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Man-Bird

Contributed by Rivka Jacobs on 16/12/11

“It was yesterday,” she wrote. “Herbert Grey and some of his wranglers found the body. They were standing in a circle, hands on their belts, chewing and spitting tobacco, looking at one another, shaking their heads when I drove up. It was only yesterday. It’s been three days since Manuel’s oldest son brought us the news about our defeat. Even with the United States government on our side, we still lost to the Maxwell Land Grant Company. The Supreme Court gave the bastards everything they wanted.” Despoina paused, glanced at the figures huddled around her large fireplace. She dipped the pen in the ink-well, then continued, “Now those of us who remain have to decide, where to go, what to do. I don’t want to go anywhere. This is my home. I proved up and supported myself and I’ve been here for twenty-five years. I had Lucien Maxwell’s handshake on it. But Chipeta tells me the land doesn’t want us any more.”

“We have to leave,” Chipeta said. She was on her knees, the beads and elaborate fringe of her fawn-skin dress glimmering orange and yellow in the firelight. Her Argyle blanket had slipped somewhat off her shoulders as she pushed at the flaming logs with a poker. Her thick black hair and dark, high cheekbones seemed to glow.

Despoina Chandler, at the table, straightened in the spindle-back chair; her taffeta dress rustled as she moved. Her eyes stung and she lowered her face, put her thumb and fingers to the bridge of her nose. The wick of the tubular lantern sitting at the head of her half-completed letter was burning low. “Chipeta, just take your girls with you and go home.”

One of the children — the Paiute orphan who called herself “Suu” which Despoina had decided was “Sue” — half turned to look at the older Anglo woman. Her soft brown eyes were filled with fear. “Urraca throw us off,” she muttered, and returned to face the lapping and flicking flames.

The girls on either side of Sue were both of the Moghwachi Ute, likewise orphans who Chipeta had taken under her wing. The eleven-year-old was called “Muusa-Chi” or “cat,” and the ten-year-old was nicknamed “Wichi-Chi” or “bird.” Chipeta had given them the names because they squabbled all the time. The youngest on the other end of the row — five-year-old Ela — was a survivor of a Jicarilla Apache family who had refused to move off their land; her family had been friends with Chipeta’s Moghwachi warrior husband so it was natural for Chipeta to adopt her. And then there was six-year-old Kamiya, squeezed between Ela and Wichi-Chi, dressed in a cotton top sewn in Ute fashion and boy’s trousers, her hair sticking out in all directions.

Despoina raised here eyes and stared at those small shoulders, that hunched little form. Kamiya never spoke. She only sang. She was the sole survivor of a band of Kapuuta Ute, and not even Chipeta knew what she’d seen, or what she’d suffered.

Chipeta came to her feet slowly, in one motion, with perfect control. The blanket was wrapped around her with regal ease. She continued to watch the fire. “We have to go,” she repeated. “We have to leave. The muruka-shi, the white company men have won, and the spirits of these mountains, the canyons and valleys, the Mesa know they have new masters. You were the only Anglo they respected. You spoke to them and flirted with them, and they did your bidding. I am in awe of you, Despoina Chandler. You were favored by them, they saved your life, and you saved ours, more than once. But the man-bird was a warning. He was dropped on your property.”

Despoina saw it, couldn’t help but remember it. She had driven up to the group of men just at the edge of her high-valley property in the southern-most Sangre De Cristos Mountains — her two black horses were bucking and protesting as she tried to rein them to a stop. She’d dropped down from her black phaeton carriage, her fine skirts sounding like the whispering of ponderosa needles, her bustle and overskirt draped with pink silk and embroidered roses. She wore a perky hat decorated with feathers and beads, tied under her chin with silk Spanish-lace netting. It never mattered to her that she spent most of her time in men’s pants, working her pasture and farm as a homesteader in Colfax County, New Mexico. When she formally received visitors, or sat down to dinner, or when she drove out to Sunny Side or Rayado, or the long trip north to Cimarron, she dressed like a proper lady.

She looked down at the words she’d written, and sighed. “I can’t concentrate,” she said. She stood, pushing the chair back on the rug with a scudding sound. She patted at the wispy, blonde curls fashionably clustered at her neck as she took a few steps towards the large, brick fireplace. She placed a palm on the tightest part of her corset, where it flattened her lower belly into the unnatural, forward-thrusting curve that was required. “I never understood why they chose me, or why I found you, or why I helped you and your girls. When I was young, back East, I never much cared for Indians. Or Mexicans. And now, for the last few years, I’ve been partnered with the best group of people — all of us Indians, Mexicans, Anglos — betrayed by Maxwell, fighting for our homes….”

Chipeta smiled slightly. She was short and care-worn but still quite beautiful. Her hair was parted in the middle, glossy and long, and she wore an eagle-feather hanging from one ear. “I never much cared for Anglos, either. But the Urraca liked you, and you helped us….”

“I don’t understand it.” Despoina threw up her hands in melodramatic way. “I don’t understand why you have to give up, to run away now. That man, he was murdered….”

“It wasn’t Company men who did it. It was the Mesa,” Chipeta affirmed. “The dead man wasn’t from this territory at all. He was not really a person. Tomorrow, we will head north into the Sangre De Cristos, and I want you to come with us.”

Despoina folded her lower lip under the upper and stared back at Chipeta, who fixed her with an unflinching and deadly-serious gaze. “He was killed by Maxwell men,” she finally said, “lynched maybe — trussed up like that to scare us off, to give us one more warning….”

“No,” the Moghwachi woman said. “I do not think so.”

Despoina closed her eyes and pictured it. The way those wrangers in their checkered shirts and wide-brimmed hats and dusty boots had formed a circle around something on the grassy ground beside the dirt wagon-road. The way they wouldn’t make eye-contact with her as she approached them, greeting them politely, asking them how they were feeling, and what was the matter.

She knew Herbert Grey, who worked for a Mexico-born rancher also now forced to leave the Land Grant, and was acquainted with four of his men; “What are you doing here?” she asked. And they stepped aside so she could see. She stopped short, a gloved hand flying to her mouth. “What … is … that?” she sputtered, swallowing down the urge to vomit.

“Might’ve been a man, ma’am,” one of the cowboys said. “Can’t rightly tell who.”

The sun burned in her thoughts, hot and imperious. She felt a headache spreading behind her brows. She forced herself to focus, to see, to peel back her mental filters. The thing on the ground lay naked, twisted, face up and stomach down. Rawhide strips were wrapped around a bloody forehead, chin, and neck. Human eyes were gone;the sockets instead seemed to be filled with something metallic, shiny, and reflective — she could see the blue of the sky and clouds moving in their depths. The arms were either bent back at an impossible angle, or were cut off at the elbows; everything was so drenched in clotted blood it was hard to tell. Something extended from the dead man’s back, parts of which stuck out at a right angle to the lower spine. It looked like a bleeding, feathered, broken wing.

“Man-Bird — this is an insult to our gods,” Chipeta said. “Pu’i-vi, the eye,” she continued, pointing at her eyes, “that is how you know this horror wasn’t done by núu-ci-u — humans. When my ancestors first arrived in this country, people were already here — they lived in stone houses, cities in the cliffs. They once were very rich and powerful. But they were also abandoned by the ancient spirits. And then they disappeared….”

Despoina folded her arms tightly in front of her. “But why? Why? Why would something turn on us for no reason? I haven’t done anything different. I’m the same person I was years ago. Is it because we lost the fight for public domain?”

“It doesn’t matter. We have to go. You can come with us, if you wish.”

The girls all stood at once, as if on cue.

“Don’t go tonight! Chipeta, wait until morning. I can’t decide right now. To simply abandon my life’s work, my homestead. I worked day and night to build this place….”

“Our belongings are packed; we left them on your porch. We are not going back up on Urraca. You need to come with us now, or you may not see the morning.”

Little Kamiya took small steps and moved to Despoina’s side. She abruptly wrapped her arms around the woman’s waist, then bent back her head as far as she could so that she could make eye contact. She sang something soft, breathy, so faint no one could make it out.

Suu tilted her head slightly. She gripped the edges of her green wool blanket. “Please come with us,” she said.

Despoina stroked Kayima’s hair and patted her back. “But I have an entire household. I have horses and cattle and chickens. I have furniture and paperwork, clothing and dishes and….”

Chipeta held out her hand and Kayima slowly withdrew, pulled away, backed towards her foster mother. “Well, I guess there is nothing more,” Chipeta said. “Thank you Despoina Chandler, for all that you’ve done for us.”

She felt a surge of grief, and a flutter of panic, as she realized that Chipeta was truly leaving. Climbing up the rocky, narrow, winding paths of Urraca Mesa, bringing supplies, clothing, medicines, and news to the refugee Indians had become a way of life for her. At some point, she thought, perhaps Chipeta and she had become friends. But it was hard to say –certainly Chipeta had become much more open after the odd things started to happen, and the Turu’mi-ru appeared.

Chipeta gathered the girls into a group. “We can’t wait,” she said.

Despoina shivered, even though it was warm and cozy inside her spacious cabin. She narrowed her eyes as a sound caught on the edges of her perception.

Wichi-Chi started and turned her head to the left and right, then looked straight up at the rafters and the pine planks that formed the ceiling. Chipeta paused as she was tying Ela’s hood and wrap tightly around her.

They all jumped as a loud, sharp noise, like something thumping, fluttering against the roof, made the entire cabin vibrate. It lasted a minute, then disappeared.

Despoina was frozen, both hands at her throat. “What in heaven’s name was that?”

Chipeta’s eyes widened, but otherwise there was no change in her expression. “Maybe they will let us go,” she whispered, almost to herself, then added something out-loud in her own language, her tone reassuring and upbeat, as she hugged the girls one after the other.

All five children appeared terrified.

Despoina took a charging step, and stood between the group and the front door. “Something’s out there. Don’t go, don’t leave,” she begged.

“Move out of the way, or pack a few things and come with us,” Chipeta responded. “It’s not here for us.”