M
AUREEN WOKE TO THE SOUND OF SINGING. THE ELDERLY voice lilted softly.
She blinked her eyes open and looked at the pale blue light that filled the canvas tent. Even without knowing Hail Walking Hawk’s language, she could tell the song greeted Father Sun. The melody had the same pleasant rhythm as Iroquois morning songs. Maureen lay quietly in her sleeping bag, listening.
Cool wind played with the tent flap, blew it out, then gently ruffled the edges. The scent of last night’s fire and the sweet earthiness of the desert rode the breeze.
A curious sensation filtered through Maureen, as though her body knew this peaceful ritual from eons ago and found the familiarity comforting.
She checked her watch: four forty-five.
She sat up, brushed and braided her long hair, and pulled on the same jeans she’d been wearing yesterday. She added on a clean red T-shirt and hiking boots. As she unzipped the front of her tent, the singing briefly stopped then started again.
Maureen crawled out into the fragrant wind and looked up. An infinity of slate blue sky arched over her head, the west strewn with a glittering of fading stars. Thousands of them. Awe expanded her breast. Skies like this didn’t exist in the northeast. There was too much moisture in the air and too many trees in the way. It seemed appropriate that her first glimpse of this sky was on her knees.
Despite the cool breeze, she could feel the day beginning to warm. Heat oozed from the very pores of the earth. By noon, she suspected it would be over thirty-five degrees centigrade again. Unbelievably hot for someone who had spent her life romping through the lush forests of Ontario.
She saw Hail Walking Hawk. The old woman wore a white sweater over a long yellow dress. She had her cane tucked under her right arm. Wisps of gray hair blew around her ancient face as she bent over and tied a feather to a bush. She had already tied half a dozen to a nearby bush, and the feathers twirled and bobbed in the morning breeze.
Maureen didn’t know this ritual, but it fascinated her. The act of tying feathers and watching them blow seemed beautiful.
She walked wide around the fire pit and toward Mrs. Walking Hawk.
When the elderly woman heard her coming, she turned slightly and smiled. “Good morning, Washais.”
“Good morning, Mrs. Walking Hawk. It looks like we’re up before anyone else.”
Her toothless mouth spread wider. “That’s because you and me aren’t as lazy as some other people.” She hobbled toward Maureen, pulled two strings of feathers from her palm, and extended them.
Maureen took the feathers, and looked them over. She thought they might be mourning dove feathers. They had a blue-gray sheen. “Tell me what to do.”
Hail Walking Hawk put gnarled old fingers on Maureen’s arm and guided her to a nearby bush. She pointed. “Tie yours to this one. Each feather is a prayer. When Father Sun rises, he will see our prayers and smile.”
Maureen knelt and tied the first feather to the bush. “What are we praying for?”
Mrs. Walking Hawk gazed out toward the eastern horizon. A lavender halo marked the place where the sun would rise. “Oh, many things. Health, and happiness for living people.” She touched a finger to the last feather in Maureen’s hand. “That one is for the Haze child in the ground over there.”
Maureen tied the feather to the bush where it lifted into the air and danced on the wind.
As the sky brightened, the dark canyon walls began to gleam a rich golden-hued blue. She wouldn’t have believed the color if she weren’t staring at it.
“This is magical country,” Maureen said.
Hail shrugged. “The gods live here, Washais. That’s all.”
“That is enough, Elder Walking Hawk,” she said. “I didn’t expect to find God here.”
Hail craned her neck to look up at Maureen. Her white-filmed eyes caught the morning light and flashed. “You knew the gods were here,” she said and tied her last prayer to the rabbitbrush.
In a way, of course, Maureen had known. God inhabited every tree in the woods. God lived in the eyes of the deer, and raccoons. Of course God must also live here in this vast treeless expanse of desert. She had always just associated God with living things, not sand and sky.
Hail Walking Hawk chuckled suddenly. “What makes you think the sky isn’t alive?”
Maureen turned. “How did you know I—”
“Washais, your face tells everyone your thoughts. You were looking up at Brother Sky as though gazing at a corpse. There was no love in your eyes, just an appreciation of his beauty.”
Maureen smiled in relief. “Elder, would you tell me more about the Haze child? Maggie told me a little last night, but I didn’t really understand. What are Haze People?”
Hail Walking Hawk took her cane from beneath her arm, and leaned on it. “They are Spirits who walk in haze because they were never born. They never got to come out and see Father Sun with their own eyes, so they can only dream of him. They live in their haze dream. Kind of a sparkling haze,” she said and tipped her deeply wrinkled face, as if seeing it herself.
“Are Haze People evil?”
“Oh, no, child. Not usually. Though some of them get very frustrated.” She pointed to her own cataract-covered eyes. “I do, too, when I can’t see things I want to. Mostly Haze People are sad.”
“So they’re sad Earth Spirits?”
Hail lifted her hands to the brightening bowl of the heavens. “Some of them live in the sky, hoping to be born. Others are stuck down here like that boy child over there. He wanted to be born, too, but he never was. I think his mother did some bad thing.”
Maureen looked over at the place where Mrs. Walking Hawk
had tapped the ground yesterday. “You mean”—she paused, not knowing the cultural taboos she might be violating—“you mean his mother aborted him?”
Most preliterate cultures knew the proper plants to induce abortion: milkweed and mugwort, star grass, and the dried roots of the cotton plant, among many other uterine irritants. But they were only used during times of extreme stress, natural disasters like droughts, floods, hurricanes. When the survival of the tribe was at issue, it was preferable to kill the unborn than to watch cherished loved ones die.
Hail Walking Hawk studied the fading stars before answering, “Maybe. That boy was really little. He hadn’t learned to talk, so he can’t tell me.” She propped her cane and started for the camp a few halting steps at a time.
Stewart had risen. He crouched near the fire pit, adding sticks to the small blaze he had going. Maggie emerged from behind the tents and pulled up a chair. She wore khaki shorts, a dark blue shirt, and black tennis shoes. Sylvia hadn’t appeared yet.
Maureen gently took hold of Hail Walking Hawk’s left arm, and the old woman smiled.
As they walked, Maureen said, “Have your people always been here? In the desert, I mean?”
Mrs. Walking Hawk stopped. “In the beginning we lived in the belly of the earth with our mother, Iatiku. When the proper time came, birds, animals, and insects helped my people climb through four underworlds—the white, red, blue, and yellow worlds—to get to this fifth world of sunlight. We came out up north, near Mesa Verde, Colorado. That’s mountains. Pine forests.”
Mrs. Walking Hawk started walking again. She eased down through a dip in the sand and climbed the other side, leaning on Maureen one instant and her cane the next.
Maureen cocked her head. “Interesting. Your people believe the mother of human beings came from beneath the earth. My people believe she came from the sky. But if your people came up from the underworlds in Colorado, how did you get here, to New Mexico?”
Mrs. Walking Hawk halted to catch her breath. After a few inhalations, she said, “The place of emergence was too sacred for
humans. We came here, to this canyon, and built the great White House.” She turned back the way they’d come and gestured to the rapidly brightening east. “These diggers, they call it Pueblo Bonito. Now it’s just red stone, but it used to be covered with white clay. We lived at White House with the gods for a long time. Then my people got to arguing with the
Shiwana,
the rain-bringers, and they left us. Without rain our crops wouldn’t grow. We got hungry and started fighting with each other. We had to leave, to move on.”
“Where did you go?”
She used her cane to poke at a clump of grass, as though testing to see what it was. “Some of us went north, back to Mesa Verde. Some south. My clan, the Antelope Clan, moved south to the sky city, Acoma.”
Hail Walking Hawk started for camp again, and Maureen heard Dusty say, “Listen, Maggie, I’ve been thinking about what we discussed last night. If you want, I can shut down the excavation for a couple of weeks. That will give you time to—”
In a frail voice, Hail Walking Hawk called, “That Haze child can’t wait a couple of weeks. He’s crying. He needs to be free.”
Maggie looked at her great-aunt and lowered her eyes to the ground. As sunrise neared, it cast a purplish glow over the camp. Maggie’s round face and short black hair had a pale lilac sheen. “We should do what she wants,” Maggie said to Dusty.
He nodded. He wore dark green shorts and a brown T-shirt that reflected the firelight. The battered straw cowboy hat sat on his head at a jaunty angle. “Just remember that the offer is open.”
Maggie said, “Thanks.”
Maureen guided Mrs. Walking Hawk to the chair beside Maggie and steadied it while she lowered herself to the seat. Hail said, “Thanks from me, too.”
Dusty smiled, but Maureen could see the worry in his blue eyes. He said, “Any time, Elder.” His sun-bleached hair glowed starkly white as he turned around to the boxes and ice chests piled behind his chair. He rummaged through them, pulled out a white plastic water jug, soot-coated coffeepot, and, finally, a bag of New Mexico pinyon coffee.
“Good morning, Aunt,” Maggie said and leaned sideways to kiss her aunt’s cheek.
“Good morning, Magpie.” Hail tenderly touched Maggie’s arm. “Me and Washais have already sent our prayers up. We can rest.”
Maggie said, “I’ll send mine after breakfast. That way I can offer part of my meal to Iatiku.”
Dusty dumped half the bag of pinyon coffee into the pot’s basket, shoved the lid on, and set the pot at the edge of the flames. “I don’t pray until I’ve had at least three cups of coffee to brace myself.”
Maureen said, “I suspect God needs a stiff scotch before you pray.”
She walked behind the tents to the fiberglass Sanolet, and stepped inside. The thing reminded her of rock concerts in a different age. God, how long had it been? But John had been with her then, his wry smile and the sparkle in his eyes just for her. This time, when she stepped out the door, unlike those long years ago, she would be alone in an alien land.
She let the door bang behind her, crossed to the fire, grabbed a chair, and carried it out of the smoke. Unfortunately that meant setting it down to Stewart’s right. He gave her a wary sideways glance.
“Am I too close?” Maureen asked.
“You’d be too close in Ontario, Doctor.”
Maureen sat down. Orange firelight mixed with the shades of dawn and fluttered over the tents and people’s faces. “Maybe you’d better consider a new continent, Stewart. I’ve heard Libya is looking for people of your caliber.”
“Oh, they’d like an American caliber, all right. But more likely a .223 coming out of an M16A1.”
Maureen lifted a brow. “I forgot. This is America. I’ll bet you have one of those for home defense, don’t you, Stewart?”
“No”—he glanced at his watch, turned around in his chair, and shouted—
“I prefer my shotgun!”
“What!”
Sylvia’s tent wobbled as though a bear had just run through it.
“I’m up!”
Dusty turned back to Maureen and showed her a perfect set of white teeth. “Thanks for the gun talk, Doctor. It gets lonely being the only man out here.”
Sylvia stuck her head out of her tent. Shoulder-length brown
tangles framed her freckled face. She sniffed the air and gazed at the sky.
“What are you doing?” Dusty asked.
“The testosterone is like a bug-bomb out here. I was just checking to see if the crows were falling out of the sky.”
Dusty smiled. “It’s good of you to join us, Sylvia.”
“Hey, no problem.” She crawled out of her tent wearing green camo shorts, a tan T-shirt, and hiking boots. “How’s the coffee?”
“Not quite, but soon.” Dusty bent over the glass top on the battered coffeepot. “It’s foaming. Another two minutes ought to do it.”
Maureen watched the soot-blackened pot for a moment, and said, “Somehow, I just don’t think this is going to be Tim Horton’s.”
“What?” Dusty asked.
“The finest coffee in all the world is made at Tim Horton’s. They serve it in these wonderful big white cups. And their chocolate-dipped donuts are enough to make angels swoon.” She closed her eyes. “God, I’m a million light years from civilization.”