CHIMAYO
By Christopher Woods
 

After we had driven through Talpa, the air seemed to turn cooler. The road climbed towards the near, somber grey clouds. In the mountains I saw blue mists clinging to ridges and layering in the high valleys like fallen smoke. On the road to Chimayo, we were also on the road into darkness. Not the sadly familiar dark of night, but in that special way that light itself can be pressed out of life.

How can I tell you all this without explaining our state of mind, how we were filled with equal amounts of hope and doubt, each battling the other for the upper ground?

All we could be certain about was the road itself, and where it would take us. How we came to be on that road, the one leading to Chimayo, was of course a different matter. The reasons were many, as were all the people and places along the way. And by this I do not mean rivers crossed, or the simple adobe houses nestled in the valleys of firs, or even the languid cows on steep slopes that seemed to reach all the way to heaven.

I can tell you about the road to Chimayo. I can tell you about other roads. But no matter what I say, there will be no changing the reason why we went to Chimayo. Not hope or prayer or doubt can change a thing. Chimayo waited for us as it had waited for the others. It waited for Lenny like it did all its supplicants. And Chimayo, friend, is very patient. 

I remember that we did not talk much. I wondered which was more deafening, the silence in the car or the landscape itself. Once, when it was raining, Martin and I saw a white horse standing in an open field. 

"Make a wish," he told me.

"But why?" I asked.

"Always make a wish when you see a white horse," he said.

I knew something about wishes and when to make them. Seeing a loaded hay truck groaning down a road. Or to the pagan deities residing in rainbows. When tossing a coin into a fountain, or down a well. But I had never made a wish when seeing a white horse.

"You're going to Chimayo and you won't make a wish on a horse?" Martin asked. "Go on, damn it! Make a wish."

I watch the rain. The field and the horse were both gone now, but I did it. I made my wish. And when I was finished, I felt no different. I looked in the backseat to check on Lenny. It was obvious he had missed the white horse.

Lenny had slept most of the way since leaving East Texas. He was on the downside, we knew. Others, our friends, had gone the same way. But as Martin had already pointed out, twice, none of our other friends had been to Chimayo. 

Early on, I had mixed feelings about going. I knew nothing about shrines except for pictures of Lourdes and Fatima I had seen in magazines. To me, they were as distant in concept as they were in miles. Certainly, no one I knew had ever gone to a shrine to be cured, of anything. I was sure that shrines were the most desperate places on earth. They would need to be just to exist at all, to lure the damned who were left with nothing but faded dreams and tattered scraps of faith. And I also had mixed feelings about faith.

Martin wasn't familiar with shrines either. But when I called and told him that Lenny wanted to go, he quickly agreed to drive us there. Lenny was our friend. There wasn't a lot we could do for him but try to honor his wishes. There was another side to this as well. Martin and I hoped that other friends would do the same for us if needed.

Earlier, Martin had said something about the banquet of years, and how the table was being cleared earlier than anyone could have imagined. But it was not until we were sitting in a McDonald's, in Wichita Falls, that I truly understood what he meant. All the McPeople! By then I had begun to notice how all the people working behind the counters, as well as the customers themselves, all looked alike. And I realized they looked alike because, for them at least, the banquet of years was still in progress. Not so for our friend, Lenny. Once, when he was asleep and his talked betrayed delirium, I became worried.

"He's getting worse," I told Martin.

"I know," he said, his eyes staring straight ahead. "But we have to keep driving." 

"But what if something happens," I ventured, "out here, on the road?"

"It can't," he said, a wild kind of faith in his voice. "Hasn't Lenny had enough thrown at him already? No, he deserves to get to Chimayo."

Lenny dreamed his way across the border into New Mexico. It was night. I watched the stars, which had now become very bright in the wide, ebony expanse of sky. And I watched the white spine of the road, thinking of all the roads that had brought us to this one.

It was early morning when we reached the town of Chimayo, but already the famous church was open. Small groups of people, families most likely, milled about outside beneath the trees. Nearby a small creek trickled noiselessly across flat rocks. After combing Lenny's hair, Martin and I helped him inside the church.

Inside, it was deathly quiet. The only discernible sound I heard was that of rosary beads clicking, moving through earnest fingers. Then, as we waited our turn to enter the shrine behind the altar, I could hear the sounds of footsteps coming and going. Some seemed certain, others more hesitant. Some were hurried, while others made slow progress, perhaps savoring the moment.

At last we were allowed to enter a small hallway that led to the shrine itself. The walls of the narrow passage were covered with canes and crutches, letters and photographs, statues and relics. They were even some crudely made crowns-of-thorns, speckled with dried blood. Some had come well prepared, I thought. Standing in that hallway, we waited for our turn.

I looked at the faces of those coming out of the shrine room. Some people were wiping away tears. Others seemed to be making a supreme effort to retain their composure. I think that all of them, down deep, wanted to cry out in desperation against whatever unfairness had brought them to Chimayo.

But no one cried out. They knew that, by doing so, perhaps things would only worsen. In the end, all they could do was hope. Without that, without keeping on, they had nothing.

At last we were allowed to enter the tiny room ablaze with the light of hundreds of candles. The heat was intense. I could see that the ceiling was low and black, but from the smoke or charred hopes I didn't know. On the floor was a hole with dirt inside it. The sides of that hole were scrapped clean from anxious fingers.

We helped Lenny to his knees and watched as he felt at the edge of that hole. A weak smile on his face, he reached down into the hole with both hands. He grabbed fistfuls of dirt and rubbed it on his arms and his face. Then, when he was done, we helped him to his feet again. He stood there silently, in that heat, his face expressionless. I didn't try to talk to him. I knew he was thinking about time. If a cure were to come, how long would it last? And, if it didn't come, what then?

All of a sudden, something happened that truly amazed me. Martin got down on his knees and did the same thing Lenny had done. I never expected it from him. When he finished, he remained there, kneeling. I had never seen Martin pray. When he finally stood up, I knew I had no choice. 

I swallowed the scream that I felt rising in my throat. I knelt down beside that hole in the floor. I reach down into it as far as I could. I wanted dirt that no one else had touched. I don't know how long it went on, my frantic digging. At last Martin pulled me to my feet. I looked at my fingers, now caked with dirt. And, as Martin led me away, I saw the faces of the others, waiting for their turn.

In that church, I could see a desperate hate in their eyes. They were resentful because I had taken so long. As if another minute or two might make a difference for them. There was no way for them to know, of course. I didn't blame them. Suddenly, as we came into the bright sunlight outside the church, I felt ashamed of my greed. 

Silently, I helped Lenny to the car. He walked so very slowly. Steps. One after the other. Wherever they would go, wherever they would lead us. Between my doubts and a faith in blessed dirt, I trusted my feet to find the path that would last the longest.
 

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CHRISTOPHER WOODS lives in Houston. He is the author of a prose collection, UNDER A RIVERBED SKY (Panther Creek Press), and HEART SPEAK, stage monologues for actors (Stone River Press). His play, MOONBIRDS, about doomed census-takers at work in a Third World desert country, received its New York City premiere in Fall, 2003. A production of MOONBIRDS is now planned in Ghent, Belgium, by KATTENKWAAD THEATERPRODUCTIES(kattenkwaad.com). He may be reached at dreamwood77019@hotmail.com.