Thirteen Senses (62 page)

A couple of men strolled up, playing their guitars.

Salvador said nothing more to Archie. Long ago he'd learned that this wasn't the end of the situation. It was just the beginning. He was finally understanding how to deal with a greedy man like Archie. You had to work him very slowly, and then he'd come around.

Hell, maybe this Palmer wasn't even asking for this much money. After all, Palmer was an educated man and educated men, Salvador was beginning to find out—as he did more and more business with them—were usually pretty straight-forward, honest people. Hell, nobody was more honest than his attorney, Fred Noon.

“All right, come and get it!” yelled Archie, turning to everyone. “The cute little maaaaaa-goat is ready!”

From everywhere, the people came. They were starving. Archie's whole face lit up with joy as he watched the people fill up their plates, licking their fingers. He'd seen a lot of hunger in his day, and it was truly a pleasure for him to see people with lots to eat.

The Sun was down, and Salvador kept seeing in his mind's eye a huge roaring fire. His mother's face flashed in the fire's flames. The flames were leaping twenty-thirty feet into the Father Sky and she was dancing about the fire with a group of people with painted faces. It gave him shivers, it all seemed so real. He took a deep breath and asked the Almighty to please look after his old
mama.

15

LIGHTNING flashed across the land and THUNDER roared through the canyons with the HOLY VOICE of CREATION!

S
ALVADOR DIDN
'
T KNOW IT,
but for three days and nights his mother hadn't been home. She'd disappeared late one afternoon with three young local Indian boys, saying that she'd be gone for just the afternoon. Driving over to Corona, Salvador could hear his sister Luisa's screams as soon as he got out of his car. Going inside, he found his mother once more sitting quietly at the kitchen table, sipping her
yerba buena
and humming to herself as Luisa continued screaming at her at the top of her lungs.

“You were gone nearly a week! No one knew where you were! I was going crazy,
mama
! I can't keep living this way! You don't seem to know or care what you put me through! I swear, I've aged TWENTY YEARS this last week!”

“Well, then, I guess that pretty soon we'll be the same age,
mi hijita,”
said the old woman cheerfully.

“THIS ISN'T FUNNY!” screamed Luisa. “You were gone! I thought that they'd STONED YOU TO DEATH!”

This was when Luisa finally noticed that Salvador had come into the room. Luisa whirled on Salvador with vengeance!

“And where have you been!” she bellowed! “Mama's been lost! She just walked in! And you were lost, too! I'd thought that the Earth had opened up and swallowed you both!”

Luisa slapped Salvador across the face with all her might, then she was crying and hugging him so hard that it looked like she was going to break his back.

It was well over an hour before Luisa had finally calmed down enough to go to bed. Salvador now walked his old mother out the back door of Luisa's house and to her own little shack in back. The Mother Moon was out and she was beautiful!

“Oh, just look at Moon,
mi hijito,”
said Doña Margarita. “If Luisa would only have looked at Mother Moon with an Open Heart, she would have known that here inside there was no reason to worry about me.

“What do you think people did for all those thousands of years before the telephone? They'd just put their hands to their Heart and look at Moon and Mother Moon would tell them about their Love Ones. Always talk to Moon, Salvador, especially when difficulties come up between you and Lupe. Mother Moon is your guide in the matters of Heart and Soul. Moontalk is the languaging of
la familia,
” she added, making the sign of the cross over herself.

“I'm tired,” said Doña Margarita, once they were inside of her shack. “Help get me into bed,
mi hijito.
We did so much Holy Work. Everyone was there. Everyone! And you know,
La Gloria,
herself, is blind.”

“La Gloria?”
asked Salvador.

“Oh, didn't I tell you,
mi hijito,
God sent down Three Holy Angels to take me up to Heaven to visit. It's just up the mountain behind San Bernardino at a beautiful lake surrounded by huge, old pines. That's where I met
La Gloria
—God's Own Self in the New Sun of Creation into which we are now entering.”

“And She's blind?”

“Yes, totally,” said his mother. “And so I asked Her how this happened, and She told me that She'd gone blind with rage. I asked how long had this rage lasted to make Her blind, and She grinned and said not too long, just a little over one hundred years. We both started laughing and laughing,
mi hijito,
this is how I will always remember this Great Woman of God, Her laughing eyes rolled over back, looking all white, and the whole land filling up with Her Great Laughter.

“You should have been with me,
mi hijito,
it was so beautiful up in that high country of Heaven. We could see forever and the waters of the Holy Lake were so crystal clear that you could see each little pebble down at the bottom, no matter how deep.”

Salvador stopped listening as he tucked his mother in. She just seemed to have no idea how upsetting it was for everyone that she'd been gone for all these days and nights without a word. Why even he, who hadn't been here in Corona waiting for her, had still felt pains in his stomach.

“Why aren't you listening to me,
mi hijito
?” she stopped and asked.

“You want to know the truth?”

“Of course.”

“Because sometimes I think you're just crazy,
mama
, the way you don't seem to realize how you upset people,” he said.

“I upset people, eh?”

“Yes, you do. We love you,
mama,
and you just disappeared. This time I side with Luisa. She has every right to be angry with you.”

“I see, it's not the people who upset themselves with their own fears and doubts?”

“Mama,
don't twist my words. You know what I mean.”

“Am I twisting your words to question what it is you say,
mi hijito?
Oh, no, you and your sister are the ones who upset yourselves, and you seem to think that because you love me, you have the right to say I upset you.”

“But
mama,
you disappeared. What was Luisa to think?”

“So, then, stop thinking,” she said. “Do you still not get it? Thinking, here in the head, is how we lost the Garden we had all over the Earth. It's only when we return to the Heart, Here in Our Center, that we can regain all of our lost senses and step through the illusion of separation and return to the Garden.
Mi hijito,
we've come Full Circle. What we did in the Church isn't some isolated reality. Our Sacred Unity of Light and Darkness is now Circling the whole Mother Earth with Sun and Moon, even as we speak.”

Salvador said nothing. He just stood there looking at his old mother. “Then,
mama,
” he said, “you're telling me that for all these days that you were gone, you were really up in Heaven visiting with
Papito
?”

“Aren't we all once we return to Grace?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said.

And so she now told Salvador how Beauty, Harmony, and Peace had come down from Heaven in the form of Three Handsome Young Indian boys to get her one morning. They went by truck to the foot of the Big Bear Mountain where their old truck broke down and they had to go up the mountain by foot.

“I flew up the mountainside, I was so full of power!” said Doña Margarita to her son Salvador. “And on top of the mountain, we came to a beautiful Holy Lake that the local
gente
call
Ojo-de-Dios,
Eye-of-God, because the waters are so clear that they reflect the Sky, putting Heaven Here on Earth.

“It was so cold, that we built a huge fire the first night,” she added.

“I know,” said Salvador. “I saw these people dancing around a huge fire with painted faces and stones in their hands.”

“That was us!” said Doña Margarita. “That first night we heated up big stones, then we went into a cave-like structure half underground and put herbs and water on the hot stones. The whole cave heated up so hot with steam that it was like returning to the womb.

“The second night we built another huge fire, and I showed
la gente
how we dance on hot-burning coals back home. People came in from hundreds of miles all around.
La Gloria
used Her Spring Festival to Honor me for what I'd done down here in the lowlands with the Devil and
Papito Dios.

“It was beautiful,
mi hijito,
they, too, knew that what I'd done was nothing new. Each of us, in fact, needs to bring Peace between God and Devil for us to Balance our Cycle of Harmony. Then
Diablo
can once more be viewed by us mortals as the happy-joking-prankster who volunteered to walk in Beauty into the Darkness of the Unknown.

“La
Gloria
led us in Holy Chant and the coyotes came to join us in Song, and Golden Eagles Screeched from the Heavens and the Great Old Trees around the lake stepped forward and joined with the Holy Singing of the Stones! Everything was in Symphony, Everything was Being Touched by the Blessed Breath of Creation!

“Oh, I could go on for days, telling you of the Sacred Places that we Voyaged Beyond as Guests of God, but I'm tired now,
mi hijito,
so we'll talk
mañana.
Good Night. I'm sorry I caused so much worry, but if only Luisa would've checked in with her Heart, instead of her head, she would've known that I was fine. By the way,” she said to her son as he tucked her in under the covers, “She walks on water.”

“Who?” said Salvador.

“La Gloria,”
said his old mother.

“You saw
La Gloria
walk on water?” asked Salvador.

“Yes, we all did. In the early morning as Mother Moon was going down and Father Sun was coming up, giving Light to all the land, we on the shore all watched Her walk out upon the lake with the dignity and stride of a woman in her prime of life and—my God, they say that She is close to two hundred years old!”

“Then is
La Gloria
a Spirit,
mama
?” Salvador asked.

The old woman laughed. “Aren't we all once we finally realize the Fullness of Being?”

“Well, yes, I guess so, but then—I mean, was She, also, of real flesh and blood,
mama
?”

“Of course, She is of real flesh and blood,” said Doña Margarita, smiling as she closed her eyes to go off to sleep. “Wasn't Mary and Joseph and Jesus?
Mi hijito,
Our Holy Story of Creation never stopped. We are still all Walking Stars Living in the Sacred Breath of the Almighty.” And she looked so very happy and all at Peace—Dreaming.

La Gloria
was now walking . . . across the Holy Waters of Creation up above San Bernardino under a Star Filled Sky.

SHE,
La Gloria
!

SHE,
LA GLORIA
!

SHE,
LA GLOOOOOO-RRRRRR-EEE-AAAAAA!!!
Star Walking upon Water!

WHEN SALVADOR GOT BACK
to his distillery in Tustin, he found Kenny White all upset. And Salvador well knew that Kenny White wasn't a man who panicked easy, so something very unusual must've happened.

“They were just kids, Salvador,” said the old man. He was half drunk. “Little, blond, blue-eyed girls no more than twelve or thirteen, and they were selling themselves, Salvador, with their parents looking on, hoping to make enough money to eat.

“It made me sick,” said the white-haired old man with tears running down his face. “What has this country come to? They were decent people, Sal! Good people, Christians, and yet here they were willing to sell their own flesh and blood for a dollar. So when I seen those two guys drive up in that beautiful new roadster, willing to pay for those little girls, I went crazy, Sal, and I know I shouldn't have done it—but, hell, those parents could be going in the hills like your people and trapping rabbits and quail and living off the land, instead of selling their—”

“What did you do, Kenny?” said Salvador, cutting him off. He, too, had seen this same kind of stuff going on for some time now, especially in those areas that had been the more affluent, and had the most to lose.

“I rammed their car with your truck and kept going 'til I'd pushed their new roadster off into the ocean below. Then I gave a barrel of whiskey to the parents of those little girls and told 'em that we'd set them up in the liquor business, but if we ever heard of 'em selling their kids again, you— the Al Capone of the Southland—would have them torched and buried alive!”

Salvador started laughing and laughing. It had been Kenny White whom he'd taken along with him the night that he'd taught that farmer what was what. He'd wanted a white man with him so that the farmer would see that it wasn't a racial issue. “Al Capone of the Southland, where the hell you get that, Kenny?”