The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (41 page)

Within three days the president of the United States had sent a telegram to General Miles, rewarding him with another star. By then Old Pancakes had been locked up in Fort Lowell, and he realized the
bootlegger and all the others could not stop what was happening. Pancakes’ last hope had been the skepticism of two reporters—one from the
New York Times,
and the other from the
Washington Post.
They had studied photographs in the general’s dossier on Geronimo. The general reminded them the photographs were from years before. As they could see from Pancakes’ appearance, the years of relentless pursuit had taken their toll. The reporter from the
Times
had a proposal. Would the general allow the captive Geronimo to be taken out the back door of the brig to be photographed? The man from the
Times
had already engaged the photographer. Miles, who was concerned that reporters might in some way tarnish his moment in history, reluctantly agreed. Miles remarked that he’d had nightmares since they had brought Geronimo from Skeleton Canyon. In the general’s dreams, Geronimo had brushed away shackles and leg irons as if they were cobwebs, and walked away, disappearing as the troops looked on, paralyzed by an invisible force. For more than fifteen years, five thousand U.S. troops, costing $20 million, had stomped through cactus and rock to capture one old Apache man more sorrowful than fierce.

“And what do you think?” old Mahawala had said, pointing her arthritic finger so it nearly touched Calabazas’s forehead. “What do you think? What did Old Pancakes see when they showed him the picture of ‘Geronimo’s’ surrender?” They had all been grinning at Calabazas, waiting for him to pick up where old Mahawala left off. Calabazas opened the last beer and began:

Old Pancakes did not go in much for photographs anyway. He held the photograph in his hands and turned it slowly around and over, sniffing it and sneezing from the strong smell of the chemicals. All the white men watching Pancakes would have laughed; the East Coast journalists would have laughed harder than the
americano
soldiers or the general, who was probably glancing nervously at the brushy slopes of the rocky foothills above the fort, watching nervously for the legions of war-painted Apaches he’d dreamed of the night before. The journalists loved the ease with which this savage desert and its savage creatures so effortlessly yielded front-page copy.

Hours later, after the plate was developed, they compared it to the wiry old man standing in front of them. Old Pancakes had never been defiant, but he had never given up anything he cared about either. He stood before them refusing to admire the piece of paper covered with brownish spots and smudges. The lieutenant and the major thought it
was not a good likeness and turned to the photographer to ask for another shot. But the photographer said he wasn’t being paid by them, he was being paid by the gentleman from the
New York Times.
If the gentleman from the
Times
was satisfied, that was that. Of course there was little resemblance between Old Pancakes and the image of the Apache that appeared in the photograph.

“And so the three Geronimos suddenly were safe again.” Old Mahawala gave a grin as wide as a full moon.

“There,” she said to Calabazas, “you have heard that one again.” Calabazas had nodded. A lot of Yaqui stories about Apaches were not so good or amusing. Until the white men came, they had been enemies; sometimes they had raided one another. Of course, as they later reminded one another, the raids and the scattered deaths were not at all the same as the slaughters by U.S. or Mexican soldiers.

Calabazas had asked if any Yaqui ever claimed to know the identity of the Apache whose face kept appearing in the photographs. But old Mahawala and the others had only shaken their heads and begun to gather up the empty beer bottles to wash and reuse for home remedies. Then an old uncle had hobbled over to Calabazas. The face in all the photographs had belonged to an ancestor, the soul of one long dead who knew the plight of the “Geronimos.” The Apaches were nervous about the dead and the activities of their souls, but the Yaquis were not. The Yaquis had extensive experiences with just such occurrences. The spirit of the ancestor had cast its light, its power, in front of the faces of the three “Geronimos.” Calabazas had been fascinated, and he asked the old man if the spirit had entered those warriors. “Oh, no!” the old uncle had said, waving his arms and shaking his head. “
That
is something else again! Very different! Not so good!” The spirit could move in and out easily through a crystal rock, that was all, the old man assured Calabazas. So a camera could not steal the soul as some people fear. A camera could not steal your soul unless you were already letting it go in the first place. But Calabazas had never forgotten the last thing his old uncle had said that night: “Of course in the hands of a sorcerer, who can say what might happen. Don’t take any chances. Look where poor Old Pancakes ended up.”

CALABAZAS SAT ON HIS narrow bed with his back against the wall and smoked one of the “special blends” he preferred at bedtime: fifty-fifty Prince Albert and marijuana. Calabazas laughed at the young guys who wanted the
sin semilla,
something that might have had more kick, but that had none of the sweet calm of a female plant that had completed her full cycle. He must be getting old himself if he was thinking about a night almost forty years ago when he had made one of the last journeys back to the Chalky Place camp where the last of the wild ones stubbornly lived out their last days, refusing to come down to the villages along the riverbank where the melons and pumpkins grew juicy and big, where their grandchildren now had toddlers playing in the white river sand.

The old wild ones would not leave the mountain camp until the claws of the winter winds raked their necks and legs with icy chills. But gradually, fewer and fewer of the wild ones reassembled each February for the return trip to the mountain stronghold. Calabazas had heard time and again that these last wild people at their moment of death always spoke of the mountains. Some spoke as if they were talking to the others, sometimes in a time of siege and grave danger, but more often, they were welcoming visitors or they themselves were returning to the strong hold. The last thing old Mahawala had told everyone was that human life spans weren’t much, and they should all remember that the soldiers had come once, and they would come again. The day would come when once more the people would have to flee to the mountains. Old Mahawala had even warned them they were becoming forgetful and arrogant because of all the white man’s toys, radios and televisions and automobiles, which were causing them to forget a great many important things. “You think it won’t happen again, that the time won’t come around again. Well, you just go ahead and think that way. I will be the sudden gust of wind that overturns your lantern.”

None of those old ones had ever forgotten the final year of the Yaqui struggle when Mexican federal troops slaughtered four hundred
unarmed men and women at Rooster Hill. Even then, when the heart of every Yaqui was crying out, no Yaqui ever said “surrender.” It was the same war they had been fighting for more than four hundred years, ever since pig-anus De Guzman had come hunting for Yaquis to enslave for his silver mines. Thinking about De Guzman reminded Calabazas about Max Blue. The newspapers had said he had been an important man in the Mafia, but he had had serious injuries that forced retirement in Tucson. Calabazas and the others kept watch, and for a long time Max Blue had performed only out-of-town work—nothing south of Salt Lake City or Denver. But Calabazas and the others had watched the two sons grow up, while the mother bought real estate. Max Blue always had the perfect alibi when a gangland execution took place in Atlantic City or Trenton or in a garden restaurant in Manhattan’s Little Italy. Maybe because Max wasn’t getting any younger himself, but all along Calabazas had been worried about the two sons. Not because the sons themselves were anything special, but because of the mother. The woman. The wife of Max Blue. Calabazas had never felt easy about her. Because she was doing something all the time with land and with money. And while her husband was reputed to spend all his days on the golf course north of the city, Leah was seen all over, everywhere, and she flew to Los Angeles twice a month sometimes.

Calabazas took a last hit off the cigarette and headed outside for a last look at the night. More and more he was thinking about “retirement” too, except he meant real retirement, not like Max Blue, who arranged executions from the golf course. Calabazas was thinking maybe of Sonora, of getting closer to where he wanted to rest at last. Whatever retirement was, it couldn’t be any worse than the years Old Pancakes spent as “Geronimo.”

The women and children with Old Pancakes had been loaded on the train in Tucson. Sometime after the Apaches arrived at the island fortress off the Florida coast, white men from a school for Indians in Pennsylvania had come to take away their children. The Indian school in Pennsylvania was in damp country, and many of the Apache children fell ill and died. The Apache scouts, those betrayers of their people, got loaded on that train too. Those scouts who had enabled the U.S. soldiers to evade ambushes and traps, those scouts willing to sell the locations of the Apache camps, those scouts had gone to prison with the Apaches they had once pursued.

Calabazas had begun to notice that he did not sleep as much as he once had, and he identified that characteristic with old age. As the human
soul approached death, it got more and more restless and more and more energy for wandering, a preparation for all eternity where the old people believed no one would rest or sleep but would range over the earth and between the moon and stars, traveling on winds and clouds, in constant motion with ocean tides, migrations of birds and animals, pulsing within all life and all beings ever created. Calabazas had not thought very often about warriors because they had died out when he was still a small boy. But he could not forget Old Pancakes. The last years Old Pancakes had been proof of the surprises and the sheer wonder still left in this world. Shrewd Pancakes had made the best of the situation. And if the whites wanted to pay him to ride spotted ponies in Wild West shows and wave an unloaded rifle over his head as the character the white journalists called Geronimo, then that was okay with the old man. Because he had seen a lot of changes throughout those years of struggle. As a boy he had ridden with the great man the whites called Cochise. But he had also heard what the great man had said before his death. Guns and knives would not resolve the struggle. He had reminded the people of the prophecies different tribes had. In each version one fact was clear: the world that the whites brought with them would not last. It would be swept away in a giant gust of wind. All they had to do was to wait. It would be only a matter of time.

Calabazas woke in the middle of the night from a dream in which the old ones long dead had gathered for a celebration.

“Drink up!” they all told Calabazas. “We are drinking to celebrate your wedding! Congratulations! What a lovely bride!” But in the dream Calabazas tried to tell them he was already married. He tried to find Sarita, but she was not in the room. Then through a half-open door, Calabazas saw the bride in her dress; the bride turned, but she was not Sarita, the woman he had married. She had Sarita’s body, with the big ass and small breasts, and the small, lovely hands. But the face was Liria’s, her sister’s.

CALABAZAS GOT UP and made coffee. Another sign of old age. Brewing coffee long before sunrise. The dream that he was married to Liria and not her sister, his wife, Sarita, was the longest-running dream Calabazas had. Calabazas shaved while the coffee boiled. He had never dreamed the actual wedding before, probably because
that
had been the decisive moment, when both he and Liria should have spoken up. Because long before the wedding Calabazas had been in love with Liria. Liria had loved him too, but she had also been confused and frightened by her betrayal of her sister. Sarita was the eldest, the one the other children looked up to and had to obey. Liria had been just a girl, and falling in love with her brother-in-law-to-be had terrified her.