"Arson is what Captain Augustino says," Daley told Joe. "He's got a dozen of these sticks from different fires. Brush fires. He'd be here now, but he's down at Trinity."
"This is not an incendiary device," Joe said and took the wand. "It's a stick. Someone threw it in the fire. You have a lot of Indians up here."
"They really think they can bring lightning?"
"They think they make the world go round."
Joe noticed that the paint that remained on the wooden head had a micaceous glitter, a fancy Taos touch.
"If you say so." Daley spat, grinned and wiped his chin. "Hell, you should know."
20
Three hours of riding brought Joe to the far side of SantiagoCanyon. There the foothills between the canyon and the mountains rose in swells of yellow rabbit brush. He had taken Oppy's horse, the tall bay called Crisis. The stallion hadn't been taken out for a month and it ate up the distance with an eager lope.
While Joe dismounted to water Crisis at a tank, he saw the Indian Service riders crossing the rise ahead of him. Al and Billy halted to stand in their stirrups and examine the tank through binoculars, then moved on. Joe waited another minute in the shadow of the tank until a second pair of Service officers riding drag followed. When they were out of sight, he swung up on Crisis and started again towards the Jemez.
Though he rode in warm, glassy sunlight, a rare rain fell in the Jemez, covering the peaks with a gray as faint as waves in a stone. As the trail ascended, it reached ponderosas, cedars, cattle bones, and a new profusion of wild flowers, shooting stars, scarlet gilia. On the last ride of the canyon before it folded into the mountain was a small, battleship mesa. Joe had to kick the horse up a steep path of loose stones to the top.
The mesa was not a mile long and less than a hundred yards across at its widest point. Cedar and juniper huddled over dwarf sage. The cedar was twisted and vigorous, meaning half dead and half alive. The same with the cholla Joe saw, half green stem and half empty lattice. A trick of survival in the high desert was to bloom and die at the same time. Cedar made good firewood. A dead cedar branch could last for years if it didn't touch the ground. He tied Crisis to a live bough and went the rest of the way on foot.
In the middle of the mesa were ruins, a worn grid of stone walls about knee-high. The stones were volcanic ash. Adobe had long since washed away, along with any sense of what was storeroom, what was quarters. All a puzzle now, Joe thought. White nuggets in the stones were timber cinders a million years old. He picked one out and it turned to talcum between his fingers.
The only excavation on the mesa had been performed by animals. Between the walls were gopher mounds of soft earth, richly mixed with shards of pottery that were black, white, reddish brown, and bits of obsidian strewn like jewelry.
Joe sat down for a smoke next to a kiva completely filled in by a gooseberry bush, its boughs as dark as a cherry tree's. The sun dropped over the far side of the Jemez, turning clouds red, rung by rung.
"Hello, Joe." Roberto and Ben Reyes stepped out of the cedars. The men were in blankets and braids.
"Brought you some cigarettes."
"How did you know we were here?" Ben asked.
"The clay. Sophie was seeing you and she was getting her clay. This is the place."
"I knew you would come," Roberto said.
"I came because they're finding your wands on the Hill."
"What kind of cigarettes?" Ben asked.
"At fires on the Hill. Luckies." Joe handed the packet to Ben, who tapped one out suspiciously.
"How'd you know they were mine?" Roberto squatted by Joe.
"Mica in the paint. Typical Taos horseshit."
"Yes." Roberto grinned. Roberto had such a long nose and his hair was so brown, he had to have some French trader or horny Mormon in his background, Joe thought.
"I like Chesterfields." Ben put two in his pocket, one in his mouth and gave the packet back.
"You're welcome. You're a real frightening pair of desperadoes." Joe gave Ben the lighter. "You're supposed to be hiding, not getting into more trouble. Fires are serious business to those people."
"He thinks we're causing the lightning?" Ben lit his cigarette.
"Who?" Joe took the lighter back.
"The doctor?"
"Oppenheimer? He sees that he's supposed to think that."
"That's smart enough." Roberto held up two fingers for a smoke.
"I don't know whether to laugh or cry." Joe lit cigarettes for Roberto and himself. "You said you were going to escape, not take on the US Army. I'm warning you. Right now, you're hiding from the Indian Service. That's one thing. The Army will send a Captain Augustino. Augustino will find you. And Augustino will find out who's been helping you on the Hill, planting a wand every time they see a fire."
"You think that's the way we do it? First the lightning, then the wand?" Roberto asked.
"That would be my first guess."
"They sent you?" Ben asked.
"Nobody sent me. I'm supposed to be on the post right now."
"But they notice the lightning," Roberto asked.
"Yeah."
"Then we're doing a good job." Roberto let out a long, plumed exhale. "Good cigarette."
As the valley went dark, a full moon rose from the Sangres. They made camp on the eastern tip of the mesa, where ancient raincatches rose in worn steps. Ben built a fire in a crack of the rock, using stones to prop cedar twigs and bark. Joe started the bark with his lighter. The fire caught quickly and had the advantage for fugitives of being impossible to see from a distance, but they had to keep feeding it because they were burning no more than tinder. Ben made a stew of chili and jerky in a can. Looking over the Rio Grande, they could make out lamplights in Santiago and Esperanza, even the village of Truchas high in the Sangres, and the bright, pollenish haze of Santa Fe at the tail of the Sangres range. Los Alamos they couldn't see at all. They cupped the glow of their cigarettes and waited for the stew to boil.
"I'll get you a pair of Greyhound tickets to Tucson. You don't like Tucson? How about Los Angeles? The two of you haven't lived until you've seen the Pacific Ocean. What have you got against the Hill, anyway?"
"What they're doing there," Ben said.
"You don't know what they're doing there. It's a secret. It's the biggest damn secret of the war."
"I had a dream they were making a gourd filled with ashes," Roberto said.
"A gourd of ashes?"
"I had the dream in Taos. Two Hopi men had the same dream, two elders. A woman in Acoma had the dream."
"Four dreams." Joe nodded, as if the conversation were sane. Ben went on stirring the can, listening.
Roberto tilted his head up. "Each time, they take the gourd to the top of a long ladder and break it open. The poison ashes that fall cover the earth."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
"Then let me set your mind at ease. I've seen what they're making. It's not a gourd of ashes. Let me get you those bus tickets."
"There's more."
"I was afraid of that."
"In my dream there was a giant."
"How about train tickets?"
"As soon as I met you, I knew the giant was you."
"Roberto." Joe controlled himself. "Roberto, you're a nice guy, bright, and I'm sure you're sincere. But you're playing medicine man in the middle of a war. Out in the real world, soldiers are dying, cities are burning, women are raped. What they're trying to do on the Hill is end the war. If you and Ben insist on being buckskin loonies, okay, just don't include me.
"Hot!" Ben shoved a tin plate of stew at Joe.
"But the ashes will poison the clouds and the water and the ground and everything that lives on it. All the dreams are the same about that," Roberto said.
"Sounds like scientific proof." There were no forks. Joe picked up steaming, gray-green strips of beef with his fingers.
"They will erect a great ladder in the sky. Then, in my dream, a giant climb
s the ladder."
"Not bad," Joe told Ben. "Starving helps. Just in your dreams?" he added to Roberto.
"It's not that I dream better, it's that I can concentrate on dreams. Being blind helps. To me there's not the same difference between day and night, awake and asleep. One leads to the other."
"Dreams and reality?"
"Two sides of the same thing. Don't you agree?"
"I would have said the major difference in the world right now is not being awake or being asleep, but being alive or being dead. And one doesn't lead to the other like a hand to a glove. More like a stump to a glove." Joe put down his plate. "So, don't dream about a giant on a ladder. Dream about Japan. Dream yourself a hundred thousand dead men bobbing in the water. Dream red beaches, banzai charges, kamikazes, paper cities and B-29s. Put a meter on your dream. One million dead, two million, three. See, I don't mind you dreaming; I just mind easy dreams."
Well, I'm a bad guest, Joe thought. A pall had fallen over the dinner party. Ben looked like he was choking. Either he was choking or he was angry.
"I have to catch a cutting in Santiago." Joe rose to his feet. "That was your last warning. Good luck."
Roberto lifted his sunken eyes. "All the same, you were in my dream," he said.
Joe rode back on a moonlit ridge between canyons. Around him was a seascape of ridges, a foam-brightness on the rocks and junipers. There was so much beauty at night that no one saw. He still heard himself speaking, and Oppy's words coming out— invasion casualties, kamikazes. It was the way he felt, but the words sounded like a formula. To give Roberto credit, he really didn't talk about the war at all. He just cared about his precious pueblos and the rest of the world could go to hell. In return, Oppy appreciated Indians, as people from a time warp. Sophie was right, Joe thought, he didn't seem to have his own words. Music, maybe, but not the kind of words and formulas that announced and explained actions. As if there were no words for where he was, which was in between. In a no-world, on a high ridge, in the sweet light of the moon.
He came down off the ridge near an irrigation ditch where alfalfa fields, flowered blue, rolled in the night breeze. After putting Crisis in the pasture, he carried saddle and tack to the Hill stable. There was still time to sign out a jeep and get down to Santiago to catch Felix cutting. He'd take a Geiger counter and check some cows as an excuse for the trip.
In the tackroom, the saddlebags opened and spilled. Horses coughed in the stalls. He used his lighter. On the floor were boxes of horseshoe nails, bent snaffles, broken reins and two yellow zigzags. Lightning wands. Roberto must have put them in the saddlebags.
His first instinct was to burn them, but he was in a hurry. He stuffed them in his shirt and slipped out of the stable door.
Between the stable and the Hill, a nine-hole golf course had been hacked out of the scrub. The greens were sand and a rake was provided at each hole. Joe intended to dump the wands, but he was out in the moonlight in the clear and if there were any MPs awake, the flash of the sticks would catch their eye.
He still had the wands when he reached the motor pool. Keys were kept in the ignitions. In the back of a jeep he put a Geiger counter. Under the seat he stowed the wands where he could reach them easily and throw them away on the road to Santiago.
21
Men sat on the top rail of the corral and shouted encouragement to boys in batwing chaps who chased calves in the dark. The cutting and branding was done at this hour because the work bus to the Hill left at dawn.
Two fires were going, one outside the corral for coffee, one inside for Felix Tafoya. The men at the coffee fire juggled mugs and shakers of salt to take Joe's hand softly and say good morning. Inside, running after a calf, the boys gave Joe a quick glance. He noticed that the largest boy wore a homemade chevron sewn to his sleeve and tucked his bandanna in like an Army tie. Everyone in Santiago had a son or a nephew in the service and Joe knew he was not only a hero to them, he was the possibility of coming home alive from the Army.
The calves were Herefords with cotton-white flashes on their heads. The boys lassoed, tackled and dragged them one by one to the fire. Wearing a leather apron over the coveralls that were his Hill uniform, Felix knelt by the coals, chose a knife with a double-wrapped rawhide handle and honed the blade on his apron. Arms and hooves converged. The heat and glow of the fire seemed to invest Felix with a magisterial glow. "Coont-da, hitos!" While the boys held the calf still, Felix squeezed the testes to the bottom of the sac, sliced and flung them into the coals, then doused the wound with kerosene. The glowing orange dogleg of a running iron dug into the calf's flank, and the smell of burning hair joined the standing odors of coffee and cow manure.
In his white suit and hat, Hilario Reyes came down the fence as nimbly as a lizard.
"The Chief himself. See my boy yesterday? I hear he put out a fire and saved the whole hill."
"He looked good."
"You mean great. What are you doing here?"
"The Army sends me to look over the cows. What's the lieutenant-governor of the state of New Mexico doing here?"
"I have great respect for the old-fashioned ways and traditions of the people here. You know, I've never missed a dance in Santiago. Most of all, I love the taste of balls."
Hilario gave a grin of open, energetic venality before going to talk to the men gathered around the coffee fire. To check out the statement about the Army and the cows, Joe assumed. Hilario liked being the fisherman, not the fish.
Joe leaned against the rail and watched the boy with the rope try a peal, a fancy throw designed to catch a calf's hind feet. He caught the calf by the head instead and almost flew out of his shoes and laces as the calf kept running, until two more boys tackled it.
Felix came to the fence to offer Joe a stick that skewered what looked like two burned chestnuts. "Joe, if you're talking to Hilario, you need all the huevos you can get."
Someone on the top rail threw a shaker of salt. Joe snatched it out of the dark. "Coont-da!"
"Hilario's friend didn't stick around long," Felix said. "He went to look at the old cows in the pen."
Joe peeled back the blackened skin and liberally salted the pearly insides. It was an odd ceremony, the cutting of the calves and the redistribution of their bullhood around the corral. A secret male ceremony all the more effective for the early morning hour, something basic and shameful and powerful. The roasted balls had the texture of oysters and the flavor of nuts.
"Heroes will soon be a drug on the market." Hilario returned. He wasn't so much a lizard, Joe thought, as an incorrigibly evil elf. Even the white outfit had the bright aura of a bad fairy. "You won't be able to swing a cane for heroes. All with their scars and ribbons and stories. See, I'm already gearing for the veteran's vote. I'm going to be the vet's friend. First, I'm going to be your friend."
Felix laughed and went back to the branding fire, where the boys were wrestling with another calf.
"How are you going to do that?" Joe asked.
"Teach you how to measure your grip on reality. Profit is the only fair measure of reality. Market value, Chief. The value of a has-been is not high, but I'm going to help you cash it in. I'm speaking of $2,000 in your hand right now."
The ground around the branding fire was pulverized and dry. Boys and calf struggled in explosions of dust.
$2,000? That wouldn't buy Bar Top and tablecloths for the Casa Mañana.
"Why?"
"There's not a loyal native New Mexican who wouldn't put his last dollar on you in the ring. Formerly eighth-ranked heavyweight in the world. A big night at the gym in Santa Fe, crowds of friends and well-wishers, lots of priests – they always tone up a fight. I can't think of a better way to celebrate the imminent end of the war than Chief Joe Peña's farewell appearance."
"I'm retired."
"This is the Texas boy I'm talking about."
"I look forward to improved relations between Texas and New Mexico."
"Then let me ask you a question." Hilar
io raised his voice so everyone in the corral could hear. "Out of sheer curiosity. Could you beat him if you did fight him? Out of curiosity."
Joe shrugged. Along the rail the men leaned forward, salt shakers and cigarettes in hand. Holding a knife, Felix looked up. Even the calf seemed to lie still.
"Because I think he'd kill you," Hilario said. "Southpaw, ten years younger, ten years faster. You look soft and tired. You should be scared of the boy, it's no fun getting beat up in public."
"How does all this make you my friend?"
"I wouldn't want you to get hurt without being properly paid."
"You mean, without you getting properly paid."
"That, too."
Joe shook out a cigarette and lit it. How washed up did he look? he wondered. He wished he'd paid more attention when the kid beat Ray. He remembered the figure walking away from the truck at D Building, rolling the wide shoulders, fist high. Joe wished he'd seen the face again. The face always said a lot more.
"Give me a straight answer," Hilario said. "See, that is what I mean by testing reality. Could you win?"
"Really?"
"That's what we're talking about."
Joe still hesitated.
Hilario said, "$5,000, Joe. Side bets are up to you."
"$10,000, winner take all."
"You're crazy. We are talking about reality."
"Uncle, the reality is that war is over and the soldiers are going home. You're an ant in the desert watching a picnic pack up. Does the kid think he can beat me?"
"He knows he can."
"Then winner take all is fine with him."
"Then the rest of the rules are mine. No priests. No gloves, no ring, no referee. Strictly a sporting event for interested parties. Anyway, you know how to use a ring, you'd just tie a faster man up in the ropes. A referee just gets in the way. I can keep time for rounds."
"How many rounds?"
"As long as it goes."
"In a week," Joe said.
"Impossible."
"We fight in a week. You said before you could put the fight together in two days.