The Night Marchers and Other Strange Tales (13 page)

“The Ghost Dance has spread from the reservations to our cities, to our youth,” another strange new voice in her head said. It sounded like the President. “The suspect is a clear and present danger to the United States of America.” 

Erin raised her gun and centered Crazy Horse in her sights. The hefty teen looked at her. He stood upright and unflinching, his hands still cuffed behind his back. 

I don’t want to do this, Erin thought. This man is unarmed, restrained, and surrounded by dozens of agents.  

“Do your job,” the voice commanded. She felt blood trickling from her nose. 

“I forgive you, sister,” Crazy Horse said. “But what you do makes no difference. This time your soldiers are few and we are many.” 

Erin pulled the trigger and watched the bullet fly as if she were watching a movie. Crazy Horse’s body jerked back. He fell onto a dancer and slid to the floor. 

I just shot a cuffed suspect, Erin thought. 

No, you were only doing your job
, the voice answered. 

From the corner of her eye she saw dozens more Squadron Thirty Seven agents pacing the club. She realized she was the only non-helmeted figure left standing. 

Flashes went off. Who was taking photographs? A black helmeted figure stepped in front of her. “Lieutenant Fetterman, Squadron Thirty Seven,” he said. She recognized the voice as the voice in her head.  

“I don’t believe what is going on here,” she screamed. “I can’t believe what I just did. You made me do this. How?” 

“You served your country well. It is time to rest now.” She suddenly felt tired and wanted to sleep. “You’re going to be all right.” 

A dry breeze swept over her. For an instant she saw Old Chief Crazy Horse and a band of dancers in the grassy field. A buffalo lay on its side in the grass. Crazy Horse bent down and picked up a writhing little beast. A newborn. He wiped the blood off it, revealing white hair and skin. A white buffalo. Crazy Horse smiled. 

Lieutenant Fetterman grabbed her hand and the image disappeared. 

Fetterman led her out of the club. Erin found it hard to walk, hard to keep her eyes open. Dozens of Squadron Thirty Seven agents stood motionless and silent among the fallen teens in the street. Fetterman was careful not to step on any bodies as he led her across the street to a personnel carrier. 

Helicopters hovered overhead. On the far side of the street, camouflaged marines dragged bodies to somewhere outside her view. 

Fetterman gently pushed her into the waiting arms of a marine inside the personnel carrier. Inside she could hear a little better over the choppers’ mechanical whir. 

“This her?” the Marine asked. 

Fetterman nodded and walked away, toward the club. Erin could barely keep her eyes open. She felt her memory fading, her thoughts confused. 

“What happened in there?” the Marine asked. 

It is beginning,
Crazy Horse said in her head. 

“This war will not be fought with guns,” Erin mumbled. The crow cried from somewhere overhead. Erin understood its message. 

“The buffalo have returned,” she said. “We shall live again.” 

THE GREEN MAN 

OF 

PUNTA CABRE  

The weathered cross atop Mount Cabre shakes like a tattered scarecrow, and the can of paint I was going to touch it up with rattles and hops. The soft ground of Juan Haberno’s cornfield below ripples like the muscles of a horse trying to throw an unwanted rider. The poor farmer throws his arms out trying not to fall. Another aftershock from the big one last week. I pray for the Lord to spare me, though I know he never hears. If he were to call me home now, then I would know his face. I could beg for forgiveness for ever doubting that he was always looking down on us. I grip the gray peeling wood and steady myself. A wave of buckling earth tears across the field leaving a wake of turned-up rock and dirt. As if Juan hasn’t suffered enough. The awful groan and rumble of rock fades, and with a jerk that sends the paint can flying, the quaking stops. White paint oozes from the upturned can and seeps into the soil. 

After a moment of deathly quiet and still, the flutter and tentative chirps of birds return to the jungle. Juan looks at the three-foot wide trench newly cut through his field and yells something I can’t hear. Even in the face of this, it’s probably a joke, as usual, like “How about that one, Padre?” 

I pick up the almost empty paint can and walk down the hill to my little church at the edge of Haberno’s farm. Two years ago, when I first arrived, I put up the cross, thinking it would be a beacon of faith, always visible to the village. The way they welcomed me and my work filled me with hope. That was before I learned that to them Jesus is just another name for one of their ancient gods, and every Catholic Saint and holiday has its own Maya counterpart.  

When I reach the bottom Haberno waves. “God’s plowshare,” he says with a laugh. The aftershock just destroyed a chunk of his field, yet he still smiles. Bless him. I’d be thinking of all the work needed to fix it in time for planting. 

Ignacio Rivera, the local brujo, darts from the jungle at the edge of the field and joins Haberno at the rocky trench. He surveys the damage with his dark eyes, closely set above his flat, wide Mayan nose. His short, wiry frame bears signs of his old age but also of strength, like a jaguar past its prime yet still capable of the kill. “God don’t like the new corn,” he says and regards me with a scowl, like he always does.  

Punta Cabre’s fields once boasted nineteen distinct strains of corn, passed seed to seed, father to son for generations back into the time of the Maya. Two years ago the infiltrating strains arrived. Resistant to heat. Resistant to bugs, but bland and genetically dominant. Soon all the corn will be the same and there’s nothing anybody can do. Not even the misguided fools up North who thought themselves smart enough to tamper with the work of the Lord.  

To the people here, corn is more than just a livelihood. It is a symbol, a bridge between the many levels of worlds they believe in. The corn’s roots reach into the world below, and bring the cobs and energy of life into our world. I wish I could rid them of these notions, but given their history and way of life I don’t fault myself for my slow progress. 

I shuffle up the three rickety steps to the church. My predecessor kept it full of Mayan images and statuettes of sun gods, sky serpents, spirits of smoke and rain and dozens of others. Yet, somehow, he was respected by the Cardinal and the people both. I never understood how he was so full of faith. Certainly not by making his church into a jungle shrine, as Ignacio would have me do. No idols or false gods rest under my roof.  

“Padre! Padre!” a young voice cries. Marco, Juan Haberno’s son, is running down the dirt path along the field, cradling a ragged bundle like a giant rag doll. 

“It’s a man!” he says, his chest heaving. The skinny, dark-haired boy looks up at me. With his flat nose and coffee skin he is a true child of Punta Cabre, Maya through and through. With the honest and kind smile that I so closely associate with him, he places the bundle at my feet, as if for approval. An ancient, crumbling blanket covers the corpse of an old man curled in a fetal position. Brown mummified flesh is stretched taut over his thin bones and face, placid with a gentle expression of sleep. Twisted hands clutch a small bag, a seed bag, in a death grasp.  

“Marco Haberno, where did you find this?” I say. “You know to stay away from the ruins.”  

He’s a good kid, though more interested in futbol than my Bible class. It would ruin me to see him chopped up by the rebels, displaced Zapotistas, who regularly loot the archeological sites to fund their hopeless fight for rights in the corrupt Government. 

“I know,” Marco says, “I’ve been good. I found him in the crack that opened up in the field.”  

“And you brought him to me?” I ask. 

Marco shrugs. “It didn’t seem right just leaving him there. I thought you could give him a proper burial.” 

If there is hope that this child will grow up with Saint Mary being Saint Mary and not the Chac of Rain, then there is hope for all. Does this child see faith in me? 

“You did a good thing, Marco,” I say. “We’ll give him a proper funeral.” Though I wonder how. 

After he leaves, I wrap the body in a white shroud and place it under the palapa in the graveyard. The mummy has been brought here for a reason. A test. A test of my faith. I hear the chitter and caw of conures in the trees above. I look, but see only black myna birds fluttering into the jungle. 

**** 

The townspeople crowd the graveyard in a half circle around the open grave. Juan Haberno left work filling in his field, and even Ignacio Rivera put aside his dislike of me to pitch in and help dig the hole. Eduardo, leader of the young rebels, non-descript and ordinary without his mask and rifle, has come. I hope the eyes of the government soldiers are elsewhere. An attack now would be disastrous.  

The mummy lays under the palapa in a simple wood coffin. Ignacio Rivera leaves a plate of fruit and a bundle of herbs alongside it. Each of the mourners follow, one by one. Soon, a mound of red hibiscus and bougainvillea blossoms, corn bread, coins, tortillas, glass candles adorned with Catholic Saints, incense both lit and unlit, cakes, and cookies has accumulated. Marco drops his offering last, a steamed tamale wrapped in corn leaves. This is not going as I wanted. The aroma of chicken and spices mingles with the smell of fresh, upturned earth. 

I fold the shroud over the body and slide the plank closed.  

“He came from the ground,” Ignacio Rivera calls out, “put him back that way.” 

The murmurs from the crowd tell me I cannot refuse. I take the body out of the coffin, carry him to the open grave, and place him next to the mound of earth. All I wanted was a good Christian burial for this man. He was probably just a simple farmer like Juan Haberno. The adults lower their heads, and a few of the boys look around curiously.  

During my short service I tell them that this burial shows even their ancestors have found Christ. From the abundance of offerings and Maya symbols and statutes, I can see my wishful falsehood is of little consequence to them. What is Marco to think? What will he grow up to believe? Even the rebels know, beliefs shape our world and are worth dying for. 

Eduardo helps me lower the body into the ground. He places the first shovel full of dirt into the hole. 

“May Jesus Christ protect you,” he says softly. 

They all line up for a turn to shovel some earth. 

When all is done, and the last of them has gone, I sprinkle holy water into the hole and begin filling it in. 

**** 

“Good morning, Padre,” Juan Haberno says, leaning on his shovel. “You don’t look so good today.” 

“Didn’t sleep so well. Woke up early to prepare the cinder. It’s Ash Wednesday. I’ll see you in church?” 

“Yes, see you in church,” he says and twirls a little canvas bag on its drawstring. The seeds inside rattle like a maraca. 

The sound brings last night’s dream back to me. A tiny old man was curled up inside a fibrous, green ball in the buried mummy’s heart. Tubers, roots, and runners grew from it, pushing down through the body to drink and up to find the sun. I woke just before the rustling creepers broke the surface. 

Juan Haberno trudges into his field. Strong morning sun bakes the fresh earth of the grave. A myna bird swoops down and grabs a brown lizard. After school, Marco and the other town kids line up at the church doors to receive the ash on their heads. 

What Mayan day or ritual this coincides with I don’t know. Some god of smoke, maybe. The children accept the ash uncaring of any symbolism or my religious explanation. Saint or smoke god, they just want to be done with it and play ball. 

With sweat-slicked ash on their foreheads, the bunch of them run from the church, kicking a ball back and forth. A wild kick sends the ball into the graveyard. When Marco catches up with it he lets out a cheer. “Come look, everybody!” 

I run. 

He is pointing to a healthy, foot-high, three-inch thick, green sprout poking its way out of the soft earth where we buried the mummy yesterday. Is it a weed? A sign? Whatever it is, it has risen unnaturally fast. Faster than anything I have ever seen. 

The kids look at each other with confusion and joy. Then they let out a unified cheer, and Marco kicks the ball high into the air.  

**** 

“Please, please don’t step on the graves,” I say to the people gathered to see the bulbous cornstalk that has shot up in the graveyard. 

It has only been two days, and already the stalk growing from the fresh grave is higher than the wooden crosses and stone slabs marking the resting places of those who have died since my arrival, mostly rebels. Visitors have come from nearby Mechalu and Saint Cristobol. The Haberno family gladly sells them tamales, proudly pointing out it was their son who found the man buried beneath the stalk.  

“Wish all my corn grew that fast,” Juan Haberno says. “It is a miracle.”  

“It truly is a miracle,” an old lady in the crowd echoes. Is this the Lord’s apology for the quake? A reward for their faith? Surely it is a form meaningful to them. I want to hush her, but looking at the pile of offerings surrounding the stalk, I realize it won’t do any good. 

“A miracle.” The words fly from every mouth. 

“Please, please,” I say. “This is holy ground. All altars must be outside the graveyard.” 

**** 

In my dream, vines and tubers snake from the stalk and bury themselves in Haberno’s field. They pulse, carrying dark ichors away from the rows of corn to the mummy, who is sitting atop one of the gravestones. Black dribble runs from its mouth and nose. I move closer and realize beneath the fresh earth and green fungus its face is mine. I wake with a start to the resonant bark of a gecko chirping on the tin roof.  

**** 

Visitors have come from Chiapas, Guadalajara, Mexico City, the small towns of Guatemala, and everywhere in between. The sick, the dying, the blind, the crippled, the old, and the religious pilgrims all want to touch and pray at the miraculous corn stalk. I roped off the graveyard with twine and fishing wire to keep them from knocking over the grave markers.