Wild Sorrow by SANDI AULT Read Free Book Online Page A

another a good night.
    As I was leaving, Momma Anna made a request. “Maybe you help take basket to people, Christmas Eve.”
    â€œSure, I’d be glad to.”
    â€œMany basket. Maybe you drive.”
    â€œYes, I’ll drive.”
    â€œYohe drive next other time. This time, candy cost more.”
    â€œOh, she’s out of gas money?”
    â€œNot too far to walk home from here.”
    â€œI can give her a ride. Which way did she go? I’ll go pick her up and take her home.”
    â€œNo. That Yohe’s gift. Candy, no gas.”
    I got in the Jeep and turned the key in the ignition. The headlamps illuminated Momma Anna’s little adobe house with its apple tree in front, a stack of cut wood along one side. I knew that Momma Anna depended on the wood for heat and to fire her pottery, and on the apple tree for fruit. She also counted on the small, desperately tended summer garden in the back for food—which she ate fresh, and canned and dried for the cold-weather months. I had accompanied her as she gathered wild spinach and harvested piñon nuts for family meals. The men at the pueblo hunted annually to make sure that the elders had meat, and Anna Santana dried some as jerky in addition to cooking it fresh in posole and chili and stew. She made a little money from the sale of her handmade pottery, dreamcatchers, and jewelry to buy the rest of the things she needed from the market in Taos. I had been to the homes of several of the aunties involved in tonight’s Christmas basket project, and all of the women lived well below what the rest of the country would consider the level of poverty. And yet, this did not seem to affect the aunties’ willingness to give generously of whatever they had. They had saved and schemed, worked and cooked, and somehow managed to come up with bountiful Christmas baskets for those whom they perceived to be in real need.
    Â 
    Â 
    As I drove past the village plaza again on my way out, the bonfires had burned down, but a gang of men huddled around one small fire they were keeping alive. Their shadows hovered like dark spirits on the adobe wall of the pueblo behind them. The group suddenly burst into loud laughter over something one of them had said. I saw a bottle passed between two of the men, even though alcohol was forbidden on the reservation. The recipient jumped to his feet, and his silhouette—distorted in the flickering firelight—looked more like a coyote than a man. He held up the bottle as if it were a lance or a tomahawk and his strength came from its power—and he gave a whooping war cry.

7
    Bad Wolf
    I was bone tired and aching as I made the forty-five-minute drive from Tanoah Pueblo to the remote cabin west of Taos where I lived. I prayed all the way that an elk or coyote wouldn’t dash in front of my car, as they were wont to do. To stay awake, I promised myself a hot shower when I got home, a warm fire in my woodstove, and then a good night’s sleep.
    But it was not to be.
    For the third time in as many weeks, the electricity was off at my remote little abode, which was nestled against forested foothills. I rented this place, which was almost entirely off the grid. No phone, no television reception, no Internet—and though some or all of these might be available via satellite, there were not enough residents in the area to make it worth anyone’s while to develop these services for so few. All this was fine with me. My first six years at the BLM, I had worked as a range rider, riding fence lines and patrolling the backcountry either on horseback or in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. I had learned to sleep out under the stars, travel light, and live next to nature for seven or eight months of the year.
    But for a year and a half now, I’d been assigned as liaison to Tanoah Pueblo, which was nearly surrounded by BLM land. I had to interact with people every day, frequently show up dressed in a uniform.