Jornada del Muerto: Prisoner Days (7 page)

By the time my grandfather returned from
war, he no longer remembered his high school girlfriend or the baby
they created. My grandfather was probably destined for the shaman
path. Sadly, the war took his soul instead. He found solace in
drugs and alcohol. I never met my grandfather. He died when my
mother was 8 or 9 years old.

My mother and great-great grandmother were
so alike in looks and attitude, it’s hard to believe they weren’t
mother and daughter. My mother was slightly taller and, in my
estimation, more beautiful. She was courted by every man in Las
Vegas, New Mexico. Everyone was surprised when she picked my
father, a plain Tewa with a good heart. They’d known each other all
their lives. Together they had six children. I was their last,
their “miracle” baby. My mother was the ancient age of 31 years old
when I was born on my great-great grandmother’s birthday. She
turned 80 years old that year.

Every year, we’d celebrated our birthdays
together with cake and ice cream. There’s one photo where we were
around the same height. That was a fun year. After that, I towered
over her.

She was the most influential person in my
life. Until she died, she was a presence in every moment of my
life, especially after my mother died. She was everything good and
everything bad in my life. I am here because of her.

She told me once that she knew the moment I
was born that I would to save the Tewa people. She told me that
she’d waited for me all of her life. She told me that she would
live long enough for me to start my journey. By sheer force of
will, she did just that.

Everything she told me came true. She was
106 when she died. She didn’t even get sick until I returned from
the Wixaritari. She died my first day in prison. I helped her soul
pass on my first day in solitary confinement.

I always wonder why she was so influential
to me. Why did I love her so much? Why did I do what she told me to
do without question or hesitation? The prison psychologist focused
on my relationship with my great-great grandmother. He said it was
unhealthy. He told me that my dependence on her was the “genesis of
my criminal mind.” Since prison was her idea, he couldn’t have been
closer to the truth.

I loved her. How could that be unhealthy? I
miss her. You’d think that I would see her all the time now. I’ve
seen only her five or six times since she died. What’s worse, is
that seeing her now is not like spending time with her when she was
alive.

When she was alive, seeing her was about fry
bread, kisses on the cheek, and much, much laughter. If I spoke,
her eyes would focus on my face as if she were trying to absorb my
words. She was so full of love and life. Her smiles never faded.
Her love of life never ebbed.

When she comes now, she’s much more serious.
She warns me of danger, reminds me of the prophecy, and generally
nags me to do what she wanted me to do. She’s more anxious now.
More irritating, too.

Like this journal. She haunted me, day in
and day out, for the last year, to start this journal. I’m not even
good at it, and she kept bugging me to create it.

I wonder why I miss someone who was so
bossy, so opinionated, and so dominating. I guess we understood
each other. She believed in me, supported me through the dark days
after my mother’s death, and the coming into shamanism. When I
looked over the cliff into the emptiness, I wasn’t afraid like most
shaman students. I knew that my great-great-grandmother would pull
me back from any abyss. She was that kind of person. She could pull
anyone back from a spiritual, emotional or psychic abyss.

She couldn’t help with the drugs and alcohol
abyss. She hated drugs and the people who used them. To live in her
house, which I did most of my life, you had to be drug and alcohol
free. She mistrusted any alcohol use. She mistrusted my father’s
occasional use of alcohol even though he held a steady job all of
his life, cared for his children and grandchildren, and generally
was reliable until the moment he died.

Reliable. My great-great grandmother said
that the Tewa needed my father’s reliability, consistency, and
strength to create a strong, reliable shaman. She believed that
only my father’s son could fulfill the prophecy. My brothers all
had a touch of spirit in them. My oldest brother wasn’t interested
in the unpractical. He became an accountant.

My middle brother, Earnesto, was my best
friend growing up. Earnesto liked the idea of the power of being a
shaman, but would rather race bikes or play his guitar than study.
He didn’t want me to be a shaman, either. Made me too weird. But he
loved me nonetheless. He was the only one who worried for me when I
was gone in the summers. He was devastated when I had to come here
to the Pen.

I see my middle brother about once a month.
He stops by to see how things are going. When we get to Pecos
Pueblo, I’m certain he will know what we need to do and where we
need to go. He worked there with my father. He was always prying
into the Pueblo’s long-held secrets. He took my mission to save
humanity very seriously. He was confident I would need his help. At
the time, I thought he was nuts. But now I realize he was right. I
will need help, and I know he will help me if he can.

My sisters had a touch of the shaman in
them. After my great-great grandmother, there was never a woman
shaman in my family line. Not one. I’m not sure if the women didn’t
get the gift or if my great-great grandmother worked so hard that
they were intimidated by the work. Either way, they used their
gifts to snag husbands, keep on top of their children’s mischief,
and generally enjoy life. My sister was one of the joys of my
life.

My mother’s children knew how to laugh,
that’s for sure. My steadfast father was always the last to join
in, but even he enjoyed the loud, rambunctious chaos of our family
the most. He never had a cross word to say to anyone, and still he
was not someone to be taken lightly. He was wise and strong, in a
way I have not seen since then.

He and my great-great grandmother fought
over me. He created the space for me to roam the woods and
mountains most of my childhood. My great-great grandmother thought
it was a waste of time. I should be studying. But my father was
adamant. “Let him follow his own path. Let the boy go,” he’d say.
Around and around they went. My father always won.

While I probably needed more study, the
thing that’s kept George and me alive is my experience in the
backwoods of New Mexico. Dad was right. I needed to learn how to
live and how to survive, before I could become a real shaman.
Without his intervention, I’d surely be dead by now. George,
too.

I haven’t seen my father, or my mother,
since all of this happened. In my fantasy, my father is waiting for
me at the Pecos Pueblo. In my heart, I know that he found my mother
waiting for him. After having to live without her for so long, he
would never leave her side. In my heart, I know they are together
and in love.

The thought makes me smile.

11/09/2056

We spent today like we’ve spent most days --
in the peace and safety of working to survive. For the last six
months, we’ve been working to get ready for our journey. Today, we
went bow hunting for elk. I shot an elk not far from here.

Of course, the smell of blood can bring the
wasps from a hundred miles away. We were careful to hang the elk
before returning to the Pen for the vehicle. We heard, but did not
see, the wasps moving in our direction. Thank the creator because
I’d hate to start the count to 500 days over again.

Together, George and I skinned and butchered
the animal. While George attended the fires, I cut the flesh into
strips and lined our drying racks. This enormous creature will be
the third elk we’ve dried for our journey.

George and I had elk steak tonight with the
last of the Worchester sauce. Funny the things you become
accustomed to. We found a stash of this precious flavoring in the
chef’s private reserve.

That brings to mind an interesting
thing.

I would have thought there would be an
abundance of supplies left hanging around for the last human
beings. Unlike in the movies, the world’s transition to wasp didn’t
happen all at once. It happened slowly, one person at a time.

It was different here at the Pen. Because
they gave the vaccine to so many people at one time, they turned en
masse. It was a solid month before the wasps ran out of people to
eat and almost a year before we had a handle on them.

But in the “real world,” the change was much
more subtle. One person would change and then slowly eat their
family. An entire year after the Pen changed, the world and media
began to catch onto the problem. And even then, a lot of people
thought it was a joke. Efforts to rehabilitate wasps took hold in
the conservative churches and other charities.

The government knew that wasps had ravaged
through the prisons, hospitals, jails, military bases, third-world
shantytowns, most of India, and any other place where people were
warehoused together. They even knew about the half-breeds created
by eating 146-modified food. There was too much money at stake to
let the public know.

The general public was kept in the dark. The
first article about this problem was actually about all of the
missing people. Almost half of the United States had “mysteriously”
disappeared. Half of the population! Because the wasps ate their
own families, there was no one to raise the alarm. No one to call
the police about their missing or ill loved one. Anyone who cared
enough to report a missing person had already turned or was
dead.

The apocalypse began right under everyone’s
noses.

There were no mass protests by crazed
Evangelical Christians. There were no press statements about “Hell
on Earth.” In fact, by the time it was time to panic, there was no
one left to do it.

Except me. And who would I call?

George and I didn’t realize that no one knew
about the wasps. With everything going on, we didn’t have a chance
to look at television until six months after everything happened.
Imagine our surprise to find no reports about the transition or any
news stories about wasps. In fact, everything seemed completely
normal. I think that’s what made this so hard for us.

We became accustomed to the world’s denial.
We lived in a bubble of reality that the world never saw or cared
about. But that’s an apt metaphor for being in prison anyway. We
were used to it. In fact, we were so accustomed to the world’s
denial that we were devastated when the television stations were
gone. The radio stations were gone. All that was left was the
Internet.

Wikipedia posted a page about a virus that
caused “personality changes” about seven months after the wasps had
killed everyone in the Pen. The page spoke of a pandemic virus, not
a genetic sequence causing a kind of semi-death. Like they did for
all the other pandemics in the last fifty years, Google created a
viral-infection map. Millions people were dead before the map was
even started.

How did so many people die without anyone
noticing?

Personally, I think society had become so
self focused. With the advent of cell phones and other handheld
devices, people became accustomed to shouting to the crowd rather
than carrying on individual conversations.

Who would notice if their social media
friend list went from 1500 to 1300 overnight? Moreover, systems
like Facebook, Twitter, and the like were set up for the individual
to control their online exposure. Many celebrity handlers continued
to communicate with fans long after the person had changed or was
dead. A few times, people live-Tweeted their transition. But no one
believed them. Even if they did, they were so caught up in their
own dream that they didn’t really understand what was going on.
Modern culture literally consumed itself in front of a live
audience while everyone laughed.

People had lost contact with their
neighbors, their community, and their streets. Few people engaged
face to face with anyone outside their household. And a lot of
people lived alone. Grocery stores, 7-11s, and fast-food
drive-through handovers were the closest anyone came to interaction
with another human being. With the advent of Internet ordering,
even those interactions became rare.

Certainly the major retailers noted a
decrease in patronage. The media and government attributed the lack
of customers to a downturn in the economy. There was a lot of hand
wringing everywhere. Television news programs did specials on the
“New Depression.” Everyone was terrified that the global depression
of 2008-2009 had returned.

Of course, not one of the many esteemed news
programs ran a special on The 146, which had turned humanity’s
minds to mush. Not one. I wonder what it must have felt like to be
a reporter finally figuring out where all the people had gone. I’d
think it would be pretty humiliating.