Читать книгу Little Red War Gods - Patrick PhD Marcus - Страница 7

After an ugly night of disoriented travel, Nastas looked grim and older than his twenty-three years, slumped over his horse’s back, his grievous injuries a sharp contradiction to the morning warmth caressing the landscape after last evening’s tumult. Musashi moved carefully so as not to upset Nastas from his back. He was tired but glowed with purpose and strength, unscathed during the rescue of the girl. He knew Nastas needed immediate help and was frustrated that he didn’t recognize the terrain. A mile earlier, he’d caught a whiff of a cooking fire and started in its general direction. The scent was getting stronger. He quickened his pace.

The river had nearly claimed Nastas for herself. A deep gash through the meat of his left bicep still oozed new blood, and thick strands of his long, black hair dragged crosshatched through it like a paintbrush. His brown leather pants were torn and streaked with mud; his naked chest, hairless and tanned to a bottomless red, was bruised and covered with small cuts. In spite of his desire to focus all his efforts on not falling off Musashi, the perilous events of the previous night replayed themselves over and over again.

He could see himself riding into the dusk on the thirtieth day of a solitary journey that had taken him in a 250-mile loop around his hometown of Window Rock. He’d been within miles of his hogan, its worn but comfy mattress beckoning, when he felt an overwhelming urge to visit Black Rock. The desire was so sudden and so palpable, he’d felt the nervousness of a rabbit beneath a circling hawk. Nastas had only been there once before, as a boy, and then the power of the holy place so overwhelmed him, he had lacked the courage to touch Tsa-Zhin. Now its summons felt like providence, impossible to resist. Musashi, also dreaming of an easy meal of oats and fresh hay, had to be put to heel several times before he steered away from home. Six hours later, Black Rock finally at hand, the weary duo were abruptly treated to a storm which seemed to rage out of nowhere.

Soaked in seconds, Nastas laughed to himself when he thought of finding shelter. Then he’d heard it, clear as day above the slashing rain: a girl’s scream for help. Musashi heard it, too, and spun in the direction of the cry without Nastas’ touch. Off he’d galloped as fast as he could, almost plunging into the flash flood’s deepening current before Musashi could be reined in. They saw the red truck bob past, and the girl who must have screamed for his help struggling in the passenger seat. Nastas said to Musashi, “If this is the purpose Black Rock had in mind when it called to me, and we are to die in this river, I am sorry if you must share my fate.” Musashi leapt from the riverbank as though he’d understood Nastas’ words and had been bothered by his need to make a speech.

Having expected to go under immediately, Nastas was encouraged to find Musashi swimming like a duck with four feet. When a branch reached up from the glut of choking debris and cut his bicep to the bone, he cried out. Implausibly, they were abreast of the truck. Nastas could see the girl from his angle but she couldn’t see him. Musashi bellowed loudly as the lightening gave way and darkness engulfed them; he surged forward, his head dipping under. Nastas grabbed for Musashi’s mane. When he did, he felt the girl. With all of his might he pulled, the sky and water lighting up so that he could see her face bursting from the water as he hauled her upwards onto his lap. He felt her clinging to him, terrified. She was alive! Remarkably, she was looking at him, appraising him, then she was limp on his thighs, unconscious.

One more blast of lightning revealed a boy framed in the truck’s broken window. He had the look of someone who’d already resolved to die. The boy extended a shaky hand toward Nastas as he struggled to maintain his grip on what appeared to be the head of a broken Navajo idol. It was a thing shockingly familiar to Nastas. Satisfied that at least someone would know his fate and that Becka had been rescued, the boy tilted his head in acknowledgment and was gone. The truck disappeared under a wave. “She will have to protect him,” Nastas whispered, thinking of the great Spirit of the idol. “There is nothing I can do.”

Nastas was amazed that Musashi was somehow still swimming when everything around them gradually drowned. Reaching a high bank, Musashi tore himself from the water, his body quivering. He kept walking, slowly gaining distance from the river. Dense, pounding rain filled with the gold of thunder whipped around Nastas’ face. He fought to keep the girl from falling, her dead weight seemingly always unbalanced. Exhausted and in terrible pain, he was sure he could hear himself begging Musashi to relent, to let them rest. Passing near an enormous cactus, Nastas felt the transition from muddy earth to hard road. Musashi quickened his pace. Several cars heading in the opposite direction passed them by, their passenger’s heads whipping around in disbelief, their headlights no more than dying candles as they sped off. A green sign appeared as the rain abated to a mist: FLAGSTAFF 120 MILES.

Almost half an hour had passed since the first driver made a call to 911. Soon the sight of blue-lit police cars roared around a bend towards Musashi and his charges. Red and white lights followed, an ambulance not far behind.

Musashi slowed to a stop, satisfied at last with his efforts.

Nastas looked down as if noticing the blonde, bloodied body of the girl stretched across his lap for the first time. She struggled to lift her head, and reached a hand of obviously broken fingers toward the coming crew of rescuers. “Help me,” she said weakly.

The first officers from their vehicles clamored around the enormous granite horse, staring in shock at its cargo. “What the hell happened?” one of them asked. Another officer ran over, a brawny Arizona Trooper. “I’m gonna take her. You just hold steady,” he said to Nastas, who did not respond. Nor did Nastas react when several paramedics came to the officer’s assistance. They gently pulled the girl into their arms and laid her on a backboard. “She’s hurt pretty bad,” another officer said, leaning in to look. “Seems like someone did a number on her.” He looked accusingly at Nastas. Just then a camera flashed as a young news anchor deftly maneuvered close to the action. The spotlight on her cameraman’s equipment blazed to life. A paramedic looked up at Nastas and offered him a hand. “Can you get off on your own? Let us have a look at that arm,” he said.

In shock, unsure of what was wanted of him, Nastas scrutinized the circling crowd for answers. A minute passed this way as tension grew across all fronts, Nastas seemingly oblivious to the helpful paramedic and his own injuries but fixated on what the paramedics were doing to the girl. A strange woman dressed entirely in a priestess’ white robes caught his eye when she beckoned to him with an open palm. Nastas couldn’t imagine a good reason for a priestess being there, unless she’d come because she knew he was going to die. He ignored her invitation to approach and at the same time wondered why she’d begun to look so familiar. The police and paramedics working around her paid her no mind.

Musashi, who until now had been glad for their rescue, suddenly sensed danger. Nervously he turned in a tight circle as he panned the gaping faces for its source. Musashi focused on the same woman in white robes that had drawn Nastas’ attention. Her knowing smirk made Musashi’s tail twitch out of control. She waved her arm gracefully; without warning, something sounding like a gunshot ripped the air. Everyone jumped or ducked with the exception of the woman in white.

The jarring noise shook Nastas back to reality. He wasn’t surprised when Musashi’s back and shoulders, injected with tension, sprang upwards. Nastas pressed himself to Musashi’s mane as the horse reared as high as his huge frame would take him. His two front hooves flailed several times, inches from the video camera’s lens, before crashing to the pavement. Every muscle fired simultaneously as Musashi exploded into a gallop and burst through the circle of officers. His speed piqued as he leapt a guardrail and sped into the desert like a comet falling out of the sky.

Nastas kept himself in the traditional Navajo fashion, his midnight colored hair long to his waist and parted in the center. One side was braided, woven thick with old buffalo rawhide, from the end of which hung a small medicine bag. The other side, unbraided, swept about his face when even the gentlest of breezes blew. His skin was tough and dark, like a warrior whose battle lineage was too long to remember, a trait that intimidated even hardened men. His facial features were simple but set in iron.

Tourists lucky enough to look up at just the right moment and see Nastas might think they’d gone back in time. “Look! Look!” one of them would say to their companions, pointing vigorously at the Indian man on horseback. With his legs hanging long without stirrups and an eagle feather in his hair, sitting perfectly still on some high bluff, Nastas looked like a “real Indian.” “No such thing,” another would contend, and both would soon forget the matter entirely.

As a teen, Nastas had spent many years fishing through his dead father’s voluminous possessions and writings, which his mother had kept perfectly preserved in the small hogan Ahiga had built to practice his private rituals. Ahiga had been killed in his hogan, and in keeping with Navajo tradition, no one was to enter it ever again. Nastas ignored his mother’s constant pleadings to stay out. He practiced Ahiga’s rituals daily, on weekends and after school, even sleeping in the cursed dwelling until his mother was truly unnerved.

On the day Nastas turned eighteen, his mother, a recent convert to Catholicism, begged him to take her to church, claiming that the car didn’t sound right and she was too worried to travel alone. Sleepily he agreed to take her. Because the church was twenty miles away, Nastas decided to wait for his mother while she prayed. She’d tried to appeal to his sense of duty to get him to attend services, but when he refused she produced a small cake with white icing and the inscription “Happy Birthday Nassie” in blue frosting script. Sitting at a picnic table at the rear of the church, Nastas closed his eyes and was quickly asleep, his head propped in his hands.

“Are you going to eat that?”

The voice belonged to a girl. Nastas heard the words without understanding them.

“Are you going to eat that? It won’t taste as good if you leave it in the sun.”

Nastas marveled at the blonde who was easily as tall as his six feet. Her tiny hands carefully removed the clear plastic cover from the cake.

“Is that you? Nassie?” She adjusted the straps on her brown halter dress.

“Nastas.” He felt himself turning a shade redder.

“What does it mean?”

“Mean?” His imperturbable features formed a question mark, not from her simple remark, but from her enigmatic aura of confidence.

“Don’t Indian names have meanings?”

Her manner was so candid that Nastas felt himself inching away.

“It means ‘foxtail.’” In truth, the full interpretation was “Curve like foxtail grass.” Nastas had never been asked for the meaning of his name before. All the Navajo already knew. The kids at his all-Navajo school preferred a different pronunciation, interpreted as “Curves like old man’s penis.” Nastas wasn’t sure why he just didn’t bother to tell her the whole thing. What did it matter?

“Like the foxtail weed?” the girl said cleverly.

When Nastas didn’t react, she settled her palms over the back of his hands. A white girl had never touched Nastas in such an intimate way; the feeling ramped up his insecurities. “I think it’s time for some of your cake. I don’t suppose it’s chocolate on the inside? The inside is what makes all the difference.” The girl obliterated the day in birthday as she drew icing onto her index finger. It disappeared into her mouth. “Delicious.”

Nastas’ bright green eyes widened explicitly. He curled his fingers into fists, causing the girl to withdraw her remaining hand. Still staring, and still fighting back the smile so foreign to his features, Nastas stood up awkwardly. The girl stood as well. Her arms hung heavy at her sides, but her fingers twitched with the obvious desire to reach out to Nastas, to soothe him with her touch.

Nastas shifted his gaze to the cake, bowed to the girl in lieu of a handshake, then stalked off to his mother’s car.

“My name is Natalia,” she yelled after him, “I know it’s stupid, but I’m here every Sunday. You’ll find me in God’s house when you need me.” Nastas did not look back and did not hear her final words, “…which will be sooner than you think.”

Almost a week passed.

Nastas had decided not to finish high school, resolving to spend all of his time ensconced in the heaps of his father’s life instead.

When his younger brother asked Nastas to take him to the store late Saturday afternoon, Nastas thought nothing of it. He loved Hasten, who needed no encouragement from anyone. He seemed unaffected by the loss of their father, and chose to love his mother for who she was, even if she’d abandoned their traditional beliefs.

Their car sped along the dirt road, CCR playing loudly through the remaining speaker.

“Thanks for doing this. I love you for it!” said Hasten.

Nastas would never forget Hasten’s last words or the drunk driver that appeared around the bend, an unpredictable missile that could not be evaded. Nastas swerved and hit a rock-filled embankment at sixty miles an hour. As Nastas’ head slammed into the steering wheel, Hasten’s neck twisted in just the wrong way, his C4 vertebrae breaking loose and sheering his spinal cord in two. He died instantly.

At the hospital, their mother was inconsolable. In a neighbor’s car, she sang during the long ride home, her words a haphazard mixture of Catholic influence and the Navajo ways she’d grown up with.

“God our Father,

Your power brings us to birth,

Your providence guides our lives,

and by Your command we return to dust.

Lord, those who die still live in Your presence,

their lives change but do not end.

I pray in hope for my family,

relatives and friends,

and for all the dead known to You alone.

In company with Christ,

Who died and now lives,

may they rejoice in Your kingdom,

where all our tears are wiped away.

Unite us together again in one family,

to sing Your praise forever and ever.

I give you this one thought to keep -

I am with you still - I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints on snow,

I am sunlight on ripened grain,

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awake in the morning's hush

I am the swift, uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not think of me as gone -

I am with you still - in each new dawn.”

Nastas sat with his mother at the kitchen table until she fell asleep at three o’clock in the morning. Nastas carried her to bed, her short, thin legs dangling over his arm. From the doorway of his hogan he spent the next hours smoking his father’s pipe.

When his mother emerged dressed for church, Nastas wordlessly slipped into the borrowed car beside her. He took comfort with her cheek on his shoulder and from her fussing over his bandaged head.

At the church his mother took his hand and led him to the large double doors. Almost abreast with the dark-suited greeters, Nastas pulled back. Begging her forgiveness, he stalked away. Taking a seat at the empty picnic table, he put his head down and openly wept for his brother for the first time.

A small part of him, no more than a drop, was surprised to find Natalia sitting in the same spot when he finally lifted his gaze. He wasn’t sure how long he had cried or how long she had been there. This time he didn’t inch away when she moved to touch him.

“Tell me, Nassie. What happened to you?” Gently she touched the bandage on his forehead. She could feel the large bump. It made her sadder than she’d expected.

“He looked so peaceful after the accident,” he responded, first in Navajo, then quickly, in English. Nastas recalled with perfect clarity the image of Hasten sitting next to him, his head resting unnaturally to the side. “I held his hand until it turned cold. No one came for so long.” Nastas spoke with the solemnity of a repentant man in confession.

“I am sorry for your loss. Hozo-go nay-yeltay to.” Nastas looked startled. “Am I saying it right? I didn’t mean any harm…”

“You are saying it right. Your tongue makes the words perfectly. Hozo-go nay-yeltay to. May we live in peace hereafter.” The way Natalia spoke the words in Navajo sounded like the songbirds of the lower plains so familiar in Nastas’ youth. “It is a beautiful sentiment. Made even more beautiful when you say it.”

Natalia blushed.

Nastas looked black. “Hasten’s death was not a good death. All morning I have had a chant in my mind that my father taught me just before he passed. It is one of dozens of chants and prayers he shared, but only one of hundreds when compared with what I’ve learned from his writings. My father was a great shaman. But this chant was from the Witchery Way. If spoken, its only purpose is to kill.”

It was Natalia’s turn to look shaken. She quickly brushed the emotion away. “Whom do you wish to kill?” she said, her unblinking eyes still calculating her position.

“A drunk driver killed Hasten. He is still alive. I am still alive. At least one of us shouldn’t be.” Nastas’ voice rose angrily with each word.

Natalia placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.

They talked until a single bell signaled the end of the service. Nastas’ mother greeted Natalia with a warmth she’d never shown the young Navajo girls who frequented her son’s room long after sunset. So began a relationship that would bring Nastas inside a Christian church for the first time in his life. Nineteen-year-old Natalia held his hand and prayed earnestly with him for a year of Sunday morning services, alongside her missionary parents. They spent many nights together in her small Window Rock apartment.

On the one-year anniversary of Hasten’s death, Nastas found himself walking alone, deep into the desert, without so much as a bottle of water. He’d told Natalia he would only be gone for an hour to search for a rare herb she’d wanted in order to make an even rarer tea. Now, ten hours later, his throat parched beyond feeling, his legs exhausted, Nastas had to resign himself to an unprotected night in the desert. Nastas at nineteen had none of the desert survival skills he’d acquired by the night of the flash flood.

Though he’d told Natalia, as he always did before he left, that he loved her, Nastas was surprised to find that he wasn’t thinking of her, even though there was an excellent chance he might not make it back alive. “It is funny what we learn about ourselves when the world has left us to our own devices,” he thought. He could picture his father’s hogan, now his hogan, with all of its charts and lessons and rituals waiting to be unraveled. He knew it was time to make them his life again, to return to the ways of the Navajo. “Earth Mother, forgive me my transgressions. If I die this day, I die as a Navajo.”

Sitting on a round rock, he licked at his dry lips.

The rapidly cooling air carried welcome relief.

Nastas looked up to find several fat rain clouds bobbing in his direction. They looked like the black sheep his father used to tend: BahBah, BahJobe, BahJahova, and BahHumBug. They nourished him then and would nourish him now. He opened his mouth to the first drops, his head moving to catch them like an agitated cobra. “Thank you, Earth Mother. I will not forsake you.”

The rain continued, and the scattered drops graduated to sheets. The temperature dropped by degrees until Nastas began to shiver. He leapt on the rock and screamed with joy: “Holy Father, you honor me!” He laughed and coughed at the same time as water filled his eyes, nose, and mouth. The storm intensified. Nastas was having trouble keeping his footing against the waterfall streaming from above.

Forced to close his eyes, Nastas waited.

The sound was deafening.

The drops stung his skin.

Exhausted, he let himself fall backwards. He hoped nothing thorny would cushion his fall. His back made contact with a thin tree trunk. He leaned against it for support until it unexpectedly moved away.

The rain slacking, Nastas brushed the water from his eyes. What he saw made him marvel. A great black horse stood above him. Wet, huge, and brilliantly spectral, its orange shadow was a creature unto itself.

It was Musashi.

Allaying Nastas’ fears that the creature must be a manifestation of evil, Musashi bowed to him like a circus horse and joggled his head up and down until Nastas mounted.

Ever since then, they’d been kin to the desert.

They occasionally returned to their family’s government dwelling to ensure all the new arrivals were living well. Nastas’ aunt and uncle and their three children had moved in after he’d left so his mother wouldn’t be alone. Even on these visits, horse and rider stayed only for a day or two. Nastas’ family helped with certain provisions and accompanied him for sweats at the neighbor’s lodge, but usually he kept to himself, praying and studying alone in his hogan. When the sun set, Nastas would often sleep in the desert within earshot of their drunken voices, the banging outhouse door a frequent interruption to the desert still.

Nastas hunched over even further; his back bowed awkwardly. He wondered why he was still moving. He wondered if movement even mattered. Hours of fleeting consciousness passed, each one closer to complete darkness than the last. Blood from Nastas’ arm dripped from his fingertips onto Musashi’s foreleg, where it fanned out across his black hoof before the desert consumed it. Slowly but surely, Nastas was bleeding to death, his body weakening minute by minute. The branch had done its job well.

Nastas knew he should dismount and tend to himself if he could, that he should sew his torn flesh together and eat, drink water, and rest in the shade. Maybe even seek help. He was puzzled by the fact he hadn’t already taken these basic survival steps. He questioned what force was interfering with his usual will to live and thrive. He thought of the woman in white. She’d been as poised and magnificent in appearance as a goddess might be, and probably as deadly. The more Nastas explored the detail of her face in his memory, the more he realized she’d been wearing the arraignments of the church elders he’d seen while in attendance with Natalia. He could not place the priestess’ face, but he had no doubt she was one of them. And if she was one of them, was she laying claim to his eternal soul? Was she the one who’d coaxed his soul so far afield, letting his blood continue to flow when help was available? Had she kept his hand from staunching the gush? It horrified Nastas to think he might have committed his soul to them when he’d prayed in their church. Why else could she be there but to collect? He resigned himself to keeping an eye open to further signs of their presence.

“Earth Mother…Holy Father…Wakan Tankan, receive my blood into your bosom. I wish to walk here for eternity, not flounder in their unnatural clouds and cold halls.”

The whole time Nastas waged a private war against his body and mind, Musashi continued to move forward at an easy walk toward what he hoped would be salvation. Finally he crested a small, broad hilltop and stopped.

“What is it, Mush?” Nastas said, before lifting his gaze. When his eyes finally took in the valley below, his jaw dropped in disbelief.