The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (128 page)

The enraged spirits haunted the dreams of society matrons in the suburbs of Houston and Chicago. The spirits had directed mothers from country club neighborhoods to pack the children in the car and drive off hundred-foot cliffs or into flooding rivers, leaving no note for the husbands. A message to the psychiatrist says only, “It is no use any longer.” They see no reason for their children or them to continue. The spirits whisper in the brains of loners, the crazed young white men with automatic rifles who slaughter crowds in shopping malls or school yards as casually as hunters shoot buffalo. All day the miner labors in tunnels underground, hacking out ore with a sharp steel hand-pick; he returns home to his wife and family each night. Then suddenly the miner slaughters his wife and children. The “authorities” call it “mental strain” because he has used his miner’s hand-pick to chop deep into the mother lode to reach their hearts and their brains.

Weasel Tail cleared his throat, then went on, “How many dead souls are we talking about? Computer projections place the populations of the Americas at more than seventy million when the Europeans arrived; one hundred years later, only ten million people had survived. Sixty million dead souls howl for justice in the Americas! They howl to retake the land as the black Africans have retaken their land!

“You think there is no hope for indigenous tribal people here to prevail against the violence and greed of the destroyers? But you forget the inestimable power of the earth and all the forces of the universe. You forget the colliding meteors. You forget the earth’s outrage and the
trembling that will not stop. Overnight the wealth of nations will be reclaimed by the Earth. The trembling does not stop and the rain clouds no longer gather; the sun burns the earth until the plants and animals disappear and die.

“The truth is the Ghost Dance did not end with the murder of Big Foot and one hundred and forty-four Ghost Dance worshipers at Wounded Knee. The Ghost Dance has never ended, it has continued, and the people have never stopped dancing; they may call it by other names, but when they dance, their hearts are reunited with the spirits of beloved ancestors and the loved ones recently lost in the struggle. Throughout the Americas, from Chile to Canada, the people have never stopped dancing; as the living dance, they are joined again with all our ancestors before them, who cry out, who demand justice, and who call the people to take back the Americas!”

Weasel Tail threw back his shoulders and puffed out his chest; he was going to read poetry:

The spirit army is approaching,

The spirit army is approaching,

The whole world is moving onward,

The whole world is moving onward.

See! Everybody is standing watching.

See! Everybody is standing watching.

The whole world is coming,

A nation is coming, a nation is coming,

The Eagle has brought the message to the tribe.

The father says so, the father says so.

Over the whole earth they are coming.

The buffalo are coming, the buffalo are coming,

The Crow has brought the message to the tribe,

The father says so, the father says so.

I’yche’! ana’nisa’na’—Uhi’yeye’heye’!

I’yche’! ana’nisa’na’—Uhi’yeye’heye’!

I’yehe’! ha’dawu’hana’—Eye’ae’yuhe’yu!

I’yehe’! ha’dawu’hana’—Eye’ae’yuhe’yu!

Ni’athu’-a-u’a’haka’nith’ii—Ahe’yuhe’yu!

[Translation]

I’yehe’! my children—Uhi’yeye’heye’!

I’yehe’! my children—Uhi’yeye’heye’!

I’yehe’! we have rendered them

desolate—Eye’ae’yuhe’yu!

I’yehe’! we have rendered them

desolate—Eye’ae’yuhe’yu!

The whites are crazy—Ahe’yuhe’yu!

Again, when Weasel Tail had finished, the ballroom was hushed; then the audience had given Weasel Tail a standing ovation.

“Have the spirits let us down? Listen to the prophecies! Next to thirty thousand years, five hundred years look like nothing. The buffalo are returning. They roam off federal land in Montana and Wyoming. Fences can’t hold them. Irrigation water for the Great Plains is disappearing, and so are the farmers, and their plows. Farmers’ children retreat to the cities. Year by year the range of the buffalo grows a mile or two larger.”

Weasel Tail had them eating out of his hand; he let his voice trail off dramatically to a stage whisper that had resonated throughout the ballroom speaker system. The audience leapt to its feet with a great ovation. Lecha had to hand it to Wilson Weasel Tail; he’d learned a thing or two. Still, Weasel Tail was a lawyer at heart; Lecha noted that he had made the invaders an offer that couldn’t be refused. Weasel Tail had said to the U.S. government, “Give back what you have stolen or else as a people you will continue your self-destruction.”

THERE WERE FORTY-FIVE minutes of recess before the Barefoot Hopi made the keynote speech. Lecha had searched until she located Zeta, sitting with her computer expert, Awa Gee. Awa Gee had intercepted a coded fax message that the eco-warriors planned to make a
surprise appearance at the healers convention. Zeta looked exhausted and nervous. Neither of them had had much sleep since the shooting. Ferro had not known his lover was an undercover cop. But then Lecha had not known Seese had kept a kilo of cocaine in her closet either. Secrets and coincidences involving cocaine didn’t surprise Lecha anymore; how odd that Zeta seemed so upset. Lecha whispered in Zeta’s ear, “What’s the matter?” Zeta had looked around, then leaned close and whispered, “I killed Greenlee yesterday.” Lecha nodded. So the time had come.

Ferro was the problem now; Ferro had loaded a junker car with six hundred pounds of dynamite to park outside the Prince Road police substation. Zeta had tried to persuade Ferro to hold off retaliation at least until the preparations she and Awa Gee had been making through the computer networks had been completed. They only needed time for Awa Gee to run Greenlee’s access numbers, but Ferro had refused to listen. Still Ferro couldn’t make a bomb that size overnight. Awa Gee’s guess had been it would take a week for a competent bomb maker to load the car properly and wire it correctly to the detonation device.

Just when Zeta was beginning to think the holistic medicine convention was a bust, a great commotion had developed near the steps to the ballroom stage and podium at the far end. Zeta and Lecha had both stood up, but they were too short; Awa Gee leaped up on his chair where he could see over all the heads. “There!” Awa Gee said. He excitedly patted Zeta on the shoulder. “I told you they’d come!”

The two eco-warriors wore ski masks and identical camouflage jumpsuits; they did not appear to be armed and Zeta saw no bodyguards around the podium. The eco-warriors had motioned for the audience to take its seats, and there on the stage with the eco-warriors Zeta saw the Barefoot Hopi impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit and tie and wearing Hopi moccasins instead of boots or shoes. The Hopi stood close to the eco-warriors, who were listening intently to the Hopi. The rumors about the alliance between the Hopi’s organization and the Green Vengeance group apparently were true. Zeta was in agreement with the tactic. Green Vengeance eco-warriors would make useful allies at least at the start. Green Vengeance had a great deal of wealth behind their eco-warrior campaigns.

A convention organizer had announced the Hopi was going to introduce a special unscheduled appearance of Green Vengeance, who came with an urgent message. The noise in the main ballroom and in the corridors outside had hushed as the Hopi approached the microphone;
a buzz of whispers began as the Hopi had pressed a button on the podium, and a giant video screen lowered to the center of the stage.

“Friends, you have all heard state and federal authorities blame ‘structural failure’ for the collapse of Glen Canyon Dam. Now you are about to see videotape footage never before made public by our allies in the struggle, Green Vengeance, eco-warriors in the defense of the earth!”

The ballroom’s overhead lights had dimmed, and a jerky sequence, videotaped from a moving vehicle, filled the giant screen. The sound track and any voices on the videotape had been deliberately removed. The brilliant burnt reds and oranges of the sandstone formations and the dark green juniper bushes flashing past appeared to be Utah or northern Arizona. Next came interiors of motel rooms with figures in ski masks and camouflage clothing standing by motel beds stacked with assault rifles and clips of ammunition. The camera had avoided the masked faces and focused instead on the hands carefully arranging black boxes in nests of foam rubber; the foam-rubber bundles were packed carefully inside nylon backpacks. A close-up of a black box before its lid was closed showed a nine-volt battery and wires. On the worn gold motel bedspread, the hands had strung the six backpacks together with bright blue wire. Awa Gee leaned over and whispered in Zeta’s ear, “I can’t wait to see this!”

Next, the screen had been filled with highway signs and U.S. park service signs; in the background was the huge concrete mass that had trapped the Colorado River and had created Lake Powell.

G
LEN
C
ANYON
D
AM
; the sign had filled the entire screen. Next the concrete bulwark of the dam came into focus; tiny figures dangled off ropes down the side of the dam. At first none of the park service employees or bystanders and tourists appear to notice. Then the camera had zoomed in for close-ups of each of the six eco-warriors, each with a backpack loaded with explosives in the motel room. Zeta had been thinking the six resembled spiders on a vast concrete wall when suddenly the giant video screen itself appeared to crack and shatter in slow motion, and the six spiderlike figures had disappeared in a white flash of smoke and dust. The entire top half of the dam structure had folded over, collapsing behind a giant wall of reddish water. Zeta heard gasps from the audience.

“A massive structural failure due to fault asymmetries and earth tremors,” the eco-warrior said in mocking tones amid the excited voices and cheers. Zeta looked around; the audience was on its feet. “Your
government lies to you because it fears you. They don’t want you to know that six eco-warriors gave their lives to free the mighty Colorado!” The audience cheered. The eco-warrior handed the microphone to his partner. Zeta glanced at Awa Gee, who sat motionless, spellbound by what he was seeing and hearing.

The eco-warrior who spoke next was a woman. She spoke calmly about the choice of when and how one was going to die. She continued calmly, relating the states of awareness she had passed through; for a time, she said, she had not wanted to resort to the destruction of property or the loss of human lives, but after their beloved leader had been murdered by FBI agents, her eyes had been opened. This was war. The new enemies, she said, were the space station and biosphere tycoons who were rapidly depleting rare species of plants, birds, and animals so the richest people on earth could bail out of the pollution and revolutions and retreat to orbiting paradise islands of glass and steel. What few species and what little pure water and pure air still remained on earth would be harvested for these space colonies. Lazily orbiting in the glass and steel cocoons of these elaborate “biospheres,” the rich need not fear the rabble while they enjoyed their “natural settings” complete with freshwater pools and jungles filled with rare parrots and orchids. The artificial biospheres were nothing more than orbiting penthouses for the rich. Three thousand eight hundred species of flora and fauna are required for each artificial biosphere to attain self-sufficiency. Eco-warriors had infiltrated the artificial biosphere projects at all levels; plans had already been made for the final abandonment of earth. At the end, the last of the clean water and the uncontaminated soil, the last healthy animals and plants, would be removed from earth to the orbiting biospheres to “protect” them from the pollution on earth.

The eco-warrior paused to clear her throat. People in the audience raised their hands frantically to ask questions, but she ignored them. “All orbiting telescopes and space stations will be turned back on the earth to monitor the human masses for as long as they survive. The orbiting biospheres will require fresh air and fresh water supplies from time to time; giant flexible tubes will drop down from the sky to suck water and air from the earth. If the people on earth attempt to destroy or sabotage the giant feeding tubes, lasers from satellites and space stations will destroy the rebels and rioters.” The eco-warrior paused, then shouted, “This is war! We are not afraid to die to save the earth!”

“Hard act to follow,” Lecha had whispered to Zeta as the eco-warriors left the stage.

Zeta had read the messages Awa Gee had intercepted from the eco-warriors. The eco-warriors had lost their beloved leader to a car bomb. They were determined to give him glory. They were determined to turn out the lights on the United States one night. They were determined to destroy all interstate high-voltage transmission lines, power generating plants, and hydroelectric dams across the United States simultaneously. Their scheme did not seem quite so improbable now that Zeta had seen the videotape. The six kamikaze eco-warriors disappearing into the collapsing wall of Glen Canyon Dam was a stunning sight, Zeta agreed. No wonder the U.S. government and Arizona state authorities had blamed the destruction of Glen Canyon Dam on “structural failure.” Naturally the authorities had feared copycat bombings of hydroelectric dams.