Morada

　

　

1.

Costilla is a dry county, but you can buy booze in Alamosa and, so, there is a saloon and package liquor place at Mosca just over the county line. Joe Serna sat outside on the patio talking to McArnheim, the photographer from Santa Fe. The name of the bar was Blanca View and the mountain rose in lonely majesty above the rolling, sage-dotted chaparral. Some steel-blue clouds were draped over the summit and fresh-fallen snow, glistening like quicksilver under the storm clouds, powdered the upper slopes. From this vantage, the peak seemed immense and, yet, somehow incomplete – the throne of a god that had gone missing.

Some bikers sat a picnic table a few yards away drinking pitchers of beer and gossiping with the waitress. Joe’s steel crutches were crossed, leaning against the wall of the saloon. The photographer wore khaki slacks and a tight shirt that seemed styled for the golf course and he had a big leather bag, like a purse, slung over his shoulder. The man seemed out of place at the saloon and vaguely needy, as if he were seeking some kind of assistance from the locals, and, so, Joe had approached him, swinging like an awry pendulum between his two silver crutches, struck up a conversation, and, then, offered to sell the photographer from Santa Fe some weed and percocet. The photographer winced slightly and declined the offer. However, he said that he would buy Joe a beer if he were so inclined. Joe was so inclined. One beer turned into a couple. The photographer introduced himself with a last name that sounded like Mac-something. Joe didn’t hear the word exactly and, so, he just called the Santa Fe cameraman "Mac."

After their third beer, Mac asked Joe if there were a Penitente morada somewhere up on Blanca Mountain.

"Oh yes, there surely is," Joe Serna said.

The photographer said that he was making a study of the Penitente moradas in the Sangre de Cristo mountains and that he would like to see the building and take some pictures.

"They get pretty touchy about that," Joe said.

"I know – that’s why I’m looking for someone to make introductions for me," the photographer said.

"They don’t like people treating them like freaks or something," Joe said.

"It’s not my intent," Mac replied. He asked Joe if he were a member of the brotherhood.

"I been initiated," Joe said. "Those old guys control all the good jobs. You want to work, you need to be a member."

Joe said that the leaders of the brotherhood were uncles to a guy in Trinidad who owned a dry-walling business. The Trinidad business had contracts as far west as Telluride and northeast to Pueblo.

"I worked a Hollywood movie star’s summer house, a chalet up in Telluride," Joe said. "I was living in Alamosa, then, and to get up there, we had to go over four mountain passes coming and the same four passes going."

"That’s sounds difficult," Mac said.

"You spend a lot of time sleeping in the pickup truck," Joe Serna said. "We’d leave at four in the morning and not get up there till eight and, then, you don’t get back home until ten at night. And if it were snowing or something – "

He paused and winked at Mac.

"But I ain’t been working recently," Joe Serna said.

Joe told Mac that he had been riding his motorcycle to see his fiancee in Walsenberg when a pronghorn jumped out of the ditch in front of him. He missed the antelope but the cycle crashed hard, flinging Joe down into a deep irrigation ditch.

"I wasn’t wearing a helmet or anything," Joe said. "And when I come to, I was all bloody and feverish and I can’t move my legs. The motorcycle’s kind of hid in some brush and I’m at the bottom of this ditch and I figure no one is coming, no one at all is coming for poor Joe Serna. So I try to creep around a bit, but it don’t work, my legs are numb and paralyzed. It’s October and chilly at night and I pretty much figure that I ain’t going nowhere and that this is the end of old Joe Serna."

"What happened?" Mac asked.

"I got cold and sleepy and nothing could get me warm. Then, a big black angel came. The angel was sitting over me, like a guard, and the angel kept talking to me in my mother’s voice. She said – Jose Serna, you got to pray, you got to pray hard. But I said: I’m not much for praying. And I’m too sleepy, I’m too tired to put my mind to it. Then, a rancher come scrambling down the side of the ditch and I seen him looking at me like I was road-kill or something. I asked him – where did my angel go? And he says: that was no angel, that was a big old turkey buzzard. Then, there was an ambulance and they took me away to Pueblo first and, then, Colorado Springs and you can see how it turned out."

"Maybe, they can heal you up at the Morada -- they do healing up there don’t they?" Mac asked.

"Sure," Joe replied. "But first you got to do penance, you got to march a dozen miles or so carrying a cross on your shoulders wearing a crown of thrones and, you can see, my legs are all fucked-up and I can’t do nothing like that."

Mac nodded.

"But my cousin," Joe Serna said. "He made me a retablo. You know what a retablo is?"

"Yes," Mac said.

"He took some pieces of tin and made a brass frame too and like a shell over the picture and he painted me there in the ditch with the black angel at my side and, then, up at the top the Lady sitting on a cloud. That’s how I was saved."

"I’d like to see that retablo," Mac said.

"It’s up at the Morada."

"Is it far away?" Mac said.

"Way off the county highway on the west slope of Blanca," Joe Serna pointed at the mountain. "That’s a big old mountain. So it’s a good, long drive."

"I’d like to see the retablo, maybe take some pictures with you and the picture," Mac said.

"I’ll tell you what," Joe Serna said. "You buy me a bottle of Captain Morgan and a case of beer and I’ll take you up to the Morada so you can take some pictures there."

"I can take pictures?"

"There won’t be nobody up there," Joe said. "Ain’t but a dozen or so Hermanos."

"Do you have a car here?" Mac asked.

"I pretty much hitchhiked," Joe said.

"It’s a deal," Mac said.

Joe took up his crutches and hoisted himself into a standing position. Then, he went into the saloon to use the toilet. Mac crossed over into the package store and bought a case of Coors and a 1.75 liter bottle of Captain Morgan. He met Joe Serna in the parking lot. A pack of bikers roared up to the tavern and the engines of their motorcycles roared like thunder.

Joe Serna complimented Mac on his F-150 Lariat Crew Cab pickup. "Nice rig," he said.

Before they put the beer in the back of the truck, Joe opened a can and set it in the cupholder between the seats.

"Is that gonna be okay?" Mac asked.

"It’ll be okay," Joe Serna said.

　

2.

The mountain changed aspect as they rounded the curves in the foothills. Sometimes, the flank of the peak rose like a ramp, an immense smooth grassland where white-faced cows were grazing that tilted upward as if it were an ascent to heaven. From high above, pinon forests stretched down to caress the bare swelling slope, the woods like black fingers spread wide. After another curve, the mountain slopes showed dark canyons and the road bounced over little streams that had their origin in the heights, meek now and braided as they rolled across the plain, and, beyond scarves of mist, the throat of the mountain rose between cone-shaped pinnacles of pale stone.

At an intersection, a flashing red light was suspended over the cross-roads and there was a truck stop and taqueria on the broader road running arrow-straight across the high, barren plains. Joe Serna pointed and they drove north along the eastern slope of the white mountain. He rolled his window down and leaned out to spit and, then, he threw a beer can into the big pickup’s slipstream and Mac saw it scooting along side the road, dancing over the loose gravel, until it spun sideways and dropped into the ditch. At the county-line road, Serna told Mac to turn and, now, his car was aimed at the mountain, from this angle dark with shadow, a chaos of gulches and canyons overhead where the high slabs of rock dragged huge, broken talus slopes behind them.

The narrrow two-lane black top swerved to avoid an ancient cottonwood tree standing alone on stony knoll. Mac saw a low, sleek-looking car parked in the short grass in the shade of the cottonwood. A winding dirt track ran uphill toward the mountain. Joe Serna told Mac to pull up beside the car. A man with short legs and very broad shoulders was leaning against the tree smoking a cigarette. Mac saw that the hood of the car had been painted by airbrush, a velvety image of an Aztec eagle warrior embracing a big-breasted Indian maiden. Joe Serna got out of Mac’s truck, leaving his crutches in the back seat. He supported himself, sliding along the side of the truck toward the man under the tree. The man looked concerned that Joe would lunge toward the low-rider and, then, use it’s polished flanks as a support and, so, he stepped away from the cottonwood and walked up to where Joe was leaning against the side of the pick-up. Joe fist-bumped the big man with the cigarette. He gestured that Mac should get out as well.

"This is Sparky," Joe said. Sparky narrowed his eyes and squinted at Mac and, then, blew a cloud of smoke his way.

"Do you like his car?" Joe asked.

"It’s marvelous," Mac said. On the car’s trunk, Jesus clad in white pointed to a crater in his chest where his sacred heart was visible.

"Is there anyone up at the Morada?" Joe asked.

"I brought my grandpa here," Sparky said. "I ain’t gonna wreck my car on that half-assed road. Juan run him up there on his dirtbike. I’m just waiting for him come on down."

"Do you think anyone will mind if I bring my buddy up to look at the place?"

"Not inside," the big man said.

"No not even in the oratorio, just the outside," Joe Serna said.

"I don’t know, dude," Sparky shook his head.

"He’s my buddy," Joe said. "I can vouch for him."

Sparky turned to Mac and said: "It’s nothing personal. But we had problems with vandals, people breaking in, stealing things – kids huffing gas and paint."

"I can vouch for him," Joe repeated.

"I don’t know, dude," Sparky said. He pushed off from the cottonwood tree, walked to his car, and very carefully opened the trunk. Sparky stooped and lifted from the truck a gun wrapped in chamois rags. He spread the rags apart to reveal a sawed-off shotgun, two short barrels and a battered-looking stock.

"You don’t need to use that," Joe said.

"No, it’s just this," Sparky said. "You got evil spirits lurking around here. I can feel them, dude. You gotta scare ‘em off."

"I don’t feel anything," Joe said.

Mac stepped back. He was careful to keep his eyes from getting entangled in Sparky’s gaze.

"I don’t like shooting this son-of-a-bitch," Sparky said. "It kicks and cuts my trigger finger."

"Then, don’t shoot the son-of-a-bitch," Joe said.

"No, it’s got to be done," Sparky replied. He lifted the gun, inspected it for a moment and, then, pointed the barrels over Mac’s right shoulder. At the last instant, he tilted the barrels skyward and pulled the trigger. Fire flashed and the sound staggered them and, then, Sparky switched the gun to his other hand so that Joe Serna could see that the web between his thumb and index finger was cut and blood was running down his wrist.

"Jesus, man," Joe said.

"You go on up there," Sparky told him. "But you remind your buddy that we got traditions around here."

Joe Serna gestured to Mac and they went to the truck, started the engine, and slipped off the asphalt road onto the wheel-tracks gouged in the side of the hill. The truck bounced and thudded forward until they had climbed over the ridge. In a hollow below the ridge, a couple of ancient pick-up trucks with campers on them were drawn up around a fire-pit and some thorns had been cut and stacked together to make a small enclosure where a goat with heavy curled horns was resting on his belly. A little acequia paved with field stones ran between some apricot trees and the wheel prints on the hill followed the canal up to a terrace dotted with pinon and chollo. The morada was across an arroyo standing amidst purplish flowers of wild alfalfa plants. The meeting house was a little longer than a freight car, built from featureless brown adobe, with vigas polished smooth by sand-laden wind extruding from the wall just a little above the height of man’s head. Part of the building’s roof was made from battered tin and, at one end of the structure, a fragile-looking framework of lathe supported a small zinc-colored gable – a bell might once have hung in that little steeple but there was nothing under that pitched roof now. In the center of the adobe wall, Mac saw a white-washed wooden door. Next to the door, a couple of fruit crates were set as benches.

Mac parked the truck on the hillside and they walked toward the building. He could see on the dome of hill above the morada, a single rough-hewn cross. Three smaller crosses made from wood still rough with bark leaned against the adobe wall. Flame-shaped evergreens encircled a tiny campo santo where the graves were unmarked except for heaps of gravel overgrown with wild roses. Joe’s steel crutches left knuckle-sized depressions in the dust.

Joe Serna led Mac to an old plank spanning the dusty arroyo. A lizard was sunning itself on the plank. Joe crossed and beckoned to Mac. The lizard, dark as an obsidian flint, skittered down the ravine. He pitched his crutches across the ravine, metal on metal sounding loud in the hushed late afternoon. Then, Joe dropped down and moved on his knees across the wooden plank, hunching up and, then, extending himself like an inch-worm. When he had crossed the arroyo, he groped for the crutches stood up and beckoned to Mac.



"I don’t know," Mac said.

"Too many quarter-pounders?" Joe asked.

Mac shrugged and ventured onto the plank. It swayed and bent under him but did not crack.

Standing near the morada, Mac could smell fire and wax burning. Joe Serna dragged himself to the white-washed door and pushed it open. Then, he vanished inside. After a couple minutes, he emerged, blinking in the sunlight.

"There’s an old guy inside."

"Sparky’s grandpa?" Mac asked.

"I guess so," Joe Serna said.

"Are we disturbing him?"

"I don’t think so," Joe said. "He’s doing some repairs in the meeting house part of the morada."

"Can you show me the retablo?" Mac asked.

"I don’t think it’s a good idea right now," Joe said.

"What’s in there?"

"I can’t show you right now, but, later," Joe said. "Stick with me and, later, I can get you inside."

"What do they have in there?"

Joe shrugged: "Old santos, you know, wood statues of skinny old guys with staring eyes, some of them got horsehair on their heads. Jesus with his side cut open and his knees all wounded to the bone, you can see the bone of his knee-cap, and the whip-marks have cut him open to his ribs too. Death."

"Death?"

"It’s a monster wearing rags, a skeleton-woman, and she’s holding a bow and arrow in her bony hands," Joe Serna said. "She sits on a wagon like a throne and the wagon’s got these square wheels – the wheels ain’t round, my friend, no they are square wheels on axles made of wood."

"I’ve heard of images like that," Mac said. "They’re masterpieces of folk art. Very, very valuable."

"It’s Death with her bow and arrow ready to pick you out and shoot an arrow right through your heart," Joe Serna said. "Thing like that would scare the shit out of you when you were little, five or six, and seeing the carving in the dark, in the candlelight."

"I can imagine," Mac said.

"Do you know why Death rides a cart with square wheels?" Joe asked.

"No, I don’t," Mac replied.

"Those old dudes, on Holy Friday, they come up here and drag that wooden thing out here, set it up on this hill, and, then, they take fish-hooks and gouge them into their shoulders and they use those fish-hooks on rope to drag that Death around this hill. It ain’t that easy with the square wheels on the cart."

"Is that true?"

"It’s what I been told," Joe Serna said.

Mac’s face contorted and he kicked the ground. "I left my camera in the pick-up," Mac said. "I guess that shot-gun and all got me nervous."

"Got me nervous too," Joe Serna said. "That Sparky is a crazy dude."

A motorbike buzzed somewhere above them. Then, they saw a kid come down the slope, gravel skipping out from under his wheels.

"Listen, we gotta get going," Joe said. "Too many people around here right now."

"Okay," Mac said. "But I want to get some pictures."

"Listen, you keep in touch with me," Joe said. "You stay in touch and I’ll get you all the photos you want. I’ll get you inside, into the Oratorio at least."

"Someone should tell them that those santos are worth a fortune," Mac said. "They need to be protected."

"The hermanos think that God protects them," Joe Serna said. "But they’re ignorant people. Not like you and me."

"I don’t know," Mac said.

"We can work together," Joe Serna said. "I’ll get you inside. All the pictures you want."

The dirt bike skidded to a stop a little uphill from the campo santo and the dark-eyed rider looked at them quizzically.

"They’re just goat-herders," Joe said. "You saw where they’re camping with their goats. They’re nothing but goat-herds."

　

　

　

　

3.

Joe Serna said that he was down in New Mexico at San Cristobal visiting his padrino when the thieves broke into the morada. Joe’s girlfriend, Lupe, had a car that worked, although it was slow and, sometimes, leaked smoke on the mountain passes. She drove him to San Cristobal and, then, Taos because Joe Serna told her that there was a man who owed him money there. In the back of her old car, Joe loaded a big styrofoam cooler with its lid duct-taped shut. He said his cousin had shot a deer and had given Joe some venison on dry-ice for his padrino. Joe said that he would give Lupe a hundred dollars for gas money. "Where are you gonna get the money?" Lupe asked Joe. "It’s my settlement," Joe said. "On my motorcycle crash. The lawyer told me that the money is here."

Lupe said that she thought Joe Serna’s lawyer was in Pueblo. "No, I got a different lawyer," Joe told her.

After seeing the old man in San Cristobal, Lupe and Joe went to Taos. The old man must not have wanted the venison because Joe still had the cooler in the car. Lupe waited at a Denny’s, while Joe transacted some business. Then, they went to Chimayo where Joe and Lupe traded her car for a low-mileage pick-up truck.

A couple days later, Joe appeared in Mosca driving the new pick-up truck. It was shiny and the upholstery smelled stiff and fragrant, like a new car. People said that Joe Serna must have hired a very good lawyer to get him enough money from the motorcycle crash settlement to buy the truck.

Several times in the preceding years, vandals had set fire to isolated moradas in the mountains. Several meeting houses had been destroyed in the Chama River Valley and the vandals defaced the soot-stained adobe walls with spray-painted obscenities and blurry red pentagrams. Some of the older hermanos said that the vandals were not human, but, rather, fallen angels or devils sent to oppress the faithful. On Blanca Mountain, the evil ones had been content with burglary and there had been no fire. The white-washed door to the morada was splintered apart by a pry-bar and several of the Santos had been beheaded. The mutilated wooden sculptures sprawled on the packed-dirt floor, heads rolled up against the bare clay walls of the building. An old figure of San Miguel, the size of a six-year old child, was missing. The wooden figure carried a sword with a real steel blade, sharp enough to cut flesh, and the angel’s scales of justice were made of brass. San Miguel had shoulder-length black hair, carved to represent the long mane of an Indian warrior and his great wings, shaped like those of a dragon-fly were inset with shards to broken glass to make them iridescent. The figure was jointed so that it could disassembled. The missing Santo was very beautiful and the hermanos grieved San Miguel’s absence but they also said that the theft of the old carved figure was a small price to pay for the salvation of the rest of the morada and its sacred images. It could have been worse and, in fact, at the bar in Mosca, some of the old men whispered that San Miguel, the defender of the poor and the angel of justice, had come to life when their meeting house was invaded. The angel, they said, had stepped forth from his pedestal and, swinging his sword, had driven away the evil-doers. Then, perhaps, he had beat his great wings together to make a tempest over the morada and risen high into the sky, ascending until he was above the peak of Blanca Mountain, the great white throne from which he could survey all the kingdoms of the earth. Other members of the brotherhood who were less superstitious said that San Miguel had, indeed, been the sacrifice that saved the morada – smitten with the wooden angel’s beauty, the thief had been content to take that figure and had left the rest of the holy images, more or less intact, or, at least, in a condition in which they could be repaired.

Joe Serna learned about the burglary at the morada from Sparky. Sparky came to his house to admire Joe’s new pickup. Joe gave Sparky a beer and they sat on his porch looking toward the big, white crest of the mountain.

Sparky told Joe that someone had broken into the meeting house and desecrated some of the Santos and that the old wooden sculpture of San Miguel was missing.

"What is the name of that man...that photographer that you brought up to the morada?" Sparky asked.

Joe said that he couldn’t recall.

"Do you think he had something to do with it?" Joe asked.

"What do you think?"

"I know you can’t trust outsiders, you can’t trust people who aren’t from around here," Joe said.

"So why did you show him the way to the morada?" Sparky asked.

"I didn’t think he would do us no harm."

"Well, you were wrong," Sparky said. "Look what’s happened."

He asked Joe Serna again for the man’s name. Joe got up and, dragging himself between the props of his crutches, searched among some papers atop a chest-of-drawers. He found Mac’s business card.

"You call him," Sparky said. "Get him down here so that we can investigate this thing."

"I’ll do that right away," Joe said.

"No," Sparky replied. "I want you to call him now."

"Suit yourself," Joe said.

He dialed the phone. Then, when Mac answered, Joe said that he had permission from the Brotherhood’s elders to show him the inside of the morada.

"We want to take an inventory for insurance purposes," Joe said. "People have told us that we need to insure some of our old stuff, the antiques."

Joe paused.

"So we’ll let you take pictures inside, so long as you give us copies of those pictures for insurance."

Mac wasn’t available for six weeks. He told Joe that for a month and a half, he was booked solid taking wedding pictures.

Joe said that he should come to the cottonwood tree near the tire-path that led up uphill to the morada. Joe wrote down a date and a time.

"I’ll be there with my buddy, Sparky," Joe Serna said.

He put down his phone.

"What are you gonna do?" Joe asked.

"I just want to talk to the man," Sparky said. "He’s disrespected this community."

"Okay," Joe said.

A couple weeks later, Joe Serna scored some very high-grade heroin from a movie-industry executive who was spending the summer in Taos. The heroin was so powerful that Joe overdosed. He was found in the front seat of his shiny new pick-up truck at the edge of a Walmart parking lot in Chimayo. An ambulance was called and he was rushed to the hospital but could not be revived.

The old hermanos who found their morada desecrated were certain that the assault was diabolical. In the dirt around the door leading into the meeting house, they found strange circular imprints, knuckle-sized craters that the old men said were the hoof marks of a mob of diminutive demons.

　

　

　

4.

The wind rushed down from the mountain and sleet in its teeth slapped at Sparky’s old Buick. Most of the leaves on the cottonwood tree had fallen and been swept into the next county. A few of them still trembled overhead.

Sparky’s cousin, Hector, drank from a silver can of malt-liquor half-hidden in a paper-sack.

Hector said: "I don’t think he’s gonna come."

Sparky whistled between his teeth.

"He’s late, that’s for sure," Sparky said. The sky was overcast and most of the mountain was hidden in banks of grey, foaming fog.

"I hope he don’t come," Hector said.

"Maybe, he won’t come," Sparky said.

The car shuddered a little with the impact of the wind. The immense plain was brown and barren, everything dead, it seemed, as far as the eye cold see. A storm was coming and the white-faced cattle had sought refuge in the hidden hollows, the little dry gulches and draws wrinkling the land.

Sparky’s cell-phone rang. He answered and, then, cursed. The white guy from Santa Fe had gone to the Blanca View bar. He was asking about Joe Serna. The white guy said that he was supposed to meet a man somewhere out on the county roads but couldn’t remember the exact location.

"Did you tell him that Joey died?" Sparky asked.

The bartender said: "Didn’t think it was any of his business."

"Damn right," Sparky replied.

Sparky said that the bartender should buy the man a couple drinks and that he would pay the tab when he reached Mosca. "Keep him there for me," Sparky said.

Sparky started the car and they drove across the foothills to Mosca. On the height of land overlooking the town, a windswept treeless ridge, sleet was sticking to the highway and making it slick. It was warmer below, some the shrubs and hedges in the little town still green.

Eight or nine pickup trucks were drawn up to the belly of the bar like piglets suckling a sow. The light was fading and the neon beer signs in the long narrow windows of the tavern glowed against the gloomy late-afternoon. The patio beside the bar with its ramadas was locked shut and the wind had overturned some of the plastic chairs. A beer can skittered across the flagstones beneath the picnic tables.

The Blanca View was warm inside, a juke-box flaring like a bonfire in one corner of the tavern. Men were huddled at the bar. Mac sat alone at a round table. His leather camera case was on the center of the table and he was drinking beer from a tall glass.

Sparky went to his table and shook Mac’s hand. He apologized for the confusion. Hector stood in the background, nervously shuffling his feet. Sparky handed Hector some cash and told him to get them all some more drinks.

Sparky sat down across from Mac. He cleared his throat and said: "Mister, this doesn’t have to be unpleasant. But you gotta tell me. What happened to the San Miguel?"

Mac blinked at him: "I don’t know what you mean."

Sparky told him about the vandalism at the Morada and, then, said: "I’m gonna ask you one more time nicely."

Mac said that he didn’t know anything about the missing Santo.

"You were telling Joey that those old things were worth lots of money," Sparky said. "He let you in the place didn’t he? And you took that San Miguel away for a museum or something."

"I didn’t do anything of the kind."

"Yes, you did. You thieved that saint out of the old meeting house and sold it for profit."

"Listen," Mac said. "You don’t know me. You don’t know me at all. I’m trying to help you people. I’m trying to document a dying folkway."

Hector brought the beers to the table.

"Dying?’ Sparky said. "Do I look like I’m dying? Hector, do you see me dying?"

Hector shook his head.

"You don’t understand."

"Hector, this man just said I’m gonna die," Sparky shouted. He stood up, knocking his chair over.

Mac remained seating: "Just calm down. Calm down. I didn’t take your statue."

"I bet you ain’t even no Catholic," Sparky said.

"I didn’t take that statue," Mac said.

"Well, let’s go outside so that we can discuss it," Sparky said.

"I’m not leaving this tavern," Mac replied.

"Then, I’m gonna take you outside with me," Sparky said.

He reached across the table and seized Mac by the lapel of his shirt. Then, he yanked him to his feet. Mac put up his forearm and knocked Sparky’s arm away. Then, he turned away toward the bar. Sparky clubbed Mac across the back of his neck with his fist. Mac staggered forward and fell against a couple of cowboys sitting on bar stools and flirting with the fat barmaid.

The cowboys spun around: "What the fuck?" one of them said.

Mac tried to get up, but Sparky kicked him hard in the ribs. He rolled over on his back. Sparky lunged and lifted his boot to stomp on his belly. But one of the cowboys hit Sparky in the side of the head with his bottle of beer.

Hector charged the cowboy who had hit Sparky, caught him around the mid-section and drove him against the wooden bar-rail. The other cowboy swung his mug at Hector but missed.

The fat barmaid screamed that she was going to call the cops.

Mac got to his feet a little unsteadily, staggered to the table, and picked up his camera case. He started toward the door. Sparky, who was wrestling on the floor with the cowboy, broke free and lunged toward Mac. The cowboy caught him below the knees and tackled him so that Sparky fell heavily. The barmaid had her cell-phone tight against the side of her head.

Mac got outside and ran to his truck. He backed-up recklessly, ground the gears when he put the vehicle in drive, and, then, sped out of town. On the height of land above Mosca, his wheels caught in the sleet and the pick-up fishtailed so much that he almost crashed into the ditch. Mac slowed down. You could see most of the world from the barren saddle overlooking town. The naked, wind-swept ridge rose crookedly toward the big mountain and was lost in swirling fog above him. Below, the upthrust of the mountain had hollowed out a vast circular moat around the peak, puddled with frozen marshes and crumpled badlands – far away, Mac could see two police cars approaching. The wind tore up the sound of their sirens and cast it away, but he could see the spinning red lights climbing the slope to the ridge, three or four miles away. The sheriff and the Mosca cop had been working an accident scene on another icy stretch of highway and, so, they still had some distance to come. Mac looked in his rear view mirror and saw below, at the edge of town, a couple of trucks’ headlights veering out onto the main highway.

Mac increased his speed to the limit. The squad car and sheriff’s Bronco, blazing with light, shot past him a mile down the hill. Mac pulled to the side of the road to let the two police vehicles pass. He had a throbbing headache.

It was twilight, dense clouds overhead threatening snow.

　



5.

Sparky had a couple warrants out for his arrest, one in Golden, Colorado, the other down in Santa Fe. His wife had just had another baby and he didn’t want to go to jail. He had a good job supervising a small crew of dry-wallers and an excellent reputation both as a car-mechanic and in the contracting business. He was pretty sure that the owner of the bar and the fat bar-maid wouldn’t name him to the authorities. But, nonetheless, he thought it would be best to get out of town for a day or so.

Sparky gave Hector a hundred-and-fifty dollars to pay to the bar owner for damage. He drove his old Buick over the high saddle above Mosca. On the other side of the ridge, he met two police vehicles with their sirens wailing and lights flashing as they hurried toward town. He slowed to below the speed limit, pulled to the shoulder to let the cops pass, and, then, drove out to the cottonwood tree marking the path to the Morada. The beams of his headlights showed the wheel-tracks in the cold, wet grass and the slick of mud leading to the knoll above the goat-herd’s encampment. Sparky took the fork in the road down into the hollow and parked his Buick next to one of the rust-bucket campers. He took a tire-iron from his car and hiked up to the Morada. With tire-iron, he smashed off the padlock on the door to the Morada and went inside.

After a half-hour, Sparky thought he heard a sound. He stood in the door to the meeting house and looked down to the road. It seemed to him that some headlights were approaching, bumping up the rough track. He decided it would be best if he climbed higher up the mountain to avoid being caught.

Sparky jogged along a path that the brothers had made to a bluff above the Morada. The air was wet and cold, invigorating to breathe at first, but, then, heavy with moisture. He came to the Golgotha overlooking the meeting house – two maderos leaned against a rain-slick boulder and he almost twisted his ankle in one of post-holes dug into the crest of the hill. From this height, he could see down to the county road and, indeed, it appeared to him that several vehicles were laboriously climbing the narrow dirt track to the Morada.

Behind the Calvario, a shallow rocky gorge, whispering with a water rippling over stones, angled upward. Sparky climbed down into the gorge and, then, made his way over the boulders upward. The stream-bed zigzagged like a snake and, at each turn, he felt himself enveloped by the mountain and protected by its heights. At last, the creek bed ended in a sheer rock-fall, but Sparky could scramble up from gorge where one of its side-walls had collapsed. He emerged onto a steeply inclined and slippery terrace. Sparky was surprised that wet snow was slapping against the rocks and pelting his face. A twisting path led over the hillside toward a rock rampart with trees at its base. Sparky thought he could shelter under the trees. The trail seemed to have been made by a deer or elk and it wandered upward skirting the trees, now heavily laden with wet snow. The stuff was ankle-deep around his feet.

Sparky had the sense that someone was following him. The trees made strange creaking sounds under the weight of snow and, sometimes, in the depths of the forest, he heard a popping noise, almost like gunshots. This was unnerving and so he plunged, forward following the tree-line up into a swirling cloud. It was hard to see but shadows surrounded him and they seemed to move and gesture in his direction. He moved slowly because the hillside was fractured into slick planes of tilted stone. Although he was soaked to the bone, Sparky was surprised that he wasn’t cold at all. Perhaps, it was adrenalin that kept him warm.

The grove of trees ended at an impassable talus field and, so, Sparky went among them. Wet snow clumped in his hair and numbed his ears. At the edge of the woods, the ground dropped sharply and it was impossible to climb against that slope – although he tried to take a few steps uphill, he simply skidded and slid down the trough in the side of the mountain. Unable to ascend, he squatted in the snow and tobogganed down the slope on his buttocks. The grade decreased and he was able to walk. The way was perilous – threads of water were flowing downward under the covering of snow and the trough was dense with ground mist.

The ground underfoot vanished. Sparky toppled down the face of a steep embankment. This part of the slope was comprised of pebbly soil and the hillside had collapsed down into a narrow channel. Sparky rolled down the embankment, falling about twenty-five feet, and, then, slammed into a shelf-like obstruction. He crumpled with the impact and, bent double, rolled into a tight dark hollow. Cupped in the notch in the earth, it was silent and he was sheltered from the clots of wet snow falling through the air.

At first, Sparky thought that he was hurt and that the eerie silence was an artifact of his injury, the calm of shock preceding pain that would kill him. He clutched at himself and huddled in the little niche in the hillside. But there was no pain and, gradually, he discovered that he was lying under a timber cross-member embedded in the gravel. Behind him, a narrow, half-collapsed tunnel tilted downward into the mountain. It was wet in the tunnel and water was dripping down from the ceiling and big jagged rocks fallen from overhead partially blocked the passage. Sparky was not inclined to explore the shaft and he remained at the head of the tunnel, under the heavy cross-timber.



The storm was too intense for him to leave shelter. He clutched his arms around his ribs and rocked back and forth against the cold. Now that he was no longer running up the mountainside, he began to shiver.

The night was long and, several times, he almost fell asleep but, then, leaped to his feet, stepped out onto the gravel porch of the tunnel and shouted into the darkness that he was not sleepy and not exhausted and not cold. He sang some hymns that he recalled from his childhood. The mountain echoed and, sometimes, Sparky thought that there were other voices joined in his song. Once, when he had fallen back into the tunnel and was resting against the stone – he heard a high-pitched howling very close to where he was hiding. – A coyote, he thought.

At the first light, Sparky saw that the snow had stopped falling. A grey, watery light spread over the landscape, not even venturing to tap at the places where deep and immense shadow clung to the cliffs and gorges. Sparky couldn’t feel the tips of his fingers or any part of his feet and he knew that he had to retreat down the mountain to save himself from freezing. The snow was almost knee-deep and it fought against him so that he fell several times, and, then, when he brushed his face and forehead, he saw that his hand came away red with blood.

A quarter mile downhill from the tunnel, he emerged from the narrow slit in the mountain and stood on a great white expanse of slope tilting gently downward. Dark clouds were still patrolling the distant reaches of the plain. A trail of huge footprints preceded him – vast indentations in the snow each about a half-yard long. Sparky thought the footprints had been made to guide him and he followed them downhill, putting his own small feet inside each big mark impressed in the snow. This made the way downward easier so that he made good progress.

After an hour, he came to the asphalt county highway, a black track running through fallen snow that was no more than an inch deep. A shepherd in a pickup stopped for him.

The bar-owner at Mosca didn’t press charges for the brawl and Mac had left town without making a complaint. Sparky wasn’t arrested. The tips of several of his fingers turned black and his feet were badly frozen. Ultimately, he had to be hospitalized and lost two of his toes. But that was the end of it.