December 1 - December 24, 1998

CHAPTER XXIII

A PRIVATE CEREMONY

Julia plucked Juanita's sheepskin jacket off the posted notice. The last time she saw the jacket was yesterday when she'd tucked it around the little pup just before they parted. Dewey Kayenta must've retrieved it sometime after that, then draped it over the sign as an invitation for Julia to proceed even though the villages were closed. As she pushed her arms through the jacket's sleeves, she offered him a silent thank-you.

With the Alfa parked on the road near the entrance to Hano, Julia trod silently, cautiously, along the dark and hushed Sichomovi concourse. She felt like an intruder; even though she had Dewey Kayenta's permission to be there. The villages seemed deserted: Possibly because the men were still sleeping in the kivas, and the women were performing their own quiet and secret ceremonies by firelight behind the walls of their homes; all part of the Soyal observance. The Hopi and their ancestors had been performing this rite each winter in unbroken continuity for more than 2,000 years. In the brown leather pack on her back, Julia carried the white paper-wrapped box from the back seat; the one she had forgotten that morning and had to go back for. The dog collar and leash and the flashlight from the Alfa's glove box were in the backpack, too. In her hand was the box of dog biscuits. As she repeatedly traversed the Hano and Sichomovi byways searching for the puppy, she gave occasional shakes to the biscuit box to summon him, in a manner she imagined Katcina impersonators might, when shaking their gourd rattles during the ceremonial dances.

She had already searched Hano, the Sichomovi plaza, and behind Ponsi Hall. Other dogs had come. She was now leading a whimpering, ragged procession of them, but the puppy had yet to appear. What if she couldn't find him, what then?

She tentatively approached Dewey Kayenta's faded vermilion door. She raised her hand and almost knocked, even though no light glimmered from the crooked windows in the tiny dwelling. Before her knuckles touched wood, she changed her mind. He was either asleep inside, or sleeping in the kiva with the rest of the village men. Besides, if Dewey was offering a further lesson in the crash course on living life in balance he had designed for her, he would be out here teaching. She was on her own now. This was undoubtedly the lab portion of the class. The flashlight's beam began fading, then winking on and off.

Julia returned to Ponsi Hall. A few of the strays were still following her, with the hope, she knew, that more biscuits were forthcoming. If she didn't find the dog she came for, maybe she should think about taking home one of the younger ones among these. She had traveled such a long way. She didn't want to go home alone. But she had no way of knowing who the owner was of any alternate dog she might choose. Dewey had only given her permission to take the little brown one. Besides, it was the little brown one she needed.

With each passing moment, Julia felt her determination waning. Not only was she losing hope about the puppy, but the storm was getting worse. The idea of returning the way she came, with the roads even icier than they had been when she was driving up, filled her with apprehension. She couldn't decide whether it was the prospect of that, or the cold that was making her shiver.

Revolving slowly, Julia shined the flashlight into each of the black corners outside Ponsi Hall. With a small cry of alarm, she stopped suddenly. There was something on the ground resting against the steps. The shape was about right, so was the size. It wasn't moving.

"Here, boy," she whispered.

No response.

Expecting the worse, she was afraid to even approach. She stood there for a time, benumbed. The wind stung her eyes producing tears that froze on her cheeks. She had never felt farther from home.

"Come on, little, guy," she called softly as she moved closer to the bundle. Not even a whimper. She felt the other dogs watching as she stepped gingerly forward. She was standing only a few yards from the indeterminate shape when the flashlight went out.

The sudden blackness startled her. She swallowed hard to control the pitch and yaw in her middle. She inched onward until she was close enough to crouch down and examine the shape. Her fingers touched something cold and sticky and brittle. Relieved, she brought her chilly hand to her cold cheek. The shape she had mistaken for the puppy was a black plastic trash bag with some clothing at the bottom; the remains of the Tuba City donation the Hopi women had been sifting through the day before. Without warning, one of the bolder dogs in the pack made a forward lunge and snatched the nearly empty box of biscuits from Julia's hand. She tried to grab it back but the dog was already trotting away. He snarled at the other dogs who challenged him for it.

Julia hunted for the puppy everywhere she dared among the sharp and dangerous rocks in the boundless darkness out on Walpi. She could feel the cold wind biting through Juanita's sheepskin jacket as she moved to the village proper to search the doorways, clefts in foundations, everywhere a cold, starving puppy might find shelter. She could feel how cold and hungry she was herself, and how tired; almost too tired to manage the trek on foot back to the Alfa. The drive back to Los Angeles seemed impossible.

She reached the central kiska--rock passageway--running underneath a few of the dwellings. The wind howled through this tunnel and it was too dark to see much. She'd never find the puppy in this blackness, even if he was still alive.

What was she doing here? She felt the last of her energy leak away and she slid down the kiska's wall in exhaustion. She immediately felt the chill ground through the seat of her jeans. It was ushered up her spine by a biting current of despair. What a moron she'd been. Dewey Kayenta was a fraud. Everything she thought had happened the day before had all been smoke and mirrors and slight of hand. It was the desperate gullibility she felt, produced by her keen need for absolution, that had made her daft enough to believe in Dewey and his magic tricks for even a moment. He probably had put something in her coffee. He was most like enjoying a good laugh at her expense right now.

If she didn't get moving soon, they'd probably find her here frozen to death in the morning. "WHO NEEDS THE DAMN DOG, ANYWAY?" she howled.

Beneath the wind, beneath the fading echo of her howl, "You do," a voice promptly stated.

Julia was jolted. She immediately came to her feet. The timbre of the voice was clear, warm, full of Brooklyn and unmistakable; in all the world, the one she most wanted to hear.

"Paco!" she laughed, not daring to believe it.

"That baby dog's exactly what you need, Jules," Paco proceeded, his voice coming from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. "Didn't I always tell you it was my job to figure out the kind of help you need to keep you on the path? Didn't I promised I'd get it to you?"

Julia felt something wet slathering against her hand. She looked down. It was the brown puppy. He was licking her palm.

"He's that something I was looking for at the end to give you, Jules," Paco continued. "He's that something to last, if you save him, that is. And guess what the bonus is for saving him, for even trying?"

Julia closed her eyes. She could easily see Paco's beautifully devastating smile. "I might feel a little better about not being able to save you" Julia murmured.

"That's my girl," Paco chuckled.

Weak and trembling, the puppy fell against Julia's knee. Carefully tucking in his pony legs, she swaddled him tightly in Juanita's jacket and picked him up in her arms. She could feel his little body quaking against hers. The day before, he had smelled like a dumpster, along with that musk particular to puppies. She detected those odors tonight, but she also picked up a faint trace of the delicious spiciness of Paco's skin. She breathed him in; the same way Paco always liked to breathe through the fur behind their cats' ears. The fresh infusion of Paco air washed Julia's misery away. She had Paco back. Everything they had meant to each other, everything they had done and said was all still there. She felt as though he had wrapped his arms around her, and he was never ever again going to let her go.

Julia grabbed her backpack and carried the puppy from the kiska. Outside, there was a break in the storm. The wind had died, but not before it had blown away the clouds shrouding the moon. She examined the puppy's face in the bright and quick light. In the mahogany depths of his peepers, she glimpsed, just as she had yesterday in her last moments with him, the familiar wisdom, the merriment, and, the love. Paco's eyes.

Julia carried the puppy like a baby as she strode to the end of Walpi. She felt fearless now, and she wasn't lonely anymore. In a few moments she would take her little dog back to the car, and they would begin the long trip home. But first, there was one more thing she intended to do.

***

With the darkness of the drop and all the desert floor before her, Julia crouched at the most extreme edge of the mesa. In a small crevice, perhaps even the very same one where Juanita's Unnawiy sought shelter from the hot autumn sun so many years ago, Julia had made a nest of the warm jacket for the puppy. He watched her as she opened her leather backpack, pulled out the cardboard box--the one from the back seat--tore off the white paper wrapping and stuffed the wrapping back in the pack. She opened box, then pulled out an a simple bronze urn. She put the box back in the pack, then came to her feet. Hugging the urn to her chest, she surveyed the grand emptiness beyond the mesa. The cold wind was rising again, but she couldn't feel it.

Passing over the polished rock roadway, crossing the gap and entering Walpi, before she found Paco, before she found the puppy, Julia had continued to see no one. She heard nothing; nothing but the freezing wind, and listening carefully, she thought she heard the snow. For those moments, she had been reminded of a certain tribe of Inuits Sal had once told her about. They were called the Dalklne; Dalklne, because when the tribe migrated, crossed clean cold rivers, jagged mountains, and broad and rolling frozen plains, the women carried the ashes of their fallen husbands in leather bags on their backs. Dalklne meant "carrier."

Julia pulled the stopper from the urn, stepped back then, and swung it like a priest wielding an incense burner during high mass. Paco's ashes, which Julia had kept for so long in her china hutch as a talisman, and because she could not them go, blew up and out and around her, then vanished into that eternity, dark and vast, beyond the mesa.

She closed her eyes to better see the sparkling swirl of Paco's excellent dust.

"'We were very tired, we were very merry," Julia recited. "We rode all night back and forth on the ferry.' And it was so merry, Paco. I want to thank you, formally, for every holy moment." She felt tears oozing from under her squeezed eyelids. "In life you belonged to me," she whispered. "In death your home base should be here."

She picked up her puppy and held him close. "Be light. Learn to float." she murmured to Paco out there somewhere, but never again so very far away, "You're going to be a great Cloud Person."

***

Julia opened the passenger door of the Alfa. She settled the too-quiet, too-docile pup on top of the towels in her fat cat Buckley's basket on the seat, then moved the seat up so that the basket was wedged against the dashboard. As she tucked Juanita's jacket over and around the puppy, something fell out of the pocket and tumbled to the floor. She knew what it was even before she picked it up and turned it over in her hands under the roof light. It was the Katcina figurine Dewey had been carving yesterday while she was reading Sal's journal.

Talawa. Katcina of the new dawn.

Julia smiled and held it tightly in her hand. When she glanced down at the puppy, he was looking up at her. She could still see the glimmer of Paco's eyes.

She set Talawa on the dashboard and started the car. As she backed around to drive down the little road through Polacca, then off the mesa, the Alfa's head lamps picked up a flash of orange; Dewey Kayenta's bright and puffy down sleeve as he waved to her. When the headlights swept over him, she saw that he was grinning at her like a proud uncle.

Julia waved back. How would she ever thank him?

The puppy sat up then. He watched through the back window as his old life receded. As the villages were lost in the distance, he settled back into the basket. Julia pulled Juanita's coat over him again. He was in bad shape, much worse than the day before.

There wasn't much time.

(to be continued)

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