December 1 - December 24, 1998

CHAPTER XVI

WALPI

"There," Dewey said. He watched the log he had just thrown on the embers in the pot-belly stove catch fire. "You'll be warmer in a minute."

Julia nodded.

"Sit down." He indicated one of the yellow plastic-seated chairs, part of a '50s dinette set, pushed up against the window. He tossed his hat on the end table near a sprung, but comfortable-looking, over-stuffed easy chair near the stove. Without the hat, he looked less formidable. He turned the knob controlling the hot-plate burner where a kettle of water sat. "Coffee?" he said.

"Thank you." Julia turned toward the window. Walpi glowed in the cold and bright afternoon light, resembling what the Spanish must have imagined they would find if they ever reached the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola.

"When non Hopis come here," Dewey said from behind her--he was looking outthe window, too, "sometimes they find inspiration from the Hopi Way as they observe it: A life lived in balance, a life of work and prayer. They attend the dances that are open to the public, see some of our sacred rituals. Maybe they don't understand them completely, but they know that we've been performing the same ones for centuries. They go away comforted."

There were two chipped white crockery mugs on the table. Dewey picked one up and blew dust out it. He wiped it with a dishtowel he grabbed from a rack near the counter where the hot-plate rested. "Sometimes," he continued, "they're comforted by the beauty and timelessness of the place . . . the peace." Then he chuckled and added, "Of course, others aren't impressed by any of it."

Julia frowned as she thought briefly of Jay, and the difficulties he might even at that moment be causing Rose.

Dewey laughed. "Don't worry. Rose can handle him."

Julia smiled ruefully, but felt unsettled that Dewey could so easily read her thoughts; like Dr. Inkster, but spookier somehow. Yet, as she looked around the room, the only one there was to the place, except the lean-to, it wasn't spooky at all. Cramped, maybe, but overall, its warmth and coziness were appealing. The feel of the place reminded her of tents she and her sister, Renee, constructed in the basement from blankets when they were children. Of course, the view from their tent flap had been of the Maytag washer and dryer and the laundry tub--not the stark but lovely vista through Dewey's window.

"At heart, Jay's a better guy than you think," Dewey said.

She doubted that. She again focused her gaze on the view of Walpi. "I could use some peace," she said.

"You just might find it . . . but there are other things here for you, as well."

"Like what?"

"Come with me," he said.

She got to her feet, then followed him through the doorway of the lean-to.

The lean-to had slatted walls joined with mortar. She saw the double bed with a woven wool cover over it, the scarred maple dresser and the faded wool rug on the rough wooden floor in between. There were a number of brightly colored men’s' shirts and faded denim jeans on hangers suspended from the hooks of an old metal coat rack. She also saw a quantity of women's clothing folded tidily into cartons pushed against the wall near the bed. The room smelled like old wood, dried lavender and leather.

"One of the things here for you," Dewey said, "is history."

She eyed him as he bent and lifted a sheepskin jacket from the top of one of the cartons, then pulled something out from underneath.

"This is the room where your father-in-law stayed the second summer he was on First Mesa as a graduate student."

Julia whirled around, looking at the room again.

"It wasn't anything like this, back then," he said. He straightened up and turned around. Julia saw the small package he was holding in his brown hands. It was wrapped in brown paper, and tied with string. He handed it to her, then nodded, indicating that she should open it. The brown wrapping was brittle with age, and the knotted string fell apart when she touched it. Inside, she found what looked like a ledger.

"It's the journal Sal kept that summer . . .The summer he met Juanita," Dewey said.

***

Ensconced in the overstuffed chair, sipping from the mug of pale brown liquid, which was half acrid coffee and half condensed milk, Julia read Sal's journal. While reading, she occasionally pilfered glances at Dewey's profile. He was sitting quite close, in a dinette chair he'd pulled to the stove. As he carefully poked at the fire, gazed at the tiny fire universe inside, he resembled a Creator, who, while generally pleased by his universe's organization, still found one or two tiny aspects not to his liking. After a time, he put the poker back in its stand, then pulled a small knife and a work-in-progress Katcina figurine from his pocket. The cuts he made were small and precise. Julia saw the features of the figurine's face begin to emerge.

"Talawa," Dewy said, addressing Julia's open curiosity, "Katcina of the new dawn."

As Julia read Sal's account of his last stay on First Mesa, as she continued to steal glances at Dewey, she effortlessly mined for and located his younger configuration, hiding just beneath the surface of the wrinkles of his burnished face. In Sal's writing, she could easily detect her father-in-law's younger version, too; less blustery, not quite as distilled as the version familiar to her, but all the same, Sal.

At one juncture, when she looked out the other window, the one that overlooked the Sichomovi roadway, she saw Jay and Rose drifting by. Jay was apparently still cooperating with Rose--probably because the girl was so slim and pretty. Jay was carrying a number newspaper-wrapped parcels.

She also observed that the brown puppy was still sitting in the exact spot across the roadway near the kiva as he was when Dewey had her ushered into the house.

Julia read the final, ominous entry, then closed Sal's journal. She waited to speak until Dewey paused in his carving and glanced over at her.

"What happened then? Did Sal go out to meet you?" she said.

Dewey smiled at her but didn't answer.

She closed her eyes for a moment, because she found unsettling the way the image of his younger counterpart remained opaquely glued over his true one. But closing and opening her eyes didn't dispel it, not entirely, anyway. She continued to see his face as a kaleidoscopic twirl of youth and age, something like a painting by Picasso at the zenith of the artist's cubist period.

With more interest than panic, Julia also intuited that something had gone amiss with time; evidenced by the inordinate amount of the stuff it seemed to require to close Sal's journal, then to reach toward Dewey, her arm wavering in the air between them like a blurry, fleshy bridge, to return it to him. Time seemed to slow even more as he shook his head. He meant her to keep the journal. It seemed to Julia that two or three weeks elapsed while she groped for her leather bag on the floor near her feet, found it and tucked the journal into one of its roomy pockets. Even the startling clang she heard when Dewey firmly shut the door of the stove did nothing to relieve the eerie (still unalarming) lag she sensed the two of them were caught in.

"We'll go out to Walpi now," Dewey said.

***

"Juanita's," Dewey remarked before they left for Walpi, when he dropped the sheepskin jacket from the carton in the lean-to over Julia's shoulders like a heavy mantle. While the jacket had a pleasantly animal fragrance, she also believed she could detect some trace of the essence of its former owner, Juanita herself, which smelled something like the fur behind her cat, Davey's, ear; both had a freshness like after-rain or new-mown grass.

"That mug you had your coffee in was Juanita's, too," he said then.

Julia and Dewey were now trudging into the chilly wind, up the road, nearing the boundary line between Sichomovi and Walpi at the end of the high and rocky platform, with Walpi's ancient, crooked avenues spread before them. Dewey, in his orange puffy jacket, its shiny fabric rippling in the wind, held onto his hat.

"Juanita wanted make the trip to Los Angeles when she found out Paco was so sick," Dewey said.

When Julia looked over at him she noted that the properties of his face were still moving in an unsettling, jumbled swirl. The man who just spoke to her was no more than ten years old.

"How did she know he was sick?" Julia caught up with him and matched her steps to his.

"Salvatore told her."

Julia was surprised.

"There's a phone at Ponsi. That's how he reached her. It happened when you were all so desperately searching for a bone marrow donor. I drove her to Flagstaff to get tested. She wasn't a match."

"I wondered. I didn't want to ask." she said, this time to the Dewey whose features she recognized as the man she first encountered in the plaza. "Had they been in contact all these years?"

"Not before Paco got sick. But often, afterwards. When she asked him if she should go to Paco, Sal didn't exactly warn her off, but he didn't encourage it either. He wasn't sure how welcome she'd be. Then, by the November before Paco passed over, Juanita was too sick herself to think about traveling."

"The photocopy of the obituary from the reservation newspaper--"

"The Tutuvehni."

"Yes--that Sal sent me in September--reported she died of a heart attack."

Dewey nodded. "She had a serious heart condition for years. The kind you get from putting too much butter on your piki . . . But the other kind, too."

"The other kind?"

"Kind of like what’s wrong with you . . . Not exactly the same," teased another facsimile of Dewey, aged somewhere in his early teens.

The refraction effect was making Julia giddy.

Continuing, Dewey said, "But still, among the sort you get when your life's out of balance in some way."

Julia didn’t answer.

"So, are you comforted by what you have seen here so far, have you found any peace?" Dewey said.

"I don't know, but I do feel sort of connected to you. It's like you're a long lost relative."

A pair of very young eyes twinkled at her in a sidelong glance. "In a way I am," he said.

The giddiness she had been experiencing turned suddenly to a yaw of actual dizziness. She stumbled. Dewey caught her by the arm to keep her from falling. They walked on. "I still don't understand why I'm here," she said.

"You will."

She glanced behind her and discovered that the brown puppy was wobbling after them in a way that made her realize Dewey's assessment was correct: The creature would never survive the advancing winter.

"Tell me what you think the reason is for your presence her today," Dewey said.

"Because I want the punishment to stop," she whispered.

"Punishment?"

She nodded. "Paco's punishing me for not honoring his dying wish."

"How?"

"He finds ways to help people even from beyond the grave . . . a lot of people, but never me. Never once, and I'm the one most in need of it."

When Dewey didn't reply, Julia turned back to glance at the puppy again. He was still tottering after them. She thought of her breakfast with Jay that morning at the Cameron Trading Post, and about the amount of food she had left on her plate. Enough to keep the helpless baby alive for at least another day or two.

They crossed the exposed and wind-swept tract dividing the mesa, and entered timeless Walpi, itself. With its sudden and unrelenting precipices, this quadrant of First Mesa was no broader than 150 feet at its widest point and fifteen feet at its narrowest. Julia felt as though she were bobbling without sea-legs toward the bowsprit of a great vessel, floating on a sea of exquisite desolation.

"It is a shame you didn't get up here before Juanita died," Dewey said. "You could've been a big comfort to one another, but there was no way your coming then, or even now, was going to bring mother and son together. That was for them to take care of . . . And like I said before, they already have."

"You didn't say where, or how."

"In the Underworld. There, everything comes right. Pretty soon they'll make the journey to the Afterworld--"

"Where they'll become Cloud People," she finished.

"That's the theory."

"And it's a pretty one, but it's completely--"

"Funny you have no trouble believing your husband is punishing you from beyond the grave, but you can't buy the idea of the Cloud People."

She smiled. Around her, the willy-nilly, multi-story, rock and mud-daubed constructions, back-built into the mesa so they seemed a mere upward extension of it, increased Julia's sensation she was on some dicey thrill ride. She stopped. Dewey stopped, too, but he kept his arm around her.

"I'm not feeling very well," she said looking up at him.

"You'll be better in a while," he said.

They both looked back at the puppy, who had come to a standstill when they did.

"You really ought to take him home with you," Dewey said quietly.

She could almost imagine it.

"Julia," Dewey whispered then, very close to her ear, "I think I can help you. If you let me." All trace of irony had vanished from his tone.

For a moment, she contemplated both him and his offer. She saw deep and authentic compassion in his expression as his features suddenly settled into the same visage they had been in when she first met him. She had come this far. Why not allow the pilgrimage, if that's what it was, to continue?

She blinked in mute consent. He continued to look at her. When she glanced away, she noticed they were now at the narrowest part of the mesa. In the distance, some forty miles away, she could see the three Hopi Buttes, but the wind made it seem as if they were falling into one another like collapsing dominos.

She closed her eyes again in an attempt to clear away the light-headedness that continued to plague her. She could feel the pressure of Dewey's strong fingers curling tightly on her upper arms, rotating her toward him, holding her erect, thwarting the chill blasts of wind that seemed intent on push-brooming her into the empty air past the escarpment. Juanita's jacket slipped from her shoulders.

At first when Dewey gripped her arms, Julia had experienced the same electrical vibrancy she encountered when he had taken her hand and introduced himself in Ponsi Hall. Now, as moments ticked past, while her locus became the white light from the sun and the cinnabar cliffs that were still reverberating between her optic nerve and her closed inner eyelids, she felt Dewey's grasp on her relax. It was almost imperceptible at first. Not like he was letting go of her, but as if she were diminishing, receding, growing lighter . . . not away from him, but into him, through the medium of his lightning fingertips.

When she opened her eyes and again surveyed Walpi, everything looked exactly the same, yet she understood with perfect clarity that it was all, in every part and way, absolutely different.

With the next breath she drew, Julia was Dewey.

(to be continued)

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