The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (102 page)

Twenty-year drought: the hooves of the deer crack in the heat; the ocean burned so high the face of the sun was devoured; the face of the sun darkened with blood, then disappeared.

A time of dissolution.

Priests were called from distant towns.

Acolytes were seen carrying baskets full of small mummified creatures—lizards, toads, wrens, desert mice. Four years had seen grasshoppers devour bean and corn seedlings. Torrential rains that came too late had caved in roofs of empty granaries and storerooms.

Priests sprinkle corn pollen and meal and bits of coral and turquoise on the stone snake’s forehead. They whisper to the stone snake leaning close so no one may see their lips.

Inside the cloudy opal, four years of grasshoppers devour bean and corn seedlings. Torrential rains arrived too late and caved in roofs of empty granaries and storerooms. Any children still alive were sent away with great sorrow.

Quetzalcoatl gathered the bones of the dead, sprinkled them with his own blood, and recreated humanity.

Marsha-true’ee, the Giant Plumed Serpent, messenger spirit of the underworld, came to live in the beautiful lake that was near Kha-waik. But there was jealousy and envy. They came one night and broke open the lake so all the water was lost. The giant snake went away after that. He has never been seen since. That was a great misfortune for the Kha-waik-meh.

1560

The year of the plague—intense cold and fever—bleeding from nose and coughing, twisted necks and large sores erupt. Plague ravages the countryside for more than three years. Smallpox too had followed in the wake of the plague. Deaths number in the thousands.

May 18, 1562—sickness and death still rampant at the end of the sixty-third year after the Katun was completed.

May 1566—between one and two in the afternoon an earthquake caused great destruction. Severe earthquakes lasted
nine
days.

1590

In the sixty-seventh year after the alien invasion, on January 3, 1590, the epidemic began: cough, chills, and fever from which people died.

In the sixty-eighth year after the alien invasion, the face of the moon was covered with darkness soon after the sunset. It was really a great darkness and the moon could not be seen. The surface of the earth could not be seen at all.

1594

Today, September 23, a land dispute between the Xevacal Tuanli is decided according to law.

1595

The mayor was struck by lightning. Ten days later lightning struck the church and main altar. In December, the great bell of Tzolola was begun. A thousand
tostones
were collected from community funds in order to pay for the bell.

1597

Thus, September 3, three days before the feast of the Nativity of Mary, there was an eclipse of the sun and the day became as dark as the night.

1600

Nine Ymox, Saturday, June 16, Mary, grandmother of the sun and all creatures.

1617-24

Smallpox.

1621

Five Ah, the plague began to spread. Great was the stench of the dead. People fled to the fields. The dogs and vultures devoured the bodies. Your grandparents died,
we all became orphans.
We were children and we were alone; none of our parents had been spared. The younger brothers were oppressed and baby boys were flayed alive. His face was that of the war
capitán,
of the son of God.

This shall be the end of its prophecy: there is a great war. A parching whirlwind storm. Katun 1 Ahau. There is a sudden end of planting. Lawsuits descend, taxes and tribute descend.

One day a story will arrive in your town. There will always be disagreement over direction—whether the story came from the southwest or the southeast. The story may arrive with a stranger, a traveler thrown out of his home country months ago. Or the story may be brought by an old friend, perhaps the parrot trader. But after you hear the story, you and the others prepare by the new moon to rise up against the slave masters.

OLD YOEME HERSELF had added a number of pages to the almanac; Lecha easily recognized the handwriting:

Late in the summer, the pigs chew green corncobs, and I wait for execution in the Alamos Jail. I have been convicted of sedition and high treason against the federal government. They hate me because I am an Indian woman who kicked dirt in the faces of the police and army.

They stand outside my cell and gloat over my death. Soon I “must” die because I had “already lived too long,” I have blemished their “honor.” Me, “the short, square-shouldered woman with deadly aim,” that’s my title.

In twos and threes they come to stare at me. They relish the words they repeat again and again—their daydreams of my hanging and dismemberment.

My execution is delayed by their needs for pageantry. Elected officials from other jurisdictions arrive. I am on display, an example to all who dare defy authority. Postponement is due to the governor’s busy schedule. They don’t miss a day outside my cell.

The police chief carries a paper with days crossed off in charcoal. “Count them,” he tells me in low tones. He is outraged because an Indian can read and write, while he, a white man, can not. I laugh and call him “barbarian” in my language.

“You will die! That is certain!” All the others of my kind have already been sent to hell, he says. My death is certain. I am not afraid to die. I am sorry to leave the people I love when the struggle is only beginning. I pray to God for justice. For myself and all our people I pray for the success of the revolution.

The day before my execution the news reaches town. At first the officials refuse to believe the reports of so many sick
and dead. Influenza travels with the moist, warm winds off the coast. Influenza infects the governor and all the others. The police chief burns to death from fever. The jailer leaves a bucket of water and a bowl of parched corn.

“The authorities want to keep you alive,” he says, “until they recover enough to hang you.” The jailer has bloodshot eyes. He says entire households have the dead lying next to the living, who are too ill to drag corpses outside.

I laugh out loud but the jailer reacts slowly.

“Someone will come to hang you,” he reassures me, but when I ask who, the jailer shakes his head. He is tired this morning or he would kill me himself. The town is silent. Church bells no longer ring the Angelus, and I listen with all my strength for the footsteps of my executioners.