Leslie Silko - The Almanac of the Dead

THANK YOU, Robert and Caz, for your patience, love and understanding these past ten years.

Thank you, Gus, for being there.

Special thanks to J. Roderick MacArthur (19171984) and to the John D. and Catherine T. Mac-Arthur Foundation for the 19811986 Prize Fellowship which launched this novel.

THE OLD WOMAN stands at the stove stirring the simmering brown liquid with great concentration. Occasionally Zeta smiles as she stares into the big blue enamel pot. She glances up through the rising veil of steam at the young blond woman pouring pills from brown plastic prescription vials.

Another old woman in a wheelchair at the table stares at the pills Seese counts out. Lecha leans forward in the wheelchair as Seese fills the syringe. Lecha calls Seese her nurse if doctors or police ask questions about the injections or drugs. Zeta lifts the edge of a sleeve to test the saturation of the dye. The color of dried blood. Old blood, Lecha says, but Zeta has never cared what Lecha or anyone else thought. Lecha is just the same.

Lecha abandoned Ferro, her son, in Zetas kitchen when he was a week old. The old blood, old dried-up blood, Ferro says, looking at Lecha, the old, and the new blood.

Ferro is cleaning pistols and carbines with Paulie at the other end of the long table. Ferro hates Lecha above all others. Shriveled up, he says, but Lecha is concentrating on finding a good vein for Seese to inject the early-evening Demerol.

Zeta stirs and nods: Old age. The day a woman put on black clothes and never again wore colors. The old-time people had not gotten old season by season. Suddenly, after eighty-five years, theyd catch the flu later in the winter, and by spring their hair would be almost white.

The old ones did not believe the passage of years caused old age. They had not believed in the passage of time at all. It wasnt the years that aged a person but the miles and miles that had been traveled in this world.

Lecha is annoyed that Zeta is being so dramatic about their sixtieth birthday. Lecha keeps the black dye for her hair, not her nightgowns. Who said anything about getting old? Zeta answers without bothering to turn from the stove. Maybe I dont want to be visible at night.

Like a witch! Lecha says to Seese. They are all laughing, even Zeta. Ferro laughs but watches Lecha intently as he rubs the barrel of the 9mm pistol with a soft rag. Paulie goes months without saying more than yes or no. But suddenly his pale rodent face widens with excitement. In the joint they dont allow dark colors. No handkerchiefs or socks dark blue. Nothing black. No dark brown. Paulie pauses. Night escape.

If youre quiet, Paulie, no one will know youre here, Ferro says, shoving an empty rifle case at Paulie. But Paulies face has already settled far from the reach of human voices.

Paulie came home one night with Ferro years before and had never left. He asks for nothing but to work for Ferro. What Ferro says or does to Paulie makes no difference. Zeta, not Ferro, keeps Paulie around. He is utterly reliable because they are his only people. This is the only place Paulie can remember except prison.

Seese gathers up the dirty cotton and used syringe. The pharmacy has sent a box of small clear cups. They remind Seese of shot glasses at the bar. But no whiskey for Lecha. Not as long as she can get Demerol or codeine. The kitchen table is littered with paper wrappings from sterile bottles or rubbing alcohol and boxes of disposable syringes. Tiny bottles of Demerol line the dairy compartment of the refrigerator. Lecha gets chatty right before the dope makes her dreamy. She laughs and points at all of them together in the same room. No food anywhere. Pistols, shotguns, and cartridges scattered on the kitchen counters, and needles and pills all over the table. The Devils kitchen doesnt look this good.

Sterling, the hired man, is standing by the dishwasher studying the instruction book. Sterling is in training for a special assignment. All of them are in the kitchen because of recent developments. Sterling has been told very little; Ferro is coiled tighter than a mad snake. Everywhere he looks, Sterling sees guns.

Ferro says the needle slips in like a lovers prick and shoots the dope in white and hot. Thats why Lecha wants them all to watch her get off, Ferro says, but he doesnt watch junky orgasms not even for his own mother. Zeta shakes her head, her lips tight with disgust. Ferro laughs, then jumps up from the table with the 9mm in its holster and bolts out the door to the garage. Paulies expression remains calm. He is alert in case Ferro calls him. But the remote-controlled garage doors and security gates light up the control panel on the kitchen wall. Paulie presses the display key on the video monitor screen: Ferro is skidding the big black four-wheel-drive truck down the driveway.

Seese looks at Sterling, who shrugs his shoulders as he hangs up a dish towel. Lecha has sunk back into her wheelchair, with her bliss dreams. Zeta runs the sink full of cold water to rinse the clothes shes dyed. She has been dyeing everything she wears dark brown. No reason, Zeta claims, just a whim. But Lecha had warned Seese not to be fooled. Nothing happens by accident here. The dark brown dye stains the white grout between the Mexican tiles patterned with blue, parrot-beaked birds trailing serpent tails of yellow flowers. Lechas mysterious notebooks have drawings of parrot-beaked snakes and jaguar-headed men. Leave it to Zeta to have the kitchen counters redone with these Mexican tiles only two weeks before Lecha returned to transcribe the notebooks.

The first time Zeta had seen Seese, Zeta had told Lecha the white girl would have to go. No strangers around the ranch. Zeta still called it the ranch although the city was crawling closer month by month. But Lecha had lied to Zeta, claiming that Seese already knew everything anyway.

Zeta had stared at Seese for a long time, and then she had laughed. Seese could sense the old woman knew when her twin sister was lying. Seese had known very little then except that Lecha was a well-known psychic who was returning home to Tucson after many years because she was dying of cancer. Lecha had come home to get things in order before she died.

Seese could tell by the way Zeta had searched her eyes the first week that Zeta had suspected she was Lechas lover. It wasnt true. Lecha had hired Seese as a secretary. Lecha wants to transcribe the old notebooks and needs Seese to type them into the word processor. There are two conditions of employment: two subjects that are off-limits, although a job was not what Seese had been searching for when she came to Tucson. What Seese is searching for is one of the forbidden subjects. The other forbidden subject is that of Lechas personal life, including that of her son, Ferro. As for her lost child, Lecha tells Seese she must wait. Seese must be careful never to ask Lecha directly to find her baby son.

Lecha cannot predict how long the wait might be. Well, Seese thinks, this is better than what I was doing in San Diego. Working for Lecha has got Seese off cocaine; still, she only feels secure knowing she still has the remnants of the kilo Beaufrey had given her as a go-away present. A suicide kit from Davids faggot lover. As long as Seese knows the gallon-size freezer bags wrapped in newspaper are safely in the back of her bedroom closet, Seese feels no craving for the drug. Seese had been an addict the night she went crying and pounding on the side of Roots old house trailer, searching for Lecha. But playing nurse to a woman taking Percodan and shots of Demerol all day long had taken away her cocaine appetite. She had weaned herself down to glasses of burgundy and fat marijuana cigarettes. Seese likes to think the cocaine was part of another life. A life she no longer knows or remembers very well. She had wanted Lechas help more than anything, more than she had wanted the drug. Lecha was her last chance, or maybe the only chance she had ever had. That is how it had begun, with Seese so desperate for Lechas help, and so afraid to do anything that might cause Lecha to refuse to help Seese find her baby. The cocaine hidden in the back of the closet was her rainy-day account, as good as cash, legal tender in Tucson.