Leslie Silko - The Almanac of the Dead

A cold beer was what he needed. He walked north again, past the music store and the wig shop. Then he saw it: the Congress Hotel. Suddenly he remembered. This was the place John Dillinger’s gang had made their worst mistake.

Sterling started to feel better. Tucson was going to be an interesting place. It had history. Where else could he have a cold beer at the same place Dillinger and his gang had been drinking beer in 1934? He opened the bar door and a gust of cold air-conditioning hit his face. Going from bright sun outside into the dimly lit bar left him blind for a moment. Even if they didn’t like Indians in this bar, Sterling wanted to have one drink there, for John Dillinger. When he could see again, he found the bar almost empty, except for an old woman on a stool talking to the bartender, and two old white men arguing over a video game. Sterling watched the bartender’s expression, to see if Indians were unwanted. But what he saw was relief. Maybe the bartender had wanted an excuse to get away from the old woman. Of course Sterling was well dressed. Even in the heat he was wearing his bolo tie made with a big chunk of good turquoise. The bartender was even friendly. He set the mug of beer in front of Sterling and started talking. “She’s trying to get me up to her room,” the bartender said. He was a small, balding white man with tattoos up and down both arms. The old white woman was wearing a dark purple dress with little white dots all over it. She wore open-toed, white high heels she had hooked around the bottom of the barstool like a pro. Her white hair was carefully waved in little curls around her face. She had drawn careful circles of rouge and used just the right amount of lipstick. Forty years ago she had probably been a beauty. “Don’t be fooled by the bartender,” she said to Sterling. “I’ve had him up to my room plenty of times.”

Then she went back to her drink — something pink in a tall glass. The bartender moved away from Sterling then, wiping the bar and rinsing glasses. The two old men were no longer sitting at the video game. They were pouring beer from a pitcher and arguing over pinball machines and video games. How could you trust a video game? It was all electronics, all programmed like a computer to beat you. You had no chance. But at least with the pinball game, you could see the effects of gravity — the edge of the flipper with just the right leverage to fling the steel ball up the ramp and ring the bells and buzzer.

Sterling could begin to see how the place must have looked in Dillinger’s day: the seats in the booths and the stools were covered with red plastic now, but he could see they had once been done in real leather. Only the bar itself was still dark mahogany. All the bar tables had been replaced with red Formica. The floor was covered with red indoor-outdoor carpet pockmarked with cigarette burns. But at the doorway an edge of black marble tile could still be seen. It had been a classy place in its day. Sterling paid for another beer and asked the bartender if it was always that quiet. “Oh, this is about average for a Tuesday,” he said. “At happy-hour time they come in.” He nodded in the direction of the two old men and the old woman. Retired people living in the cheap rooms downtown. The old woman was hanging off the stool by her high heels, leaning toward the old men, who were still arguing about pinball machines and video games. Occasionally the old woman would leer at the bartender or at Sterling. “You’re not an Arizona Indian,” the bartender said. Sterling shook his head.

Just then two men had come into the bar. Both wore dark glasses and were nervously scanning the room, for somebody. The men wore identical white jeans and pale yellow polo shirts, and big gold wrist-watches. The Mexican with the cruel face was staring at Sterling. The young white man with him stared at Sterling too. Sterling smiled at the bartender uneasily. The men were looking for old Fernando, who worked as a gardener when he wasn’t getting drunk, but nobody had seen the old man for weeks. The Mexican with the cruel face stepped closer to Sterling. “You,” he said. “What about you? Can you work?”

“Gardening?” Sterling suddenly felt light-headed from the beer and the heat. “Ah, yes!” Sterling said. “Yes!” Trying to come up fast with the answer the men in dark glasses wanted to hear.

“Oh, yes!” Sterling heard himself answer. “Big lawns! All kinds of lilac bushes — dark purple, lavender, pink, white, blue!” Before Sterling could go on about the pool full of giant goldfish — all of it made-up — Ferro had turned and pointed to the door. “You’re hired. Let’s go.”

The Mexican had the young white man drive the four-wheel-drive truck. No one spoke during the entire ride. They drove north and then west from downtown Tucson. The dry heat had parched the leaves of the desert trees pale yellow. Even the cactus plants had shriveled.

Sterling had never seen dogs like these before — leaping high against the chain-link fence — snarling, barking guard dogs. They were either black or reddish with short coats and brown or black markings on their faces like masks. Sterling had noticed the dogs each wore heavy leather collars mounted with tiny black metal cylinders.

THE STONE IDOLS

“WELL,” STERLING SAYS, pushing the broom back toward the shallow end of the pool. He pauses and stares at the Catalina Mountains to the east. “I hope I am going to be here awhile, because I don’t have any other place to go.” Sterling has to clear his throat to keep the tears back. Seese wipes the back of her hand across her face but never looks up from the water. Her sadness startles him, and Sterling is seized by memories and lets down his guard. Remorse, bitter regret.

The stone idols had got Sterling banished. How many times had the theft of these stone figures come up during the hearings and Tribal Council proceedings? So often his brain had gone numb and lost track. The stone figures had been stolen eighty years before. Yet at Laguna, people remembered the crime as though it had just been committed. But the incident involving the Hollywood movie crew and the shrine of the great stone snake was no crime; it had been the result of a simple mistake; a small misunderstanding, a total accident.

The theft of the stone figures years ago had caused great anguish. Dark gray basalt the size and shape of an ear of corn, the stone figures had been given to the people by the kachina spirits at the beginning of the Fifth World, present time. “Little Grandmother” and “Little Grandfather” lived in buckskin bundles gray and brittle with age. Although faceless and without limbs, the “little grandparents” had each worn a necklace of tiny white shell and turquoise beads. Old as the earth herself, the small stone figures had accompanied the people on their vast journey from the North.

Generation after generation the protection and care of the stone figures had passed to an elder clanswoman and one of her male relatives. She prepares cornmeal and pollen sprinkled with rainwater to feed the spirits of the stone figures, which remain in her house when they are not in the kiva. She lifts them tenderly as she once lifted her own babies, but she calls them “esteemed and beloved ancestors.”

The stone figures were stolen from a kiva altar by “a person or persons unknown” according to the official report. A ring of anthropologists had been crawling around the Pueblos all winter offering to trade for or buy outright ancient objects and figures. The harvests of the two preceding years had been meager, and the anthropologists offered cornmeal. The anthropologists had learned to work with Christian converts or the village drunk.