Zuni Stew: A Novel (4 page)

That was the first familiar thing Jack had seen or heard: Cook County Hospital was perpetually short-handed.

Martin explained that the Indian Health Service operated in a quasi-military fashion. Rarely would he be on a military base. He was not expected to maintain military etiquette. It was hard for Martin to look into the young doctor’s clear blue eyes, knowing of the killings. He tried to hide his empathy. A hollow grew in the pit of his stomach. Luckily, the intercom buzzed, a secretary’s voice told them the admiral was expecting them.

As they entered, Mark Zeller stood—six-foot, four-inches—and shook Jack’s hand. “Welcome to the service, Doctor. First time out west?” Jack nodded. “What do you think of it so far?”

“I had some great
chiles rellenos
last night at La Placita in Old Town. And my first
sopapillas.
”

“You speak Spanish?”

“Poorly, about as good as my high school Latin.”

“Make sure you read this,” Zeller said, handing Jack a booklet. “From Indian Affairs. Wise advice. In Indian Country, you have to partner with the tribal police and the FBI. They have the trust and respect. They can open doors, especially for us in the Indian Health Service.

“You’re going to see and have to report cases of suspected abuse and provide services to the victims. As outsiders we have a certain objectivity and reputation for fairness. To us, it doesn’t matter who is what tribe or clan. We just want to provide the best health care.”

The meeting over, Zeller said uniforms were at the BX. “Then straight to Zuni?”

“Yes, sir. Already checked out of the motel.”

“Good.”

Then the admiral did something Jack would later recall as unusual. Zeller reached out to shake his hand, and soundly clapped the other hand on his shoulder. The pressure was firm and seemed to last a bit long, considering he had just met the man, not to mention Zeller far, far outranked him.

“The Zunis are a beautiful people. Handsome. A bone structure that is unique. Not Asian, not flat—no ovoid eyes. Kind of dignified. You will like them. You will find, well, for want of the right word, a level of solace in their world. Godspeed, son,” said Zeller.

One hour later, Jack-the-civilian became Jack-the-Navy-Lieutenant-equivalent, shiny double bars on his lapel. All khaki—slacks, short sleeve shirt, socks—all very beige.

He wrestled with the ragtop before leaving Albuquerque. The canvas was bleached, splotchy, threadbare along the seams, but in one piece.

He departed the city on Central Avenue, crossed the Rio Grande, began the climb up Nine-Mile Hill. The land opened up. The narrow two-lane 66 was bordered by desert grassland, barb-wired fences, solitary rows of telephone lines. The sky was huge.

Crossed the Rio Puerco through a truss steel arch bridge. A sign told him he was entering tribal land. Route 66 was stepping back in time. Laguna Pueblo. He regained control of his thoughts; his usual keen sense of observation and assessment returned. His physician’s mind, trained to notice any and all nuances, thought back to the brief conversation with the admiral. A distinct sense of urgency. Even sincerity. Everything in place, down to the marked map now on the passenger seat. Strange. Zuni must be very, very short-handed.

The patched highway climbed in altitude, switch-backing, not a person or another car in sight. Static drifted in and out over the radio. He pushed the off button.

Silence.

An empty road, with a turn south to Zuni ahead– piece of cake, he thought. He was smack in the middle of Laguna Indian country, surrounded by flat mesas topped with gradations of indigo, blue-black, then burnt sienna and yellow ochre, a rainbow of earth tones. Rugged buttes striated with shades of lavender were dotted with piñon, which met chalk-colored rock at the base. Wicked. Freakin’ awesome.

The route circled around massive wind-carved red rocks. Red-stained arroyos, rich with clay, broke through yellow gramma grass, pockmarked with lava. Lots of volcanic activity in the past. The road opened up, but he was slowed down by a dirt-spattered Ford pickup. A brown arm signaled a turn and the old rusted truck pulled off on a dirt driveway. A corn patch, a horse, and a couple of sheep.

His ears popped. The ecology was changing. A zone of juniper. A mix of piñon and oak. A thicker cover of blue gramma grass. Prickly pears—a first for him. And something else had changed. Eastern New Mexico was ranching country. John Wayne. Leaving Albuquerque, he began to feel the heartbeat of the Spanish and Indian Territory. Everything was old, seasoned with the passing of time. Generations before. Human drama. He felt something he had never experienced before. A sense of mystique. An inexplicable aura.

Thankfully the Jeep was running smoothly, and he planned to tell his father just that—his car was great. The robbery bit could come later. For some reason, he thought of Wooly and wished he could reach across the floor gearshift to pet the old dog. Wooly was almost sixteen, arthritic and partially blind, and not a single person in his family could face euthanizing him. God certainly got the canine life span wrong.

A smile crossed his face, even though his next thought wasn’t really all that funny. He could picture the day at the boat house in technicolor. Wooly was just a puppy, he and Nic were little boys, all waiting for their mother and the gardener to take them out in the boat. Somehow Wooly managed to climb onto the roof of the boat house, spotted the boys waving to Rose, and jumped from the roof in obvious glee, crashing straight into frigid water. The silly dog would have drowned if Nic hadn’t jumped in to save him. Jack could smell the sunburned days. Med school had distanced him from Nic. Now, he had left him behind again.

He stopped for gas at a Texaco station in Grants, not knowing what would be available at the pueblo. A single lone pump. A bowlegged man appeared at the door carrying a case of empty Coke bottles. A Woolworth bag blew across the cracked pavement and down the empty street. Jack asked him about a place to eat. The man gestured across the street in the direction of bright turquoise cinderblock building.

Wooden booths, plastic-covered menu tacked to the wall. Pretty much Mexican food and burgers, so he went with the Hatch green chile cheeseburger with a side of frijoles.

An older Hispanic man said,
“Bueno. Y
iced tea?” Someone in the kitchen turned up a radio tuned to a Mexican station.

“Si, por favor.”
He unfolded the Indian Affairs pamphlet he had stuffed in his back pocket. The first sentence read:
Do not speak Spanish on the Zuni reservation!
Strange, he thought, but it became clear as he read on:

Zuni was officially annexed to the Spanish Empire in 1540. For more than a century Spanish friars labored to convert the Zunis to Catholicism, often using brutal techniques. Zuni parents were forced to hide their children from the Spaniards by placing them in windowless grain storage chambers built into cliff dwellings. In many instances, the parents were captured or killed, and subsequently the children perished, their skeletons to be discovered years later by archeologists.

Other pueblos shared religious rituals, and even occasionally intermixing words from their respective languages. The Zunis refused, maintaining their own particular language and culture, and remaining in a single tight-knit pueblo. Zunis ignored the Spanish culture, set aside Catholicism. Even during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, Zuni played only a small part, choosing to remain in what they believe to be the Center of the Middle Earth.

To this day, Zunis do not believe in intermingling with the outside world except for commerce.

Jack closed the booklet, ate the last of the burger, and was back on Route 66 and across the continental divide, watching for Highway 602. After the turn south, the narrow road dipped and curved through hilly, up-and-down arroyos. A little ribbon of a road, no fences, surrounded by open range, narrowed into a tunnel-like draw of burnt sienna and cream-striped rock.

The single-track road turned sharply left. A blind curve. He hit the brakes, the Jeep grabbed. A goddamned herd of bleating sheep blocked the road. Creeping forward in low gear, peering over their dusty backs, he could barely make out the outline of a truck on the other side of the road, upside down, wheels still turning.

He pulled the Jeep off the road and flung the door open wide. Dodging and jumping sheep, he ran to the truck. An arm dangled out of the window, twisted. Fingers twitched involuntarily. One look inside at the contorted body in the cab. “My God,” he said aloud. The arm was nearly torn from the torso just above the elbow. Blood spurted from severed arteries.

He jerked off his shirt and in one swift motion ripped a strip of fabric, wrapped the mutilated stub and formed a tight tourniquet above the elbow, stopping the bleeding. Gasoline. Unable to pry the door open, he reached in and grabbed the young man’s shoulders and pulled the torso out the window, dragging him a safe distance away.

The kid was breathing heavily. His eyes opened wide as Jack gingerly probed for other injuries. Ear to his chest. Lungs clear, no gurgling, no broken ribs. He carried him to the back of the Jeep, pushed the plastic bag of new clothes under his legs to keep blood flowing to his brain. He positioned the nearly severed arm on the boy’s chest. The kid was conscious, but silent.

At the outskirts of Gallup, he roared through a just-turned-red light. A cop hit his red lights and siren. Jack edged the Jeep off the pavement and waved the cop forward. Once parallel, he yelled, “I’m a doctor. Emergency! He’s bleeding out. Lead me to the PHS hospital.”

Immediate surgery. Jack and the policeman met up at the admission desk. Surprisingly, the officer could complete most of the forms.

Name: Tito Jahata.

Residence: Zuni Pueblo.

Father: Louis Paul Jahata.

The remaining data was obtained from Tito’s driver’s license. Jack asked for a lab coat to cover his bare chest.

“You did good, Doc. Very good.” The officer added, “Tito is the son of one of the pueblo’s most revered
A:shiwani
.”

“What?”

“Rain priest. Responsible for the welfare of total Zuni world,” said the officer. “He can do miracles. I have seen.”

9

D
octor’s lounge. An hour passed before the senior surgeon showed up. “He’s going to be all right. The mutilated arm, no hope, only a useless extremity.”

“Could I have done more?”

“You did what was needed, you kept him alive.” The surgeon never offered his name.

Jack walked down the green-tiled hallway out to the Willy, ignoring the blood stains in the back. State 602 again, south. The countryside spread before him. Deep cobalt blue sky, dotted with innocent flat-bottomed clouds. Ponderosas towered over patches of mullein, tall grass and chamisa filled the ravines of the rugged hillsides.

West on State 53 in about a half hour. Zuni Pueblo, ten miles down the road.



Just as he reached the last rung on the ladder, he heard the phone ringing. He swung his body through to the roof and headed through the open doorway. His broad-rimmed black hat skimmed the door frame. After hanging up the phone, Louis Paul Jahata took off his hat and dark glasses and walked silently into his cool workroom. The conversation terse, no emotion in the voice of the Zuni woman working at the Gallup hospital. Tito, his son, was alive. A good boy, non-drinker. A candidate to someday become one of the tribal priests or
A:shiwani
. In an instant the spirit world had ended Tito’s dreams of becoming an Air Force pilot.

Jahata’s mind grappled with the scant facts he had just received—a white man, a doctor, saved him. He listened to the wind.

The breeze fluttered a line of clothes outside his home in the pueblo. A modest home, like all the others. Sepia adobe walls colored by layers of fine sand-based mud, floors the same. In a tiny closet-like space off the sparsely furnished front room, his work bench sat in front of the only window. Buckskin pouches filled with stones, some with silver conchos, were piled to one side. Bundles of dried mountain tobacco hung from a nail. Medicinal herbs hung from a viga above. A shelf contained a row of bear fetishes. His wife of twenty-five-years belonged to the bear clan. Like all Native American men, he joined his wife’s clan. The small carvings made from antlers, shell, turquoise or coral would fit in the palm of his hand.

He reached for a fetish, the most primitive, carved by nature with only a minimum of human intrusion, strengthened the bear shape. An arrowhead bound to its back by a fine leather thong gave it strength. The critical insertion of a red coral heartline added great power.

Louis Paul smoothed back his long black hair. A premature white streak ran on the right side of his crown. He wore a tan leather vest over a collarless denim shirt. Worn jeans, silver belt buckle. Scuffed boots. A large pale turquoise ring. Settled on a goatskin, he raised the fetish to his lips and breathed in, inhaling the spirit. As he settled into a trance, he imagined a silver strand extending from each corner of the room to his solar plexus. He prayed silently, using the fetish as a messenger to the spirits that could intermediate to help a humble human.

The prayer began: “Thou art stout of heart and strong of will...”



Bordering marshes at the edge of a lake, Jack passed a cluster of buildings on the right. Three miles further, at the outskirts of the pueblo, he spotted children playing in a dreary stream strewn with bottles, cans, and empty Budweiser cases. He stopped beside the single gas pump at a general store. Flies buzzed over a puddle, a yellow dog strained against a tethered chain. He wagged his tail. Stirred up dust. He opened the screen door and tentatively stepped inside the rock building. Several older men stood huddled at one side of the store, smoking, talking in low voices. The place smelled strongly of mothballs and piñon smoke.