a grudge against the white man, I reasoned, Shannon and I would never have been allowed into the lodge.
“Now that you have heard how we got here,” he continued, “tell us how you happen to be here, in Colorado, on this day.”
Shannon went first. “I grew up in Denver, so Colorado is home to me. The mountains are part of me. I don’t think I would be happy living anywhere else. And we’re here at the sweat because Joseph gave me an invitation.” Without speaking, Joseph nodded in acknowledgement.
Shannon turned to me. Her profile appeared to glitter in the rocklight, although it could have been due to the essence of toasted herbs in the air.
“My turn, I guess,” I began. “I’m not a native by any definition. I grew up in central Indiana, which is as flat as those plains out there.”
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“Indiana,” the old man said. “It means ‘land of Indians.’”
“That’s what they told us in school, anyway,” I said with a smile. “And there’s a buffalo on our state seal, so maybe it was true once. Anyway, I decided on a whim to come here for law school. After I got my J.D., I took the bar exam here, and got a job, and have been here ever since.”
“Come on, tell the whole story,” Shannon said. “How did you pick Colorado?”
“It’s kind of ridiculous, but okay,” I said, ducking my head a little. A bead of sweat dripped off the end of my nose and plopped on my skirt; I watched the circle of wet fabric expand a little as I spoke. “I applied to four law schools and was accepted to two – IUPUI in Indianapolis, about an hour away from where I grew up, and the University of Denver. And I couldn’t decide. I mean, I’d never been away from home in my whole life. My undergrad degree is from Purdue, which is about fifteen miles away from my mother’s house. It’s always been just me and her. Indy should have been a slam-dunk. But I’d fallen in love with Colorado from the pictures in the DU brochure – the aspens in the fall, and snow on Longs Peak, and skiing.” I smiled at the memory. “I’d always wanted to learn how to ski, but there’s no place to do it in Indiana. But to move so far away just to learn how to ski? I felt as if I would be abandoning Mom.
“My heart was in both places. I really couldn’t decide. So I flipped a coin.”
Shannon snorted. “About twelve times.”
“Ten,” I corrected her. “Ten times. And every time I flipped it, it came up for DU. Whether Colorado was heads or tails, it always won. Ten times in a row.
“I’m not what you’d call a devout Christian, nor was I back then. But it seemed like God was telling me that I needed to be here.”
I was looking at the old man as I said it, so I saw him exchange a look with his grandson. Then he told us it was time for our first break.
We shuffled out of the lodge, following Joseph again. Outside, I was pleasantly surprised at how comfortable I felt. I knew it was cold and I was underdressed, but it took a few minutes before I began to feel it. It helped, too, that we stood around the fire pit, stretching and drinking the bottles of water George gave us. After five or ten minutes, we went back in for round two.
This time, the old man sang a different song, and used different herbs on the rocks. The new herbs made my head swim a little.
He taught us a call-and-response song. It didn’t matter that neither Shannon nor I spoke Ute – our part consisted mainly of the word “heya” sung over and over as a sort of chorus, emphasized by the beat of the drum. Then he told us another story – that of White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman.
“This is not a Ute legend,” he said at the outset. “It’s Sioux. It has almost become a pan-Indian legend over the years, though, along with many other legends and practices that were once theirs only. Some of the Sioux aren’t too happy about the way the whites have co-opted their culture, although their nation isn’t the only one to be treated so. Sometimes it seems as if the whites think of us Indians as all one happy family, with the same religion and the same way of life – as if all Indians lived in tepees and built totem poles.
“Anyway, this is how I heard it.”
Now the combination of the steaming herbs and heat, the lack of sleep, and the voice of the medicine man went to work on me, wrapping me in a kind of dream state.
“Two braves were out hunting one day, without much luck. This was not good – their tribe was very hungry. Suddenly they spied something in the distance. As it came nearer, they realized it was a beautiful Indian maiden, dressed all in white buckskin and floating instead of walking.”
I gasped. Shannon glanced at me, finger to her lips.
The old man must not have heard me, for he continued without a pause. “One of the young men told his friend, ‘That beautiful maiden is for me! I’m going to go and get her!’ The friend cautioned him, saying he thought the woman was sacred. But the first young man laughed him off. Well, when he went to touch the woman, lightning came out of nowhere and struck him, so that nothing but ash and bits of bone were left.
“The woman told the second young man that she was from the buffalo nation, and she had something holy to give to his people. She told him to go back to camp and tell the people there to prepare for her arrival. They were to put up a medicine lodge with twenty-eight poles and await her coming.
“All was in readiness when the woman arrived, four days later. She brought them the sacred pipe of their nation and taught them how to use it. She taught them the seven sacred ceremonies in which to use the pipe. She taught the women how to make a hearth fire, and how to cook food in a buffalo paunch by dropping a hot stone into it. She taught the tribe everything it needed to know to survive and to honor the spirits in the proper way.
“When she had taught them everything, she told their chief that she was the four ages of creation, and that she would return at the end of every age. Then she walked off, into the setting sun. As the people watched her go, they saw her roll over and turn into a black buffalo; then she rolled over again, and turned into a brown buffalo; then she rolled over a third time, and turned into a red buffalo; and the fourth time she rolled over, she turned into a white buffalo calf – the most sacred animal of the Sioux.”
“I’ve seen her,” I blurted, unable to keep still any longer. This was the opening I’d been looking for. I’d come here expressly to find out what was happening around me. If I didn’t do it now, I felt, I would lose my nerve.
The lodge grew still.
Mr. Guzmán broke the silence. “You’ve seen White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman?” he asked. I heard an undercurrent of eagerness in his voice. No, not eagerness – urgency.
“I believe so,” I replied. “She appeared to me in a dream.”
“You only told me about the white buffalo calf,” Shannon said. “You didn’t say anything about a goddess.”
I heard the hurt in her voice, and reached to place a hand on her arm. “Sorry. I meant to. I got off on a tangent and meant to go back to it, but then I forgot.”
“Tell me,” the old man commanded. So I did.
No one spoke as I recounted my first dream, although when I mentioned the crow at the end, I saw Joseph hunch forward as if he wanted to be sure to catch every syllable. Then I went on to describe the second dream. “But the owl might have been an echo of something I heard earlier in the evening,” I said, and explained how I’d been dive-bombed by an owl on a Denver sidewalk earlier in the day.
“And today is day three?” Joseph asked, startling me. It was the first time I’d heard him speak. His voice was different in timbre from his grandfather’s, but no less rich.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “Day three. But the owl and the dreams aren’t even the scariest things that have happened to me lately. I’m a mediator, and I’m not bragging when I say that I’m good at what I do. But over the past few months, I’ve been setting records for getting the parties to agree. I’ve been chalking up my success to experience. But then the other night, on the way over to Shannon’s, I was in a hurry, and I told a driver ahead of me to just step on it already – and the driver did, and nearly got into an accident.” I felt guilty and embarrassed all over again. “No way that other driver could have heard me. My windows were rolled up. I didn’t honk, didn’t do anything aggressive – all I did was say aloud what I was thinking.”
“Could have been a coincidence,” Shannon said.
“Maybe,” I conceded. “But it doesn’t feel like it.” I huffed a laugh. “Maybe the universe really does revolve around me.”
The lodge went silent for a moment. Then, “Time for a break,” the old man said. “Joseph, go.” We filed out again.
As before, Shannon and I stood by the fire and stretched. George handed us a couple of water bottles apiece and we drained them.
Joseph and his gr
andfather had not joined us at the fire. They stood a little apart, deep in conference. George took them bottles of water, which they drank from as they talked. Occasionally, Joseph would gesture toward us.
“You sure got them going,” George said.
Shannon and I exchanged glances. “I guess we did,” I said to George. “I just hope they have some idea of what’s happening to me.”
“Oh, I expect they do,” George said with a grin. “And I’m sure Looks Far will tell you when he thinks the time is right.” Then he turned his attention to stoking the fire.
I exchanged another nervous glance with Shannon.
After several minutes more, Mr. Guzmán and Joseph seemed to come to an agreement – or maybe Joseph deferred to the old man, I couldn’t tell. In any case, they rejoined us at the fire.
The old man took a deep breath and said to me, looking over my shoulder, “She came to me, as well.” He paused, as if waiting for me to say something, but I had nothing to give him.
A slight sigh escaped him. “We go now for the third and final round. This is going to be more intense than your earlier experience.” He glanced at his grandson. “Joseph is somewhat worried about what might happen, but I think it will be all right. Joseph, go ahead.”
For the third time, Shannon and I traded wide-eyed looks. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Mr. Guzmán’s words frightened me, but I wouldn’t be entirely truthful if I said I went eagerly under the flap.
Again, the old man sang us around the lodge three times; again, Joseph took up his drum as we settled cross-legged around the fire pit; again, the old man threw something into the pit just before the water hit the hot rocks.
I knew immediately that it was no herb on those rocks. “Peyote,” I whispered, before the mist carried me away. I closed my eyes and swayed.
A bright light pricked my eyelids. I opened my eyes, and there before me glowed the woman from my dream. She was dressed as before in white buckskin, beautifully fringed. Her long, black hair hung loose around her shoulders like a cape. Her skin was red-gold, her eyes were slightly slanted, and she looked at me so tenderly that I nearly began to cry.
“What’s happening to me?” I whispered. “Why am I seeing these things? Why have you come to me?”
“We chose you,” she said, and her voice was like the sighing of the wind through the chaparral.
“But I’m not an Indian,” I breathed.
“You are,” she said. “You are Indian, and you are white. Your people will listen to you.”
I was stunned into silence. Indian...?
“This day,” she continued, “is a new start for all the peoples who live on Grandmother Earth. For too long, this world has been in the grip of an angry God whose only goal is to win as many followers as possible. He has convinced His followers that He knows everything and controls everything. He condemns His fellow Gods who require Their followers to sacrifice for Them – yet He sacrificed His own Son, and then twisted the story to make it appear as if it were an honor. He calls Us demons, and worse.” She paused, her visage twisted. “His rule has been marked by jealousy and hatred. By telling His followers they are His chosen people, He has led them to believe that they are better than all the rest of His Creation, and so they have raped Grandmother Earth and fouled Grandfather Sky, and treated their fellow beings with contempt. By telling His followers that they were flawed from the start, He has instilled in them self-hatred and guilt. And yet,” she spat, “He says He loves them.”
“He does,” I said automatically, my Methodist upbringing asserting itself. “He does love us. He gave us His Son to redeem our sins.”
“There is no sin!” she cried, and I jumped in surprise. “There is no devil. There is no Hell. He made it all up to frighten the people into following Him!”
Thunder rolled ominously. I looked up; we were no longer in the lodge, but on a vast, vacant plain under a velvet sky spangled with a billion stars. Then I looked closer and realized they weren’t stars at all – they were gods and goddesses. A billion gods and goddesses, all of whom believed Jehovah had seriously overstepped His bounds.
I shook my head. “No,” I said weakly. “You’ve got it all wrong.”
“He is the one who has it wrong,” she said, and the stars rumbled again in agreement. “His rule has created fear and loathing and jealousy. He has encouraged greed and ignorance. The people cannot escape any of those things under His system. It would be impossible – they are all intrinsic to it.
“We are tired of it – tired of the mess He has made of His Creation. It ends now. We are taking control, and relegating Him to His proper place in the Universe once again. And you are Our instrument.”
“What?” I cried.
“What you have suspected is true: we have enhanced your powers of persuasion,” she went on. Then she smiled ruefully. “We cannot force the global shift to lovingkindness that your friend Shannon dreams of. We cannot wave a magic wand and rip the veil from the people’s eyes all at once – it would throw the world into chaos. But We can empower certain people to help us turn the tide. You must help us persuade the people to turn away from greed and hatred on their own.”
“But I don’t want any special powers!” I cried, alarmed.
“You are not the only one fighting this battle,” the goddess went on relentlessly. “Others have been empowered as well, in other parts of the world. And you will not be alone. The people in this lodge are your friends. You can trust them. And there will be others.” She looked down, and I followed her glance. Sitting next to her was a coyote. “Well,” she said, laying a hand on his fur, “I wouldn’t trust this one all of the time.” But she was laughing as she said it. The coyote turned to me, mouth hanging open in a canine grin as if sharing the joke, amber eyes molten in the rocklight.
I was back in the lodge. White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman was gone. And the golden gaze locked to mine was that of Joseph Curtis.
In turmoil, I broke off the staring contest and grabbed Shannon’s arm. “Let’s go,” I said, half out of my seat.
“No,” she said.
“What?”
“She told me you would want to run,” Shannon said dreamily. “I promised Her I wouldn’t let you.”
“What?” I said again. “Who told you?”
“White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman,” she said. “You didn’t tell me She was beautiful.” She began to topple sideways.
Joseph caught her before her head hit the ground. “Let’s get her out,” Mr. Guzmán said. “Naomi, please take her feet.”
It wasn’t easy to carry Shannon, woozy and bent over as we were. I kept stepping on the edge of my skirt. But we didn’t have far to go, and soon we were outside the lodge.
The cold air rapidly revived us all. George helped us place Shannon in the folding quad chair he’d been using while he tended the fire, and then handed out water bottles again. I opened one for Shannon, who took a long pull and shook her head. “Wow,” she said. “That was some trip. Was that peyote?”
Mr. Guzmán had the grace to look guilty. “It was. I’m sorry you had a bad reaction.”
“Oh no, don’t be sorry. It was a wonderful experience, really. I was just a little overcome at the end.” She beamed at him.
“That’s what you were worried about, wasn’t it?” I said to Joseph. “Your grandfather wanted to use the peyote and you were against it.”
“I thought it was a bad idea, yes,” he said. His eyes, I noticed, were no longer amber, but a deep blue.
“But I wouldn’t have gotten to meet White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman if we hadn’t,” Shannon said.
“I wouldn’t have, either,” Joseph said. He looked again at me, and again I had the feeling that I’d seen him somewhere before. “And you, Naomi? Did you get the answers you were looking for?”
I sighed. “I got answers, but they certainly weren’t what I was looking for,” I sa
id ruefully. “It seems there’s a war in Heaven, and I’ve been drafted. As a general.”
“Did you see her, too?” Shannon asked.
I nodded, physically and emotionally exhausted – and suddenly aware that I was standing, barefoot and braless, in a soaked cotton t-shirt and skirt in sub-freezing weather. I hunched my shoulders and crossed my arms. “I know this sounds silly, given where we’ve just been, but is there somewhere we can go to warm up?”
The old man seemed to recollect himself. “Please,” he said, “go and change, and then join us in the wickiup for dinner.”