Blood of the White Bear Read online

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yes, the development people will be taking over ROMeze. Did I say that out loud? Not a word, now Rachel. I’m going to release the brand name on Sunday. You’ve got to give me the pleasure of announcing the name of Socoro’s latest miracle.”

  “Ted Fuller wanted me to talk to marketing people. The drug is not ready for market development, yet.”

  “The FDA begs to differ.”

  “The FDA? Have you read my article in JAMA? There is still a lot of pure research to be done.”

  “And we will do it. I want to put you on something where your laboratory skills can really shine. Taking a drug to market is a whole different ballgame.”

  “You really should read the JAMA article.”

  “I know you have to be ultra-conservative in peer review rags. Do you think other companies aren’t working on R.A. drugs? With the demographics of this country, an arthritis cure will be bigger than the polio vaccine. Socoro will become the next Salk Foundation.”

  “And you will be Jonas Salk, I presume.”

  Mr. Walcz started laughing. Rachel hung up before he had a chance to cough in her ear again.

  So, her research on P1601 had been declared completed by Socoro. The development people were taking over, now. They were probably designing boxes and storyboarding commercials already. The drug had only been through one round of clinical trials. The children in the research should be monitored at least through puberty, for neurological side effects. Rushing this drug to market, and calling it a cure, was irresponsible. Beyond irresponsible. Rachel knew if she were taken off the project, she would lose control of the research forever.

  Just then, Rachel heard the first notes of a song she once loved. Ted Fuller had arrived, and he was singing “Doctor, Doctor.” This was going to be his permanent shtick, Rachel feared. Still, after her conversation with CEO Mr. Walcz, Rachel thought she might just be able to tolerate Ted’s tone deafness. Rachel raised her hand and waved to him.

  Chapter Ten

  John Osborne removed the ubiquitous toothpick from his mouth and began cleaning the dirt from under his nails. He started with the right pinky, always, and moved along through the digits to his left pinky. Cleaning his fingernails was a constant occupation. A good archeologist always has dirt beneath his nails.

  In another sense, Osborne’s fingernails were always dirty, because he carried the canyons and mesas of the Four Corners with him all the time. He walked, dug, sifted, and swallowed so much dirt over the past twenty years that he expected to ooze dirt from his pores.

  For all his research and time spent observing and digging, Osborne had published nothing. He started numerous articles, and his writing was excellent, as far as it went. He just could not finish anything. He did not complete his PhD dissertation and was the oldest associate professor at the University of New Mexico. Everyone called him el anciano, even though he was only fifty-two. He looked older. If sun and wind could carve sandstone into layered buttes, it could turn human skin to leather. Wearing a full beard was not a sign of Osborne’s laziness or lack of pride in his personal appearance. It was protection.

  The reason Osborne was not a finisher, at least as far as his research went, was because there were always new theories to consider and new facts to check. Sometimes, Osborne chased two conflicting theories at one time. At present, he was working on a hypothesis about the disappearance of the Anasazi. They all but disappeared from their homes and gathering places in the Four Corners about 1200 CE. If they moved on, due to famine caused by drought for instance, they did not take their culture with them. No other group built the small round rooms called kivas or the larger circular rooms thought to be granaries. Tree ring dating did not indicate a meteorological cataclysm. Oral tradition did not hint of war. Some researchers believed the Anasazi were pulled away from their homes by the kachina religion that developed south of the Four Corners. Evidence of bone malformation and interrupted growth in skeletal remains suggested a push factor, much less sudden than drought or climate change.

  Osborne had another idea. He believed the Anasazi were decimated by an epidemic, something so fast that it left no evidence in bones, something that struck young adults, the hunters and producers of that society. The old and the young, both vulnerable to famine, murder or kidnapping by other groups, would have been left unprotected and perished from natural causes. An epidemic explained why Anasazi cultural artifacts did not move out of the Four Corners.

  So far, Osborne’s ideas were the product of his lone voice in the wilderness. His professors imagined he would abandon the epidemic idea, and they largely ignored his drafts of research and speculation. Osborne was a good teacher, and his students liked him. He was great at organizing and motivating them at digs. The university liked Osborne, and expected him to remain an untenured associate professor until they were all retired in Scottsdale.

  * * *

  On the same morning Rachel Bisette delivered her speech in New York, Osborne was meeting with a lawyer from the Department of the Interior and staff from the Chaco Canyon National Park Service. He was surprised to see Eva Yellow Horn at the meeting. Their paths had crossed before. Eva lived on her own in a canyon, growing herbs and caring for new mothers and old grandparents around the Four Corners. She did healing sand paintings and was rumored to be a shape shifter. Osborne was both fascinated and frightened of her.

  Eva and Osborne were invited to meet with the park officials to talk about creating a traveling exhibit of Anasazi artifacts and ceramics. The exhibit would travel through the region, giving students, artists, and aficionados a chance to see artifacts that had never been outside the Four Corners area.

  “Leave the pots where they are,” Eva said.

  “Hear us out,” the park ranger said. “What we are trying to do is retrieve artifacts from private collections.”

  “Why not just arrest them? You know who the big collectors are. You’ve been letting them break the law by holding onto our sacred things for a hundred years,” said Eva. She rose from her chair. Her long, gray hair flowed over her white shirt.

  “We hope you and John can convince them to turn over their artifacts voluntarily.”

  “Because I’m so persuasive or because Osborne is so handsome?”

  “Maybe, we can shame them into giving back their pots and bones,” Osborne said.

  “Shame could work,” said the lawyer. “You can also remind them of the penalties under the Federal Antiquities Act of 1906. The university assigned John to be its representative on the project. We‘re calling it the Antiquities Reclamation Initiative.”

  Eva slowly sat back down and folded her legs under her skirt. She was no longer listening to the proposal but thinking of how happy her ancestors would be when she told them their possessions might be returned, at long last.

  * * *

  Two weeks earlier, Osborne opened an email from his boss: “Platiquemos en mi oficina. 3 en punto. J.A.”

  Osborne laughed at the message. Dr. Javier Arellano was the Chairman of the Department of Anthropology, and he loved his linguistic jokes. Platiquemos meant, let’s have a chat. It would be a friendly conversation about something in or affecting the department. When he said 3 en punto, he meant 3:00 on the dot, but it was a joke because among his friends, Dr. Arellano operated on Mexican time. So, 3:00 on the dot meant come some time after 3:00, whenever you want to come. Osborne arrived at 4:45 p.m. for his chat with the chairman.

  “Come in, John. Right on time.” This was another of Dr. Arellano’s jokes.

  Osborne pushed his head into the Chairman’s deep, narrow office. No one else was present. This would be a one-on-one chat. Osborne was feeling very optimistic. Something good would come out of this talk. Maybe, he would be relieved from teaching the freshman Survey of the Southwest American Indigenous Populations class again. He hated being stuck in a classroom. Osborne hoped to be as
signed full-time to the university’s dig near Pueblo Bonito. Discovering was the only thing that really excited him about archeology.

  Dr. Arellano was entitled to a better office as chairman, but he had built bookcases from floor to ceiling in his office, and they were crammed full. Dust regularly fell onto Dr. Arellano’s head from the upper shelves if it did not get caught in the cobwebs on the way down. Mrs. Rabich-Arellano came in every summer with a long-handled duster, but her efforts did not produce lasting results.

  “How goes the dig?” Dr. Arellano asked.

  “Great. We’re finding lots of black and white shards, as I expected.”

  “Good,” said Dr. Arellano, obviously not listening. He sat down at his desk and invited Osborne to sit across from him. There were two worn leather sling chairs in the back of the office, under the windows, but Dr. Arellano did not ask Osborne to sit there. This chat was not to be as friendly as Osborne anticipated.

  “Oh, and we found a Blue Kachina mask, inlaid with jade, completely intact. It’s worth millions,” Osborne joked.

  “Right. Not in the mood, John. This is serious.”

  Obviously, platiquemos had a darker connotation than Osborne understood.

  “What now?” he asked.

  Osborne picked up a pen off the chairman’s desk and turned it between his thumb and index finger, until it fell on the floor. He left it.

  “You have an undergrad working on the dig, Tanya Braswell.”

  “Probably. All the students in 201 are out there at some point during the summer. What about this one?”

  “She’s made an informal complaint.”

  Osborne jumped up from his chair. He huffed and shook his head. He did not know what to say. He had been in this situation before, and it was a no-win deal.

  “Calm down. She talked to one of the grad students, who told me,” said Dr. Arellano.

  “Braswell? Skinny blonde? Wears tank tops with no bra and shorts cut up to her butt? There is always one. She’s working on her tan more than the dig. She probably steps on more shards than she recovers.”

  “There is always one. I know. I’m trying to head this off at the pass, John.”

  “What are you going to do to me?” Osborne fell back into the chair. It was not a leather sling, and the wooden seat smacked his ass through his khaki shorts.

  “I’m giving you the Antiquities Reclamation Initiative.”

  “The Park Department show-and-tell? Don’t do it, I’m begging.”

  The chairman got up from his seat, walked around his desk, and retrieved his pen from the floor between Osborne’s feet. He sat on the edge of his desk, which put his head above Osborne’s.

  Here we go, thought Osborne. I’m going to hear for the hundredth time how the department gets pressure to drop me as an associate professor, because I am not making progress on my dissertation. Then, I’ll get some crap assignment like the freshman survey course or permanent latrine orderly.

  “You’re a natural for the project,” Dr. Arellano cooed. He could pour on the Latin charm whenever necessary. “It’s good PR for the university. Besides, you are the best pottery guy in the state. You’ll know what collectors have as opposed to what they think they have.”

  “It’s taking artifacts on a road show,” Osborne whined.

  “It’s more than that. Eva Yellow Horn would never get involved if it were only an exhibition. The main purpose is to find artifacts in private collections. Then, we persuade, finesse, cajole, engañar, seducir the collectors to return them to the people, via tax deductible donations to the University Museum.”

  “Yellow Horn couldn’t cajole her way out of a paper bag.”

  “That’s why they need you. For balance.”

  “How long do I have to do this penance?”

  “A few weeks only. Just get it rolling on the right foot.”

  “And Ms. Braswell?”

  “She’ll be gone when you get back. I’ve arranged for the cheerleaders to invite her to try out.”

  “Genius. That’s why they keep re-electing you chairman,” said Osborne. He could coo if he needed to.

  “You could be chairman, someday. Finish that dissertation!”

  “Chairman? Me? That could happen when the blue kachina comes riding the white buffalo down César Chavez Boulevard.”

  “Algún día, m’hijo.” Some day, my son.

  * * *

  After their man-to-man chat, Dr. Arellano guided Osborne down the hall to a classroom. Eva Yellow Horn was waiting outside the door. Dr. Arellano greeted her. “Good afternoon, jefa.” Eva did not acknowledge him. She hated waiting, and she hated meetings more.

  Inside the classroom, representatives of the Department of the Interior and the Chaco Canyon National Park gathered to meet with Dr. Arellano. He explained the purpose and plans for the Antiquities Reclamation Initiative. He introduced Eva and Osborne and explained how they would be traveling the Southwest together, talking to private collectors and convincing them to return the oldest and rarest pieces to the Indians.

  Eva and Osborne said nothing in the meeting with the people from the Department of the Interior and the Chaco Canyon National Park. They considered themselves draftees in the project. Osborne chewed on his toothpick and pictured himself traveling with Eva Yellow Horn. He changed his mental image to spending the summer traveling with the delectable Ms. Braswell. He bit right through his toothpick, and the little wooden stake stabbed his tongue. He grimaced and looked over at Eva. She was smiling at him. Sometimes, Eva spooked Osborne. It wasn’t just her radical politics; he shared most of her ideas in that direction. He believed Eva had real power from the ancestors. He would have to be very careful with her. Osborne did not doubt that Eva could put a hex on his good parts.

  Chapter Eleven

  That night, Osborne drove into the desert, near the site of an old airplane crash. He knew it was one of Yellow Horn’s haunts, and as likely a place to find her as anywhere. Osborne bought his 1983 Chevy Malibu station wagon when he first moved to New Mexico, after dumping a girl back east and deciding to follow some famous old advice and go west. The first and only new car he ever bought, it now had close to 200,000 miles on it. Osborne considered the wagon well-broken in. It had lots of room and a front bench seat. These were Osborne’s two main requirements; room to carry his dig equipment and a comfortable seat in case he had to sleep in the vehicle. So many nights, Osborne did just that. He quickly figured out that he needed to upgrade the suspension and transmission to handle the rough mesa terrain. The surface was sand blasted by numerous storms to a flat finish. That was a definite plus in the desert, because the sun was not reflected off a shiny hood into his eyes.

  There was no sun and barely any moon, when Osborne drove out to the desert. If he was going to be doing this goodwill tour for the university, he would miss the desert he loved. When Osborne stopped, he was in Eva’s canyon. He followed the familiar roads in the gathering darkness, and this is where they led him.

  Eva’s circular house was half a mile ahead of him. It was in the canyon before Osborne ever arrived. The canvas covering was replaced a time or two since she built it years ago, and the stones needed new mud only after an unusually wet year. This was not where Eva Yellow Horn lived, of course. It was a ceremonial dwelling. Women were not allowed in the traditional kivas, so Eva built her own place, where she came to think, chant, and write. She wrote letters and articles on radical nativist topics with a pencil on notebook paper by a sagebrush fire. Recipients of her tirades could smell the smoke on her pages.

  Osborne leaned the back of his bench seat to a reclining position. He looked out the moon roof he installed in the top of the station wagon, so he could see the stars. He loved sleeping in the desert, but he liked the security of the Malibu wagon. So far, no coyote had figured out how to climb up to the roof and down onto the sleeping wastoe—white man.


  As Osborne surveyed the stars, a small light caught the edge of his peripheral vision, up on a cliff, at the far end of the canyon. It was definitely the flickering of a fire. It was not a very large one, or maybe it was back in a cave. Osborne sat up and started the Malibu’s engine. It was a V-8 with plenty of horses, but to quiet the exhaust, Osborne installed a baffle. He did not want to travel the desert sounding like a train, scaring away all the wildlife. Following desert creatures led him to some of his greatest finds. Osborne drove his quiet but powerful machine without headlights or taillights (he had disconnected the brake lights). He was able to get to a place just under the bluff where the fire burned above him. He did not know there were any caves in this set of bluffs. The cave had to be deep with a small entrance. Osborne waited a long time below the cave, but he did not see anyone come out, and left just before dawn.

  * * *

  Eva Yellow Horn discovered the cave years back, at the time of the airplane crash. When the rescue helicopter entered the canyon, it blew up a cyclone of dust. It blew dust that had not been disturbed for centuries, as no such concentrated wind had hit the canyon in the same way the helicopter did. Through the dust storm, while holding the little blonde girl and trying to protect her wounds from the flying dust, Eva looked up. She shouted to the helicopter to land and stop making such a mess. She yelled every pejorative she knew in English, Spanish, Lakota, and Navajo. Of course, her words were blown in a circle with the dust, but with her head raised, Eva thought she saw a slight change in the dust pattern up near the top of one of the far bluffs. It looked like dust was being sucked into an opening high on the ridge.

  Years later, when the little girl was long gone and the crash investigation had been filed and forgotten, Eva climbed the bluff. There she found something that had been lost for centuries, protected by its inaccessibility and the frailty of human memory.

  That was just what the people who created the cave intended. The cave was not natural, but the Anasazi knew how to make buildings of all kinds in the bluffs and cliffs of Chaco Canyon. The Pueblos of North America and the Tarahumara of Mexico had long been known for their cliff dwellings, but this cave was intended for other purposes. What Eva Yellow Horn thought she found was a cache of pristine Anasazi pots, a whole pile of them, different sizes and shapes and designs, but all made at one time, surely, and they were all sealed, which was unheard of among the Anasazi. Pottery was used for household purposes or to hold the sands used to make ceremonial sand paintings. These pots were sealed, hidden, and buried in a cave created for that purpose alone. The cave entrance was so small that no one would have expected it to hold anything important. Eva had to knock out pieces of stone on both sides of the opening in order to find it. No one was supposed to find it, and if they did find it, they were not to know it held anything important. That much Eva knew from her education and from her instinct as a descendent of the people who made the pots. What Eva did not know was the deadly secret contained in these ancient pots.