Wild Instinct - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора T. Jefferson Parker (39) #39

39

So Gale reads aloud:

The claws of El Diablo tore my flesh and Bernardo washed me in the creek while the dogs played in the water.

The cuts to me were six in all, and they were not very deep but deep enough to bleed and be moderately painful.

Bernardo then made a paste of sage blossoms, prickly-pear cactus meat, and sand from the creek, and applied it to my cuts to stop the bleeding. With this accomplished, he wrapped deer grass around my body and left arm to keep the healing paste in place.

We dragged El Diablo to the creek and let his blood run into the water. Bears watched us from far back in the cottonwoods. Bears often steal kills from lions, and these bears would almost certainly attempt to steal the lion from us.

Bernardo and I disagreed about what to do with the body of El Diablo. Bernardo said to leave him here by the creek for the bears, and we could safely return to Mission San Juan Capistrano.

But I wanted to display his body to my family, such that we could all heal our grief over Magdalena by burning him and releasing his eternal spirit into the sky. My people believe that all living things wait for the afterlife in the cavern of light in the underground sea. And when they are ready, they ascend to the place where the sky and the earth overlap. Father Serra calls this place heaven.

So we made a sled from the cattail canes growing around the spring, lashing them tightly with deer grass, and weaving a strong rope to pull El Diablo through the mountains and valleys to Acjacheme Village.

When the boulders were too big and steep or the trail too narrow, we took turns carrying El Diablo across our shoulders while the other pulled the empty sled. My wounds soon were bleeding again and we stopped along a creek to clean them and renew the healing paste and wrap them in the grass. Each time we stopped we saw a bear following us, a female with two cubs, the most dangerous of bears. The dogs’ hackles rose and they began pursuit, but I called them back to protect us.

In the late afternoon we were startled to see the mother bear and her cubs that had circled around and gotten ahead of us on the trail. They were approximately three hundred meters away. She had that posture of stillness that grizzly bears have before they charge, a look of determination as she stared at us with her small eyes. Mother bears teach their cubs how to kill.

You cannot run faster than a hungry or hateful grizzly. You stand your ground and if you have a weapon you prepare to use it. Or you back away slowly. Bernardo advised me to leave the dead lion on the trail and back away, but I was as determined to bring El Diablo to the tribal fire as was the bear to eat him, and perhaps we men and dogs also.

I primed and powdered the blunderbuss and readied the flint. Then Bernardo, with El Diablo upon his shoulders, and I, with Thunder Girl heavy against the magnificent pain in my arms and chest, began to walk toward her, bellowing together a tribal battle chant.

The three dogs snarled viciously but stayed close.

When we were one hundred meters away, the sow bear rose to her hind legs and bellowed back at us. With this, the dogs lost control and charged up the trail, baying and yelping like tortured souls.

The bear bellowed again and fell to all fours and charged us.

I arranged the fork rest and steadied the flint. I forgot the pain and my hands were not shaking. I was too distracted to pray.

Eighty meters between us, then fifty, and the dogs closing in.

Then the sow turned away in a wide half circle, and the two cubs turned and followed her into the big oaks, where they vanished in the direction of the creek, where we had first seen her, stalking us, the dogs in furious pursuit.

The dogs, barking, disappeared in the trees. I knew it was useless to call them back, and my chest hurt too much to tighten the muscles into a loud voice.

Late in the night we climbed the last hill and saw the pale mission walls in the light of a half-moon, and the village of Acjacheme nearby, its small adobe casitas with candlelight in their windows, the wickiups casting gray shadows on the ground.

We went to the village and I lowered El Diablo to the dirt, then went inside and awakened my parents, sister, and brothers.

“That’s one brave Brave,” says Geronima.

“I like the way he writes,” says Gale. “Not too much drama. Blood & Heart reads like a police report. He makes all of it seem true.”

Hulk bolts from the red couch and skids to a stop at the screen door, bunching up the rug and growling.

Through the screen, Gale watches a Tesla silently gliding by. Hulk gives Geronima the same look he gave Gale when the Rivian truck went past last night, almost silent.

“That part about a cavern of light in an underground sea makes me think of the crystal cathedral,” says Geronima. “The bones of our ancestors and prehistoric crystals powering the twenty-first century.”

“And creating a fortune for the Tarlow Company,” says Gale.

Hulk leaps back onto the couch and sits upright, midway between Gale and his master, ears perked and still looking through the screen.

“He’s got good hearing,” says Gale.

“He hears the mail truck turning onto the street five minutes before I do. Full conniption. Hates that thing, and our mail lady is so nice. She tried to give him treats and he just growled.”

“Little dogs,” says Gale. “We had Labs for birds and rabbits.”

Geronima makes another pot of coffee and sets the mugs on the steamer trunk.

Gale reads:

The Fire Ceremony for El Diablo lasted two days.

First we removed his feet and tail to cure in the sun. We sprinkled his body with gunpowder. Then we burned his body in a large fire of oak branches stoked with dried grass and Arundo reeds.

The next day when the burned bones had cooled, we cast them on the ground where El Diablo had taken Magdalena, and the village danced upon the bones from sunrise until moonrise.

The women painted their faces black and red, and the elders wore feather headdresses of the sacred great horned owl, four kinds of hawks, bald eagles, crows, and doves. And many shells from the ocean. The warriors, elders, and our ritual specialists swallowed the peyote cactus and, after vomiting, had visions they communicated in dance. The women took peyote also, and drank the very strong wine made in large iron vats deep within the mission.

Acjacheme dancing begins slowly then builds into a frenzy. The dancers make the rhythm with sound sticks, drums, and rattles. Most of the movements have been created by the ritual specialists, then taught to the people. Some of the movements have meanings that only the specialists and elders know. The children were forbidden to dance but they fought mock battles in the trees away from the fire, and some of them stole wine, which the Franciscans believe is the blood of Jesus, using metal cups “borrowed” from the mission that were intended to hold the blood.

We ate while we danced, in the Acjacheme custom for the fresh, raw meat of rabbit, deer, mission cattle, birds, fish, and dried lizards, the blood and fat of which ran down our chins and elbows and fell into the soil and the scorched bones of El Diablo.

I danced with Dulce Agua, which means “sweet water” in Spanish. Before Father Serra took it away, her name was Shongwa’ala Mo’yla, which means “moon woman.”

She was very beautiful, painted, and rhythmic, and my peyote visions said I would marry her within thirty days, which came true.

She told me she had the same vision.

We danced until the moon came up then I went to my adobe brick home and slept until late the next day.

Hulk bounds from the couch again and scampers down the hall, screeching. Gale checks the street, but no cars, bikes, or pedestrians.

Geronima picks up her tiny gun and follows Hulk into a bedroom, flicking on the hall lights.

Gale moves to the security screen door and leans into the wall, gun drawn and at his side. He’s invisible from outdoors, except to someone perched on a rooftop or in a tree, with a view through the western window, as he would have been perched in Sangin or Vernon Jeffs in Bosnia.

Snorting loudly now, Hulk blasts back into the living room and jumps onto the leather chair, framed by the western window, hind legs extended from the seat, front legs braced on the chair’s back, tail straight up, stiff and still.

In his mind’s eye Gale envisions Jeffs on the rooftop across the street, putting the Barrett’s crosshairs on vigilant Hulk, just a bouncing silhouette beyond the serape blinds.

Gale smells the opium poppy scent of Sangin Valley, not the sage-and-savanna aroma of San Juan Capistrano.

Eardrums pounding, he may as well be into a twenty-hour speed-and-energy-drink jag in the rocky hills of Sangin Valley, waiting for the old man in the Cheetahs to come out from the granary.

Geronima comes back down the hall now, flicking off the lights.

“Lew... what is happening?”

“Freeze, Geronima! Down!”

Gale defaults to training, clambering on hands and knees toward Hulk, his fingers pinched hard between the gun and the floor.

He stands and with one hand hauls the growling dog to his chest, then pivots toward Geronima, ducking away from the window and into the hallway.

Gale guides Geronima with his gun hand, prodding her into the little bathroom, Hulk tight to his ribs like a football.

Closes the door and sets Hulk down, kneels, then gently pulls Geronima to her knees in front of him on the black-and-white floor tile.

He speaks in the glow of a night-light.

“He can’t see us here.”

“Who? Did you see him?”

“No, but Hulk might have. I think he might have.”

“Your nose is bleeding.”

“Hulk caught me when I picked him up.”

“Is there someone out there or not?”

Gale sees doubt and fear in Geronima’s dark eyes. A wordless interrogation.

“They could be everywhere. I don’t think so, Geronima. I really don’t know. I need to just kneel here a minute.”

She sets her gun on the floor, then Gale’s.

Holds his hands to her cheeks.

Gale feels his thighs trembling and the patches of old scar tissue tight and hot.

Hulk squeezes in close and licks his master’s ear.

Gale’s phone, Mendez on speaker:

“Jeffs just parked his Harley in the back lot of the Bear Cave,” she says. “He’s limping a little, but moving pretty damned well. On the lookout, aware. Past the dumpster now, headed for the kitchen door. The fog is back.”

“On my way.”

“Go,” says Geronima.