Let Their Spirits Dance (4 page)

“Turn it off!” Dad yelled, “Turn the damn thing off!” Priscilla and I stayed in our room the rest of the night listening to “Solitary Man,” Jesse's favorite song.

T
he night Jesse's plane soared into Vietnam, Don Florencío, El Cielito's old seer, said he saw a flock of bats fly out of La Cueva del Diablo. They were in a frenzy, screeching, darting across the sky, and circling the face of the moon four times. The bats were seeking the four directions, Don Florencío said, north, south, east, west, black, blue, red, and white, searching for blood.

“I shouted at them, mija, with all my might! Go, you bloodsuckers, chupones de sangre! Go, go, fly to Vietnam…ALL! ESTA MI RAZA! And they flew, mija, and there was nothing I could do but chase them screaming like a madman with my arms flapping in the air. And I cried, big tears, an old man's tears to make God look at me. If he looks at me, it will break His heart, I reasoned, and He will stop the war.”

 

• D
ON
F
LORENCÍO WAS
the only visionary Jesse and I ever knew. He lived along the banks of El Río Salado, and nobody ever visited him unless they were sick, and needed relief from one of his ancient remedies, or had bumped into his shack in the dark in a drunken stupor. The old man was dark-skinned, small-boned, his body hardened by miles of walking, climbing, living by his wits. His long black hair smelled like ashy
mesquite wood. His legs were bowed a little and he always wore boots. He said his legs were living proof of all the burdens his people had been forced to carry for the Spanish patrones. Don Florencío could speak Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, which used to be called mejicano, the same language Malinche taught Cortés when he landed in the new world. Don Florencío claimed to be a direct descendant of the Aztec people, declaring himself a tlachisqui of the Mexicas, la gente de razon, the people of reason, as they were known. He told Jesse and me stories of magic, visions, men who could turn themselves into animals, and the power of invisible forces both good and evil.

The old man's shack faced east on the rocky banks of El Río Salado. La Cueva del Diablo, a huge, hollowed-out hole at the base of a rocky hill, faced north. La Cueva del Diablo was boarded up many years later, condemned and dynamited out of existence, but when we were kids, it was a black, yawning gap spewing out the stench of bat droppings.

La Cueva del Diablo produced nothing but dark, flinty rocks and peals of laughter from scoffers who mocked the men who had gone through the trouble of taking pick and shovel and laboring for days in the hot sun, searching for gold. Pan for gold by the banks of El Río Salado, why don't you, the scoffers said, and some people did. Don Florencío said they were all fools like Cortés's men. There were no Seven Cities of Cibola, cities of gold as the Indians had related. The dead were the last to laugh after all. The land was the gold, but the Spaniards couldn't see it.

Everyone said La Cueva del Diablo was occupied by a ghost who slept by un entierro, a stash of gold someone buried and forgot about, or was murdered before he could return to claim it. Why a ghost needed money was a mystery to me. Yet, for years the ghost had taken possession of the land and the cave and el entierro. People were afraid of the ghost and stayed away from La Cueva del Diablo and Don Florencío's adobe shack. The old man only laughed and said we were descendants of people who had once made their homes in seven caves, living in harmony with all living things, in Aztlán, the land of whiteness, the land of the Aztecs, la gente de razon. Aztlán was north of what we now know as Mexico, and no one has ever been able to determine how far north its boundaries extended.

Tata O'Brien, my Irish grandfather on Mom's side of the family, befriended Don Florencío. Tata O'Brien's cohort of old-timers included Indians, Mexicans, full-breeds and half-breeds who stuck together for the single purpose of defying modern times. Aliens to the code of progress,
the old men crouched in circles in our backyard, passing around Don Florencío's ironwood pipe with the sculpted faces on the stem, filled with tobacco, sweet-smelling stuff, fragrant sagebrush. In the winter, they hid in the folds of thick blankets woven by their Indian wives and warmed themselves before fires blazing with mesquite logs. Sometimes their women came with them and sat in the alley next to our house with their children, passive Indian faces unmoving. Some of the old men had warred with Geronimo, or Pancho Villa, or Zapata. By then the lines of rebellion were blurred and having served in any war was better than not having served at all. They were descendants of warriors, after all, legendary warriors who fought to the death for the privilege of riding on the crest of the rising sun.

Concrete, iron, and steel didn't impress the old men. They had lived between mud bricks in adobe houses that kept them warm in the winter and cool in the summer. They traded with Tata O'Brien mesquite wood, blankets, and ceramic pots for vegetables and chili from Tata's famous Victory Garden, named for the miraculous harvest it produced during the years of the Great Depression. Tata was fascinated with growing chiles. He grew jalapeños, chiles japones, chili de arbol, serranos, chili pe-quin, and chili tepin. The last two always sounded the same to me. He fussed over the plants, and worried they wouldn't be hot enough, or the crop would suffer damage through cold and frost. He wanted me to grow up and be the U.S. ambassador to Chile. He figured a country with a name like “Chile” would grow only the very best chiles. “Bring back the pods, Teresa, that's where the seeds are. I'll do the rest.”

When Tata O'Brien lay dying, Don Florencío came over and built a small fire in the backyard. He hunched over it, throwing sacred meal into it every once in a while and smoking his ironwood pipe with the little sculpted faces on the stem. The sweet, pungent smell of tobacco blended in with the mesquite wood of his fire. Don Florencío made an offering of smoke to the four directions for Tata, north, south, east, and west, and to the sun and moon. He said in the old days his people stopped at every river before crossing it and the huehues, leaders of his tribe, blessed the river, toasting it with aguardiente, asking its permission to cross over. “It's always wise to salute nature,” he said, “especially when the spirit of a friend is about to join it.” Dad said Don Florencío was smoking peyote and that he smoked the pipe to dream about the other world the way the Chinese used opium. I never believed him, because everything Don Florencío said to me and Jesse made perfect sense.

Jesse and I were the only kids from El Cielito who visited Don
Florencío at his adobe shack. Mom didn't like it, but Tata never wavered. What kind of disrespect was that? he said to her, the old man was one of his friends. Jesse and I couldn't stay away, the old man was our lure, his crackling voice answering the burning mesquite wood. Our own medicine man, Jesse said. Sometimes Don Florencío threw sacred meal into the campfire, making purple-orange sparks appear that sputtered and danced before our eyes. And we danced too, Jesse and I, although we didn't know actual Indian dances. Still, we jumped around the campfire while Don Florencío played his wooden flute. We were powerful, we were the visions people have in the night of ghosts and nahuals who throw their spirits into animals and walk in the woods at midnight.

Don Florencío believed in Aztlán. He told us the history of Aztlán while he tended his small campfire in the evenings and smoked his ironwood pipe. We sat on burlap mats. Don Florencío's legs were sturdy stumps under him. He sat stiffly on an old wooden chair with a seat made of straw, held together with twine. He lit his ironwood pipe and began.

“It was like this, mijos, oh, so many years ago, I can't even think that far, but God knows. Our people were living peacefully in seven caves in Aztlán, somewhere north of Mexico. The Aztec they were called, the Heron people. Later, they became the Sun People. There was war among them, mijos, one god against another, but more than that, it was evil men trying to gain control of the tribe, frightening the people into slavery. Quetzalcoatl was cast out by the god of war, Huitzilopochtli. The priests of Huitzilopochtli were madmen who spoke for the god. They wrapped his body like a mummy and told the people they were now the voice of the god. What stupidity! The people might have questioned why they had to leave their beautiful homeland, but the priests by then had gained power over them. Go south, they told the people, south, until you see the sign, an eagle perched on a cactus, with a serpent in its beak, there build your city. Can you imagine how far they must have traveled? Pobre la gente de razon, with little food, huddling like sheep, listening to their god. When they saw an eagle sitting on a cactus with a serpent in its beak, they knew it was the place to build their city. This happened in the year 2-House. In our time, it was 1325. They named the city Tenochtitlán, and today we call it la capital de Mejico. Later the Mexicas tried finding Aztlán again and to this day they are still in search of it.

“It was at that time that Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god of peace, Sky Serpent also called Ce Acatl Topiltzin, Our Lord I-Reed, was tricked by evil deities into committing incest, a terrible thing, and finally fled the shores of Mexico vowing to come back. In 1519, when Cortés arrived
on the shores of Yucatán, the Aztec emperor Moctezuma believed him to be Quetzalcoatl, the fair-skinned god who would return to take over his empire. Do you realize what that meant, mijos? Moctezuma thought Cortés was a god! If they had only seen clearly, ay, mi gente, they would have seen that he was a demon instead!

“It was time for the empire to be destroyed anyway, mijos. Huitzilopochtli was bloodthirsty. He consumed human hearts. Many of my ancestors had already fled the capital and settled in the mountains, joining other Indian tribes. Later, centuries later, I left to cross the border myself and search for Aztlán.”

“Did you find it?” I asked him.

“Find what?” he asked, as if he had just forgotten what he had said.

“Aztlán!”

“No, mija, I'm still searching for it. Maybe you and Jesse will be the ones to find it, you're Mexicas, too. And look,” he said, pointing to Jesse, “Your brother has an Ixpetz, a polished eye, that can see through the nature of things and find their true meaning. In the old world, he would be celebrated for his bravery and fearlessness.”

Jesse pounded his chest, “Aii! Aii! Does that sound like a warrior? What do you think?”

“Good try,” I said.

Don Florencío said he knew this about Jesse, because he had seen the spirit of a warrior rise in the fire when he fed it alum the day Jesse was born.

“The flames rose so high I became frightened, and in the center, I saw a warrior with a plumed headdress. Just then, your tata arrived at my house to tell me Jesse had been born!”

 

• T
HE DAY AFTER
Jesse was killed, I walked to Don Florencío's shack, forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other. Don Florencío was sitting outside his adobe shack on his old wooden chair. The sun was setting, Don Florencío was facing east. He had a fire going, burning copal. I knew it was copal because it was aromatic, sweet. The smoke was cleansing the air around him of evil spirits.

He saw me trudge up to his shack and never said a word. He was smoking his ironwood pipe with the sculpted faces on the stem. My voice was gone. A whine began from deep within my breastbone. I had never heard it before. I moved toward the old man and knelt by his side.
I clung to his neck, holding on to him for dear life. Over and over again, I let out the tone of a melody that never varied. The pitch was the same, and it came in great gulps. Again and again it came, and the birds answered me, chirping in the distant cottonwood trees.

“You cry like our ancestors,” Don Florencío said to me. “They cried with their souls, not their eyes. That is the way to mourn, to mourn with all your heart. They accused us, mija, of sacrificing to the bloodthirsty god of war, our priests who carved out human hearts. A horrible thing to do, not in keeping with the teachings of the true God and his mother Tonantzin that you call La Virgen de Guadalupe. But look, there are men now, greedy for power, like the priests of Huitzilopochtli. They sacrifice our young, your brother and many others to war, war that has no hope of ending—bloodthirsty, ha! And they said we were bloodthirsty! But never mind, Jesse will return, mija, in a new form. Our people have always walked the earth.”

I thought about Don Florencío's words when we met Jesse's coffin at the airport after days and days of waiting. The Army said they had sent his body to the wrong address. Even in that, they betrayed us, treated us less than human. I stared at Jesse's body through the plastic lid, dressed in Army green. I had no words to say how I felt, only shouts, tones, and pitches I had never heard anyone else make.

Don Florencío made me a tea from a flower he said was shaped like a heart, yoloxochitl, the yellow flower of the heart that heals tlazotlaliste, the sickness of attachment, the fever of affection. I drank it and the cry inside me went away, and eventually I was able to speak again.

We buried Jesse next to Tata O'Brien. Later Nana was buried with them, and after her, Annette, Priscilla's six-month-old baby. Don Florencío died months later in one of the caves that bordered the hills close to his shack. It was right that he died in a cave, that's where he said we came from, like Christ, birthed in a cave. He was taken off in a body bag like the guys in Vietnam. Since there were no relatives to bury him, the neighbors who knew him pitched in and bargained with Murphy's Funeral Home for a cheap burial. The Murphys were competing with Phoenix First Funeral Home for all the bodies coming home from Vietnam, and those left here dying of heartache. Because of their greediness, God punished them, and Phoenix First Funeral came out ahead in the end. It all happened because Murphy's didn't close Esteban Luna's head after his motorcycle accident and a pinkish fluid oozed from the crack around the circumference of his skull. After that, nobody wanted
to be buried by Murphy's because they didn't want to be oozing in their coffins, even if they were dead.