The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (40 page)

So the Apache warrior called Geronimo had been three, even four different men. The warrior of prominence and also of controversy among other Apaches had been born in the high mountains above the river now called Gila. This man had not been a warrior but had been trained as a medicine man. As the wars with the
americanos
and Mexicans had intensified, and the ranks of the warriors wanted men, the medicine man had begun riding with them on the raids. His specialty had been silence and occasionally, invisibility. With his special skills, the raiders had been able to move so silently not even the Apache scouts who worked for the U.S. cavalry had been able to hear the raiders walk past their bedrolls.

The old Yaquis liked to tell stories about the days when their beloved mountain canyons used to shelter the four Geronimos. They discussed the strange phenomenon of the Geronimo photographs and of course other matters, such as how best to exploit the weakness of the whites.

First they had settled back over mutton ribs supplied by the youngest of the three “Geronimos.” They each told their most strange or amusing experience with American colonels or Mexican captains who believed they had captured the notorious “Geronimo.” Denials or attempts to explain the mistaken identity were always rejected angrily by the white men. “
You
are that murderer! The savage beast Geronimo!” the white men would bellow. Explanations or denials had only been further proof of guilt for the soldiers.

General Crook had been careful to engage the services of the traveling photographer stationed in Tombstone. The photographs had been for national publicity to maintain Crook’s support among the territorial
congressional delegations in Washington. The old people, who generally could not agree on the details of anything that had happened more than a minute or two before, had been unanimous about the photograph. Calabazas remembered he had repeated the word
photograph
to Mahawala, and one of the other old people mimicked his tone of dumb surprise. At the meeting of the three Geronimos, naturally there had been discussion of photographic images. All of them, even Red Clay, the final Geronimo who died in Oklahoma, had been photographed at one time or another. Sleet, the youngest of the Geronimos, had been photographed during a stay at Fort Apache when General Crook and the Indian agents had attempted to get the War Department to order the forcible removal of white squatters from mountain land that had already been promised to Sleet and his people.

The photographer who made the photograph had been at Fort Apache for a number of weeks by the time he learned from the camp mulemaster which of the Apaches was “Geronimo.” The photographer had perfected his Arizona-desert backdrop and had time enough to commission Apache women to create a huge feathery warbonnet unlike any headpiece the Apaches had ever seen, let alone worn. Sleet had dressed exactly as the photographer directed, then stood slightly to one side so that the long, trailing cascade of chicken and turkey feathers could be fully appreciated in the profile view.

Big Pine had been photographed around the same time. By then the photographer’s warbonnet had disappeared, and Big Pine had posed instead with a .45-70 across his lap. The rifle had no firing pin and the barrel had been jammed with an iron rod because Big Pine and his band had been arrested at their camp west of Tucson and even the small children had been locked in manacles and shackles. The locks and chains were “punishment” for “breaking away” from the Fort while Washington made a final determination of their ancestral homelands. Big Pine had tried to explain to the Indian scouts and interpreters that he was not “Geronimo,” that the one they were looking for was probably Sleet, and his band of warriors, who were headed for the border. Big Pine offered as proof their tidy little camp. Anyone could see, Big Pine said patiently, this camp had taken months to build, and that the venison drying in the sun had taken weeks of patient hunting. All this proved he and his band of women and children could not have just escaped from Fort Apache and gone there. The half-breed Apache scout knew Big Pine was truthful, and Sleet’s band had headed for Mexico. But the
Indian scouts had discovered that American army officers did not like complications. The Indian scouts had already determined that if they ever revealed that mistakes had been made, and that there were probably three or maybe even four Apache warriors called Geronimo, all of the Apache scouts might be court-martialed and hanged. Every hotshot young captain had come to the Arizona and New Mexico territories eager to be the man who captured and brought in Geronimo. Cash bonuses were constantly offered to the army scout or enlisted man whose efforts led to the taking of Geronimo dead or alive.

The man who had been born at the headwaters of the Gila River in New Mexico and who had spent years as a medicine man before assuming certain duties on raids had gone by different names. He had been photographed in a group picture some years before with Nana, Mangaas Coloradas, and Jute. He was known to the Yaquis in the mountains of Sonora as Wide Ledge, which the Yaquis understood to be the meaning of his Apache name. But Yaquis also understood that a person might need a number of names in order to conduct all of his or her earthly business.

The discussion of the photographic image centered upon the group photograph, which Wide Ledge had been shown by a young U.S. cavalry officer. Wide Ledge recalled that the young white man had pointed to the flat paper. Here the chorus of voices in the darkness had quickened, and Calabazas knew they were nearing what they considered to be the heart of the story of the four Geronimos. Wide Ledge, old Mahawala told Calabazas emphatically, had done a lot of thinking and looking at these flat pieces of paper called photographs. From what he had seen, Wide Ledge said, the white people had little smudges and marks like animal tracks across snow or light brown dust; these “tracks” were supposed to “represent” certain persons, places, or things. Wide Ledge explained how with a certain amount of training and time, he had been able to see the “tracks” representing a horse, a canyon, and white man. But invariably, Wide Ledge said, these traces of other beings and other places preserved on paper became confused even for the white people, who believed they understood these tracks so well. Wide Ledge had actually observed a young soldier fly into a rage at the photographer because the soldier said the image on the paper did not truly represent him. The soldier’s friends had examined the photograph, but among themselves they could not agree. The photographer only wanted to be paid.

The secret, as a Yaqui or Apache might already have guessed, was that the black box contained a huge quartz crystal that had been carefully cut, polished, and mounted inside the black wooden box. Wide Ledge had had a chance to look through the flat, polished crystal; a boulder nearby had taken on a great many different forms while Wide Ledge looked through the lens. Wide Ledge said he was just beginning to have an understanding of the big polished crystal when the photographer saw him under the black cloth and began shouting at him.

Each of the so-called Geronimos had learned to demand prints of themselves as payment for posing. At meetings in the mountains they had compared photographs. The puzzle had been to account for the Apache warrior whose broad, dark face, penetrating eyes, and powerful barrel-chested body had appeared in every photograph taken of the other Geronimos. The image of this man appeared where the faces of the other Geronimos should have been. The old man called Nana by the whites studied the photographs and conferred with his acquaintances, elderly people who had ranged in the mountains even before the Apache Wars. The identity of the Apache in the photograph could not be determined, but a number of theories were advanced by both Apaches and Yaquis concerning the phenomenon; the light of the polished crystal, the light of the sun, and the light of the warrior’s soul had left their distinctive mark with the Apache face white people identified as Geronimo.

Opinion had been divided over the dangers of allowing a photographic image to be made. Could the face and body that kept appearing in place of the three Geronimos be evidence that at some earlier photographic session, the soul of an unidentified Apache warrior had been captured by the white man’s polished crystal in the black box and was now attempting to somehow come back? If so, why did this warrior’s soul appear only in connection with the three Apaches white people called Geronimo?

Well, there were many interesting questions surrounding the strange polished crystals in the white men’s black boxes, Sleet said. Why bother with speculations and arguments over whether the crystal always stole the soul or only did so when white men harbored certain intentions toward the person in front of the camera. The point was, Sleet reminded Wide Ledge and Big Pine, whites on both sides of the border were hunting the Apache called Geronimo. U.S. newspapers from Tucson to Washington, D.C., had the biggest headlines in the blackest ink Sleet had ever seen, demanding death for Geronimo. Wide Ledge was the oldest and
most tired of the three Geronimos. Constant movement through rough desert country and the endless scattering of the women and children had exhausted this “Geronimo.” He had been ready to “go in” until the bootlegger in the whiskey wagon from Tucson had shown him that same newspaper. The bootlegger had read the big words to him, Wide Ledge said, and that had scared all of them. If they were going to die, to have their heads chopped off and their skins tanned for chair cushions, Wide Ledge and all his people had agreed, they would not make it easy for the whites. The people would crawl back into the stony crevices and cling fiercely like scorpions.

BUT WHILE THE THREE Apaches had been meeting to discuss the confusion of the whites over “Geronimo,” news came that Old Pancakes had surrendered to U.S. troops in Skeleton Canyon. Old Pancakes had been the best customer the Tucson bootleggers had ever had. Old Pancakes bragged that the bootleggers in Tucson protected him from the army; Old Pancakes would only “surrender” his tiny band long enough to rest, fatten up, then they would escape again. Old Pancakes bragged he was fighting his own personal war, for his right to drink when and what he wanted to drink, and as much as he wanted to.

Wide Ledge and Big Pine did not see why this news should concern them. But the young boy who had brought the news of Pancakes’ surrender stood before the three Geronimos seemed to have something more to tell them. Sleet told the boy not to be afraid to tell them whatever it was. Well, Old Pancakes had really done it. Old Pancakes had claimed he was the warrior called Geronimo. The Indian scouts doubted the story, but the attaché to General Miles had heard the name Geronimo. The attaché accused the scouts of withholding critical intelligence information. It was no secret General Miles wanted to do what his rival Crook had failed to do, namely, bring in the ferocious criminal Geronimo and make the territories safe for white settlement.

Thus Old Pancakes had finally been able to use his skills as a liar and joker to seize the opportunity to save the others. Old Pancakes had released all his men and women of fighting age early in the campaigns. For years Pancakes managed somehow to guide his small band of old women and small children left in their care, to one or two campsites in the Santa Rita mountains south of Tucson.

The boy reported that Old Pancakes had not expected the Geronimo trick to work because he was such an old man and he had no warriors with him anymore, and he spent most of his time dozing under shady trees in Skeleton Canyon or one of the other canyons in the Santa Ritas. But Pancakes had not counted on army politics. Even when the scouts failed to convince the attaché and the general that Pancakes was an impostor, Pancakes had been certain once the wagon carrying him in shackles and chains reached Tucson, General Miles and his aide would be set straight by other seasoned army personnel.

But as the troops with their captive arrived in Tucson, a strange thing occurred. A stagecoach load of East Coast journalists who had arrived a few days before came running out of bars and whorehouses. The only word Old Pancakes heard was “Geronimo!” Pancakes watched the bootlegger come out of his yard where the wooden vats of fermenting liquor were poured into oak barrels. Pancakes watched the face of his old friend who had made vast fortunes off the Apache Wars. Out came the townspeople who held contracts to supply the U.S. cavalry troops with hardtack, beans, and meat. Pancakes watched the faces of the Tucson city fathers.

Pancakes’ good friends, the white fathers of Tucson, realized the Army’s mistake but the swarms of journalists at the telegraph station and the army greatly outnumbered them. The news of Geronimo’s capture had been telegraphed to the entire U.S. By then, Pancakes had begun to be frightened by his joke. He could see he was not going to be turned loose, with all forgiven as a big misunderstanding. When the bootlegger and other Tucson dignitaries told the army they had the wrong Apache, General Miles revealed to the press there had been cooperation between some white men and the marauding Apaches. Although Miles did not say so, the implication had been the white businessmen in Tucson might have reasons for alleging Miles had captured the wrong Apache.