Wild Indigo (16 page)

Kerry's hand on my face felt warm. I looked at him and smiled. “Oh, you're here. I must have had a bad dream.”

He wrinkled his brow. “You all right?”

“I'm okay,” I said, stretching, checking every part to see if it worked. I sat up, looked around. I was on the floor near the woodstove. The house was cold, the door standing open.

“Can you move? Can you get up?”

I rubbed my eyes, then took a deep breath. “Yeah, I'm okay.” I pushed myself to my hands and knees, then rose to my feet.

“Good,” Kerry said. “C'mon then. We have to get Mountain to town now. He's barely breathing.”

One vet in Taos contracted with the Division of Wildlife to see animals brought in with injuries or illnesses. Kerry got the man out of bed and down to his clinic to tend to Mountain. “Has he been poisoned?” the doctor asked.

“No. I don't know. I—”

Kerry interrupted. “We don't know what happened; we just found him this way, lying on the porch in front of the door.”

“How long's he been like this?”

I shook my head. “I don't know.”

The vet gripped Mountain's large chest with his hand. “His heart's barely beating. You stay here with him a few minutes. Let me make a call and get someone down here to help me.”

I pushed my head into Mountain's neck, willed him to breathe, his heart to beat. I smelled his wild scent. “C'mon, buddy, you can make it,” I sobbed. “You can't leave me here. I need you.”

Kerry rubbed my back as I continued to bury my face in the wolf's fur. “You saved me,” I whispered. “You got me down the mountain. Now, get on
my
back and ride. I'll carry you, I'll get you back to safety. Come on, just let me bring you home again.”

A sour cup of coffee and two bottles of water later, the vet sent me and Kerry home. “He's ingested something, would be my guess, something that's either drugged or poisoned him. We don't have much in the way of fancy diagnostics here like they have in Albuquerque. I'll do some blood work, run a few tests. Until we know more, we can only watch him, keep him hydrated. It's touch and go. Nothing you can do here, might as well get some sleep. I'll call you if anything develops.”

“But I don't have a phone!” I said.

“Not even a cell phone?”

“No, they don't work out where I live. I'm almost off the grid.”

“Well then, you call me. I'll be up with him through the night. You go to the nearest phone in a couple hours and we'll touch bases like that until we see a change. How's that?”

Back in my cabin, I found the cracked conch shell on the floor in front of San Cirilio, its contents dissipated from the flames. On the table sat Tecolote's infusion in the big mug, cold now. I sniffed at it. It still smelled good, even enticing. I was thirsty. Kerry coaxed a fire in the woodstove while I deliberated whether to drink the tea:
Is that why things went wrong, because I didn't drink it after burning the root?

Then I remembered the root! The other half was missing, not on the table, nowhere to be found. I was supposed to put the other half next to my heart, but perhaps Mountain had gotten hold of it and eaten it. “Take me to the café on the highway,” I told Kerry. “I have to use the phone right away.”

In the middle of the night, I rose from the bed, carefully taking Kerry's arm from around me and placing it on the pillow. He muttered something and dropped back into deep sleep. I pulled my Pendleton blanket from the chair and cloaked myself with it, went to the table in the dark and felt around until I found the mug of Tecolote's tea, picked it up, and took it with me. I went outside, to the place where Mountain and I so often sat at night, looking up at the stars. I lowered myself carefully to the ground, so as not to spill the contents of the mug. It was very cold out, and I gathered the blanket tightly about me. I felt the emptiness of Mountain's absence, remembering all the times he'd stayed beside me, watched for coyotes or mountain lions, or run in place and whimpered in his dreams while I tried to work out the meaning of my day's events, or some other pressing matter. I sniffed at the tea again and the smell was still inviting, so I took one small sip and waited.

Nothing.

I took another sip. The drink was delicious and felt soothing to my throat, which was sore and raw from the smoke of the witch root.

I waited.

Still no effect, other than that the tea seemed to be quenching my thirst, when all the water I'd consumed earlier in the evening had had little effect.

I continued to sip the liquid as I watched the stars and huddled under my blanket. I felt a small warming in my chest as I finished my cup, but no other noticeable side effects. I did, however, feel great sadness and fear about Mountain, and I began to cry. “Great Spirit, Mother Earth, and Father Sky,” I prayed, “please don't take my great heaven beast, my soul mate, my wolf companion from me. He's all the family I have, and I love him beyond measure. Please help him to heal and recover. I love him. I need him. Aho.”

I dreamed again of Mountain and woke before dawn, sobbing into the bedcovers. Kerry stirred and rolled over, and I got up to write down the contents of the dream:

I started some coffee brewing, and Kerry got out of bed and came up behind me. He put his arms around my waist and nuzzled his face in my neck. “You need to shave,” I said. “You're rough as sandpaper.”

He rubbed the side of his jaw with one hand. “Sorry.”

I turned to face him. “You slept last night. You actually slept.”

He grinned. “I know. Hey, babe!” His tone was strange.

“What?”

“Have you looked in the mirror?”

I brushed my uncombed hair with my hand. “No, why?”

“Take a look,” he said.

I made for the bathroom, and he followed. Standing at the sink, I examined my reflection. The marks on my cheek had faded overnight, only faintly pink now instead of the virulent red they'd been for days.

“What happened?” he asked.

I touched my cheek—no burning. “I don't know. Maybe Tecolote's tea.”

“You drank that? You're braver than I am. After what happened, I wouldn't have touched that concoction.”

I continued to scrutinize myself in the mirror.

Kerry watched for a few moments, then said, “Babe, I know you love that wolf better than anything or anyone in this world.”

My eyes grew moist.

“You've got to be hurting bad. Why don't you talk to me?”

“I dreamed about him.” I clutched at my chest, grabbed a handful of my T-shirt and twisted it into my palm. “It was like something I saw when I was…when I passed out after burning the smudge.”

“What was it? What did you see?”

“We were climbing a mountain and he wanted to take a trail leading farther up but I knew we had to go down. There was something urgent about it; I knew we had to get down the mountain but that wolf wouldn't come with me.”

Kerry turned me around and looked at me, his hair still disheveled from sleep, a line on his face where the pillow had wrinkled into his cheek. He gathered me into his warm chest. “Boy, when it rains it pours, huh? So many tragedies in just one week.”

“I don't even have my job to do so I can occupy myself,” I said. “I feel like I've wandered into a nightmare, all this strange stuff that's been happening to me. I don't feel grounded, I can't…I want Mountain!” I broke into a sob.

Kerry squeezed me tighter. “Listen, I'm going to drive down to the café and use the phone. I'll take off work today and stay with you.”

“No, no, don't do that,” I said, pulling away from him. I looked into his green eyes. “I may need you more if—if…Mountain…”

“I'll be here if that happens.”

“Go. I'll be all right.”

He hesitated. Then he gave a little snort. “You're so stubborn.”

Alone in the cabin, I felt Mountain's absence so painfully that I wanted to do anything to distract myself. I drove up the highway to the café to call the vet. “His heart's just barely beating,” he said. “He's not conscious, but he's hanging on. We'll just have to see what the day brings.”

“Isn't there anything you can do? Pump his stomach? Anything?”

“It's not that root thing you thought it was. We drew some blood. He's been given atropine, a near-deadly dose. The only thing we can do is wait.”

“Atropine? What's atropine?”

“It's a highly poisonous crystalline alkaloid—comes from the belladonna plant, and some other plants. It prevents the response of various body structures to certain types of nerve stimulation. It can be used in very small amounts to relieve spasms, or to lessen secretions, even to dilate the eye. But your wolf here has received a big dose of it, and it's keeping his heart from performing like it should. Stuff's concentrated in his bloodstream, no use pumping the stomach. I don't think he ingested it by mouth. Like I said, all we can do is wait. But I think it's only fair to tell you, it doesn't look good. He might pull through, but there's a good chance that even if he does, his heart—or even his brain—has been damaged. He may not even regain consciousness. Best thing is that he made it through the night, he's still fighting. Like I said, all we can do is wait and see.”

I got in the car and drove on down the highway. Inside my chest, I felt like a powerful fist was grabbing my own heart and squeezing out all the life. A fearsome, dark loneliness—like a patient and familiar enemy—edged in around the corners of my life, ready to strike again now that my four-legged sentry was not there to defend me, to love me, to stand beside me.

I drove through the canyon of the Rio Grande, along the river. As I traveled, memories of Mountain rose to greet me. I passed a place where we had crossed to the other side last May. We'd had an unusually dry winter, which meant almost no snowpack melt that spring. The mammoth stones in the riverbed rose above the water and we could step from one to another. Right in the center of that wet highway, like a clown, Mountain stopped and perched all four of his massive paws on one rock no larger than a basketball. His big body couldn't balance on so small a center, and finally he teetered and fell into the water. I laughed at him, and he rose out of the river and began galloping around the reeds and shallows, splashing great waves of water on me and everything around him. He grew so excited with the shock of the cold water that he sped up and began circling in and out of the trout pools along one bank until he finally fell into enough depth and current that he was forced to swim. I laughed and laughed at him, and he made sure to repay me as soon as he got out by forcefully shaking every ounce of liquid out of his coat and onto my dry clothes, rubbing against my legs, and wagging his wet tail into my body.

As the canyon narrowed, I saw a tiny trail we had taken once on a hike. I was searching for petroglyphs that day, and we found many of them for me to photograph. But near the summit of that climb, we were rewarded with a much greater prize: the nest of a pair of golden eagles spread across a flat of rock near our route to the top. We stayed a distance, but as I was climbing through a crevice of two large stones nearby, I found a perfect tail feather—a good omen indeed. It was unlawful to take it, so I made a small cairn of stones and planted the plume in the center—a shrine to the beauty of the place. Mountain and I lingered on a high ledge watching for the eagles. They came, after fishing in the river, with trout dripping from their beaks. On the stone floor near their nest, they ripped the fish apart and then took turns feeding a pair of fledgling young. Using a zoom lens, I photographed them. But the best treasure I gained that day was a beautiful black-and-white photograph of the wolf that I took from the top of the canyon, his mane rippling in the wind, a big smile on his face, the Rio Grande winding for miles like a silver ribbon below him. I called the picture
Mountain on the Mountain
.

Suddenly, I felt a wave of guilt that I hadn't been able to protect him and care for him as I'd pledged to do. I'd failed him—such a beautiful, magnificent, innocent animal.

I reached the tiny village of Agua Azuela, parked the CJ, hiked behind the ancient adobe church, and started up a winding goat path on the south-facing slope. I sought the only healer who perhaps could help in this instance.

Tecolote was waiting on the
portal
as I came around a bend in the trail. She waved at me. “Come! Come, Mirasol! I made you tea!”

At her crude plank table, I sipped the warm liquid without concern about whether or not I would experience any strange visions or out-of-body episodes. It wasn't courage, but rather surrender to a sense of overwhelming fatigue and sadness.

For once, Tecolote was quiet, not chattering at me like a bat. She was intently focused on her task at hand—rolling some herbs up in tiny pieces of fabric, then tying them with bits of thread. She had at least a hundred finished ones in a pile in the center of the table, all made of solid-colored fabric, some red, some turquoise, and some white.

The tea was soothing. I felt my body relaxing.

Some time passed with neither of us speaking. The kettle on Esperanza's hearth hissed steam. I could hear birds singing outside in the chamisa bushes. It seemed so peaceful here, the sun coming in the open doorway and warming my left side.

Finally, I let out a heavy sigh.

“Don't worry, Mirasol. I am sending you something for Montaña. We will do all that we can, you and me.”

I sighed again. I tried hard not to cry. “I…”

“Shhhhh. There is no need to talk about it. He is almost too beautiful to speak of anyway. We will do all that we can.”

“He…someone poisoned him.”

Tecolote stopped working and looked at me, tipping her head to one side. “Do you know what I am making here?” She opened her wrinkled palms to encompass the pile of cloth bundles.

“Prayer ties?” I asked.

“
Sí! Bueno, bueno!
You got it right.”

“For Mountain?”

“And for you, and that boy, and maybe for the others.”

“What boy? Kerry? What others?”

“Shhhhh. Drink your tea, Mirasol.”

“But why are
you
making prayer ties? Isn't that a Plains Indian practice?”

“Many wise teachers came through here over the years. Do you know the village of Las Trampas?” She pointed a bony finger out the door and toward the east.

“On the High Road? Near Truchas?”

“
Sí, sí,
that one. It is named for some long-haired white men who set traps, caught animals, and sold their hides many years ago.”

“Fur trappers?”

“
Sí,
trappers.”

“Go on.”

“Go on? You are giving me orders now?”

“No, I'm sorry. I mean, please tell me more.”

“
Las trampas,
they knew a little bit about healing—not like a curandera, mind you, but they knew a few small things. They had medicines we didn't have over here, salves and things. They knew how to pull out a bullet and pack the hole it made in the body with herbs that killed the poison. They knew a lot about sewing up wounds—they used horsehair instead of sinew, and this made only tiny holes, which healed nicely and didn't attract poison and decay. And they knew a few other little things.”

“But how do you know about all this? That must have been well over a hundred years ago!”

Esperanza smacked the table hard with her hand. “Have you no manners, Mirasol? You interrupt me when I am telling you a story for your own good!” Her eyes were as wide as an owl's.

“I'm sorry.”

“Drink your tea!”

“I've finished it.”

Tecolote hissed like a snake. She reached over the mound of prayer ties and snatched up my cup. “You are always wagging your tongue, asking foolish questions.” She went to the hearth and spooned some herbs into the mug and added some of the boiling water, then hobbled back to the table. She slammed the cup down in front of me, sloshing a little of the liquid out onto the wood surface. She pointed at the cup. “Now. Your
taza
sits waiting for you to empty it again. Do not interfere any more until that is no longer the case.” She looked around a little, then snatched up a piece of turquoise fabric. “Now, where was I?”

“Las trampas,”
I prompted.

“Ah,
sí.
They knew a little something about
mal ojo y mal puesto.
”

“Evil eye? And…”

“
Sí,
the evil eye of witches, and the illnesses they can cause from outside a person.
Las trampas
had a
libro negro,
a black book of many spells and
remedios
. They wrote down the
curas
in there for many things, especially Indian things. They put in there the teachings from many places where they traveled, things they gathered over many years. They also lived with an old
pujacante,
a Comanche witch. The people over here let
las trampas
take beaver and elk and bear and many lions, even
los lobos
like your beautiful Montaña, for their hides. In return, we asked them questions and learned their secrets. But, you know,
más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo
.”