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Authors: Martin Cruz Smith
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clung to his shirt as they ripped through to the skin. Another bat landed on his hand and the boy dropped the shotgun, rose, and began to run.
They followed the running boy until he reached the truck, dived through its door and rolled the window up. For a while, the bats clustered on the hood and windshield. Then, one by one, they returned to the sheep. To the feast.
C H A P T E R
T H R E E
“W hen I die and go to hell,” Selwyn squinted at the sun, “that place is going to look awful familiar.”
He clutched the flask in his breast pocket as Youngman steered around a hole in the road. Selwyn’s wife Esther and one of his half-breed daughters rode in the back of the deputy’s jeep. The teenage girl was dolled up for social attention in a black dress trimmed in red. Looming ahead was that center of the Hopi universe called the Black Mesa. From the giant mesa four fingers stretched southwards into the desert. They were called, from west to east, Third Mesa (with the pueblos of Hotevilla and Oraibi), Second Mesa (with the Shongopovi and Shipaulovi pueblos), First Mesa (Hano and Walpi), and Antelope Mesa (with the ruins of Awatovi). Seen from the road below, the mesas appeared a single, flat-topped wall of stone reaching to the horizon in either direction. Only two fragile clouds intruded on the sky.
“Did Anne tell you where she was going to camp?” Youngman asked.
“Didn’t ask. She wouldn’t give me the time of day or the year anyway, Romeo. She’s after your balls, you know that. Rich white girl, that’s the worst. I mean, she is not for you. Now, take my girl Mae here. You could do worse.” He weighed Youngman’s lack of interest. “Typical. They want blankets, I have pots. They want white girls . . .”
“Hey, Selwyn, you never told me. Why did you give up the missionary business?”
“Never did. It gave up on me. I got another germ, see?”
“No.”
Selwyn took advantage of a relatively smooth stretch of the unpaved road to suck his flask.
“It’s my theory that religion is like a disease. A great religion’s like an epidemic. Take Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism. Just like epidemics. Start in one place, always spread along the trade routes, flourish for a few hundred years and die out. Or get overrun by a new epidemic. I was sent here like a germ, to infect you people. Instead,” he shrugged, “you infected me.”
“With what?”
“A very dry mouth,” Selwyn tipped his flask again.
As they neared it, Third Mesa jutted out towards the road, an escarpment of rock sheared cleanly at its top except for decaying, boxlike structures of adobe. Old Oraibi was still inhabited, barely, as if by the survivors of some disaster.
Esther nudged Youngman’s back.
“I have to do Mae’s legs. Pull over at Spanish Place.”
Youngman pulled off the road beside a mesquite tree and a weathered tin sign that read, “Warning. No outside visitors allowed in Oraibi. Because of your failure to obey the laws of our tribe as well as the laws of your own, this village is hereby closed.”
Selwyn went behind the sign to urinate. Mae’s white cotton leg wrappings had come undone, revealing a pair of 59¢ athletic socks. While Esther wound the traditional wrapping again, Youngman stretched his legs up on the windshield and smoked.
There was nothing much to distinguish this strip of the highway from any other, although some Hopis said it was here that they greeted a Conquistador named Pedro de Tovar and his troops in 1540.
He was supposed to be the Pahana, the White Brother whom the Hopis had left a thousand years before, when they first began their long diaspora out of Mexico. Oraibi was established in 1100; the other pueblos followed as other clans arrived at the Black Mesa. Together, they waited for the bearded white brother whose arrival would signify the completion of the world. Pahana didn’t arrive the year he was expected; in the person of Cortez, he was busy bringing down the Aztec
They followed the running boy until he reached the truck, dived through its door and rolled the window up. For a while, the bats clustered on the hood and windshield. Then, one by one, they returned to the sheep. To the feast.
C H A P T E R
T H R E E
“W hen I die and go to hell,” Selwyn squinted at the sun, “that place is going to look awful familiar.”
He clutched the flask in his breast pocket as Youngman steered around a hole in the road. Selwyn’s wife Esther and one of his half-breed daughters rode in the back of the deputy’s jeep. The teenage girl was dolled up for social attention in a black dress trimmed in red. Looming ahead was that center of the Hopi universe called the Black Mesa. From the giant mesa four fingers stretched southwards into the desert. They were called, from west to east, Third Mesa (with the pueblos of Hotevilla and Oraibi), Second Mesa (with the Shongopovi and Shipaulovi pueblos), First Mesa (Hano and Walpi), and Antelope Mesa (with the ruins of Awatovi). Seen from the road below, the mesas appeared a single, flat-topped wall of stone reaching to the horizon in either direction. Only two fragile clouds intruded on the sky.
“Did Anne tell you where she was going to camp?” Youngman asked.
“Didn’t ask. She wouldn’t give me the time of day or the year anyway, Romeo. She’s after your balls, you know that. Rich white girl, that’s the worst. I mean, she is not for you. Now, take my girl Mae here. You could do worse.” He weighed Youngman’s lack of interest. “Typical. They want blankets, I have pots. They want white girls . . .”
“Hey, Selwyn, you never told me. Why did you give up the missionary business?”
“Never did. It gave up on me. I got another germ, see?”
“No.”
Selwyn took advantage of a relatively smooth stretch of the unpaved road to suck his flask.
“It’s my theory that religion is like a disease. A great religion’s like an epidemic. Take Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism. Just like epidemics. Start in one place, always spread along the trade routes, flourish for a few hundred years and die out. Or get overrun by a new epidemic. I was sent here like a germ, to infect you people. Instead,” he shrugged, “you infected me.”
“With what?”
“A very dry mouth,” Selwyn tipped his flask again.
As they neared it, Third Mesa jutted out towards the road, an escarpment of rock sheared cleanly at its top except for decaying, boxlike structures of adobe. Old Oraibi was still inhabited, barely, as if by the survivors of some disaster.
Esther nudged Youngman’s back.
“I have to do Mae’s legs. Pull over at Spanish Place.”
Youngman pulled off the road beside a mesquite tree and a weathered tin sign that read, “Warning. No outside visitors allowed in Oraibi. Because of your failure to obey the laws of our tribe as well as the laws of your own, this village is hereby closed.”
Selwyn went behind the sign to urinate. Mae’s white cotton leg wrappings had come undone, revealing a pair of 59¢ athletic socks. While Esther wound the traditional wrapping again, Youngman stretched his legs up on the windshield and smoked.
There was nothing much to distinguish this strip of the highway from any other, although some Hopis said it was here that they greeted a Conquistador named Pedro de Tovar and his troops in 1540.
He was supposed to be the Pahana, the White Brother whom the Hopis had left a thousand years before, when they first began their long diaspora out of Mexico. Oraibi was established in 1100; the other pueblos followed as other clans arrived at the Black Mesa. Together, they waited for the bearded white brother whose arrival would signify the completion of the world. Pahana didn’t arrive the year he was expected; in the person of Cortez, he was busy bringing down the Aztec
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