The Grey Pilgrim (4 page)

Browsing for Ethnographers

J.D. found out he owed the Papago Tribal Police the price of a carbine when he got back to the office. The United States would take it out of his next pay check. It would wipe out the gas and mileage allowance he was supposed to get for taking his own car out to
Stohta U’uhig
, but he didn’t complain. He hadn’t realized Larson was just borrowing the gun. Still, the look on the fat little bureaucrat’s face had made it worth every cent.

Larson owed them a lot more, repair and towing charges on a tribal Chevrolet, and some extensive glass replacement on the Ford pickup. If Uncle Sam was also taking it out of his pay, Larson was going to wait awhile before he saw another check. The little fat man didn’t owe anything to anybody on the Buick, unless it was a finance company. It was his car and his responsibility. Larson was still the number two BIA representative on the reservation, but by a pretty fine thread. If J.D. happened on a pair of scissors he’d know what to do with them.

With amazing speed for a series of bureaucracies, the BIA in Washington consulted with the Reservation Supervisor who consulted, in turn, with his tribal police. They discussed it with state and county authorities, and the Federal Marshal’s office put in its two cents. They all left it up to the local draft board, which went through its own agonies before deciding Jujul’s band was a bad precedent. If the village could be persuaded to come in and register peacefully, fine, no need to press charges. But if they couldn’t be convinced by gentler means, they would have to be brought in by force. That left a chance to keep things calm. Larson remained the fly in the ointment. Despite pressure to the contrary, he’d filed assault charges in federal court against Jujul and a dozen Papago Juan Does. As Deputy U.S. Marshal for Southern Arizona, J.D. was responsible for enforcement of both matters. His reaction was not exactly delight.

That was why he’d had his little chat with the attorney Parker. Jesus Gonzales had suggested he should start with the man. “He probably won’t know anything yet, but he may find out.”

John Parker, according to Deputy Sheriff Gonzales, was a half-breed. His father had been a missionary to the Papago; his mother, a convert. The Reverend Parker must have chosen his profession out of some confused need to offset the darker side of his nature. He preached the gentle love of a redeemer, whose personal representative he claimed to be, then threatened the fires of hell and eternal damnation on those who refused the salvation he offered. He drank. He beat his wife and child. He sowed his seed in more than one unwilling member of his flock, and left behind a trail of bastard siblings for his only legitimate son. He died, so drunk he choked on his own vomit.

John Parker grew up with a special loathing for his father and the culture that produced him. But his father survived long enough to force him to face that culture and to know it. He sent his son off to far away schools, and made him stay until he came back a lawyer.

Parker would try to get himself involved with Jujul’s case, the deputy suggested, because it was a challenge to the BIA and the tribal council. He regularly ran for a seat on that council on a militantly anti-Anglo platform and he just as regularly lost. Any cause that might harm those agencies would draw him “like
caca
draws flies.”

Gonzales was right. The moment the court began to consider Larson’s charges against Jujul and his band, Parker was there, an endless source of objections and legal technicalities. All of which had only delayed and not halted the issuing of warrants. It would get some publicity though, and that was probably all the attorney ever intended. After their brief interview, J.D. was confident Parker didn’t know any more than he did, at least not yet. But he also had the uncomfortable feeling the attorney wouldn’t cooperate, even to stop bloodshed. Not unless there were some way for him to profit from it too.

So J.D. began to consider where to look for a bunch of Papagos who’ve suddenly gone feral. Their reservation was big enough to hold all of Delaware and Rhode Island with room to spare. Some sixty miles of its southern border, hardly marked, was with Mexico. Most of the rest of its boundaries were just as unclear and similarly desolate. Jujul could be almost anywhere.

J.D. spent Tuesday asking everyone, Jesus Gonzales, the Papago Tribal Police, the people (Larson excepted) in Bill Fredericks’ office. He asked everyone with an opinion, and he got lots of them, but the bottom line was always the same—Mexico. The Papago had seasonal villages. Many spent half their year south of the border. Jujul would know enough to understand that the BIA and tribal police had no authority in Mexico. They would just head south a little earlier than usual. Probably. He alerted the border patrol. Now, what to do next?

There was something that bothered J.D. about all those opinions. They might have come from people who either were or knew Papagos, but in every instance they were tame Papagos, Americanized Papagos. To find out what sort of folk Jujul and his band were, he was either going to have to go out in the less affected parts of the reservation and ask people who would be reluctant to answer, or find someone else who might already know.

J.D. parked his Ford in a faculty slot, leaving a U.S. Marshal’s business card under the wiper blade. It had saved him a lot of parking tickets from the City of Tucson and seemed a good bet to be just as effective at the University of Arizona.

The campus was a verdant oasis of neatly trimmed lawns and palm-lined drives, lying behind low walls of volcanic stone. The library stood just inside the main gate on the left. It was a large red-brick building, light on the ivy. Inside, schools of serious-eyed students circled the card catalogue, darting in to nibble at the contents of its drawers in a continuous learning frenzy. He got out a notebook and cautiously joined them. There were depressingly few listings, and all those proved to be no more than references to passing comments in general texts. No one had seen fit to publish the sort of tome he wanted. There were several eighteenth century Spanish documents in the special collections section, but they were as apt to give him an inaccurate view as a result of their age as he was getting from his modernized informants. He tried the information desk. A frumpy, thin-shouldered woman of indeterminate age hid behind glasses so thick it seemed unlikely she could read anything in her place of employment.

“You might wish to browse through the various ethnographic publications in the library’s collections,” she offered in a whisper. “I’m sure there have been several valuable articles over the last half century or so.”

When he discovered the majority of those publications had yet to be indexed, he decided to go browsing for ethnographers instead.

The Arizona State Museum was directly across the palm-lined drive. Its dim interior was deserted except for an elementary school class which crowded around a distant exhibit while each member shouted questions at their befuddled guide. There was a studious looking woman behind the information desk who could have been a twin to the one across the street. He asked her who could tell him the most about the Papago.

“Spencer,” she whispered.

He had trouble hearing her over the kids. “Where do I find this Spencer?” he whispered back.

“What?” she asked, cupping an ear.

He asked again in a normal voice. What the hell, it wasn’t going to disturb the kids.

She frowned her disapproval but provided an intricate set of directions. He followed them faithfully and got thoroughly lost. After inquiring of three students arguing the merits of isolationism as they sat beside the campus’ centerpiece fountain, he finally found the Department of Anthropology. There was another one there, behind the secretary’s desk. Triplets, he thought, or a good argument for environment over heredity. At least this one didn’t feel compelled to whisper when she asked what he wanted.

“Spencer,” he told her.

“L.J. or M.B.?”

“I don’t know,” J.D. admitted. I’m looking for the guy who works with the Papago.”

“L.J.,” she decided for him. She gave him still more intricate directions. This time they worked.

It was a classroom filled with partitions and desks, not students’ desks, full-sized ones. There was a sign on the wedged-open door that proclaimed this to be the Department of Anthropology Graduate Research and Teaching Assistants’ Office. It also gave a list of names. J.D. peeked inside. There weren’t many people there but L.J. Spencer was one of them.

He looked up with a pleasantly surprised smile and said, “J.D., what are you doing here?”

It took J.D. a moment to put a name with the face but when he noticed the sign on the desk said Larry Spencer, it helped. Tucson wasn’t such a big town that, having cracked the social whirl, you could easily miss anyone else who had managed to do the same. He’d met Larry at a party, several parties, actually. If he’d ever known his last name was Spencer, he’d forgotten. J.D. wasn’t that good on names and faces from parties, especially the ones he met later in the evening. This face was attached to a big, good looking, athletic lad. J.D. seemed to remember he was some kind of archaeologist, which made him wonder if the third triplet hadn’t sent him on yet another wild goose chase. He also remembered that the kid had been very curious about Spain and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. J.D. didn’t like to talk about Spain so he hadn’t liked talking to Larry Spencer. All of which had something to do with why he barely recalled him.

J.D. needed information, though, so he was polite and friendly and tried it from the top. When he finished, Larry cleared it up for him.

“I see what’s happened,” he grinned. “It’s Mary you want. Mary’s my wife. She’s a grad student here too, you probably remember her.” J.D. didn’t. “She’s the Papago expert, has all her preliminary research done and is about to start her field work. Me, I’ve worked with a lot of Papagos, used them as crew on some of my digs. When you assumed your Papago authority would be a man, that’s where the confusion set in.”

Actually, what J.D. had assumed was that he was looking for a faculty member and not a student. He put it a little more tactfully, though.

“Strange that an anthropology department right on the edge of the reservation wouldn’t have somebody who’s a Papago specialist.” He was still hoping that might get him the name of a professor who, if not an expert, at lest knew them pretty well.

“That’s part of what got Mary interested,” Larry confided. “Very few people have spent much effort on studying and describing Papago culture. The tribe didn’t fight any glamorous wars like the Apache or Navajo, don’t have picturesque villages like the Hopi and Pueblo, and don’t produce any collectable artifacts, aside from some very nice basketry, that anybody is much interested in. Dr. Sherwood is the Southwestern Indian man on the faculty,” (J.D.’s hopes rose) “but he’s into Navajos. He only started mentioning the Papago in his lectures in more than a passing way when Mary became his teaching assistant and started writing them for him,” (and J.D.’s hopes fell). A little of the disappointment must have shown in his face. “Mary may not have lived with them yet, but she knows Papagos as well as any living White. If anybody can tell you what you want to know, she’s the one.”

It was probably an exaggeration, but having no other hot leads to follow, J.D. decided he might as well talk to the girl. He asked where and when he could see her. Larry decided her schedule was too hectic for the remainder of the day and most of the next. “Why don’t you come over for supper tomorrow night,” he suggested. “We can chat in comfort and without distractions.” J.D. had the sinking feeling the kid wanted to chat about Spain and the Civil War, not the Papago. He tried to think of a reasonable excuse that would still give him a chance to pump the girl for whatever she might know. He couldn’t come up with anything convincing off the top of his head. What the hell. Maybe she’d turn out to be a good cook, and if the boy archaeologist was too much of a pest he could always plead urgent business the next day and make a run for it.

“OK,” J.D. agreed. “Where do you live and when should I get there?”

“Oh good,” Larry said. He jumped up and grabbed J.D.’s hand, sealing the bargain with an overflow of enthusiasm seldom encountered outside a used car lot.

Rita Hayworth on a Good Day

Mary Spencer was late so she slipped quietly in through the classroom’s back door. Dr. Sherwood stopped lecturing to give her a cold stare while the rest of the class turned to see who was causing the problem. She found a seat near the door and gave Sherwood a pretty smile, and a flash of tanned thigh. He hurrumphed and bent back over his notes, trying to recall what he’d been saying.

Most of the class probably thought she’d just made a bad impression. They were wrong. She’d done that a long time ago. It was early enough in the semester for most of them to be unaware she was their teaching assistant, and not in danger of flunking on the basis of an occasional tardy arrival.

Dr. Sherwood was a man on whom she could never have made a good impression. For all his education, he was a firm believer in the myth that a woman’s place was behind her husband instead of beside him, and there in silent acquiescence to fulfill his every want and need. A woman’s day should consist of washing, cooking, sewing, cleaning, and maybe plowing the south forty in her spare time. Having babies and mothering them shouldn’t interfere with the smooth running of her husband’s household or keep his meals from being on time, his socks from being darned, his shirts from being ironed, or the south forty from getting plowed. Not too surprisingly, Dr. Sherwood was a bachelor, having yet to encounter a woman who could match his ideal.

“Ahem, yes,” he was saying. He’d liked that flash of thigh, though he probably thought a proper young woman would show only about that much flesh during the sex act itself, and then demurely.

Mary suddenly realized the poor old dear had completely lost track of where he’d been in his lecture. She knew he couldn’t have been very far along, she wasn’t that late, but she couldn’t help him. He’d stopped talking to give her that cold, disapproving look the moment she came into the room. Finally, one of her fellow graduate students who was auditing the course took pity on the professor.

“You were going to tell us about the Hohokam, sir.”

Dr. Sherwood hurrumphed again, took a quick peek over the top of his glasses in Mary’s direction in case some thigh was still visible, discovered it wasn’t, and said, “Yes, exactly. Yes, that’s right. The Hohokam.” He’d found it in his notes.

“The name Hohokam is a bastardization,” he said, pausing for a round of titters from the young innocents whom college had once again exposed to a term with which they were quite familiar, but felt they shouldn’t be, “of the Pima/Papago word
hekihukam
. It means ‘an old thing.’ It was the closest we Europeans could come to pronouncing the word they gave us when we asked about the impressive ruins that are scattered about their homeland. Though they didn’t realize it, it is quite likely that the modern Pima and Papago, who are but two branches of the same tribe, are the descendants of the Hohokam and once possessed a more technically advanced and economically successful adaptation to their environment. There are many theories regarding the disappearance of the Hohokam and the advent of the Pima/Papago peoples. Plague, drought, conquest. Such answers, if they are to be found, are better left to the spade and trowel of our archaeological colleagues. What concerns us in this overview of the peoples of the Southwest is their culture.”

Mary leaned forward, opened her notebook, and began jotting down what she wanted to pick up at the market for supper. Dr. Sherwood nervously consulted his notes to see if she’d caught him in a mistake. Mary had pretty much written this lecture for him, all but the pomposity which he’d added by himself. The Papago were her specialty. She knew a lot more about them than he did. In fact, she probably already knew more than anyone else in the department, even though it closely hugged the border of
Papa-guería
. When she finished her dissertation, she would be
the
expert.

Sugar, she wrote. That was easy enough. They’d run out of sugar with Larry’s second cup of coffee that morning and Larry hated coffee that wasn’t two or three teaspoons sweet. It was a start, but didn’t solve anything. Such as, first and foremost, what she wanted to serve her dinner guest.

Just what sort of food would a man like J.D. Fitzpatrick like? He was mature, he was worldly, what wouldn’t he like? It was stupid, she told herself, but she wanted to impress him. Stupid because she was already married, had been for three years, and, even if it wasn’t what she’d fantasized, she wasn’t unhappy, wasn’t looking for an alternative. Stupid, maybe, but fact. The man fascinated her. When she thought about him she found herself wishing America was a polyandrous society. No such luck. In fact, the part of America she occupied contained more than its share of Mormons, some of whom were still living at the opposite extreme. It was high time a woman founded a religion, she thought, and set down laws and customs that favored females for a change. Dr. Sherwood wouldn’t like that. Now that she thought about it, neither would Larry. While he would prove downright narrow-minded about sharing her with one or more fellow husbands, she knew he would adjust to a polygynous relationship with hardly a second thought, except, possibly, delight.

Spanish food, she decided. Not Mexican, Spanish. Ruth Gibson said her husband had told her J.D. came to Arizona, in part, to recover from wounds and a severe lung condition after fighting in Spain. She’d told Mary he was a hero there. Of course, she’d also said he was a Communist, but not even F.D.R.’s administration went around appointing active members of that party to Deputy United States Marshal’s positions, no matter how heroic they happened to be.

Spanish food was a terrific idea, or an absolutely awful one. If J.D. fought and almost died there it might revive unpleasant memories. In fact, since the Fascists had won, that would be almost inevitable. OK, she decided, no Spanish food. It was a step. Now she only needed to eliminate a few hundred other national cuisines.

J.D. was a bachelor. That meant he probably ate out a lot, or confined himself to simple sorts of home cooking. She supposed he was accustomed to lots of cheap cuts of fried beef and a variety of chicken dishes. She could make a pork roast with all the fixings. That was bound to be a nice change, but what if he was Jewish? With a name like Fitzpatrick? But then his mother could have been Jewish. There was that chance in a thousand he was kosher. So OK, she told herself, no pork.

She knew some good Mexican and Chinese recipes, but those were two types of ethnic foods that abounded in Tucson’s restaurants. That let them out.

She could be really original and prepare a Papago meal. She even sort of knew how a few were made, but it was already afternoon and J.D. was coming for supper that night. She’d have to drive clear out to the mission to get the right ingredients. There just wouldn’t be enough time.

Well, fuck it, she thought. Larry hated it when she said fuck. Dr. Sherwood would probably have a heart attack on the spot if he even dreamed she knew the word. A tendency to that and a few other salty phrases hadn’t damaged her reputation in local society nearly as much as she feared. Anthropologists are allowed an uncommon level of eccentricity, especially when they happen to resemble Rita Hayworth on a good day.

Fuck it! She’d buy the best steaks she could find and let Larry cook them on the grill in the back yard, and she’d make a simple garden salad and a vegetable dish and top everything off with a chocolate rum cake. If it all turned out to be a disaster, she could just eat cake until she got blind.

Below sugar she wrote steaks. It sent Dr. Sherwood running back to his notes. If she timed it right she could keep the professor at a peak of anxiety for the remainder of his class.

At a complex point of the lecture concerning Pima/Papago religion, she wrote down chocolate under steaks, experimentally accompanying it with a faint frown which she aimed in the doctor’s direction. He went into a coughing fit while he searched his notes and memory for the error he was sure she’d caught him in. She stopped paying attention.

Ruth had also said she’d heard J.D. had the most awful scars. One, like a knife wound, or maybe a sword, across his left shoulder and down his chest. Ruth was incurably romantic. Hers was the sort of mind to convert the Spanish Civil War into a swashbuckling adventure and J.D. into the Errol Flynn lead, swinging about the countryside from convenient ropes that undoubtedly hung from the Spanish sky, sabre clenched in his teeth, smoking pistols at his belt, bared chest sporting those dramatic scars.

Ruth had told her Maggie Edgar was her source of information about the scars. The Edgars had a swimming pool and apparently J.D. had taken advantage of it. Maggie had thought him a marvelous swimmer, but it was the scars that really grabbed her. There were three other scars, she’d said, along his right side. One was just below his shoulder, one in his side, and one in his thigh. They were small round white scars, pairs, front and back, and she thought they might have been from bullets. Then Ruth had blushed and gotten giggly and said Maggie had told her the scars were spaced in such a way that it seemed quite likely there was a fourth pair where it would be hidden by his bathing suit. Mary had been full of that same dreamy, girlish curiosity too, until she heard about the fourth wound. Then, all of a sudden, it hit her. It would have taken a fully automatic weapon like a machine gun to place four shots in such a neat row. Her imagination immediately showed her J.D. lying torn and bleeding in the dirt and it hadn’t seemed romantic anymore. J.D.’s quiet intensity, the way he seemed to watch everyone and everything from a distance, made her wonder if there weren’t inner scars as well, wounds to the spirit. She’d felt a sudden urge to take him in her arms and hold him and tell him it was all right. And she’d discovered the urge was not entirely platonic. That was where it got complicated, because she still loved Larry, didn’t want to do anything to hurt him. And yet she desired a man she hardly knew.

Fuck it, she thought. She wrote rum under chocolate and underlined it three times. Lots of rum. She didn’t even notice what it did to the flow of Dr. Sherwood’s lecture.