The serpent's trace - short story - Latin America: Private Eyes & Time Travelers

Literary Review, Fall, 1994 by Hiber Conteris, Randolph Hogan

UP CLOSE, THE SIX-FOOT-SIX, SLIGHTLY BENT FIGURE of Just Priesthood standing in the cabin's little vestibule looked even more wizened, squeezed out, and dried up than it did from a distance: a sepiacolored, weatherbeaten face that looked like somebody had slapped a coat of varnish over the myriad wrinkles. The wildcat stare, dauntless behind the glasses, hard and piercing like the point of an auger. The body was taut, almost curved inward from tension. The hair, limp, abundant, and ashy, fell in a rebellious lock across the forehead. He looked somewhat younger than his sixty years.

"Please excuse us for showing up unannounced," he said by way of introduction. In his hairy hand he held a bundle, roughly cylindrical in shape, about fifteen inches long, wrapped in brown paper. "May I come in? I promise not to keep you very long."

"Make yourself right at home," Patricio blustered, regaining his composure. He opened the door wide, with the gesture of a seneschal affording access to the royal chambers. Cester stayed glued to his spot. "Won't you have a drink with us?"

"Thanks, I never turn down a friendly drink." Priesthood accepted with unusual amiability. He put the bundle on the table.

Cester cleared off the two Provencal-print armchairs, and Priesthood spread out in one. The silent Mattews adopted a circumspect air, then leaned his arm on his thigh, letting the weight of his torso rest there; compressed, as it were, like a spring ready to pop out in any direction if released. Patricio looked at the contents of the bottle and poured a generous amount into a couple of glasses.

"There should still be some ice left in the bathroom," he remembered.

Priesthood raised a hand.

"Not for me," he said. "Bourbon at the temperature it comes out of the cask."

"To your health," Patricio toasted.

"To yours," the Sheriff replied. He took a slug and savored the taste. "What's under that bandage, Mr. Adenas?" he asked, fixing his stare on Patricio's forehead.

"Six stitches."

"And under that?"

"A headache."

Priesthood emptied his glass and put it on the table, covering it with his hand when Patricio tried to refill it.

"How did the accident happen?"

"Do you know those roads through the Allegheny foothills, east of Woodsfield?" Patricio asked him.

"A little."

"Well, I don't."

Priesthood's expression changed immediately from one of bewilderment to an effort at cracking a smile.

"What time was it?"

"A little after midnight."

"Bad time in a place like that," the Sheriff said. "Why didn't you stay and spend the night with the Indians?"

"The fact is, I did end up staying."

"Indeed. Did you enjoy the hospitality?"

"I have no complaints. Their idea of comfort is different from ours, but it's all a question of knowing how to appreciate it."

"And you appreciate it?"

"Naturally, I'm an anthropologist -- and from Mexico."

"Mexico. Yes, of course." J.P. dipped his hand into his jacket pocket and took out his trusty Peterson; it showed numerous burn marks. "A kind of ancestral bond, you mean?"

"Yes, that's right. I feel rather at home with them."

"And anthropology, Mr. Adenas, what is it exactly? A sort of secular priesthood? The anthropologists I've met always conjure up an image of the old missionaries for me. But instead of Bibles, they carry tape recorders."

Patricio laughed and took a slug of Old Taylor. He offered the bottle to Matthews, who refused it.

"I can't deny there's a resemblance," he conceded. "But the missionaries generally went around teaching Indians; we anthropologists go to learn from them."

Priesthood held a match to the bowl of the pipe until he exhaled two little puffs of dense, blue, aromatic smoke.

"That's a very subtle distinction," he said approvingly. "I've never felt any great sympathy for the missionaries, I'm not ashamed to say. Why in hell would you want to convert Indians to our religion? They have their own, and it's older, more venerable, and more appropriate to them than what we can inculcate in them. No Indian I've ever met will ever subscribe to the idea of one God when he can allow himself so many others. That would leave them very poor indeed -- very insignificant, that is. They need a world full of gods, in order to explain everything that occurs in nature. And as to the Christian idea that we're all children of this unique God, with equal rights and obligations, what civilized man, for all his good intentions, can convince them of that? The past is still here with us, all too fresh. The Indians have a good memory; they transmit the history of their race by word of mouth from generation to generation. As if it were yesterday, they remember the epoch in which their white brothers, children of the same God, considered it their divine right to slaughter them like buffalos or rats. And when there was no longer any need to kill them because so few were left, they were corralled onto a few acres of land set aside for them to continue to slowly extinguish themselves and reproduce miserably among themselves, which is the case now."

"Well, good," Patricio said, his expression an ingratiating smile almost frozen on his face. "I'm glad to hear you articulate that point of view. Frankly, it's unusual here -- at least outside the circles we move in, among ethnologists and anthropologists. If that's what you think, Sheriff, there's no need for me to try to explain our work to you. To anyone in my profession, to my friend Cester, for example, the few indigenous people left around here are just what you've observed: the residue of a people, various peoples, perhaps, the remnants of a culture. That's why I told you we came here to learn; to learn what they're like, what they were like before, how they think, what they believe in, what customs they still retain and practice. We're going to see if we can salvage something of that past and preserve it as best we can before everything disappears. As a part of the history of man, of humanity. As a testimony to something we were and, perhaps, something we shouldn't stop being. Am I being clear?"