Zuni Stew: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

Even sincerity. Everything in place, down to the marked map now on the passenger seat. Strange. Zuni must be very, very short-handed.
    The patched highway climbed in altitude, switch-backing, not a person or another car in sight. Static drifted in and out over the radio. He pushed the off button.
    Silence.
    An empty road, with a turn south to Zuni ahead– piece of cake, he thought. He was smack in the middle of Laguna Indian country, surrounded by flat mesas topped with gradations of indigo, blue-black, then burnt sienna and yellow ochre, a rainbow of earth tones. Rugged buttes striated with shades of lavender were dotted with piñon, which met chalk-colored rock at the base. Wicked. Freakin’ awesome.
    The route circled around massive wind-carved red rocks. Red-stained arroyos, rich with clay, broke through yellow gramma grass, pockmarked with lava. Lots of volcanic activity in the past. The road opened up, but he was slowed down by a dirt-spattered Ford pickup. A brown arm signaled a turn and the old rusted truck pulled off on a dirt driveway. A corn patch, a horse, and a couple of sheep.
    His ears popped. The ecology was changing. A zone of juniper. A mix of piñon and oak. A thicker cover of blue gramma grass. Prickly pears—a first for him. And something else had changed. Eastern New Mexico was ranching country. John Wayne. Leaving Albuquerque, he began to feel the heartbeat of the Spanish and Indian Territory. Everything was old, seasoned with the passing of time. Generations before. Human drama. He felt something he had never experienced before. A sense of mystique. An inexplicable aura.
    Thankfully the Jeep was running smoothly, and he planned to tell his father just that—his car was great. The robbery bit could come later. For some reason, he thought of Wooly and wished he could reach across the floor gearshift to pet the old dog. Wooly was almost sixteen, arthritic and partially blind, and not a single person in his family could face euthanizing him. God certainly got the canine life span wrong.
    A smile crossed his face, even though his next thought wasn’t really all that funny. He could picture the day at the boat house in technicolor. Wooly was just a puppy, he and Nic were little boys, all waiting for their mother and the gardener to take them out in the boat. Somehow Wooly managed to climb onto the roof of the boat house, spotted the boys waving to Rose, and jumped from the roof in obvious glee, crashing straight into frigid water. The silly dog would have drowned if Nic hadn’t jumped in to save him. Jack could smell the sunburned days. Med school had distanced him from Nic. Now, he had left him behind again.
    He stopped for gas at a Texaco station in Grants, not knowing what would be available at the pueblo. A single lone pump. A bowlegged man appeared at the door carrying a case of empty Coke bottles. A Woolworth bag blew across the cracked pavement and down the empty street. Jack asked him about a place to eat. The man gestured across the street in the direction of bright turquoise cinderblock building.
    Wooden booths, plastic-covered menu tacked to the wall. Pretty much Mexican food and burgers, so he went with the Hatch green chile cheeseburger with a side of frijoles.
    An older Hispanic man said, “Bueno. Y iced tea?” Someone in the kitchen turned up a radio tuned to a Mexican station.
    “Si, por favor.” He unfolded the Indian Affairs pamphlet he had stuffed in his back pocket. The first sentence read: Do not speak Spanish on the Zuni reservation! Strange, he thought, but it became clear as he read on:

    Zuni was officially annexed to the Spanish Empire in 1540. For more than a century Spanish friars labored to convert the Zunis to Catholicism, often using brutal techniques. Zuni parents were forced to hide their children from the Spaniards by placing them in windowless grain storage chambers built into cliff dwellings. In many instances, the parents were captured or killed, and subsequently