Forests of the Heart (24 page)

“Bettina will help you,” his mother said. “I hear she has an affinity for lost places and causes.”

Abuela snickered.

Ban looked from her to his mother, aware of undercurrents, but unsure of what they were.

“Why don’t you ask Rupert?” Bettina said.

Ban shook his head. “He’s out at the rainmaking camp till the end of the week. They’re rebuilding the roundhouse for this August’s ceremonies.”

Bettina knew that. She’d just wanted to switch the focus of conversation to anything but herself. She gave her grandmother a pleading look.

“I’m sure Ban will find it just as easily as his father,” Abuela said, relenting.

Loleta nodded. “Probably better, if the
peyoteros
are at the camp.”

They drove to Ali Cukson—Little Tucson, a Papago village just a fraction of the size of the sprawling metropolis of Tucson some fifty miles away—and then up into the Baboquivari Mountains, a special permit on the dashboard of Ban’s pickup since neither Abuela nor Bettina were tribal members. Above the white wake of dust stirred up by their wheels flew turkey vultures and Harris hawks. Coyotes watched them from the ridges, roadrunners darted across the road in front of them, and a bobcat was startled into immobility by the unfamiliar presence of the truck before it faded away into the brush.

At the end of their road they came to a canyon that held an abandoned stone cabin with a flood-water field, the latter overgrown now with mesquite, catclaw, creekside desert olives, and wild chile bushes. Ban parked the pickup and they stepped out to stare up at the cliffs rising hundreds of feet above them. Bettina hoped for a glimpse of a coatimundi, the raccoonlike animal that Ban had told her could sometimes be found here. This canyon, he told her, was one of the few places in the States where it could be found—it and the five-striped sparrow. But neither made an appearance today. There was only a crested caracara, floating high up on a thermal, long-necked and long-tailed against the bright blue of the desert sky.

Shouldering backpacks, they started up the canyon on a narrow trail leading through the dense undergrowth, flushing quail, startling the Mexican jays and phainopeplas. Further up the canyon they walked among the Mexican blue oak, mulberry, and enormous jojoba that prospered here in the more humid narrows. They passed by puddles of standing water in the otherwise dry wash, continuing to follow it until a white-necked raven flew by with a laughing cry. Ban watched its flight for a long moment.

“A guide?” Abuela said.

Ban smiled and nodded, then led them away from the creekbed, up a steep slope, leaving the shade behind.

It was hotter out in the sun, walking along the exposed slope. The bajada here was all thorn and spine as they wound their way between ocotiilo, cholla, prickly pear, barrel, and saguaro cacti. But if the way grew harder, the view became ever more spectacular. They could follow the paths of all the drainages that led down from the western slopes to empty into Wamuli wash. To the east, the sharp peak of Rock Drawn in at the Middle rose to its awesome height.

They rested there for a while, drinking from their canteens, rendered silent by the panorama—even Abuela, who almost always had something to say. Finally they turned their backs on the view and climbed the last stretch to the cliffs. When they reached the thornier scrub at their base, they were a thousand feet above the desert floor, with the cliffs rising up behind them another thousand feet.

This part of their trip had been simple, if arduous, but finding I’itoi’s cave was another matter entirely. They spent a half-hour searching, finding only small overhangs and caves—nothing like what I’itoi’s cave should be.

“You
have
been here before?” Abuela asked Ban when they finally took a break.

He nodded. “But only that one time with Papa and he led us right to the cave. I thought I’d have no trouble finding it, but everything seems different today…” He shrugged.

“Y bien,”
Abuela said. “I’ve not come this far to give up now.”

Bettina’s heart sank. What had been an adventure this morning had lost much of its luster by now. She was hot and tired, scratched, and more than a little frustrated that the entrance to the cave remained so elusive. Usually a foray into the desert with her
abuela
was a much more relaxed affair—rambles rather than such formidable treks. For the past half-hour she’d been more than ready to head back down the forty-five-degree slope to where they planned to camp in the canyon.

The white-necked raven they’d seen earlier flew by once more, still laughing—at them, Bettina decided—but its presence made Ban smile.

“I remember something,” he said. “There were white streaks on the cliffs and my father led us past them.”

They turned back, following the base of the cliffs, more eastward this time, in the direction of Rock Drawn in at the Middle. They found the streaks, stark against the darker rock, but dusk fell and it seemed they had to give up. Finally, Bettina thought, but then she caught the flash of the sun’s last rays on a crevice in the rock, just the other side of a large jojoba bush.

“There,” she said, pointing.

The sun dropped out of sight, but Ban had marked the spot. In the deepening twilight they made their way to the tall slit in the rock. It began at waist height so they had to step up to it, then awkwardly squeeze sideways through the narrow opening.

“Wait,” Ban said once they were inside.

Bettina could hear him rustling about in his backpack. He struck a match, lighting a candle, and her eyes went wide with delight. The candlelight pushed the darkness back from the opening of the cave where they stood, illuminating a tangle of offerings that hung from the ceiling above them: rosary beads, ribbons, chains with
milagros
and rings wound into their links, shoelaces, belts, scarves. On the floor were small statues of terra-cotta and unfired clay—oddly proportioned toads, lizards, dogs, birds—jars of saguaro cactus syrup and preserved jams, a single shoe, dried bunches of marigolds, the red flowers of desert honeysuckles, and pink fairy clusters. In little niches in the walls people had stuck bullets and shotgun cartridges, cigarettes, chewing gum and hard candy, hair barrettes, medallions and coins, Mexican pesos, American pennies, even an English pound.

The offerings reminded Bettina of a story one of the O’odham elders had told late one night around a campfire during the saguaro fruit harvest. “When you visit I’itoi,” he said, “you have to leave him something, whatever you have—a cigarette, a coin, a bracelet.” Then he told of a group who had visited the cave once. One of them was a Protestant priest who wouldn’t leave anything because what harm could come to him, a priest? When it was time to go, he turned around, following the voices of his companions. But the darkness deepened and the cave mouth shrank and shrank until it was far too small for him to climb back through.

“Leave him something, Father!” his companions called.

But still he hesitated. The opening kept shrinking until finally he took his hymn book out of his pocket and laid it on the floor of the cave. A strong gust of air blew him towards the tiny hole of daylight and the next thing he knew, he was tumbling out into the scrub where his companions were anxiously awaiting him.

She’d repeated that story to Ban and her grandmother on the hike up the canyon.

“I remember that,” Ban said. “Only it was a nun in the version I heard and she left behind her rosary.”

Bettina reached into her own pocket, looking for what she would leave. All she had was some smooth pebbles she’d picked up on their climb and a piece of candy. She doubted I’itoi would need any more stones, no matter how pretty they were with their turquoise and quartz veining, so it would have to be the candy. She hoped it would be enough.

It was hard to judge the size of the cave. As their eyes grew accustomed to the poor light, they were able to see about twenty feet ahead of where they stood, but the cave obviously went farther than that. Bettina thought of the spiraling designs of the O’odham basketweavers, how they were said to twin a much larger spiral that lay here under the Baboquivaris. She pictured its corkscrew shape, the slow coils tunneling through the rocks below her feet. In her mind, the spiral went on forever, as though she stood on the edge of a door leading into Abuela’s
época del mito,
with I’itoi’s lair at once only a step away and immeasurably distant.

Though the air was musky and cool, she felt a sudden flush of heat. The weight of the cliffs above pressed down on her. The slight draft that came from deeper in the cave felt like I’itoi’s breath on her face. I’itoi breathing. I’itoi the Creator.

She had to put a hand out against the wall for balance, suddenly dizzy. The darkness spun and fell away. She closed her eyes and slid down to her knees.

“Abuela!” she heard herself cry, her voice coming to her as if from a far distance.

But when she knelt, it was on rough gravel and sand, not the floor of the cave, and an impossibly bright light flared red-orange against her eyelids. Opening her eyes, she blinked at the sudden, stark sunlight. She was no longer in the cave, but out on the scrub slopes of the bajada, a great-aunt of a saguaro rearing tall above her, signaling some slow semaphore to her relatives on a distant slope.

Bettina’s pulse quickened with panic. What had happened to the night? Where was the cave? Where were Ban and her
abuela?

Then she realized what must have happened and she grew more anxious still. Somehow she had crossed over into myth time, alone, without Abuela to help her back to the world she’d inadvertently left behind. She could be any-when. In the ancient past when the Anasazi were first building their cliff-side dwelling, north, in slickrock country, or in some unimaginable future when human beings no longer walked the world at all.

She might never find her way back home. Everyone said
la época del mito
was a dangerous place to visit—especially for the inexperienced. Even her father, one of the few times he’d talked to her of what he called men’s business, had told her he never traveled into the mysteries on his own. He went in the company of his
peyoteros
with Mescal to show them the way and then bring them back home when their visiting was done.

“Abuela,” she called, her voice no more than a hoarse whisper, her throat tight and dry with fear. “Papa.”

She wanted to be brave, but courage fled, the harder she tried to grasp it. Turning, she searched for the opening of the cave once more, but the sun glared on the towering cliffs, washing away detail in a sheen of shimmering heat waves and light. Nothing looked quite the same anyway. The coloring of the rocks. The feel of the slope underfoot. The intense blue of the sky.

The vegetation was different, too—some of the saguaro were taller than she remembered, others smaller. The prickly pear grew in changed patterns. There were no jojoba bushes close to the cliff itself.

“Por favor,”
she said, meaning to address the spirits of this place, to beg their indulgence and ask for guidance, but then she heard something odd.

She sat up straighter, head cocked to listen. The sound she heard was singing, a singing that seemed to be a mix of high-pitched children’s voices and coyote yips. It came from just over the next rise where a flush of prickly pear clustered at the base of another tall saguaro, the same piece of nonsensical verse repeated over and over with an innocent exuberance that pulled a smile from her tight lips:

No somos los lobos

no somos los perros

somos los cadejos

cadejos verdaderos

Fearful still, but too curious now to be cautious, she clambered up the slope to peek over the other side of the ridge. Her smile broadened into a delighted grin and all fear fell away when she saw the improbable singers. They were dogs, a small pack of gamboling, dancing, warbling beasts, not one of them taller than her knee in height; six, perhaps seven—it was hard to count, they moved so quickly. That they could sing was surprising enough, but their colors were what took her breath away. Their short fur was the startling hue of Mexican folk art: a mottled rainbow of bright blues and yellows, lime greens, deep pinks, purples, and oranges. A child’s palette that filled her gaze with the same potency that a particularly hot chile salsa brought to the roof of the mouth—almost painful in its intensity, yet ever so pleasurable all the same.

What would such fur feel like? she couldn’t help but wonder. Soft, or stiff like a terrier’s?

Because there was something of a bull terrier in the shape of their heads, long and rounded like a bullet. But they weren’t quite as barrel-chested. Looking more closely, she saw that instead of a dog’s paws, they had the feet of goats. The sound of their little hooves on the rocks as they danced added a counterpoint rhythm to their song.

Clickity-clackity-click
.

We are not wolves, we are not dogs.

Clickity-click.

We are
cadejos.

Clackity-click.

Cadejos,
truly.

Clickity-clackity
…

She started to stand, wanting to go down, to join them and make a joyful noise. To be a
cadeja
to their
cadejos,
whatever a
cadejo
might be. It didn’t really matter. She could be happy to paint her skin a dozen bright colors and dance in the sun with them.

“I wouldn’t go down there,” a voice said.

Startled, she slipped a few steps back down her side of the slope and turned to see a roadrunner lolling on a nearby rock. She looked around, but there was no one nearby who could have spoken unless it was an invisible spirit.

She shivered at the thought and returned her attention to the roadrunner. It was lying with its back to the sun, tail dropped, wings spread wide, the speckled feathers lifted on its back and crest to expose a “solar panel” of jet black underfeathers and skin. Bettina had seen them do this before, absorbing heat from the sun, but usually this was only in the winter when their body temperature dropped overnight. The birds used the sun’s energy to warm themselves up, rather than increasing their metabolic rate the way hummingbirds or poorwills might, reducing their caloric needs by as much as forty percent—the equivalent to her skipping breakfast or lunch. In the winter, when food was in short supply for the birds, it was an efficient way to heat their bodies.