Category Archives: AnasaziStories

Sixteen stones stacked high as a man’s head, one upon the other, spindly and apt to fall in a hard wind, but it had been there for as long as the boy could remember. He liked looking at it, a reminder of the strength of perfect balance. How one could stand alone and survive.

He sat in a place on the rock where two shallow scrapes fit his buttocks, and where the shadow of the sixteen standing stones passed in its daily march. The boy half-closed his eyes and made his spine as straight as the standing stones, the pull of gravity precisely his center, an arrow into the earth, a resistance to the forces of all things human and natural, a perfect monument of the power of patient persistence.

The wraith-man appeared and the boy lost his balance. Panic spiked in him and the urge to run back to the village gripped him, but he thought of the wind and how the sixteen stacked stones resisted and held its center. He swallowed and breathed deeply, trying once again to make his backbone become a column of stacked stones.

“Twenty-four,” rasped the wraith-man.

The boy refused to look directly at him, but in his peripheral vision, he saw the wild gray hair, the bony body clothed only in a thin loincloth, the skin mottle and burned by the sun. He knew to say nothing to the man. He had been expelled from the village for a reason, though the boy did not know what the reason had been.

“Twenty-four,” the wraith-man said, and the boy clenched his eyes trying to ignore him. But a tendril of wonder entered the boy’s head. Twenty-four what? Involuntarily, he glanced at the wraith-man, who saw him and cackled with laughter. He jumped up and dashed to the sixteen standing stones, and the boy’s heart leaped in his chest thinking he would try to knock them over, but he stopped short and raised his arms up above the stones, caressing them without touching them.

“Twenty-four, there used to be,” croaked the wraith-man, as if he had not used his voice in an age. He sounded as rock might sound if they spoke, as the sixteen standing stones might if they suddently gave voice to the world.

“A council of priests, we were, three moons in the making,” said the wraith-man. He dashed from the stones and put his face close to the boy’s. The man’s face was filthy, with rivulets of less-filth streaking from where his eyes had overflowed and run. The boy, even in a paroxysm of recoil, wondered if the wraith-man had been crying.

“Twenty-four high, all from the sacred place. Twenty-four, not sixteen. Eight not here, half of sixteen. All from the sacred place. And they blamed me! Half of sixteen off the top. Half of sixteen.” He turned and looked at the standing stones, then ran to them and raised his arms as if feeling the missing stones.

“Did you take them?” asked the boy, surprised by his own voice. He had not inended to speak to the wraith-man. The elders forbade it. He was to be ignored as if he did not exist.

The wraith-man turned his eyes wide and flashing in the sun, his hair tangled and twisted in the wind. “Yes,” he said, his arms frozen in caress of the missing stones. “Want to see?”

He dashed away up and over a shelf of rock between two boulders, then turned to look back at the boy, who did not know what to do. What if the village banished him because he went with the wraith-man? He stood and looked around, his body shaking. He saw no one, but that did not mean they did not see him. Then he looked at the sixteen stacked standing stones and imagined eight more stones balanced perfectly on top, even greater grandeur for the forces of serenity. What if he could restore them? What if he could retrieve them from the wraith-man and make the stack higher than a man’s head? Would his back be straighter, stronger, balanced against even the force of his grandmother and his clan, the elders and the village? A rush went into his head, making his ears pop, and he nodded ot the stacked stones as if they had spoken to him. “Yes,” he whispered. “I will.”

He turned and followed the wraith-man, who scrambled over rocks to a hidden place with a shallow cave, a fire ring with scattered broken pots, and a column of eight standing stones, smaller than the others, but the boy saw clearly how they would fit on top. He crept carefully to them while the wraith-man crouched and watched, his mouth working from an O to a grin and back again.

The stones came to the boy’s waist and they gave a heat as if alive, and did they hum, or was that inside his head?

“Let’s put them back,” said the boy.

The wraith-man jumped up and stood beside the boy, fidgeting and rocking on his legs. “The eight back with the sixteen t make twenty-four!” He kept repeating it over and over. Until he had said it twenty-four times, then he looked at the boy and said, “Yes!”

They worked in the night to the light of a three-quarter moon, the boy imagining his grandmother calling and calling. They built a circling scaffold of wood and the wraith-man lifted the stones to the boy who balanced them on top.

“Balance,” said the wraith-man. “Center line. Perfect now. Be perfect.”

By morning, they had removed the scaffold and when the first light of morning touched the topmost of the twenty-four stacked standing stones, the village chief and the boy’s grandmother arrived, the entire village behind, and they stared without speaking until the chief dropped to his knees, the boy’s grandmother too, and they chanted glory, glory, glory to the sun god.

Two middle-aged men, wide of shoulders and bowed of leg, helped the old man to his feet in the first heat of the day, well after first light. The old man grunted in pain ever so lightly. He tried to convince himself the pain was not real, and he chastised himself for allowing evidence of it to slip through his lips.

The men continued to hold his forearms until he moved his legs and tried his balance. When the old man nodded, the men let him go. They walked away discussing which new field needed to be cleared of stones today.

A boy watched the old man. Had watched the old man his entire life. As he matured, he noticed different things about the old man. Much younger, he had learned that the old man would look at him and smile if he laughed long and hard enough. Later it was that the entire village looked after the old man, but that no one lived with him. Today, the boy realized how lonely the old man must be and he ran to him.

“Grandfather,” the boy cried as he arrived.

The old man put out his elbows and crouched as if the boy’s sudden appearance might knock him off balance. When he saw that the boy had stopped moving, he relaxed.

“Laughsalot,” the old man said in greeting. He smiled a three-toothed grin.

“You used to have more teeth,” said the boy.

“They jump off me like fleas,” sailed the old man.

“Teeth can’t jump,” said the boy, looking into the old man’s eyes.

The old man began to move, a slow shuffle, his arms held calmly down only by great effort. “They can if they have legs.”

“Teeth can’t have legs.”

“Have you ever seen a tooth with legs?”

“Of course not,” said the boy.

“Then you don’t know for sure whether they exist or not.” He smacked his old lips and began scanning the older women to see which one would offer him a bowl of mush this morning.

“Grandfather?”

“Laughsalot?”

“They say you spent your whole life watching the moon and stars. Did you really?”

The old man scratched his rough face. He smelled his own hand, and it stank, so he put it behind him. “Yes. Yes, boy, that’s about what I did.”

“And the sky gods smiled on you. This we know because you have lived to become so old.”

“Who have you been listening to?” asked the old man. “That’s not Laughsalot talking.”

“My uncles. They help you in the morning. But I have a question.”

“I’m going to start calling you Talksalot.”

The boy looked at him, his eyebrows framing his dark eyes. The boy narrowed his eyes like a much older man who thinks deeply.

“If the sky gods smile on you, why are your teeth jumping off you like fleas and why do two uncles have to stand you up every day?”

The old man sighed. “Now I’m going to call you Thinkstoomuch.” He chuckled. “I have a prophecy,” he said, not raising his voice.

The boy saw the heads of several women turn. A prophecy from the Eldest Man meant something. Those who heard it firsthand would be revered.

“You, my boy, will be either an outcast or a High Priest.”

The boy frowned. “I want to be a sky watcher, like you.”

“After what the sky gods have done to me?”

“Maybe you’ll feel better after the last tooth jumps out of your mouth.”

The old man thought of the boy’s impertinence, then noticed all of the women, every one, showing body language offering him a bowl. Because of the prophecy, he thought. They had heard him. He narrowed his eyes, thinking deeply. There would be those who would make the boy into an outcast this moment to fulfill the prophecy, and others who would raise him just as quickly to High Priest. By taking a bowl he would be casting a vote of support. Nothing was ever easy.

He stood as erect as he could and pulled his chin to his throat. “Ladies, this morning I fast and pray. But tonight, I wouldn’t mind a little fatty meat!” He looked at each of them quickly, and knew at least two of them would compete for his dining attention.

“Let’s go, boy. We’ll meditate to the sky gods. Maybe they’ll bestow a closed mouth upon you.”

This is a flash fiction piece from my sketchbook on historical fiction about the Anasazi culture of the Southwestern United States.

Before the soldiers could speak their reason for being there, the Eldest Woman pointed him out.

“That’s him right there,” she said, pointing with her whole hand. “He’s the one you want.”

The man sat cross-legged and straight-backed, his face unchanged.

The village Top Man, great-grandson of Eldest Woman, stood from where he sat waiting for his evening meal. He looked into the eyes of the lead soldier.

“Who sent you?” he asked. He sidestepped to stand beside the soldier so he could see Eldest Woman.

“The four-fingered man himself,” said the solider.

“Pok?”

The solider made a quiet “Yes” sign with his hand.

“What’s your business?” the Top Man asked. He watched the old woman. She worked a hand loom and pretended not to listen.

“Do you have a one-eared man?” asked the solider.

“I told you that’s the one they wanted, didn’t I?” screeched Eldest Woman, looking up from her handiwork. “Since the day he came here, I’ve known they would come looking for him.”

The man with one ear stood and took a step toward the solider. He was a dark man with a powerful jaw that framed square beneath his cheekbones. He raised one hand and pulled aside his thick, dark hair to show the remnants of an ear.

“And three toes. Do you have three toes?” demanded the soldier, looking at the man’s feet.

For the first time, the man’s expression changed. He looked from the lead soldier to the others, then to the Top Man, as if judging the potential for his escape, or who might resist or help him if he put up a fight. He seemed to rule that out and began taking off a dog-skin sandal the widow woman had made for him. He pulled out his bare foot and wiggled his big toe and the two toes next to it. The others ended in knuckle bumps as if they’d never been there.

“That’s it,” said the lead soldier. “You’re the one. What’s your name?”

“Naksta.”

“Yes. That’s right. You’re definitely the one. Now, come with us.”

“Where?” Naksta asked his first question.

“Black Stone Town. Pok wants to see you.”

Naksta’s black eyes glistened as they turned slightly from side to side, an inner search for the meaning of this. “Why?” he asked.

“He wants his brothers around him, I don’t know why,” said the solider. “We found another one with a half-Másaw-looking birthmark on his back. Now you. Still one more to go. Now come along, or we’ll make you.” The soldier pushed <Name>, who turned to the Top Man and Eldest Woman. He smiled at them. The first smile that had crossed his face since he came to the village.

“I’ve been waiting for this,” he said. “My brother finally needs me.”

Note: The name Naksta is derived from the Hopi word naqvu for “ear,” and ngasta for “without.” Source: Hopi Dictionary/Hopiikwa Lavaytutuveni: A Hopi-English Dictionary of the Third Mesa Dialect.