Jornada del Muerto: Prisoner Days Read online

  We’ve found that the most human way to dispatch a wasp is to:

  Remove the head;

  Light the body on fire;

  Bury the brain.

  We’ve tried burning the brain, but the wasp screams as if it is in terrible pain.

  The ancient cleansing agents -- fire, soap and salt -- work the very best. Wasps will walk right into a fire and burn to death. The first two years, we kept the fires going day and night for protection. Of course, we had a lot of corpses and refuse to burn.

  Salt works in two ways. When we were able to get the wasps to eat something really salty -- pickles or even salted flesh -- the salt worked from the inside out. The wasp comes apart from the inside out. Salt injections work better than salt baths, but that’s mostly because it’s hard to force a wasp to stay still long enough to absorb the salt.

  Wasps that have been around a while fear salt. A two-inch line of salt in a doorway is enough to keep a colony of wasps out. We’ve been able to keep the Pen free of roving bands of wasps by salting the doorways.

  11/07/2056

  I’ve skipped a day. I hate to admit it, but I don’t know if I am up to the task of documenting everything that has happened. I guess that’s why it’s taken me so long to get started.

  I’ve never felt this kind of insecurity. Ever. I’ve always been a person who moved forward -- either at a rapid pace or one step at a time. I never understood why people were afraid to change, or for that matter, afraid to do anything. Insecurity was as bizarre a concept as human beings dying.

  My great-great grandmother tasked me with this challenge. She manipulated my entire life, including going to the United World College, so that I would be prepared for this moment in time. I should be ready to do this thing, ready to document the downfall of humankind.

  It’s only been a few days, and I am struggling. I hate this Remington. I hate the way the keys punch at the pages. I hate that the letters don’t match up evenly. I hate the loose paper roller that makes the pages slip. And the dirt and dust and broken keys and…

  And who is ever going to read this? As far as I can tell, I am the only human being within a hundred miles of the Pen. According to the spirits that come through on their way to the afterworld, I am the only human being in the Western world.

  If a half-breed reads this, assuming they can still read, they will use it to destroy George and me. Our fates will be sealed by all the time spent typing away at this typewriter.

  I hate this “journal” for reminding me how much I miss everything. I miss computers and cell phones. I miss the casual conversation between strangers. I miss my great-great grandmother and my people.

  I loathe to admit this, especially since I am a shaman, but, in the middle of the night, sometimes, I pray that things will return to normal. I pray that the next morning, food will arrive at eight in the morning. I will be one day closer to release. I will read my books, take my exercise with George, and plan my return to the Pueblo. My son will have children of his own, my infamy will have grown, and I will take my great-great grandmother’s place as spiritual leader of the Tewa. But this dream will never come to pass.

  Instead, George and I are following some ancient prophecy.

  We will leave the Pen with enough food and water for a month. We have found a nineteen-year-old, cherry-red off-road vehicle in a garage in Santa Fe. The fellow who owned it, some guy name Kevin Costner, kept the vehicle in great condition. It looks like he never drove it. He must have been some make-believe cowboy because he had all kinds of pistols, shotguns, traditional bows, compound bows, a thousand arrows, and riding gear. We took most of this stuff from that guy’s house.

  George learned how to work on cars in prison. Before he was shipped to the Pen, he was the mechanic for the prison vehicles. I didn’t expect him to remember how to work on cars, but he has completely recreated this vehicle. He’s replaced anything with high-desert dry rot. He even found a machine to make sure the computer parts are working. He spent six months developing puncture-proof tires. Over the last year, this vehicle has brought George so much joy.

  On his own, without encouragement from me, George began modifying the vehicle to fight the wasps. He’s attached propane tanks to the back to spray fire. He’s created arrow stands for our salt-tipped arrows. He attached weapons to the wheels and doors for drive-by wasp killing.

  Because we don’t know if we will find gasoline on our journey, we have added an additional twenty-gallon tank to the off-road vehicle. The Pen had its own gasoline supply. Over the last ten years, we’ve used much of the reserve. We will have enough for our journey.

  We are heading to the Pecos Pueblo. Unbeknownst to the white man Park Service that made the Pueblo a Historic Monument, there is an entire area of the Pueblo that is hidden. According to the prophecy, the shaman who will save humankind from the brink will find what he needs there.

  What do I need? I roll it over and over in my mind. I worry that I will have to ask for what I need, and I have no idea. None. I assume I’ll be required to draw upon my deep wisdom, the wisdom of the ages. At this moment, I can only think, “What wisdom?”

  Who picked me for this job? Why did I get to be so lucky?

  When I read over my entries, I see that I talk about my great-great grandmother a lot. She’s the one who picked me. She’s the one who set up my entire life. She raised me after my mother died, trained me, sent me to learn from the spiritual healers and shamans. She was the keeper of the prophecy, and she chose me.

  I don’t really know why she chose me. She never really said. I wonder why I went along with her. And honestly, I don’t know.

  Sure, there was a huge ego boost when I learned that I was the prophesied savior of humankind. And I did enjoy the training. Every bit of it. I loved listening to those old men and women talk about the spirit way. Even in the last years in Mexico, I felt like a sponge, soaking up every tidbit, every fact, and every lesson. I couldn’t wait to try out new things. Nothing thrilled me more than spending a day trying out a new path, talking to a new spirit guide, practicing a new healing method.

  And I was good at it. I was better at the shaman way than I was at anything else. My United World College guidance counselor had planned for me to work at the UN or possibly become an international lawyer. Her myriad of tests had indicated that I was destined to be an influential person. She recommended that I continue at Harvard or Yale. She had even secured scholarships for me.

  I remember the day I told her that my great-great grandmother was sending me to Mexico to study with the shamans of the Wixaritari. She was disappointed. She even cried. She told me that I was throwing my life away. I could do more for my people in Washington, DC than I could in Mexico. And, as if it were written on my forehead, she said, “You could be a savior to your people.”

  It’s like everyone knew, and could see, my path long before I took a step on the journey.

  Now that my ego is no longer involved, now that there are no women to impress, now that I am about to set out upon the journey to “save my people,” I don’t want to do it.

  We could spend the rest of our lives here at the Pen. We could live in peace, continue hunting the elk and deer that have returned to the wild regions around us. We could farm our fields. For the last 477 days, George and I have been happy -- happier than I remember being in a long time.

  George would follow me anywhere. He would stay here and work if I said so. He will go with me to fight along the way if I said so. As long as we are together, he knows that everything is going to be all right.

  Why go? There are no plush maidens waiting to warm our beds and feed us fry-bread and beans. There are no friends waiting to hear what we have to say, listening to our experiences and wisdom. There are no babies to play with, children to tell tall stories to, and friends to drink beer with. Hell, there’s no beer.

  There is only death and wasps in front of us. We may not make it ten miles out of the Pen, let alone all the way to Pecos Pueblo.
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br />   We hope to find horses along the way. We hope to ditch the vehicle at the Pueblo and head into the hills. We hope to make a place there, a homestead that we will use as a home base for our explorations to find other humans. My hope is that the Navajos, Hopis, and Apaches survived. Until we look, we won’t know.

  Ten years ago, there was a major highway, the 285, between here and the Pecos Pueblo. By the highway, it was only a little more than thirty miles. At 75 miles per hour, we could be there in less than a half hour. But we have no idea if the entire highway is still intact. We can get across the valley but the mountains? We don’t know what will happen in the mountains.

  Another reason I’m the worst person for this job -- I hate to drive. My cousin was 4-wheel driving from the time he could drive. He could have gotten us there. No problem. He knew the Pecos Pueblo like the back of his hand. I don’t even remember what’s there.

  Why did my great-great grandmother pick me? Why did she use her magic to make all this happen?

  Why am I the only living human? Some days I want to kill myself. Some days I look into George’s vacant eyes and long for that kind of silence inside my own brain.

  The answers never come. Not from spirit guides, not from the undead souls, not from the earth or sky or mountains or clouds or empty prison. I’ve asked my great-great grandmother when her spirit visits me. Like she had for most of my life, she tells me to do what I’m told. “Don’t question so much, Emil. Do what you’re told.” That was her answer for everything.

  There’s no one left to tell me anything. Some stupid prophecy controls my life. Some days, I feel such desperate despair and hopelessness that I can barely move. I sit in the old prison yard and watch George work the fields.

  Outside of the most basic -- anger, love, fear -- George doesn’t feel emotions. He can no longer understand despair or hopelessness. Even if he did, he’d have no use for it. Life lies out in front of George like a highway. He knows he’ll die someday, but, until that day, he can’t (literally) worry about it.

  And I can’t seem to get the question out of my head -- What if I fail? What if I cannot do what is in front of me?

  What’s hardest, for me, is that I never felt this way. I never had this kind of fear or insecurity. I never felt unconfident. I always did what was next -- down to wasting my life way in the Penitentiary. I was told to come here, and here I am.

  Now I’m consumed with doubt.

  11/08/2056

  I probably haven’t said this, but I taught George to read. Of course, it’s possible that after some of his brain went to mush, he remembered how to read. Anyway, it took about a year.

  I wanted to be able to communicate with him. I wanted to hear what he thought without reaching into his brain to listen. Mind reading is a delicate art fraught with misunderstanding. When I would look into George’s mind, I’d find chaos, fear, anger and frustration move through him like breath. The next moment, he might feel something else. It’s much clearer to communicate -- verbally or in writing -- than to do all the mind work.

  George has a white board that he uses to “talk” to me on. After all this time, we have developed a shorthand I like to call “George-speak.” It reminds me of the cryptic language people developed for texting and IM conversations. “C U later.” That kind of thing. I let George make the language, which he enjoys.

  He’s become a voracious reader. I guess with no television, movies, computers or people, books seem more interesting. Over the last three years, he’s read about half of the Pen library. He likes comedies the best. He refuses to read books by African-American authors because they make him homesick for a life he never had.

  His favorite book, however, is The Invisible Man. (A book about a black man written by a black man.) He told me that he always felt invisible. Most of his violence was a way of insisting on visibility. He never knew that other people felt invisible like he had always felt.

  It’s amazing how much we have both learned about human beings now that they are all gone. And how much we miss them.

  I started talking about George and his reading to say that he’s read my entries so far. Last night, he told me that he thinks that I shouldn’t worry about writing these entries the right way or wrong way. He thinks my great-great grandmother wanted me to do it. Whatever way I write them will be perfect.

  I’m not sure why that made me feel better. It just did.

  I’ve been thinking a lot about my great-great grandmother. I guess because I feel she “made” me write this journal, it forced me survive all of this.

  My great-great grandmother had her first child, my great-grandfather, when she was fourteen years old. Over the course of the next twenty years, she had ten children. She told me that my grandfather was her favorite, born of her first, and only, real love. But she was the kind of mother who whispered the very same words into every child’s ear. I have no idea if he was truly her favorite.

  For a woman who left such a wide mark on my life, she was a tiny person. I doubt she ever weighted over a hundred pounds. She stood less than five feet tall. She never drank, ate sugar or smoked. She cut her hair only once every decade. All of my life, her hair flowed deep white and gray down her back, almost to the ground. She used to say that she was like the white man’s Samson. Her power was in her hair. Of course, that wasn’t true. She just didn’t like to get her hair cut.

  My great-grandfather had his first child, my grandfather, when he was 18 years old. My great-great grandmother was 32 years old. When my great-grandfather went off to war, she invited my great-grandmother into her home and raised my grandfather as her own. My great-grandfather never returned from that war. Over time, I honestly believe my great-great grandmother forgot that my great-grandmother was not her flesh-and-blood child.

  Maybe not. On her deathbed, she cried over my great-grandfather’s death. It was the first and only time she openly mourned the loss of her child.

  Like his father, my grandfather ran off to war leaving a pregnant girlfriend behind. The pregnant girlfriend, a white girl, dumped the baby, my mother, on my great-great grandmother’s doorstep. The note read, “My parents want to kill the Indian baby. They say they are going to press rape charges. Please care for her. She’s not safe with me.” There was no signature and no way to track the mother. My great-great grandmother was 49 years old.

  By the time my grandfather returned from war, he no longer remembered his high school girlfriend or the baby they created. My grandfather was probably destined for the shaman path. Sadly, the war took his soul instead. He found solace in drugs and alcohol. I never met my grandfather. He died when my mother was 8 or 9 years old.

  My mother and great-great grandmother were so alike in looks and attitude, it’s hard to believe they weren’t mother and daughter. My mother was slightly taller and, in my estimation, more beautiful. She was courted by every man in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Everyone was surprised when she picked my father, a plain Tewa with a good heart. They’d known each other all their lives. Together they had six children. I was their last, their “miracle” baby. My mother was the ancient age of 31 years old when I was born on my great-great grandmother’s birthday. She turned 80 years old that year.

  Every year, we’d celebrated our birthdays together with cake and ice cream. There’s one photo where we were around the same height. That was a fun year. After that, I towered over her.

  She was the most influential person in my life. Until she died, she was a presence in every moment of my life, especially after my mother died. She was everything good and everything bad in my life. I am here because of her.

  She told me once that she knew the moment I was born that I would to save the Tewa people. She told me that she’d waited for me all of her life. She told me that she would live long enough for me to start my journey. By sheer force of will, she did just that.

  Everything she told me came true. She was 106 when she died. She didn’t even get sick until I returned from the Wixaritari. She died my first day
in prison. I helped her soul pass on my first day in solitary confinement.

  I always wonder why she was so influential to me. Why did I love her so much? Why did I do what she told me to do without question or hesitation? The prison psychologist focused on my relationship with my great-great grandmother. He said it was unhealthy. He told me that my dependence on her was the “genesis of my criminal mind.” Since prison was her idea, he couldn’t have been closer to the truth.

  I loved her. How could that be unhealthy? I miss her. You’d think that I would see her all the time now. I’ve seen only her five or six times since she died. What’s worse, is that seeing her now is not like spending time with her when she was alive.

  When she was alive, seeing her was about fry bread, kisses on the cheek, and much, much laughter. If I spoke, her eyes would focus on my face as if she were trying to absorb my words. She was so full of love and life. Her smiles never faded. Her love of life never ebbed.

  When she comes now, she’s much more serious. She warns me of danger, reminds me of the prophecy, and generally nags me to do what she wanted me to do. She’s more anxious now. More irritating, too.

  Like this journal. She haunted me, day in and day out, for the last year, to start this journal. I’m not even good at it, and she kept bugging me to create it.

  I wonder why I miss someone who was so bossy, so opinionated, and so dominating. I guess we understood each other. She believed in me, supported me through the dark days after my mother’s death, and the coming into shamanism. When I looked over the cliff into the emptiness, I wasn’t afraid like most shaman students. I knew that my great-great-grandmother would pull me back from any abyss. She was that kind of person. She could pull anyone back from a spiritual, emotional or psychic abyss.

  She couldn’t help with the drugs and alcohol abyss. She hated drugs and the people who used them. To live in her house, which I did most of my life, you had to be drug and alcohol free. She mistrusted any alcohol use. She mistrusted my father’s occasional use of alcohol even though he held a steady job all of his life, cared for his children and grandchildren, and generally was reliable until the moment he died.