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Smitten by blasting sunlight energy, dazzled and dazed, the born-again Mosca flew at a hundred feet over a small town, set in mountains, forested with pines, but somewhat more sparsely than those around Big Sur. Crow, flapping ahead, extended their circle of flight, and Mosca observed down on the ground each road had been blocked by New Mexico State Police. "They do that every year," said Crow. "Here and elsewhere, the Penitente Brotherhoods don't want strangers witnessing their rites. It won't be long before you know why." "How do they get the police to keep the public from using public roads and going to town?"
"The state calls it freedom of religion, but actually it's because the brotherhoods have too much political clout."
"Where they get it?"
"I'll show you."
They swooped down and dragged Main at about forty feet, passing between stores and houses and gas stations and by the grade school, to perch upon a windowless flat-topped adobe building, white, one story high, a crude cross over the door.
"They get it right here in their meeting house, the Morada."
A path led from the front door of the Morada, across Main Street, and continued on about half a mile to the crest of a hill on which stood a tall wooden cross.
"That's the Bloody Trail------ El Rastro de la Sangre, and it goes up Skull Hill, you know: Calvary." Crow began explaining things, teaching, loving it, just like Dr Bruhn, my dear old Flymaster. Here, in New Mexico, with all its Latino voters, not only does political power come from the end of a gun, but also from the Moradas. At least that's what Crow said. Congregations are divided into the followers: The Brothers or Darkness, and the leaders: The Brothers of Light. These illuminated authorities include the Reader, the Healer, the Piper, the Blood-drawer, the Singer, and the boss, the Hermano Mayor: Big Brother. The word of Big Brother is law. Defectors are buried alive. (This is Crow talking, not me.) The Hermanos Mayores order the brothers to register and vote, their women too, and then tell them who and what to vote for. This adds up to power because most of the Latinos in New Mexico belong to some Morada, or are closely associated with one.
While Crow was presenting all this, Mosca became aware of strange sounds coming through the roof of the Morada.
"What are they doing down there?"
Shrieks, then an anguished hymn, then flute shrill and ratchety rattling sounded from inside.
"They're preparing to emerge."
Women and children began gathering before the meeting house. Moved by intense curiosity, Mosca rose and hovered over them. The doors opened. Out came the piper, leading a procession.
He, like the others, wore nothing but loose white-cotton trousers and a blood-drawing, wild-rose-briar crown of thorns.
Under his crown, the piper---- the pitero---- had thrust a stick bearing a small American flag.
Abruptly, rain began to fall, almost as if all this were being choreographed and directed by some phantom film-maker. Behind the piper trudged the officers, Los Hermanos de Luz, each flailing himself with a homemade whip, each lashing first over one shoulder than over the other to smite his bleeding back, all to the eerie wail of the flute, the rattle of the ratcheted twirlers, and the uniform chant of lugubrious hymns. The scourges, called disciplinas by Crow, rose and fell, again and again, spattering blood as the procession plodded across Main Street and began the slow ascent of the Bloody Trail to the top of Calvary Hill. Behind the Brothers of Light came the Brothers of Darkness, some of whom dragged huge rough-hewn crosses, trailing them along through wet dust, as the rain intensified, bringing the odor of soaked mesquite and soggy earth.
Stumbling, bleeding, falling, suffering in silence, they followed the wail of the flute as it keened its way through the quarter-notes of the Indian scale into Gregorian intervals while women, all dressed in black, watched, and children followed along behind, learning the ways of American small-town life.
Now, led by the Cantador, they sing:
Por el Rastro de la Sangre,
Qué Jesu Cristo deramma,
By the Trail of Blood
Which Jesus Christ did shed,
There's no one now
Not worth something,
Because Jesus Christ is dead.
Among the Brothers of Darkness trod walking crosses, each one of whom had his arms tied to a long cylindrical cholla cactus passing from hand to hand across the shoulders and nape of the neck. As they were rendered unable to whip themselves, the sangrador went from one to another, and with his knout scourged blood from their backs, and the flute wailed, and the spinning twirlers rasped and rattled.
Angel de me guardia,
Noble compaña,
Dareme gracia,
Ave Maria!
And up Calvary Hill trekked the flagelantes, pausing to acknowledge each station of the cross, then toiling on, and leaving behind as a mark of their passage a trail of bloody mire.
Guardian Angel,
My noble companion,
Grant me grace,
Hail Mary!
This, thought Mosca, is almost as cruel as war, as the CIA, except these communicants truly live by their beliefs and punish themselves, not others.
Arriving, they knelt before the cross, chanting all the while, then began reeling back along the trail of their own blood, whips rising and falling to the sorrowing flute, their scourges of braided yucca leaves or of wood and clothes-line tipped with metal splashing more blood to the drone of the metraca-twirlers as they descended Calvary Hill. When once more they came to Main Street, the Hermanos of Light entered the Morada and closed the doors behind them. The Hermanos of Darkness formed into single ranks on both sides of Main Street, each man at arm's length from the next.
And everyone burst into anguished hymn as the doors opened once again and the brothers of light, harnessed with horsehair ropes to its long shaft, drew out the Carreta de Muerte, the Death Cart. Seated on a box built onto the crude wooden cart, dressed all in black, partly hooded by a black shawl, grasping a drawn bow and its
arrow, rode the rude wooden effigy of Santa Sebastiana. A hidden system of wooden gears caused her upper body to turn from side to side through a half circle as she was pulled along, and thus she aimed her arrow, in turn, at now this brother, now that, standing in the ranks at both sides of Main Street.
Saint Sebastian, a beautiful and charming Roman soldier, favorite of Diocletian Caesar, as the consequence of adopting Christianity, had, on Caesar's orders, been shot full of arrows.
A thousand years later, next to Jesus, he became the favorite subject of Italian Renaissance painters, who took delight in depicting him, a beauty, as a human porcupine bristling with arrows.
Now here, aiming arrows, manifesting in female form, rode an anti-Saint Sebastian.
She seemed as forlorn as a failed motel.
"Why did she send for me?"
"Why indeed? Well, if you must have the truth, I don't know. I never question her, or presume to read her thoughts. Mine is to serve. I am an extension of her senses and will, not of her mind. She is a prisoner of the Brotherhoods. All of them have statues of her, but she lives in this one. The Brotherhood of Crows, for which I am the messenger, has always served her, but we are too weak and, yes, too ignorant, to set her free." Crow ate a flea from under a wing. "Imagine! All these centuries, and these cretins still don't know she is ours, not theirs."
To the pace of a chanted hymn uttered by all, Santa Sebastiana progressed slowly between the ranks, aiming her arrow first at brothers on the left, then at brothers on the right. Directly behind her trudged Big Brother, El Hermano Mayor, dragging a huge, bloody cross, whilst the Sangrador, walking beside him, lashed his back, each stroke sounding a wet thwack.
More profoundly than ever, Mosca felt himself on the border between asleep and awake.
Abruptly, the chant reached its end and stopped.
The procession halted.
The arrow of Santa Sebastiana aimed at a scar-faced young man.
Once again the game of Holy Russian roulette had selected a winner.
The rain had diminished to a drizzle.
As always in the Blood of Christ Mountains, buzzards wheeled overhead.
The young man stepped forth and took the cross from Big Brother.
He dragged it to the front of the procession, taking a place just behind the piper.
The penitentes walked again, to the rasping of the thunder- twirlers, and the piping of hymns rising to exultation, falling to despair.
They proceeded to the Campo Santo---- the town cemetery. There, all remained to picnic on provisions women brought in baskets, all save the thirteen Brothers of Light and the scar-faced young man.
Slowly treading behind the piper and the Cristo, chanting to the music, spinning thunder-twirlers and whipping themselves in time with their steps, they returned to the Morada and entered, to partake of the Last Supper, in a rite of such utter depravity as to have no place in these pages.
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