Through bulky earphones you listen to a recording of Pueblo Indian children interviewed decades ago. Perhaps these were children abducted from their families and forced to live in Catholic orphanages where terrible things were done to them, and where they did terrible things to themselves, the children speak in halting English, voices so high-pitched you can’t decipher their words, and sometimes their voices crack and fail and you hear only static and weeping.

  Unless it is you who is weeping? Wiping foolishly at your dripping eyes, sad slack mouth.

  Glancing about, but no one is observing you. No Gerard.

  This terrible loneliness. Cannot bear much longer.

  NOTHING TO HOLD YOU IN THE Arriba County Historical Museum for obviously Gerard is not here.

  Yet even as you chide yourself Gerard is not here you invite the antic possibility that yes indeed, Gerard is here.

  On the second floor of the museum amid a din of recorded “Apache war chants” you sight the man in the wheelchair who’d behaved so rudely toward you an hour before. No longer pushed by the sulky child (who follows after him at a little distance, looking bored) but propelling himself through an exhibit of many-times-magnified Apache war masks looming floor to ceiling. As you stare the wheelchair-man lifts his head to peer at you from beneath the visor of his cap and you are jolted by the cunning malice of his gaze—It is Gerard peering at you, but without recognition.

  While unmistakably Gerard’s, it is a gaze that both “knows” you and does not acknowledge you as worthy of attention, significant. This Gerard gazes upon you with the crude, sexually-assessing eyes of a random male. He never met you at the concert in Cambridge (perhaps) but (perhaps) he’d glimpsed you among the audience that night. Or, he’d glimpsed you in Cambridge. The most fleeting of glances, an (impersonal) male assessing an (impersonal) female encountered in a public place. Behind the facial mask is a brain that (evidently) recognizes your face but without a context to provide meaning: you, who have been married to Gerard for more than twelve years, and love Gerard deeply, are something less than an acquaintance to this Gerard who has never known you intimately and would not feel a moment’s grief if he learned of your death.

  It is shocking, stunning. To see Gerard’s gaze turned cunning, malicious. That the man is not Gerard, and yet is Gerard, is overwhelming to you. As a father might gaze upon his own child not knowing that he is his child, unmoved if the child’s brains are bashed out before his eyes . . .

  Stand there helpless, staring. As the stranger in the wheelchair propels himself brazenly past you amid Apache war chants so loud and so terrifying in ferocity, visitors to the exhibit wince and clap their hands over their ears.

  Desperately you want to appeal to this man, beg him—But, Gerard, don’t you recognize me?—your wife Michaela. We love each other, we have been married to each other for twelve years . . .

  But you know that such an appeal would be futile. This Gerard is not your beloved husband. He is not your friend, he does not wish you well, you would be an annoyance to him, you are not even sexually attractive to him, barely you register with him as female. And the Apache war chants would drown out your plaintive words in any case.

  NOT DISAPPOINTED! INDEED, RELIEVED.

  Eager to leave the Arriba County Historical Museum but on your way out you discover an exhibit titled Indigenous Gods & Demons of the Southwest which draws you to it despite your better judgment.

  A minor exhibit, in an alcove off the mezzanine. A windowless dungeon-space that has drawn few other visitors. Overhead fluorescent lights bleach shadows and give to the displayed objects a curious flatness like that of cartoons.

  The sort of exhibit, with much historical material posted on the walls, that Gerard would have liked. The figures range from simple line drawings of the kind a gifted child might make to elaborate carvings and sculptures that might qualify as “art.” All exude an air of the primitive and the exalted. You feel hairs stir at the nape of your neck as you draw closer.

  Immediately you recognize the Scavenger God Ishtikini with his grotesquely enlarged skull-head, staring eyes and potbelly, pencil-thin erect penis. The largest figure of this demon-god is a carving that stands, in a peculiar crouch, with bent knees, about twelve inches in height; the most menacing is smaller, constructed of scrap metal and slivers of broken glass, with small beady eyes that seem to shift in their sockets, fixed upon the observer. Another Ishtikini carved from birchwood is identical in its malevolent expression with the carving you have hidden beneath the bathroom sink in your rented house.

  Can’t stop from shivering, shuddering. In a description of Ishtikini you learn what you hadn’t known before—that the “insatiable” demon-god has the power to burrow into living bodies, jackal-like, devouring brains, hearts, entrails, genitals.

  Ishtikini (Zuni Pueblo Indian Scavenger God, Skull God) is both god and demon: ravenous appetite that is never satiated.

  Skli is represented in several lewd figures, drawings and sculpted pieces, each more grotesque than the other. You have to imagine that only a man could create such obscene visions of the “female”—a shrieking O of a mouth, drooping breasts like a sow’s teats, a garish-bloody vagina. It’s surprising then to discover a cartoon strip by a contemporary Navajo feminist artist who presents the demon-goddess as an action heroine like Wonder Woman, with oversized designer sunglasses, bright-red lips, sharp-pointed breasts like missiles, naked except for thigh-high leather boots with three-inch heels that reach nearly to the bloody gash between the legs—quite a brazen sight! In cartoon panels Our Skli SuperGoddess of Creation & Destruction is pictured seizing white-skinned adversaries, both female and male, biting off their heads and eviscerating them with sharp talon-claws gleaming with red nail polish.

  You make an effort to admire this appropriation of the demon-goddess by a young woman artist. Try to smile, no personal harm is meant against you, certainly not you.

  Also transformed into something of a comical figure is Weyaki, God of Chaos, the pop-eyed bloated-frog demon-god claimed to be responsible for the woes of the world. Weyaki, who seems sexless, has never appalled you quite as much as Ishtikini and Skli.

  At the end of the exhibit is the figure that has most baffled you: the life-sized stag’s head constructed of layers of leather crudely stapled together, with glassy eyes and “authentic” stag’s horns . . . A demon-god like the others? “Prank god”? You’d never learned its name, if it has a name.

  You duck beneath the rope separating visitors from the exhibit. No guard is nearby to reprimand you, all you want is to read the caption beneath the stag’s head but the words are faded, indecipherable.

  Touch the leather head as if petting it. Examine the glittering seed-sized staples holding it together that appear to be, here, merely staples, and not (as you’d imagined in the seminar room) living ticks. It seems to be a feature of the stag’s head that it has been clumsily assembled and is glaringly artificial and absurd, as if in mockery of Native American artwork; the “authentic” horns are, then, a further mockery?—or, a cry of dismay?

  The natural appropriated by the artificial. The sacred appropriated by the profane, obscene.

  But you aren’t sure. Can’t know. The grief-vise is tightening around your chest.

  All of the demon-gods are a torment to you, regarding you with their sinister/vacant eyes. Hard not to believe that they have been lying in wait for you here, for all of your life.

  But why did Gerard bring you to them?—Why did Gerard want so badly to come west, in what would be the final phase of his life? That is the riddle.

  Become aware that your fingertips are tingling. There is a rapid ascent of something too small to be seen by the naked eye, myriad things no larger than pencil points, running up your arm as you stand before the stag’s head blinking and staring and trying (futilely) to comprehend . . . Whatever you are trying to see, you cannot see.

  Soon then, numbness spreads and you cannot feel.

  INNER EAR. INFECTION, BACTERIA. Close to the brain.

  Blink if you hear me? Michaela?

  Blink if you are (still) alive.

  58

  Bell Tower at San Gabriel

  Come, Michaela! Higher.

  Climbing spiral steps. Hurry!

  Ferociously blinking your eyes. Tears in your eyes. Dust, sand in your eyes.

  In a bell tower beside an “historic” adobe church, steep stone steps worn smooth, uneven and slanted beneath your feet like eroded rock.

  It’s the beautiful old Spanish mission San Gabriel de Isleta. Founded in 1597 by Franciscan fathers. Weatherworn adobe church, walls and bell tower and cemetery, twenty-foot wooden cross visible for miles across the violet-hazy desert plain.

  Why you’d driven here. Drawn by the cross. Seven miles west of Santa Tierra.

  What is a cross but outflung arms. Semblance of a torso, something that has managed to stand upright, outflung pleading arms.

  Gerard had marked with an asterisk the Mission San Gabriel de Isleta in the guidebook.

  Higher, higher. Hurry!

  Out of breath climbing the spiral steps. Turning so tightly, steps so narrow, you are feeling giddy like a child turning in circles.

  Hot gusts of wind blowing hair dry as straw into your eyes, mouth. Sucking your breath away.

  Stark and beautiful at a distance the bell tower is not so beautiful close-up. Desert rock, what Frank Lloyd Wright called desert masonry, beginning to crumble. Bits of calking litter the steps, bird droppings and the delicate skeletons of small birds, shards of tiny white bone underfoot.

  Wince, stepping on these tiny white bones!

  Already you are winded. Already feeling sharp pains in your thighs.

  Your legs are accustomed to running on flat surfaces, not climbing steep steps. Your lungs are (still) not accustomed to thin air.

  Pain can be no deterrent. Pain is to be expected. Gerard’s most anguished moments were in silence, he would not scream aloud or whimper as the long needle sank into his abdomen releasing the contrast material . . .

  You are determined to reach the top of the bell tower before you are stopped. An impulsive decision, you hadn’t time to deliberate—ducked beneath the rope downstairs, ignore the warning sign—

  BELL TOWER CLOSED FOR REPAIR

  UNSAFE DO NOT ENTER

  In the distance he is waiting. Except you are not certain in which direction.

  Why you are here, you believe. Why you have been urged to climb to the top of the bell tower, to see.

  (Waiting for a sign.)

  For the promise is, the terrible loneliness will end.

  The terrible loneliness will end this very day, possibly.

  This very hour. Possibly.

  The time of crossing-over.

  Waiting for you, these weeks. He will protect you. Fold you in his arms so you are still. So you cannot despair as you have been despairing, devouring your own guts. So you cannot do (further) injury to yourself.

  He will forgive you for betraying him, for having forgotten him. (But you want to protest—you’d never forgotten him!) Fleeing the crossing-over out of cowardice.

  Come, Michaela! Higher.

  Less than twenty-four hours before you will be leaving Santa Tierra. Your boarding pass has been printed, most of your (and Gerard’s) luggage has been packed. Tags on suitcases neatly identified. You will use your passport for ID.

  In your carry-on suitcase, the (yet-unopened) envelope from the needy young asthmatic man in Albuquerque which (you vow) you have no intention of opening yet which (you concede) you cannot bring yourself to discard.

  I hope you will let me be your friend, Michaela.

  You are feeling dizzy, thinking such (unwanted) thoughts. Unless it’s the thoughts that are thinking you.

  Invasion of the brain. Something soft-liquidy, warm-viscous, formless, heedless has eased, seeped its way into your brain.

  And the high desert air, thin as a razor blade. Breathe, breathe!—that is the commandment.

  Insufficient blood to the brain. Insufficient for the brain to repel the (ravenous) invasion.

  Danger is, should your foot slip on the smooth-worn steps turning so tight upon themselves . . .

  Through crude windows in the tower wall you can see the mountains—the San Mateo Mountains. From this location the mountains look different from what you recall in Santa Tierra, steeper, less defined, partly obscured by the violet heat-haze like a dream.

  Nearer the bell tower, the Rio de Piedras—River of Stones. An ugly river, strangely—not reflecting the (hard blue western) sky but gray-shimmering as an immense snake, restless in sinuous movement.

  Midway between the San Mateo Mountains and the Rio de Piedras is Cold Spring Canyon State Park which Gerard has also marked with an asterisk in the Lonely Planet guidebook.

  Often in Santa Tierra, before his illness, Gerard had spoken of hiking in the mountains and canyon trails. You knew he’d had knee trouble, a mild stenosis of the spine, Gerard’s days of ambitious hiking were behind him but still he’d wanted to hike one of the shorter trails in Cold Spring Canyon with you. Before he’d become ill.

  Together you’d studied photographs of hiking trails through the canyon. Steep granite walls tinged with indigo, vertical striations in the rock, like ancient hieroglyphics. Warnings of rattlesnakes, mountain lions. Flash floods in the event of sudden rainfall. Shortest hike is five miles, starting from the trailhead beside the Rio de Piedras.

  As you climb the stone steps you are approaching the open sky. The top of your skull is lifting. Dazzling light! High filmy cirrus clouds like fading thoughts.

  Begin to feel a sensation of vertigo, nausea. The grief-vise returns suddenly grasping your ribs, squeezing.

  Sudden impulse to turn back . . .

  Don’t be afraid, Michaela.

  Nothing to fear, Michaela.

  Is Gerard waiting in the distance? From the top of the bell tower you will wave to him with the happy abandon of a child waving to an (invisible) parent.

  Shading your eyes, desperate to see where Gerard is . . .

  Below, a voice lifts sharply: “Ma’am! Excuse me!”

  And: “The rope is here for a reason.”

  A guard has detected you in the forbidden bell tower. A young Mexican-American. If he intends to be sarcastic in his speech the sarcasm is diluted by his politeness.

  This guard, possibly the sole guard at Mission San Gabriel, you’d hoped to elude. You’d sighted him when you’d first entered the church pretending to be among a group of tourists led by a Native American guide.

  Almost, you’d climbed out of the guard’s sight. Only a few more steps before you reach the top of the bell tower. Open sky, fierce winds.

  Michaela, hurry!

  Michaela, I am waiting.

  But the sharp-eyed guard has followed you up the steps. Raising his voice, sternly: “Ma’am? I said—the rope is here for a reason. The bell tower is not open.”

  You are calculating: Can you make it to the top of the steps before the guard stops you? Would a young Mexican-American man dare seize your arm?

  Stand panting and light-headed at the waist-high railing pressing yourself against the railing shading your eyes staring into the distance awaiting a sign as the wind whips against you greedy, impatient . . .

  But, no. You have stopped climbing the steps. A dead stop, sudden.

  What are you doing, Michaela? After coming so far.

  His voice is flat with disappointment, disapproval. But you have no choice, you have come to a halt. For a long moment trying to catch your breath, unable to move forward or back.

  I can’t, can’t. Can’t go forward.

  Forgive me, Gerard. I have failed you another time.

  You have turned, you will descend the steps. Meekly, like a guilty child who has been caught in a blatant misdeed.

  Apologizing to the guard. Explaining that you’d intended just to take pictures with your cell phone as you’d done at other missions, in other bell towers, with no trouble.

  But the guard isn’t easily placated. He is upset, your behavior seems to have alarmed him.

  “. . . must have seen the sign, ma’am. Signs all over. When the wind is blowing like this, especially there is danger of an accident at the top . . .”

  Accident at the top, a plunge over the railing. No guard wants death on his watch.

  If the bell tower were truly dangerous wouldn’t there be some sort of partition nailed over the entry to prevent tourists from climbing the steps?—that could be your rationale for ducking under the rope. But you don’t dare suggest it.

  Retreat, return to the ground floor. Apologize again to the guard. Speak clearly, smile at him. Do not further antagonize him.

  Wanting him to know that you are indeed just a presumptuous tourist, a pushy White woman, a heedless gringa, ignoring signs and warning ropes because that is what White privilege has conditioned you to do; you are not a desperate woman, a woman maddened by grief intent upon risking her life in a fierce hot wind at the top of a tower; he has not narrowly avoided witnessing this woman fall to the ground, cracking her skull, spilling her brains on the much-trod pavement beneath the tower . . .

  No. That did not happen, and was not likely to happen.

  Make your way (unhurried, casual) out of the church. Past a side altar where small squat lighted candles flicker in the draft and a single woman, white-haired, kneeling, her thin hands covering much of her face, has come to pray.

  By now your heartbeat has slowed, the wild anticipation has subsided. You have become a deflated balloon, no longer at risk.

  Hoping that no one has been observing you. A noisy busload of tourists has arrived at the front door of the church, preparing to swarm inside.

  Ma’am! The rope is here for a reason—Gerard will laugh when you repeat these words.

  One of those comical catch phrases that echo through a marriage until eventually neither spouse remembers its origins. Only that wife and husband are bonded together by such memories, the more trivial the more endearing, enduring.