Let Their Spirits Dance by Stella Pope Duarte Read Free Book Online Page A

and the cave and el entierro. People were afraid of the ghost and stayed away from La Cueva del Diablo and Don Florencío’s adobe shack. The old man only laughed and said we were descendants of people who had once made their homes in seven caves, living in harmony with all living things, in Aztlán, the land of whiteness, the land of the Aztecs, la gente de razon. Aztlán was north of what we now know as Mexico, and no one has ever been able to determine how far north its boundaries extended.
    Tata O’Brien, my Irish grandfather on Mom’s side of the family, befriended Don Florencío. Tata O’Brien’s cohort of old-timers included Indians, Mexicans, full-breeds and half-breeds who stuck together for the single purpose of defying modern times. Aliens to the code of progress,the old men crouched in circles in our backyard, passing around Don Florencío’s ironwood pipe with the sculpted faces on the stem, filled with tobacco, sweet-smelling stuff, fragrant sagebrush. In the winter, they hid in the folds of thick blankets woven by their Indian wives and warmed themselves before fires blazing with mesquite logs. Sometimes their women came with them and sat in the alley next to our house with their children, passive Indian faces unmoving. Some of the old men had warred with Geronimo, or Pancho Villa, or Zapata. By then the lines of rebellion were blurred and having served in any war was better than not having served at all. They were descendants of warriors, after all, legendary warriors who fought to the death for the privilege of riding on the crest of the rising sun.
    Concrete, iron, and steel didn’t impress the old men. They had lived between mud bricks in adobe houses that kept them warm in the winter and cool in the summer. They traded with Tata O’Brien mesquite wood, blankets, and ceramic pots for vegetables and chili from Tata’s famous Victory Garden, named for the miraculous harvest it produced during the years of the Great Depression. Tata was fascinated with growing chiles. He grew jalapeños, chiles japones, chili de arbol, serranos, chili pe-quin, and chili tepin. The last two always sounded the same to me. He fussed over the plants, and worried they wouldn’t be hot enough, or the crop would suffer damage through cold and frost. He wanted me to grow up and be the U.S. ambassador to Chile. He figured a country with a name like “Chile” would grow only the very best chiles. “Bring back the pods, Teresa, that’s where the seeds are. I’ll do the rest.”
    When Tata O’Brien lay dying, Don Florencío came over and built a small fire in the backyard. He hunched over it, throwing sacred meal into it every once in a while and smoking his ironwood pipe with the little sculpted faces on the stem. The sweet, pungent smell of tobacco blended in with the mesquite wood of his fire. Don Florencío made an offering of smoke to the four directions for Tata, north, south, east, and west, and to the sun and moon. He said in the old days his people stopped at every river before crossing it and the huehues, leaders of his tribe, blessed the river, toasting it with aguardiente, asking its permission to cross over. “It’s always wise to salute nature,” he said, “especially when the spirit of a friend is about to join it.” Dad said Don Florencío was smoking peyote and that he smoked the pipe to dream about the other world the way the Chinese used opium. I never believed him, because everything Don Florencío said to me and Jesse made perfect sense.
    Jesse and I were the only kids from El Cielito who visited DonFlorencío at his adobe shack. Mom didn’t like it, but Tata never wavered. What kind of disrespect was that? he said to her, the old man was one of his friends. Jesse and I couldn’t stay away, the old man was our lure, his crackling voice answering the burning mesquite wood. Our own medicine man, Jesse