The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (23 page)

The old widow-woman had not asked questions, but from time to time she had made comments too low to make out, although once or twice Zeta had heard her mumbling something about “this” not being “the Indian way.” Zeta and Lecha had heard about the “Indian way” for years and years. Their aunties and dirty-fingered uncles despised what they called “Indians” until it suited them; then suddenly the “Indian way” was all-important if and when the “Indian way” worked to their advantage. Zeta did not want to hear about “the Indian way” from anyone who was her own employee. Zeta had stared at the old woman for a long time.
What
wasn’t the “Indian way”?

The people had been free to go traveling north and south for a thousand years, traveling as they pleased, then suddenly white priests had announced smuggling as a mortal sin because smuggling was stealing from the government.

Zeta wondered if the priests who told the people smuggling was stealing had also told them how they were to feed themselves now that all the fertile land along the rivers had been stolen by white men. Where were the priest and his Catholic Church when the federal soldiers used Yaqui babies for target practice? Stealing from the “government”? What “government” was that? Mexico City? Zeta had laughed out loud. Washington, D.C.? How could one steal if the government itself was the worst thief?

There was not, and there never had been, a legal government by Europeans anywhere in the Americas. Not by any definition, not even by the Europeans’ own definitions and laws. Because no legal government could be established on stolen land. Because stolen land never had clear title. Zeta could recite Yoeme’s arguments and crazed legal theories better and better as time went by. All the laws of the illicit governments had to be blasted away. Every waking hour Zeta spent scheming and planning to break as many of their laws as she could.

War had been declared the first day the Spaniards set foot on Native American soil, and the same war had been going on ever since: the war was for the continents called the Americas.

Calabazas said the widow did not think it was the Indian way to use an old woman and a little child as her “cover” for the business of
crossing the border. He had been leaning against his pickup truck with a toothpick hanging out of the corner of his mouth, staring off in the distance at the highest peak in the Tucson range.

Zeta had laughed loudly—something she only did when she was angry or surprised. “Who said anything about the ‘Indian way’?” Zeta demanded.

Calabazas turned and looked at her and shook his head. “Hey, don’t get mad at me, I didn’t say it,
she
did.”

“Tell her she’s fired then,” Zeta said.

ZETA GAVE UP on men after Mr. Coco. He hadn’t been the first, but she had decided he would be the last. She was not afraid to know the truth. She could feel what she knew. She was different from other women, just as she and Lecha had always been different from all the others. Zeta had begun to feel a wearisome repetition in the love affairs. Hot, awkward motions, foul breath, and the ticking of a clock in the room. She knew how the love would trickle away before the sweat dried on the bed sheets.

Around the same time Zeta gave up on men, she had come across the notebooks old Yoeme had left her. Zeta had begun examining the bundle of pages and scraps of paper with notes in Latin and Spanish. Lecha had all the notebooks but this one. Yoeme said it was to ensure Lecha did not try to hog the notebooks for herself; this had been Yoeme’s way of teasing Lecha, but also a reminder the old woman expected the sisters to care for one another throughout their lives.

Old Yoeme had given Zeta the smallest bundle of loose notebook pages and scraps of paper with drawings of snakes. Yoeme had warned Zeta not to brag to Lecha, but the notebook of the snakes was the key to understanding all the rest of the old almanac. The drawings of the snakes were in beautiful colors of ink, but Zeta had been disappointed after she began deciphering Yoeme’s scrawls in misspelled Spanish. This did not seem to be the “key” to anything except one old woman’s madness.

Pages From the Snakes’ Notebook

Maah’ shra-True’-Ee is the giant serpent

the sacred messenger spirit

from the Fourth World below.

He came to live at the Beautiful Lake, Ka-waik,

that was once near Laguna village.

But neighbors got jealous.

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 us, the Ka-waik’meh,

at Old Laguna.

Spirit Snake’s Message

I have been talking to you people from the beginning

I have told you the names and identities of the Days and Years.

I have told you the stories on each day and year so you could be prepared

and protect yourselves.

What I have told you has always been true.

What I have to tell you now is that

this world is about to end.

Those were the last words of the giant serpent. The days that were to come had been foretold. The people scattered. Killers came from all directions. And more killers followed, to kill them.

One day a story will arrive at your town. It will come from far away, from the southwest or southeast—people won’t agree. The story may arrive with a stranger or perhaps with
the parrot trader. But when you hear this story, you will know it is the signal for you and the others to prepare.

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

Sacred time is always in the Present.

1. almanakh: Arabic.

2. almanac:
A.D
.1267 English from the Arabic.

3. almanaque:
A.D
.1505 Spanish from the Arabic.

4. a book of tables containing a calendar of months and days with astronomical data and calculations.

5. predicts or foretells the auspicious days, the ecclesiastical and other anniversaries.

6. short glyphic passages give the luck of the day.

7. Madrid

Paris        Codices

Dresden

Leave it to Lecha to show up with the remaining notebooks and the notion her transcriptions would be unique and never thought of before. Zeta had already completed the pages of the notebook Yoeme had given her. Zeta did not believe it was an accident Lecha had returned just as Zeta had finished typing the transcriptions of the pages into the computer.

Zeta feels a sudden sadness at the sound of their voices. She is not sure why. Maybe it’s because Lecha and the blond woman are friendly with each other, and she feels so alone. But she does not turn back from the bedroom door, which is ajar. Zeta knocks and the blond woman startles and moves away from her, across the room to an open window. “I haven’t killed and eaten anyone for some time now,” Zeta says to
Seese, who blushes and returns to the chair by the bed. “It’s the color of clothes you wear,” Lecha says quite seriously. “After a while the dark brown color begins to shout something at all of us.”

“Superstition,” is all Zeta will say, dismissing the subject so that she can begin maneuvers to get the contents of Yoeme’s old notebooks into her computer.

“I have been thinking about the old notebooks,” Zeta begins. But Lecha is flying high this afternoon, and she grins at Seese as she says, “I’ll bet you have! I know just what you have in mind.” Now it is Lecha who is watching Zeta’s face for clues; Zeta has never quite known, and Lecha won’t tell her, exactly how much of the psychic business Lecha controls, and how much it controls her. Zeta believes Lecha mostly has the visions or “scenes” imposed on her and can’t control what she sees. Otherwise, why the remark that she “had to leave” the TV talk show circuit? Zeta has gathered it was because of something Lecha had said or described, and whatever it had been, the executive producers of the regional and cable talk shows no longer wanted to risk what Lecha might “see” or say. Zeta is pleased that the blond woman is learning to leave them alone. With Seese gone, Zeta can survey the work area they’ve made in the corner of Lecha’s bedroom. Lecha’s suitcases and travel trunk have been piled outside the closet that is crammed full of her televison clothes—mostly long black silk crepes with plunging necklines or blue satin kimonos with slits up the sides. A big blue chair with peacocks is littered with pill bottles near the bed. But in the center of the light-oak desk sits a new electric typewriter. The pale blue carpet is littered with what appear to be notes and old letters.