Parable

The Parable
By Aurelio


         Arturo cringed as Uly opened the car door; it squealed like a car alarm. Both men froze. Cicadas droned. A legion of bullfrogs croaked. Arturo's skin crawled. Arturo nodded his head slightly as Uly motioned for Arturo to stay put in the car while he went to scout.

         Sweat trickled down Arturo's face. Arturo dabbed at it and checked to make sure it wasn't blood. Goosebumps scurried like spiders over his arms and neck at every sound from the bosque, the forest of cottonwoods and salt cedars lining both sides of the Rio Grande. A coyote yipped in a high-pitched howl, setting off a chain reaction of barking dogs. A cat shrieked unnaturally, probably in the killing jaws of the coyote.

         An owl screeched from an ancient cottonwood directly overhead and Arturo jumped.          He looked around, embarrassed he had been startled, glad no one was there to witness it. Arturo didn't like to show fear.

         Arturo looked in the car mirror, a habit of vanity he'd had all his life. A thin mustache covered his upper lip and his flat nose bore evidence of having been broken many times. His hands were hard and sharp like broken glass, and his face was sharply angular and bronze, like the face on a copper penny. People often told him he looked like Burt Reynolds, but he had none of Reynold's flirty charm.

         A putrid smell of death drifted from the river. A beaver's leathery carcass floated by like a discarded tire.

         Arturo sat up in the car seat when he saw a hunched figure moving stealthily toward the car. Uly stood up, the full moon illuminating him briefly as he motioned for Arturo to follow.

         They stole like escaping felons along the drainage ditch that ran parallel to the river.

         Arturo knew if they were caught, they'd end up in the state prison on the other side of the river.

         They followed the chain link cemetery fence dense with clinging vines to the back of the cemetery, where the fence sagged. They jumped over a low spot and in the lurid glow of the full moon, dark shadows moved, cast by headstones of varying sizes, and an assortment of weathered wooden crosses.

         Rosaries dangled from crosses and jingled in the wind, shadows danced haltingly like troubled souls. The men worked their way to the far end of the cemetery, where the mounds of dirt had few gravestones, and weeds grew so thick it was hard to walk.

         Finally, the two men stood over an unmarked grave. The ground was depressed where the grave had caved in. Arturo asked with his eyes if Uly was sure that this was the grave. Uly nodded yes. Uly took two collapsible shovels from a burlap bag tied to his waist, and handed one to Arturo. They started to dig.

         Arturo stopped digging when Uly took a break. They sat against the fence hidden by dense brush under a giant cottonwood tree, which seemed to have sprouted numerous eyes. Though Uly had already told Arturo about the priest, Arturo wanted to hear about him now that they were exhuming him.

         "This priest got stabbed," Uly whispered. He related how a drunk, believing the priest had singled him out in a sermon about public drunkenness, waited in ambush and twisted a six inch buck knife into his side.

         Uly said the priest suffered all night, dying at last about sunrise. They found him at the end of a 50-foot crawling trail of blood, his face agape and his finger pointing at some unseen terror.

         From his pulpit, the priest had delivered weekly doses of guilt and promises of eternal damnation for the sinners in his flock, and there were indeed sinners, many of them.

         Father Padilla warned that one day soon, God would come for the sinners, and if God gave him the job, the priest said, then he would come for all of the sinners, and he'd make sure they all suffered according to their sins. It seemed to many of the villagers that the priest took an unnatural pleasure in frightening them.

         Many believed that Fr. Padilla was a demon and so when his coffin rose to the surface the first time, about a year after he had been buried, many sinners prayed for forgiveness, and some changed their sinful ways.

         "Course, if you thought about it, it was easy to see it was the high water table from the river that kept dislodging the coffin and bringing it to the surface," Uly told Arturo.

         Uly picked up his shovel and climbed back into the hole. Arturo followed. They resumed digging. Sweat streamed down their faces. They stopped and looked with alarm at the bosque when they heard someone crashing through the brush, but the noise just as suddenly stopped.

         "Tell me more about this priest," Arturo said, looking for distraction. "What happened to the priest?"
         "Oh, yeah, the priest," Uly whispered.

         "The people believed the priest's spirit was restless, and that he kept rising out of the ground because he had died a violent death.

         "A lot of people believed he was getting punished for banning the tribe's dances. One Christmas Eve when the ceremonial dances were going on, he showed up decayed and falling apart. Everybody ran out of the church that night, feathers flying."

         "When they finally found the priest's body, it was floating on the river. The elders said they found an old puncture wound where the drunk guy had stabbed him years before."

         "So the elders put the body back in a metal casket, and they dumped a bunch of rocks and a load of loot, thinking he could be bribed, I guess," Uly said.

         Uly explained again how he had worked as a caretaker for the current priest, and had one day found the safe unlocked in the rectory. Everyone in the pueblo had heard the legend of the priest who kept coming back from the dead. But now, Uly had been able to look at the cemetery map and discover where the murdered priest and his fabled treasure was buried.

         "They reburied him at night without a headstone. They say the elders even conjured him up and put him in charge of protecting his own grave," Uly said, with a wry smile at Arturo, who didn't smile back.

         A mangy stray black dog, almost invisible in the darkness, slunk up to the side of the grave, curious about the two men's nighttime activity. Arturo looked up and saw the dog's head looking into the hole, and he stifled a terrified scream. The sound, though choked, was still loud enough to unleash a new chorus of barking dogs in the village. The startled dog hurried away.

         Arturo went back to work and soon, his shovel struck something solid, like metal or wood and he froze. Uly excitedly used the flat part of his shovel to scrape the dirt off the top of the coffin. Uly took a small crowbar out of the burlap sack and inserted it into the side of the metal coffin. He pushed down hard, but the crowbar didn't budge.

         Both men put their weight on the crowbar and pushed down hard. The top of the coffin flew open, releasing a hellish sickly sweet stench. Arturo's lunch of a chili dog and fries nearly escaped, but he held his hands to his mouth and forced himself to swallow. Uly scrabbled in his shirt pocket for a pen light and then trained the feeble yellow light inside the coffin. Glimmering gold and silver reflected from rosaries wrapped around bony fingers. Uly lifted the light to illuminate the corpse's face.

         Leathery, mummified skin stretched across the creature's bony countenance; purplish pieces of skin resided in the eye sockets giving it the appearance of having eyes. The creature grinned at them, earthworms crawling in gaps in its teeth. It had an expression, it seemed to Arturo, of relentless rage and monstrous reproach.

         Both men gaped at the rings, jewel-bedecked rosaries, necklaces and bracelets visible in the failing light. Uly reached in gingerly and pulled an oak cane lying next to the priest. It was topped with a heavy silver eagle's head. Uly whispered to Arturo that he recognized it as a governor's cane, the type pueblo governors had in years past. One had not been used or seen for years. That heirloom alone, Uly whispered, was probably worth tens of thousands of dollars.

         They feverishly dug through the petrified remains, stuffing the loot into two large burlap bags. The stench that rose from the corpse was almost unbearable. It reeked of unholy anger. It was a smell of foreboding wrapped in a cloak of dread that assaulted both their senses. Still they worked greedily. At last done, the men pushed the lid back on the coffin, shutting off the stink of the priest and his gaze, which seemed to Arturo, to promise revenge and impending doom.

         They began refilling the grave. They smoothed the dirt on top of the grave and struggled to carry the heavy bags. The bags clinked and jingled loudly as the men carried them to a small garden at the entrance of the cemetery, where they dumped the bags in a shallow hole Uly had dug the day before. Uly was glad he had thought of this, because it was clear now that the heavy bags would have been hard to carry to their car.

         Uly covered the bags with dirt and then he carefully spread tumbleweeds and brush over the freshly turned earth. They knew time was short. The morning would break soon and threaten to expose them. They shuffled hurriedly to their car and drove toward the horizon, the Falcon bouncing and jumping over the rutted pueblo roads.

         When they got to Uly's home, an exhausted Uly headed immediately to his bed.

         "You can sleep on the couch if you want to," he said, and then Uly collapsed on the bed.

         Arturo couldn't sleep. He lay on Uly's couch and looked out of the open window at a full moon that bathed the pueblo in a surreal yellow glow. He thought about his friend, Uly, and how well he had come to know him in just the few short weeks since he had met him at the Crystal Bar. He thought about how he had changed since meeting Uly and he thought to himself that he didn't like some of the changes.

         A vicious street fighter, Arturo got into bar fights for little or no reason, and his reputation left him no challengers, and no friends. But since meeting Uly, he had not felt the need to dominate anyone. He didn't understand it, and he never expected it, but the friendship now sustained him like violence never had. Uly had uncovered a layer of humanity in Arturo, like someone who had removed the fruit from a prickly pear.

         Each time he laughed at one of Uly's frequently incomprehensible jokes, Arturo felt rejuvenated. Though they made an unlikely pair, each was painfully lonely, and in each other, they found companionship, and friendship.

         Arturo in return made sure that he protected his friend against every possible physical threat. Indeed, when the pair went drinking at the Crystal Bar, no one ever bothered the diminutive Indian, or his violent Mexican sidekick.

         The bar at the edge of the reservation was small and dirty. Arturo fed the jukebox quarters constantly until he ran out of money. Then he extorted quarters from the owner, who gave them up willingly, conscious that the music soothed the beast in Arturo and seemed to keep him out of fights.

         Arturo broke into a soulful shake and shimmy every time he heard Elvis or Wilson Picket on the jukebox. He liked to pose in front of classic cars, arms crossed, defiant, but he was always pictured alone, because he knew no other way, except to build walls between himself and others. He carried one such picture in his wallet now, taken during a recent car show at Isleta Lakes.

         Ulysses' grand name was bestowed on him by his mother, because she believed it would be good luck and would help him find a successful path in life, Uly told Arturo. But Uly was short and squat. He had stubby arms and skinny legs that made him appear even shorter. He parted his long, oily black hair on the right side of his head so long strands of hair broke across his forehead and dangled over his left eye when he stooped. His hair stuck up in funny places, as if he had tried to give himself a haircut. His flat nose looked broken, though it had never been broken, according to Uly. And his teeth shone gritty yellow and uneven when he smiled, giving him the appearance of always leering. His eyes were bloodshot and squinty, and his breath often smelled of beer, especially in the evening.

         Uly told Arturo that he was the librarian at the pueblo library, and that he published a little weekly newspaper for the tribe called the Pueblo News. Uly said that he wrote about goings-on at the pueblo, about visitors from other tribes, about winners at the casino, about who got married, who died and who got thrown in jail.

         He wrote blistering editorials about Albuquerque city government and about how the Goliath to the north did not give a "dam" about spoiling the pueblo's water. He said he used the pun in his editorial to poke scorn at the city for diverting river water, by building a dam north of the reservation. But some readers called and chided Uly for misspelling damn.

         Arturo's musings about their recent meeting were rudely interrupted by Uly's steady loud snoring in the other room. Arturo looked once more at the moon that kept guard over the pueblo before he lay back on the couch and closed his eyes.


         Meadowlarks warbled outside the window as the sun peeked over the horizon, softly rousing Arturo from a disturbing nightmare. The decaying priest in the grave had transformed into a black crow that had alighted on the cemetery fence. It swiveled its beady black eye from side to side, watching him with a satanic gaze. It ascended but then faltered and fell heavily to the ground like a rock.

          It's wings flailed as it struggled on the ground, and then it was descended upon suddenly by a vicious pack of wild dogs. The dogs tore the screeching bird to bloody pieces of feathered flesh. In the dream, Arturo approached the bird and as he viewed the carnage, Arturo screamed when he saw his own face on the bird's head.

         Arturo's eyes snapped open. At first, he didn't recognize his surroundings, but then he heard Uly still snoring loudly from the other room. Arturo rose soundlessly and made coffee in an old pot he found in Uly's kitchen.

         Arturo looked out the window cautiously, half expecting to see police cars waiting outside. There was nothing, except the strays that habitually populated the pueblo. Arturo put on the TV, but there was nothing on the morning news about a grave robbery. Uly by this time had stirred, and he sat up in bed, loosing a raucous blast of gas that startled Arturo. Uly rubbed his eyes and scratched his belly as he moved to the kitchen table.

         "What's up? What you doing?" Uly asked absently.

         "Looks like a nice day," Arturo said.
         The early morning light bathed the pueblo in autumn amber and a cooling breeze sashayed from the river. Already, the plaza resembled a city square as tourists patrolled outside the church and at the many fry bread and souvenir stands. The black stray dog that had startled Arturo the night before at the cemetery ambled around outside in the cemetery garden. It was pawing and sniffing at the freshly turned ground.

         "That dog's gonna mess us up," Arturo said.

         "Maybe," Uly said. "We better get over there."

         Arturo put on his shirt, but it was caked with mud. Uly went to his closet and picked out a shirt and a pair of pants and tossed them to Arturo. Uly put on clean clothes and the two men drove to the cemetery.

         Arturo quickly got out of the car and picked up a rock. He drilled it at the dog. The dog yelped as the rock thudded into its side, and it ran. Arturo leaned against the cemetery fence as Uly began rooting in the weeds in the garden.

         "Get down here and pull some weeds," Uly told Arturo.

         Arturo got down on his knees and dutifully began pulling weeds from around lilies, petunias, marigolds and tufts of crabgrass in the garden. A tribal officer passed in his squad car and waved. Uly gave a wide smile and lifted his chin in acknowledgment, painfully aware that he had no work gloves on and that he had thoughtlessly put on a white shirt, not a work shirt.

         "That's my cousin Randy," Uly said to Arturo. "He probably thinks I'm doing my good deed for the day. Shit, he's turning around."

         "He sure is, what do we do?" Arturo said, a note of panic in his voice.
         The officer turned his car around and parked near the two men, stooped over in the dirt pulling weeds. Officer Randy walked officiously toward the men.

         "Don't do a damn thing. Do what I do," Uly said tersely through his smile at his cousin.

         "Hey, Uly, Don't think I ever seen you work that hard before," the officer said. He looked with suspicion at Arturo.

         "Yeah, just cause you make your money eating dough nuts all day," he said to the officer, with a nervous laugh.

         "What are you guys up to?"

         "We're hoping to get a couple of bucks from Father Mueller when he gets back and sees what a nice job we did weeding his garden," Uly said.

         "You mean you ain't even asked him yet? Man, Uly, you one crazy Indian," the officer said, laughing.
         "Who's your buddy?" the officer asked, staring at Arturo from behind mirrored sunglasses.

         "That's Arturo, a buddy of mine from Los Lunas.          He comes over and gets drunk with me sometimes. Thought I'd put him to work for a change."

         Uly introduced Arturo to his cousin, who coolly removed his glasses, ignoring Arturo's out-thrust hand. The officer walked toward the garden and peered at the pulled weeds piled over the hole that Uly had partially uncovered. The officer kicked at the pile and Arturo gasped loudly.

         "What's the matter with you?" the officer asked.

         Arturo shook his head.
         "He's a little gun-shy, Randy, cops are always beating on him for no reason; you know how it is."
         The officer stared at Arturo, and then turned to Uly.
         "Uly, my mom says you never come over no more, why don't you make an old lady happy and come over and see her," the officer said. "For some reason, she likes you, you ugly little midget."

         "That's cause she wishes she had a son like me and not a son of a bitch like you, because, technically, if you get my drift, that makes her a bitch," Uly said, breaking into a hearty laugh.

         The officer smiled and appeared to be thinking of a comeback, but then just nodded and gave Uly a wry smile.
         "Okay, you guys don't work too hard," he said.

         "Don't worry, Randy, we're ready for a beer break," Uly said. The men waited for the officer to drive out of view before they retrieved the burlap sacks and put them in a wheelbarrow, pushing the heavy loot to the car parked near the cemetery entrance.

          They drove back to Uly's house where they lugged the sacks inside and deposited the cargo on the kitchen table. The two men could do nothing but look at each other incredulously, the treasure sparkling from the afternoon light spilling in from the windows.

         Uly hurriedly went to the windows and pulled the curtains, shutting off the light and the possibility of any curious passersby looking inside. Both men dug their hands into the treasure and held up diamond-studded necklaces, rosaries and bracelets. They marveled at the huge diamonds and turned over in their hands the glimmering gold and silver glinting in the sparse light.

         "Man, I guess we hit the jackpot," Uly said to Arturo, and the two men began dancing in the middle of the room like a couple of crazed leprechauns.

         A week after the grave robbing, Uly and Arturo sat on a wooden bench in front of Uly's house, tipping back cold cans of Budweiser as Arturo regarded the venerable and massive St. Augustine Church.

          The Spanish built it, according to a plaque on its door, in the early 1600s. Isleta meant little island, but it proved to be no sanctuary at the time against gold-fevered Conquistadors and soul-obsessed friars. Uly's house was identical to several other tiny mud huts that lined all four sides of the plaza, dominated by the church.

         Arturo had been on the reservation several times since he had met Uly, but he was still fascinated. Uly's house sat in the afternoon shade on the western side of the plaza. A red Chile ristra hung from the end of a viga that protruded over the front doorway.

         Across the square, an old woman's shadowy silhouette was barely visible behind the fine black mesh of her screen door. A man in a tattered baseball cap walked past her door and he waved at her. On the corner, a gaggle of tourists flocked at a souvenir shop, where a slender, pretty young woman in a light brown deerskin dress hawked pottery and blankets.

          An emaciated black dog, shadowed by an equally starved and shaggy brown dog, shambled across the square to a makeshift stand where a man in long salt-and-pepper ponytail sold tamales and fry bread. The man tossed the dogs scraps and the animals snarled and fought desperately for the scraps.

         The pungent, spicy aroma from green Chile roasting, tamales and fry bread wafted across the square, tempting the beer drinking Uly and Arturo, who were leaning back against the cool adobe wall.

         Arturo's stomach grumbled as a group of tourists passed on their way to see the church. One woman aimed her camera at the men, but Uly pointed to a hand-written sign on his wall that read "No Pixures." The lady nodded and hurried to catch her group.
         "I'll break her camera," Uly said, revealing a yellow gap-toothed smile.

         "Shit yeah," Arturo said, breaking into gales of laughter. Arturo had not had very much to laugh about in his life, and so when he laughed, it was like clanging a rusty bell that shook loose huge deposits of rust that had built up inside of him.

         Arturo knew the word "Pixures" was misspelled, and he knew that Uly was an educated man who was the publisher of the Pueblo News, and so he asked about the sign.

         "What's the matter with the sign?" Uly asked, his expression stoic.
         "It's not spelled right," Arturo said.
         "It ain't?" Uly responded in mock surprise. "How do you spell it then?"

         Arturo was caught flat-footed because though he knew it was misspelled, he wasn't sure how it should be spelled.
         I don't know, but I know it ain't right," Arturo said.

         Uly laughed and said, "If you don't know how to spell it, then how do you know it ain't right?"

         Arturo, red-faced, stood up angrily, ready to punish the diminutive Indian for embarrassing him, because if there was anything certain about Arturo, it was that he wouldn't allow anyone to make him the butt of a joke.

         Seeing his friend in a dangerous state of agitation, Uly got up from the bench, unconcerned, and leaned across Arturo to get two fresh beers out of the cooler.
         "Look, don't get all bent," Uly said, handing his friend a beer. "I'm going to tell you a story. Sit down."

         Arturo was flustered, but happy that he wouldn't have to punch his friend. He accepted the beer and sat down.

         Though he thought Uly was the funniest man he had ever met, Arturo also knew that Uly was the wisest, not in a scholarly or academic way, but in the way of life. Arturo had decided this after Uly had told him a parable about the Sun and the Wind.

         Uly began by telling Arturo that Wind had believed himself to be the Lord of the universe, with boundless power and strength, able to move whole sections of the Earth, creating terror and panic through hurricanes and tornadoes, and other turbulence throughout the world.
         But the Sun, Uly said, laughed derisively at Wind's boasts, and challenged the blustery one to a contest.

         "Do you see that man wearing a jacket?" Sun asked of Wind.
         "Yes, I see him, And so?" Wind replied.
         "If you have the power to make him remove his jacket, then I will agree that you are the most powerful force in the universe," Sun told Wind.

         "But if it is I who makes the man remove his jacket, then you will bow to me and acknowledge me as the most powerful force in the universe, Agreed?" Sun said.

         Wind was confused, but he accepted the challenge. Wind began the contest by focusing a blast of cold arctic air on the man so ferociously that the man buckled and was pushed back a few steps by the gale's fury. But the man did not surrender. He merely pulled his jacket tighter, fastened his coat buttons, leaned forward and kept walking.

         Wind unleashed another terrible blast at the man, but the man did not falter. At last, after several more attempts left him gasping for breath, Wind was forced to withdraw.

         Sun, wearing a smile of supreme confidence, focused his fiery stare on the man, who began, after a few minutes, to sweat profusely.

         After a few minutes more, the man had unbuttoned the top button of his jacket. Sun increased the intensity and heat of his glare, and soon the man stopped and unbuttoned the rest of the buttons on his jacket. Then, as Sun smiled languidly, keeping his gaze intent on the man below, and to Wind's horror and surprise, the man removed the jacket himself.

         Arturo didn't know exactly what the parable meant, but he was impressed nonetheless.

         "Aha!" a woman said as she approached and caught the end of Uly's tale. "You told him that lame old story! Man, Uly, you ain't got no shame!"
         "What do you mean? It's a good story, learned it from my ancestors," he said solemnly, looking at Arturo.

         "Oh shit, don't believe him, he's a liar, he got that from a book in his library," she said. "It's not even from our own tribe."

         Uly looked with disfavor at the woman and crossed his arms. She saw his hurt and tried to hug him, but he turned away. She tried a little harder and this time, he returned her hug. He smiled over her shoulder and then she turned and looked with curiosity at Arturo.

         "Oh, this is my friend, Arturo," Uly said by way of introduction. "He saved my life."
He told Arturo the woman's name was Ayah, and further introduced her as a lifelong friend.

         Uly told his friends he was going to take a nap; more likely he was going to try to sleep off too many beers. Arturo invited Ayah to go for a walk, although he mostly followed her since he wasn't familiar with the pueblo. Many of the tribe's young men had noticed him and didn't like outsiders wandering alone on the pueblo.

         "How long have you known Uly?" Arturo asked her, as they sat on a tree trunk that spanned a stream feeding a lake at the southern end of the pueblo.

         "Oh, I don't know, all my life, I guess, we were born here, grew up here," she said.

         Ayah's long black hair was parted in the middle, her hair falling gracefully to her shoulders where it bunched like a satin scarf. Arturo thought to himself that she looked like the beautiful Indian maiden pictured on postcards. Her oval face was small and delicate, like a porcelain doll's, and her lips brimmed with a faint shade of rose, though she wore no lipstick. Her high cheekbones accentuated enormous, dark brown eyes shaded by heavy black lashes.

         "What did Uly mean that you saved his life?" Ayah asked, trying to break an uncomfortable silence.
         "Just helped him out of a jam once, that's all," Arturo replied.

         Arturo felt some guilt thinking about his real motivation for helping Uly that night in the parking lot of the Crystal Bar. When Arturo had seen a diminutive Indian being pummeled by three cowboys, Arturo had not intervened to right a wrong or defend a downtrodden minority.

          He had "jumped in" in the same way a Doberman, frenzied by blood and fear, jumps into a fight against other fighting dogs. Arturo fought with the ruthless ferocity of a wild animal and had dislodged the cowboys, who were cut down or sent running by his frenzied expert brand of street fighting.

         The Crystal Bar always had one pretty woman, and sometimes two, playing pool or sitting at the long bar, and by closing time, the rest of the women looked pretty good too. Most of the regulars were men, boastful and loud, and women, lonely and damaged, bent on finding something missing in their lives, though they weren't sure what it was, or where to find it.

         Fistfights were commonplace and violent, on the dance floor and in the parking lot. A fight broke out for little more reason than a mad dog glare, or the look ascribed to a rabid dog's raging look of intimidation.

         Arturo Montoya was a master of the mad dog glare; most men who saw it dropped their gaze, and those who didn't later wished they had.

         Now as he spoke to Ayah, he struggled to find words to try to get to know her better. This wasn't a woman who went to the Crystal Bar. But she appeared to be even more interested in him.
         "Where you from? Got a girlfriend?" she asked in quick succession.

         "Jarales, a little place near Belen," Arturo replied. "Girlfriend? Naw, got no girlfriend."

         "And you? You and Uly friends, I mean, you know, seeing each other?" he asked.

         "No, we're not... we're just friends," she replied. "No boyfriend, but I do have a man in my life." When she saw his eyebrows rise, she quickly added, "He's my boy, except he's no boy.

         He's 25, a man. He never had a daddy but we made out okay. I love him. I'm proud of him. I'll introduce you to him someday if you want."

         Wanting to move the conversation to a subject less personal, Arturo asked about the priest.

         "So, do you know anything about this demon priest who was buried with all the treasure?" he asked.

Her face took on a solemn, frightened expression.
         "Uly told you about him?"
         "Well, yeah, anything wrong?"

         "He knows what can happen if he messes with that priest," she replied.
         She continued. "My dad's a tribal religious elder. He told me all about that priest and what can happen. Nobody wants to mess with him, well, nobody except Uly, but he won't either, not if he's smart as I think he is. He ain't stupid.

         "My father told me if that priest ever came back looking for sinners again, if that priest ever comes back from the grave again, he ain't going back, he won't stop till he gets all the sinners, he won't stop at the pueblo, he'll destroy the world looking for sinners. He'll make that 9/11 thing at those towers in New York look like a game," she said.

         "You guys aren't messing with that priest, are you?" she asked again.
         "No, no, I was just curious about him, that's all," Arturo replied.
         She paused and pondered his response for a moment.

         "Because if he does, there'll be hell to pay," she said.
         "What do you mean?" Arturo asked.
         Ayah stood up from the sawed off tree trunk she had been using as a chair by the side of the stream.

         "You don't want to know, and besides, I already told you more than I should," she said worriedly.

         "The elders don't like us telling religious secrets, especially to outsiders" she said, turning to walk back to the pueblo. Arturo got up from the rock where he was sitting and caught up to her, but he didn't ask her any more questions. He began to worry.

         It had been nearly a month since the grave robbing.
         "What are we waiting for? When we going to spend our loot?" Arturo asked Uly, as they spent another Saturday afternoon drinking beer in their usual spot in front of Uly's house. Uly didn't respond. His eyes looked empty and it was clear to Arturo he was distracted by something.

         Long shadows gripped the plaza as the sun rolled on the horizon, leaving flecks of amber and pink in the atmosphere over the flat plains to the west. The beer cooler was empty and so the two men went inside Uly's house. Uly killed the last of a 12-pack of beer and hiccuped loudly.

         "I like you," Uly slurred to Arturo. "And I trust you. I don't think you speak with forked tongue," Uly said, giggling. Then inexplicably, Uly began to sob. Arturo felt uncomfortable at Uly's womanly reaction.

         "I'm 45 and I ain't never been off this pueblo," Uly said to Arturo. "Been to Albuquerque and Belen, and once even went fishing at Lake Escondido this side of Socorro. But that's it. Never had any money to go anywhere else and I barely had enough all my life to keep fed.

         "Never had a woman, except that once with old toothless Bertha, but shit, that don't count," Uly said. "People call her the last resort chick, guess you can guess why."

         Uly stared at Arturo through bleary eyes.
"I been to college and I publish this newspaper for the tribe, but that don't cut nothing with the people around here. In fact, they call me a white man's Indian; it ain't nothing to them. I ain't nothing to them," Uly said.

         "Guess we could go somewhere now with that loot, but I'm scared," Uly said. "Ayah's got me scared of what might happen if we spend the priest's loot."

         An Amtrak train approached and Uly moved to the window. The ground shook noticeably as the train passed just a few feet behind Uly's house.
"I always wonder where that train goes," Uly said, with an expression of longing. Arturo got up from his chair and looked outside at the cemetery.

         "Grave robbing's bad medicine," Uly said. "Especially robbing that devil's grave."

         "It's bad medicine," Uly repeated simply. "A lot of people say he was looking for sinners."

         "What the hell does that mean?" Arturo asked.
         "He was looking for sinners," Uly repeated solemnly. "That means he'll be looking for us."
         The next morning, Artur went to work at the part-time job Uly had gotten him at the tribal library. Arturo was sweeping a storeroom when he saw Uly talking to a woman wearing black. She told Uly something that prompted him to put his hands over his eyes and begin to weep.

         The woman, who appeared to be about 20 years older than Uly, embraced him and then they both sat down and talked for some time before she left, giving Uly a final hug. Arturo didn't want to seem nosy, but he asked Uly anyway what had happened.

         Uly reached in his pocket and retrieved a handkerchief, which he used to dab at his eyes, and then he blew his nose.

         "Oh, that was my Aunt Stella, she came over to tell me my favorite Aunt Lea, you know, the cop, Randy, remember him? That's his mother, the one who wanted me to visit," Uly said. "Well, anyway, she died last night, of a stroke. She wasn't even very old," Uly said.

         "Sorry," Arturo said simply.
         "Thanks, I'm closing down shop, I guess, need to get over to her house to be with her family, you know."
         "No problem," Arturo said, cleaning his mop and bucket and putting them back into the supply closet.

         A couple of days later, Arturo was helping stack books when Uly got another visitor.          This time it was a younger man. Again, something he told Uly caused him to droop.
         "Two of my cousins rolled over in their pickup truck this morning on a bridge at Isleta Lakes," Uly told Arturo blankly. "They both drowned."

         About a week later, Uly came back into the library, and tossed his reporter's notebook onto a table.

         "You're not gonna believe this," Uly said, not waiting for Arturo to respond.

         "There's some kinda virus, like the hantavirus, that's hit half the people in the village; three people might not make it; they're in the hospital in pretty bad shape," he said.

         A woman who was browsing in the library appeared from behind a stack of books.

         "I think it's Father Padilla," she said to Uly, who just stared back at her incredulously. "I think he's back and he's looking for sinners."

         Uly growled and swept into his office, slamming the door behind him. The woman looked at Arturo, puzzled.
         "What's the matter with him?" she asked.

         "He's just working too hard," Arturo said.
         As for Arturo, every night he dreamed of the priest.

         And it was a private and painful hell for Arturo, who each morning awoke in a cold and desolate place, with no color or flowers, no sound, wind, or sun, nothing but blackness and silence. Each morning, the bony-faced visage of the priest appeared, a skeletal grin on his cobweb-framed face. It was the priest's duty, and pleasure, each day to torment and torture Arturo.

         "So you thought you could sin against God, you thought you could sin against me, and just walk away?"the priest asked, his face pressed against Arturo's, his rancorous breath assaulting Arturo's senses.

         The tortures in Arturo's dreams had been conjured by Arturo himself, representing his own fears of what hell must be like. What Arturo imagined were the very punishments inflicted upon him. presided over nightly by the priest.

         One night, the priest tied Arturo to a rack, and his abusive father, now long dead, appeared with heavy leather strap in hand. He administered a stinging series of whips upon Arturo's naked back, which soon was mish mash of bloody beaten flesh.

         On another night, Arturo recognized the torture rack from pictures he had seen while doing a book report in school about the Spanish Inquisition. The rack was constructed of pine in a cross shape, and it was outfitted with leather straps attached to serrated wheels. The priest pulled on a lever, and Arturo's arms and legs, attached to the leather straps, were pulled slowly, inexorably, out of their sockets.

         Arturo's screams filled the soundless chamber.

         The next night, the priest dragged a shackled Arturo to the edge of a great abyss, where he pushed him over, laughing as the terrified Arturo practiced his silent scream. It seemed to Arturo that each day, the priest found a diabolical new way to be crueler than the day before.

         Arturo asked Uly whether he was having similar dreams and Uly nodded yes, his face showing the effects of his own nightly torture.          But Uly didn't want to talk about his dreams.
         Arturo sat in Uly's library and noticed a strange veil had fallen over his friend. Uly didn't joke and he never went to the Crystal Bar anymore. He seemed dead.

         "We messed up," Uly said, looking intently at Arturo.
         "What you mean?" Arturo asked.
         "We let loose an evil thing," Uly said. "It's looking for sinners."
         "What the hell you talking about?" Arturo asked.
         "We got to give it back," Uly said.
         "Give what back?"
         "The loot, we got to give it all back," Uly repeated.
         Arturo stared at his friend with incredulous amazement.

         "You got to be crazy," Arturo said.
         "If we don't give it back, he's gonna keep looking for sinners," Uly said. "He's gonna keep taking sinners. He's gonna take us."

         Arturo realized his friend had completely disintegrated. Uly asked him in desperation to help him return the loot to the priest, and then perhaps then, the priest would stop haunting their dreams. Arturo agreed, reluctantly. If they weren't going to spend it, they might as well give it back, he thought.

         More importantly, Arturo was now convinced that the loot was cursed, and that the only way to escape the curse was to give it back. And then maybe the nightmares would stop.

         They chose another darkly shrouded night and repeated the same strenuous backbreaking work at the cemetery. They uncovered the casket and when they pulled up on the lid, there was the same unholy mummy glaring up at them.

         But this time, his expression was one of triumph, though still hateful and full of reproach. They dumped all of the loot back into the casket.

         But even after the two men had undone their crime, freak accidents continued to occur. The nightmares continued.

         Arturo and Uly began to drift apart. Uly still got drunk at the Crystal Bar, and still occasionally propositioned a "last resort" chick at closing time, but most of the time, Uly simply worked at the library and continued to put out increasingly high quality issues of the Pueblo News.

         The last time he saw Uly, Arturo had gone to the pueblo library to ask his friend to come and get drunk with him at the Crystal Bar. But Uly had refused.

         Arturo shook his friend's hand and hitchhiked on I-40 to Albuquerque, where his extended thumb got him a ride to a bar on East Central.

         Whenever Arturo needed money, he went to the bar and lured a patron outside, where he punched him unconsciousness and relieved him of his cash. Arturo had just accomplished such an enterprise and was walking away from his prone victim when he heard the click of a loaded handgun.

         Arturo turned in time to see a flash from the barrel of the gun. He heard the blast. He remembered Uly telling him the parable about the sun and the wind. He wished that he had lived his life less like the wind and more like the sun.

         But there was no more time and he breathed a message to Uly of friendship and regret that fluttered in the wind like the brown brittle leaves that skittered on the sidewalk, reddened by a growing pool of blood.

         The dead priest cackled, and Arturo howled agonizingly. He knew the priest was waiting to administer obscene tortures on him for the rest of time.

         The crow struggled to ascend, but it plummeted to the ground, where it was descended upon and torn to pieces by a pack of ravenous dogs. The air was still and calm, oppressive and sticky like the gelatinous pool of blood spreading on the sidewalk.


         Arturo opened his eyes. He became aware at first of garbled voices. Then he saw the man he had tried to rob standing at the back door to the bar in the alley, talking to another man.

         A police siren neared. Though he was still dizzy, and pain shot through his cheek, where he had been grazed by the bullet, Arturo sprang up from the sidewalk and gracefully used his hands to spring over a five-foot-tall chainlink fence.

         He looked back to see the man with the gun frantically fumbling with bullets to put into his gun. Arturo sped around a corner quicker than a rabbit being chased by a coyote. He caught up to a city bus that was just about to close its door, and he frantically knocked on the door until the driver opened it.

         Arturo rode in silence all the way to I-25 where he got off and started walking on a frontage road along the freeway back toward the pueblo, about 15 miles out of town.

         It was almost dark when he saw the cottonwoods along the bosque that signaled he was near the pueblo. He went to Ayah's house and banged loudly on the door.

         When she let him in, he got on his knees and begged her to tell him how he could exorcise the devil priest. Uly was there, sitting at her kitchen table. He and Ayah looked at each other, and to Arturo, it seemed as if they were considering whether to tell him anything at all.          Finally, Ayah spoke.

         "The priest didn't care about the jewelry and the bootie you took back," Ayah said. "That's not what he wants."

         Arturo stared at both of them, not understanding.
         "What do you mean? You said he was looking for sinners, and that he wasn't gong to stop till we took his shit back," Arturo said.

         Uly spoke.

         "I thought so too, but I talked to a shaman. He told me the priest is trying to break through. He using me and you to do it."

         Arturo sat heavily into a chair. His body sagged.

         "It's like this," Uly said. "The priest needs a covenant of blood before he can come back to the living. It's like Christ when he died. He had a covenant of blood. He died and spilled his blood so that people could be saved. That's the covenant he kept. That's how he was able to break through, and rise from the dead, because he kept his covenant."

         "According to the shaman, the universe stays together because it's made of opposities; that's the only way balance is maintained, that's the only way the whole damned thing doesn't just fall apart. There's a covenant of blood that will allow evil to break through, let evil come back from the dead.

         "It's a little different kind of a deal though," Uly said, going to his refrigerator to get a beer. He offered one to Arturo, but he refused. Ayah shook her head no too.

         "Instead of offering himself as a blood sacrifice, like Christ did, the priest must find someone to sacrifice; that's why you hear of satanism and ritualistic sacrifice," Uly said.

         "I have a feeling the priest is looking at us as his blood sacrifices. He went to give us to the devil, and when he does, he'll be able to come back," Uly said.

         "The shaman can help us. He told me he will help us. He doesn't want this monster loose on the planet either. He's going to get a friend of his, a curandero, a spanish guy, to help him.

          This curandero isn't just a healer, like with the herbs and all that. This guy's a brujo, a witch, just like this shaman isn't just a shaman, he's a guardian spirit.

         They're gonna help us, but we're going to be mostly on our own when we go against the priest, just you and me.

         "The only thing that can defeat this demon is truth, not money, not guns, not muscle, not nothing, just truth," Uly said.

         "That means he's going to come at us with truth; he's going to try to drive us mad with truth. He knows all the truths there are to know about us, so if you got a dark side, and I know you do, and I know I do, it's all going to come out, and he's going to try to destroy us with it," Uly said.

         "We're going to have to take it, and then we're going to hit him with the truth. I went back and talked to people when this guy was alive, when he was the priest here, and I found out more shit, more secrets about him that I think we can use to try to beat him. "

         "That's not the worst of it. The priest is a shape shifter. That means he can take the form of an animal. People say he takes the shape of a huge snake. That's his favorite way to scare people, makes him the most scary. I think it's a pretty sure thing that at least part of the time, we're going to be dealing with a giant snake. Can you handle that?" Uly asked.

         Arturo stared, dazed. He could do nothing but stare.

         "Now remember, the shaman, and the curandero, the brujo, they can shift shapes too. Remember, they're going to help us, but the power of the priest is probably three or four times their power. The only thing that will defeat him is truth, and how we handle it, and how he handles it is going to make or break who walks away. Truth, understand?"

         "In this struggle, we must be like the lamb, we must be meek, accepting death, if we must, like Christ, in obedience to authority," Uly said.

         "In this struggle, we must be like the sun, not brash and reckless like the wind, but like the sun. You remember the parable I told you? The real measure of power is perception, perceived power. If you spend your power, you are left with nothing, so the real power is perceived power. That means we must be like the sun. If we react like the wind, we are doomed," Uly said.

         "So who are these guys who are going to help us?" Arturo asked.

         "Juan, they are both named Juan. Juan Abeita is the shaman. He will most likely shift to coyote. Juan Valdez, the curandero, will probably shift to wolf," Uly said.

         "They will be trying to turn the spell against the spellbinder. If they are successful, they will turn the curse back against the accursed."

         "It's not going to be easy," Ayah said. "You will both need to prepare."

         "You must lure the priest out of your mind, where he is residing in comfort and leisure to torment you whenever he wants," she said.

         "You must lure him out and engage him in a physical and mental battle. But for him to become physical, you must learn the words of the ancient ones, and you must believe. You must believe! If you do not believe, it can't be done."
         "And you must never reveal the secrets that you will hear," she said. "If the elders learn of this, I'll surely be banished, and Uly too."

         'I won't tell anyone," Arturo said.
Ayah still looked skeptical, but she began by telling Arturo that he must purify his soul for three days in a sweat lodge near the pueblo kiva.

         "The priest will remain in your body only as long as it amuses him, or you have gone mad, and then he will leave and he will look for sinners all over the world," she told him.

         "It will be up to you to defeat him, but you can't do it with your boxing, or your physical strength," Ayah said. "It will depend on your power of truth."

         "You may think you know evil, but believe me, you won't know evil until this priest is standing before you tryng to drag you to hell with him," she said.

         Uly had been quietly listening, sitting at the kitchen table, and then he rose and stood in front of Arturo.

         "I'm going to tell you one more time about the parable. It's important. You have to remember." Uly asked.
         "Yeah, ok"

         "The message in the parable is that power just is an illusion, and that the only power anyone really has is power they don't use."

         Arturo looked confused. Uly continued.
         "The wind, with all its bluster and brag, in the end spends all its power. The sun is patient and imposes its power gradually, serenely, with dignity and confidence," Uly said.

         "And timing, timing is important," he added. "You must be like the sun. The only power you got, the only power we all got, is the power your enemy thinks you got," Uly continued. "If you use up your power, and you got no more, then you got no more and you're cooked. Get what I'm getting at?"

         Arturo nodded, though he was more confused than ever.

         "There's one more thing," Ayah said, waving to summon a young man into the room.
         "This is my son, Domingo, " Ayah said. The young man had long purple-black hair, like his mom's, and a pleasing kindness in his eyes and smile.

         "He will be there to help us," she said without explanation, though Arturo thought to himself that a young boy like this would be little help against what they were preparing to go against.

         For the next three days, Arturo and Uly climbed into separate sweat lodges, to purify their spirits, enduring heat, hunger, and periodic claustrophobia. The turtle shaped lodges were about 10 feet long and only four feet high, fashioned entirely of willow saplings. The entrance faced east, to allow the light of wisdom. In the center of the dirt floor was a pit, about a foot wide and a foot deep. Rocks were heated in a great fire and brought inside to make heat. Deer skin hides covered the frame of the sweat lodge, making it completely dark inside.

         Ayah gave him three prayers to say when addressing the the guardian spirits. She said the prayers would be crucial in their fight.

         Ayah gave Arturo a leather bag, containing a collection of stones, various herbs, animal teeth, feathers and bones she said would help to ward off the destructive spirit of the priest.

         He tried to sleep, but his mind conjured visions that kept him from sleeping. He frequently awoke screaming. He dreamed of growing up in Jarales. He was the youngest of five brothers who grew up on their father's farm in Jarales, a riverside village south of Belen.

         People called it S.O.B., partly because it was south of Belen, but also because many men from there were sons of bitches, hombres brutos.

         The Montoya brothers were well known as hombres brutos. As children and later as young men, the brothers worked hard on their farm.

         Rafael, their father, rarely worked, choosing instead to frequent the nearby Westerner Bar, from where he nightly arrived home drunk and surly.

         Arturo and his brothers Joe, Claudio, Timoteo and Mario tried to hide when their father came home, but it just delayed the torture they grew to expect and endure. Rafael slammed the door and called out for them to come out, whipping off his heavy leather belt, swinging it ominously. "Salen, putitos," Rafael said to the boys. "You'll get it worse if you don't come out now and accept your punishment like men."

         Lucinda, the boys' mother, feared her husband more than the devil, but still tried to stop him. But she was weak and ineffectual.
         "Please, leave them alone, Rafael," Lucinda begged. "They worked hard all day."

         She tried to confiscate the heavy leather strap he swung drunkenly, but she never could. Arturo, though the youngest, was usually the first to come out of hiding to accept his torture. The other boys followed. They removed their shirts and suffered stinging slaps of leather, punctuated with squeals and screams of pain.

         Lucinda retired, sobbing, to her bedroom, holding her hands to her ears to try to block out the screams of her boys. Arturo never screamed. He accepted the punishment and became stronger.

         By the time he was a teenager, he had acquired an instinct for survival that complemented his physical strength. He was resilient and cruel, and it gained him respect through fear. When he dominated or hurt someone, it wasn't to be cruel. He had been dominated and hurt himself, and so it seemed natural.

         His brothers had not survived Rafael's daily abuse. Joe, the oldest, had heavy scars on h is back. Joe was a well-muscled fireplug who became the most feared of the barroom brawlers in Jarales. But after a brief stint in Golden Gloves boxing, Joe had died after he tried to jump on a moving train going to California. He had wanted to visit his girlfriend, but he was cut in two by the train wheels. Claudio, the next oldest, was serving a life term for killing his wife after finding her in his own bed with his best friend.
He killed them both with a kitchen knife.

         Timoteo, the youngest and most handsome of the clan, with dreamy round eyes and seductive smile, was in an insane asylum by the time he was 29, after he was gang-raped in the local jail. And Mario, the next to the youngest, lived in a one-room shack less than a mile from where he grew up. He made a meager living picking up beer cans along the roadway.

         Lucinda often tried to run away, but Rafael always found her and brought her back, bruised and compliant. Lucinda died and Arturo always blamed himself for not killing his father.

         On all three days and nights in the sweat lodge, Arturo's memories of growing up in Jarales plagued his waking hours.
On the third day, a flash of light blinded Arturo as Ayah opened the door to the lodge. He held his hands tightly to his eyes as he crawled and stumbled out into the cool morning air. It rejuvenated him.

         Uly and Ayah drove Arturo back to the pueblo, where they walked to the kiva. Uly served as a lookout as Ayah took Arturo inside and directed him to sit near a shallow hole set in the floor of the kiva.

         "This is sipapu, where you will connect with the spirit world below," Ayah said solemnly to Arturo. Ayah recited prayers and sang songs, as Arturo bowed his head and clasped his hands together. When Ayah finished, she led Arturo outside.

         The trio in Uly's pickup truck drove to the llano, the plains in the foothills of the mountains, where an oasis fed by an underground stream sprouted out of the desert.
"This is where our battle with the priest will take place," Uly said solemnly.

         "Can't I get something to eat first, get some rest?" Arturo asked.

         "No, you must be pure, and if you take time to rest and eat, you will not be pure," Uly said.

         They led him to a grove of salt cedar trees near the desert stream and he sat under the tallest tree. Ayah began painting Arturo's face with war paint, and Uly retrieved an ancient, weathered book from the truck. Ayah took the book, and as Uly instructed Arturo to sit and listen, Ayah began reading from the book. Arturo couldn't understand the words, but occasionally, Ayah would come to him and rub paint and ashes onto his forehead and onto his cheeks and chin, and on his arms and on his bare chest. Finally, Ayah stopped.

         "Do you have the bag I gave you?" Ayah asked; she looked relieved when Arturo pulled the leather medicine bag out of his pocket and showed her.

         "It's time," she said simply.

         Ayah walked back to the truck, stopping at the edge of the meadow to whisper, "The priest is here. Be ready."

         She stopped again.
"Remember the parable."

         The men heard Ayah start the engine of Uly's truck and then he heard the truck drive away. Arturo looked around. He heard sparrows chirping. A squirrel ventured nearby, curious, and then loped away.

         "Hello? Anybody here?" Arturo called out. Silence.
         "Oh shit, this is just bullshit," Arturo said to Uly, who sat impassively, his eyes closed as he leaned against a tree.

         "Bullshit? Is that what you thought when your daddy beat your mommy so hard until she passed out?" the priest asked.
         Both men jumped to their feet in panic.
         "Show yourself, pig," Arturo said.

         "You scare me, asshole, the priest replied, stepping out from behind a rock. His wispy, cobweb like hair was blown back from his skeletel face by the growing wind. His black eyes had no light.

         Giant black thunder heads swirled and the wind howled, spawning a roaring tornado a few miles away, bearing down upon them like a train.

         Remember the parable, Arturo thought.
         Ayah had warned him that the priest would use his own dreams, memories and his guilt against him, but Arturo was still shocked by the priest's unrelenting cruelty.

         Ayah had given Arturo truths to use against the priest, but it was much too early to reveal them. He had to wait. Meanwhile, the priest continued.

         "Your brother, Joe, died because he was trying to pull you up into the train when he slipped and fell. There went half his body and there went the other half, oops," the priest said.
         Arturo's heart bled.

         "And Rose, poor sweet Rose. She left you and why? Was it because you broke her nose and raped her, just as your father had done to your mother before you?"

         A huge funnel cloud formed to the west and touched the ground, raging toward them.
         "Remember the parable," Arturo whispered to himself.

         "And Uly, grand Ulysses," the priest said mockingly.

         "You're the lost tribe all by yourself. The tribe doesn't want you because you're a white man. The whites don't want you because you're a dirty drunk Indian from the hills. The women hate you because you're ugly, and you hate yourself, because you're weak. You have no child, you have no woman. If you died tomorrow, no one would know, no one would care."

         Uly began weeping.

         "Stop it, Uly, don't let him get to you."

         But Uly hid his face in his hands. Out of the corner of his eye, Arturo saw a coyote slinking behind the rocks. A wolf perched on a boulder.

         Meanwhile, the priest had turned his back. He appeared content that he had tormented Arturo and Uly to the point of no hope. Arturo knew in this condition, they would not be able to resist being tendered as blood sacrifices to Satan. He saw the priest gathering two thick strong ropes, and some huge knives for the work of cutting their bodies for the ceremony.

         The priest, Arturo sensed, was ready to harvest his sinner soul, and was preparing to lay waste to sinners all over the world.

         "Yes, it's true, and I'm sorry, dear Lord, for all of my sins," Arturo said
         "I'm sorry for the pain I've caused, to you and to others," he said.
         In this confession, I offer repentance and I pray for forgiveness," Arturo said.

         The priest regarded Arturo with bored disinterest.
         "Your priest, you are a sinner, and you will be punished," Arturo said to the priest, who now regarded Arturo with questioning rage.

         "How dare you call me sinner!" the priest shouted, his red eyes blazing with rage.
         "You raped the little boy, Dominic, your nephew, your brother's son," Arturo said, waiting now for the volcanic reaction he knew must come.
         "You lie, bastard," the priest said. "I will send you to hell."

         The priest transformed into serpent, its body snapping wildly back and forth in the wind, howling like dogs devouring prey.
         "You raped the boy, and then you drowned him to hide your crime," Arturo said. You shamelessly presided over his funeral and held your brother's hand, consoling him when you were the beast who condemned the boy to hell."

         "That's a lie. I loved the boy! I loved my brother," the priest screamed.
         The priest towered over Arturo, about devour him when from behind the trees, Uly, Ayah and her son, Domingo, emerged, giving the snake pause.

         "Look upon your son, priest!" Ayah screamed.
         Enraged and confused, the snake spat, "I have no son, whore."

         Arturo used the distraction to crawl away from the monster.
         "You raped me in the rectory when I was just a child. You lured me into the rectory, tied me up with rope and raped me," Ayah said. "I will never forget your drool and your lecherous grunting."
         "I'll kill you all, and torture you first," the priest said.

         The priest coiled to attack. Domingo reached behind his shoulder and pulled an iron tipped arrow from a quiver on his back. The arrow tip had been dipped in his own blood and in the blood of Christ, transformed from wine at mass early that morning.

         The priest laughed maniacally when he saw Domingo's weapon.

          "You're pathetic, you don't think an arrow can hurt me, do you?" the priest asked, just as Domingo let the arrow fly. The Guardian Spirits rose up at that instant, together with the coyote and the wolf, and they attacked.

         Arturo learned later from the shaman and curandero that had the priest acknowledged the truth of his sins and had repented, it would not have been possible to turn the curse against the accursed. But the priest did neither.

         The arrow head ripped into the priest's throat, and the priest emitted a high pitched surprised scream of pain. The wolf and coyote ripped at the snake's protective scales.

         The priest with fanged mouth pulled at the arrow stuck in his throat, but the arrowhead held fast, turning the ground to scarlet with the priest's blood. Arturo clapped his hands to his ears to try to shut out the priest's piercing screams.

         The writhing snake's body snapped wildly back and forth. It's head rose in the snake's final death throes before it exploded into a million pieces of blood and bone, the snake's body quivering on the ground.

          Meanwhile, the storm arrived with deafening fury. The Guardian Spirits left the snake corpse of the priest and crossed back into the underworld.

         Arturo wrapped his arms around a tree trunk. The tornado screamed as it uprooted trees, rolled huge boulders and lay a devastating path of destruction. Arturo felt himself being flung high into the air, and then he fell roughly to the ground. Pain shot through him like electric shocks. The storm howled.

         Arturo clung desperately to the earth, until the thundering, sucking power of the wind had been spent, and he lay in the stream, terrified and weak. Soothing stream water sluiced around his tattered body.

         Arturo heard his friends on the other side of the stream. He went to help them.

         Arturo tasted droplets of rain and breathed ozone from the depleted clouds. Arturo reached for Ayah and crushed his lips hungrily to hers, his heart welling with happiness, beating with power. She looked back at him surprised and returned the kiss. There was a sensuousness in their eyes, conveying a fevered anticipation of their intentions.

         Uly threw his arms around Arturo.
         "I'm proud of you, man, you were like the sun," he said.

         "It's more like he's burning like the sun," Ayah said lustily.

         Arturo asked Domingo where he had learned his bowmanship.
         "My mom," he said, looking with pride and love at his mother.
         "Remember, he's the man in my life," Ayah said, hugging her son.

         "Not the only one anymore," Arturo said, again hungrily crushing her lips with his, urgently pressing his body against hers.

         Uly waved at his nephew to follow him.

         "Come on, boy, let's get out of here before there's too much sun and not enough wind," Uly said. They laughed. There was a weariness in his friend's step, but it seemed as if a great weight had been lifted from Uly's shoulders.

         "We'll be down the creek; take your time," Uly said to the couple. "We're gonna try a little fishing down the creek a lilttle bit, just me and the boy. Come on boy, we got some fishing to do."

         Arturo and Ayah watched them disappear into the distance in the desert oasis. They kissed again with passion. Arturo looked far to the west where the sun was dying.

         Arturo for the first time in his life felt clarity, like the clarity of a stream fed by mountain snow, and he realized he had only begun to know truth.