Kachina Season

[OCT2011]

The Morion incident. The last time Siméon and I spoke was a call he made as I was driving down to meet the Hopi shaman and authenticate the Morion. He called to remind me that the crew was standing by in Taos shooting B-roll and once I authenticated the artifact, Carlo Tovar, our production manager, would come to the site. His exact words were, "Carlo would come get it...on film." It wasn't until the next day that the pregnant pause between "get it" and "on film" made sense. So much of Baaleth's conversations with me in those 24 hours seemed awkward. We had done all of this so many times that I was struck by the sense that he was either testing my mental acumen or distracted by another production.

I was happy with this arrangement though — getting to the site before descended upon by production and legal teams. With such little time to research this find, I bought some audio books about the Hopi prophecy of the morion to listen to on the drive down. They all spoke of it as legend but I was driving to what I had hoped would be the physical evidence that would turn this legend into fact. As it turned out, this helmet was key in the Hopi prophecy of the Fifth World and that when it was again seen by the world; it would open up the floodgates of the next era. No longer feeling like the linear-minded scientist I was trained to be, today I was an archetypal player meant to set this artifact before the world, via the world wide web and fulfill a mystical prophecy.

With every mile, my excitement grew. I was soon to meet a shaman. Miriam would have been absolutely beside herself. This was her wheelhouse. So I imagined her in the seat next to me discussing the questions she would ask. I relied on this imagination often. Talking with her about how to package webisodes, how to answer Jack's life questions, even how to respond to Dr. Kamen's psyche-probing questions so that I seemed engaged with the process. She became my conscience. My Jiminy Cricket. And that day she was very talkative.

I had programmed my GPS with the coordinates Baaleth sent over but after turning on the dirt road toward the Pueblo, the crisp graphics of roads on the screen became large swatches of beige so I relied on the voice commands and oscillating arrows to tell me I was still on course. But not having those pixels of roads made me uneasy. It's amusing to realize that, before GPS, I would probably have been driving along with confidence not knowing what I didn't know. Then I spotted a young man up the road. He was sitting on a guard rail staring out at the valley. I pulled up but he didn't move.

"Excuse me." No response. "Excuse me!" Still nothing. So I got out and walked up to him. "Hello there. I'm trying to figure out if I'm on the right road." He slowly turned toward me. No more than sixteen years old with deep dark eyes that seemed to look right through my head. "I'm trying to find the pueblo where a Hopi shaman lives?" This kid must have been local, no cars around and the fact that the shaman was Hopi and not Navajo would have been a key differentiator I thought.

He didn't say a word but pointed up the road I was already on and in the direction I was already headed then turned his gaze back to the valley. It was as reassuring as it was awkward. I got back in the truck and headed on with renewed confidence. It gave me some freedom of thought to look around at the scenery and I quickly understood the boy's seeming infatuation with it. The red canyon walls, striped with layers of deep green piñons and junipers glistening in the afternoon sun. It was, as the bright yellow license plates of New Mexico vehicles claim, "The Land of Enchantment."

About forty minutes later, while lost in the scenery as well as my thoughts, I was startled when I spotted that same boy walking on the side of the road. Same build, same jacket, same hair but it couldn't have been. Unless there was some trail switchback that allowed him to catch up to my truck forty minutes later, it must have been someone else but couldn't be. I had to stop. I backed up to him and rolled down my window.

When I saw his face I was sure it was the same boy. "Hello again. Didn't I just see you like forty five minutes ago way back there?" He looked blankly at me. "I'm the guy looking for the shaman...the Hopi shaman?" I said studying his face for some familiar response. Nothing. Was he deaf perhaps? Mute? "Look, this GPS is no help and I've got to find this place before dark. Are you going in that direction?" He nodded. At last a response. "Can I give you a ride? Can we help each other out?" He got in and motioned again with his finger up the road. I tried for a few minutes to make small talk with little more than nods and slight smiles from my new passenger but soon just concentrated on his silent directions and the ever more remote driving conditions.

A half hour later the road just ended. No signs, just ended. The boy got out and began walking the rest of the way. "Wait!" I shouted but he continued walking so I grabbed my pack, locked the doors and chased up the path behind him. It was clear by his determined look and casual hand gestures that he was still taking me to the pueblo. We walked for what felt like hours until we turned a bend and there, etched into the red rocks fifty meters away emerged a dwelling.

The afternoon sun seemed to set the red rocks on fire. My new friend led me through a thin opening and into a series of passages, some carved some natural.

"There doesn't seem to be anyone here." I said aloud and probably a little nervously which is why he must have decided to utter the first words I had heard him say all day.

"Sacred Cave. Home of Katsina" he said in a voice that was soothing and surprisingly sophisticated.

"This must be the place then." I said relieved. "Katsina." I thought—it's the Hopi word for Kachina—the first subject Miriam and I ever quipped about. I knew that she would not stand for this mysterious boy's silence and would be pelting him with questions. And I also knew that her winsome charm would have him answering every one of them—my Jiminy Cricket must have been very frustrated by my inability to get much out of him.

The passages were thick with a scent almost sweet but tinged with sage and the deeper we got the thicker the air. So much so that I became light-headed. "The air in here is intoxicating." I said.

"Pinani." He said. "Spirit Breath."

Finally we reached a ladder. It looked like the toothpick ladders Jack and I would build for his dioramas. It took us up to a chamber then another took us down into a small room dimly lit by a deep narrow shaft that reached out to the canyon wall, enough to vent the air and pull in the last orange rays of sun. The boy took a seat in the corner. So I put down my bag and as my eyes adjusted, there it was. The orange beam from the shaft illuminated the morion which sat on a mud pedestal in the center of the room. If we arrived a few minutes sooner or later, it would not be easily seen nor as dramatically illuminated without the orange beam of light at that moment.

"There it is!" I said, like Jack had as a child when he first saw the Disneyland sign from the five freeway in Anaheim.

"Anasazi." the boy said softly but with disdain from his dark corner. The name "Anasazi" has come to mean the ancient people of this region. But the word itself is actually Navajo for "enemy ancestors." I knew instinctively that the boy was referring to the conquistadors who lost this morion. I walked up to the helmet which looked as if it wasn't 500 days old much less 500 years. There, embossed on the comb of the helmet was a relief of Cortés. If this was a fake, it was magnificent. If it was real, it was miraculous.

"I just have to do a few liquid tests to determine the age of the surfaces and..." Suddenly my head spun. Whether it was the "Spirit Breath" of this cavern or simply the three hour hike finally catching up to me I do not know. But my enthusiasm succumbed to the dire need to sit for a while and regain my faculties. I slunk down in the opposite corner from my young friend and closed my eyes tightly. The lime phosphenes swirled behind my eyelids and with every breath I felt my mind sitting deeper and deeper into my brain.

My next sensation was one of pure euphoria. Like the gravity in my body evaporated and my spine caught fire one chakra at a time until my chin snapped upward, my eyes blew open and my lungs let loose an exhale that surpassed their capacity. Images began to flood passed my attention faster than I could grab onto them: the orange glowing morion, the scenery from the drive, Jack's face, chess pieces, even the details of Dr. Kamen's office which caused my mind to take a turn toward a darker corner of my memory. I see Miriam's gravestone, me clipping on Jack's little black tie before the funeral, the light green walls and flickering fluorescents of the psych ward, then Miriam's silver necklace, the road toward Santa Fe, the sound of the exploding tire, the flashing red and blue lights of the troopers that pulled us from the wreckage. The last image I could grab onto was of hands pulling a sheet over the face of my wife on the ambulance gurney. A primordial wail came from behind my soul. And for what must have been most of the rest of that night I wept. I cried for the loss of my love. I cried for the neglect of my son. I cried for my betrayal of Miriam's intuitions about the people that tore us apart. Finally, just before dawn, I felt myself sink once more. Into an ancient despair. For the children slain and reflected in that morion. The ego that drove me to this place to reclaim my celebrity and peer approval had melted into the kiva stones against my back. All the while, the whole night, my young friend on the other side of the room sat very still. Waiting. As if this destruction of my denial was the real reason I was here and not the artifact.

The chill and faint glow of morning crept into the room and I looked up. Finally, I was back in the front of my head with a clarity I had never felt before. I looked over at the boy with embarrassment for what he must have watched me experience for the past hours. But he looked back at me knowingly and with such acceptance that I was at once at ease. But the calm was soon shattered.

A muted thumping noise reverberated from the vent shaft which became a sharp, consistent cutting of air. A helicopter. "Carlo would come get it...on film" Baaleth's words echoed in my head immediately. "Carlo would come get it..." The pause was a mental misfire. Baaleth let it slip that Carlo would come get the morion itself, not get it on film. Perhaps it was this new-found clarity that exposed all the deceit I had previously not noticed or ignored. I now knew that Baaleth's news of the network picking up the show was a lie. That he was using me to find it because the shaman would only meet with me. And I knew that chopper outside held men sent by him to take this artifact so he could sell it to Angelica. If we didn't get the morion and ourselves out quickly, it would be gone, a prophecy would be unfulfilled and we would be dead.

I looked at the morion then the boy. He nodded. I emptied my pack and stuffed the helmet inside. He ushered me back up the ladder then through a black passage I hadn't noticed on our way in. The shoulders of my jacket ripping against the narrow cavern walls as we rushed away from the sound of the chopper. Before too long we were in the blinding sunlight on the other side. I fixed my eyes on the boy's back trusting every turn he made and matched his footprints. The helicopter blades appeared over the ridge. I looked up panicked to see a high caliber rifle strapped to the door and trained right at us. I yelled for the boy to get down but he was already gone. My pace still full throttle then the sudden sensation of weightlessness. The rifle rattled off short bursts and I felt the thud of one pierce the helmet in my pack. Five hundred years of pristine condition ended by one lead round. Then the sudden awareness that I was submerged in water and being pulled deeper into it. It's then that I lost consciousness, track of time and my young friend.

When I awoke a day later, I was in a hospital in Farmington, New Mexico surrounded by State and Navajo Police. This was the "Morion incident" that finally ended my partnership with Baaleth and re-ignited his adversarial relationship with INTERPOL. I scanned the room and saw my belongings, still wet along the seams but unmolested in the corner and a glimmer of 500 year-old gold plating through the bullet hole in my pack. They had no idea.