Less Than Nothing

Less Than Nothing: A novel of Anasazi strife

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Short Description

When the Crab Nebula Supernova appeared on July 4, 1054, it hung like a tiny sun in the daytime sky.

What did the ancient ones of Chaco Canyon, N.M., do when they saw this unpredicted event?

Went into a cannibalistic frenzy.

It takes the combined efforts of the Chaco mob, a secret society of mad-as-hell women, and Tuwa with his band of orphans to try and make their world right again.

Long Description

Tuwa wants little more than to crush the man, Pók, who killed his mother and grandfather and subjects his Anasazi Indian society to a form of terrorism that ultimately hastens its mysterious collapse four hundred years before Europeans arrived in North America.

He can hope to do it only with the help of a group of orphans hardened by their work as burden-bearers and bodyguards for a long-distance trader, and a secret society of women led by an albino who lurks in the shadow of the seat of power.

Along the way, Tuwa discovers his childhood sweetheart, Chumana, is the masked fortuneteller for the power brokers, and Pók, who is connected to his past almost more deeply than he can bear, tried to murder him at birth because his small size made him “less than nothing.”

Tuwa stands at the boundary of his homeland angry, determined, and frightened. The man he must face, Pók, is surrounded by hundreds of well-trained warriors at his command, and resides in a castle-like fortress of stone now known as Pueblo Bonito, deep in Chaco Canyon, northwestern New Mexico.

Three years before, to appease the spirit of the mysterious supernova star, so bright it could be seen during the day, Pók, with the blessing of the most prominent leaders, sacrifices hundreds of people. These include Tuwa’s beloved grandfather, the chief sky watcher, his childhood sweetheart, Chumana, and the albino woman who raised him. A long-distance trader essentially kidnaps him and other orphans to be burden bearers and bodyguards, and after a three-year march to the far south, Tuwa returns a young man leading a dozen hardened orphans. They resolve to exact as much vengeance as possible.

If you enjoy this book, you may also like “The Witchery of Flutes: Forty-seven short dramas of Anasazi daily life,” by Jeff Posey.

Includes excerpts from two novels by Jeff Posey, “Anasazi Runner: a novel of identity and speed,” available now, and “The G.O.D. Journal,” available Spring 2012.

Categories

Fiction>Historical
Fiction>Westerns
Fiction>Thrillers
Fiction>Suspense
Travel>United States>West/Mountain (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NM, UT, WY)
Fiction>Historical>Western & American Frontier
Fiction>Historical>USA

Search Terms

Anasazi, Native American, Pueblo, Chaco Canyon, Crab Nebula, Supernova of 1054, Mesa Verde

RSS (Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis)

Tuwa watched the foreigners who ruled Chaco Canyon butcher and eat his grandfather and he returned three years later bent on revenge.

Note on Names and Words

Not all of them. Just a few. I spent way to much time rabbit-trailing all this. No reason for you to go along for much of that ride.

Source is Hopi Dictionary/Hopiikwa Lavaytutuveni: A Hopi-English Dictionary of the Third Mesa Dialect, by Kenneth C. Hill, Ekkehart Malotki, Mary E. Black, and The Hopi Dictionary Project, unless otherwise noted.

In alphabetical order.

Bluestone
Turquoise.

Center Place Canyon
Today’s Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico.

Choovio
From chöövio, which means “antelope.”

Chumana
From Chu’mana, which means “snake maiden.”

Corn Beer
Did the Anasazi really have corn beer? I don’t know. Archaeology isn’t very good at finding evidence of ancient beer. But don’t you know that, sooner or later, some Anasazi person would have stumbled upon a mash of corn that would ferment and make alcohol? In the course of human history, that seems both common and inevitable.

The Fat Man
I don’t know if there really could have been a fat man in the Anasazi culture, which was so obviously calorie-starved. But if there were, it would almost certainly be among the top elite, perhaps the one who controlled the black market.

Hakidonmuya
From Hakitonmuya, which means “leap month,” the month they insert into the calendar to adjust it as needed. In the book, I have it mean “time of waiting for the full moon.” I obviously took some liberty with the meaning on this one.

Ihu
From the Hopi word for “coyote,” ihu. It also means “gullible fool.”

Kopavi
From Ko’pavi,which means “the open door at the crown of the head.”

Lightfoot
Not derived from anything. I just made it up. Seemed right for the kid.

Long-Haired Star
The long-haired star that appears every seventy-six years is known to us as Halley’s Comet.

Másaw
The Hopi spirit-being that is the lord and caretaker of the Third World of the Hopi (from Book of the Hopi, by Frank Waters). But he became too self-important, and the Creator demoted him to being the deity of death and the underworld in the Fourth World.

Natwani
From the Hopi word spelled the same that means “practices related to the continued renewal or rejuvenation of life, such as planting, ritual obligations, hunting and gathering.”

Nuva
Snow.

Peelay
Derived from his namesake, the famous Anasazi flute player, Kokopelli.

The Pochtéca
As explained in Wikipedia, “A pochtecatl (plural pochteca) was a professional long-distance traveling merchant in the Aztec Empire.” I’ve abused the word a bit by making it into a singular pronoun. While there’s no conclusive evidence that such a traveling merchant class existed in the world of the Anasazi, there’s plenty of evidence that long-distance trade took place. (See In Search of the Old Ones, by David Roberts, for easy-to-read illumination on the pochtecan-style trading class.) The evidence for long-distance trade is overwhelming, from Pacific Ocean coastal seashells to colorful jungle-bird feathers (macaws in particular; live birds were even kept in places) and wonderful tiny copper bells smelted and formed in Central America — where the people of the jungles, Toltec and Mayan, built massive pyramids to their gods. The Anasazi, in return, provided finely worked turquoise in trade.

Pokunyesva (Pók)
Pokunyesva means “man before altar” according to the Book of the Hopi, by Frank Waters; in my usage, often shortened or changed by those who hate him to something similar to “pokkwita,” which is dog excrement.

Pointed Teeth
A few skulls with teeth in place have been recovered in Anasazi ruins that show, as the archaeologist put it, “dental transfiguration.” That means they’ve been filed to a point. It’s a practice much more common to the south among the Maya and Toltec cultures. (See especially Man Corn, by Christy G. and Jacqueline A. Turner — note that this book is not for the faint of heart.) Also note that some tribes in Africa still practice this technique.

Ráana
From raana, which means “bullfrog.”

The Six Directions
It’s a subtle thing, but on rare occasion, in the oldest of oral stories that could plausibly contain tendrils of those from the Anasazi a thousand years ago, six directions are mentioned. We have north and south, around which the earth spins (although they would not have interpreted it that way, they would still have been able to precisely determine it — though not by the North Star, because due to the wobbling of the earth, what we now call the North Star was several moon widths away from its current apparent position). Then we have the directions of sunrise and sunset in the winter and in summer, which gives four more directions. That’s six total. But there’s also the possibility that the directions could include up and down.

String Records
While there is no evidence to my knowledge that the Anasazi used such strings, ancient cultures in Central and South America certainly did so, particularly the Inca. It’s worth noting that early Spanish-Catholic missionaries burned enormous piles of these strings, making it as if a long line of these ancient people had never lived, which breaks my heart.

Sowi
From Sowi’yngwa, which means “deer.”

Sweet Corn Cakes
Enzymes in saliva truly do render the starches in cornmeal into sugars that many Native American cultures use to render a sweet batter. Other than honey, it may have been the only experience the Anasazi had with sweetness.

Tokpelamongwi (Grandfather)
Tokpelamongwi is sky chief (“tokpela”sky; “mongwi” chief).

Tootsa
From tòotsa, which means “hummingbird.”

Tuwa
Many meanings in Hopi, including “find, locate, discover,” “perceive,” and “recover, get back what was lost.”

Village of the Twins

The ancient village below the twin cliffs or spires at Chimney Rock Archaeological Area, twenty miles west of Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

Wooti
From wuyòoti, which means “get old.”

Author’s Note: The Genesis of the Story

Why did I write a novel about these people, when I’m so obviously not one, even a distant descendant?

Because I saw a ghost. Sort of. I’m not a guy who sees ghosts, so I tend to demean what happened, but taking a tour through the Chimney Rock Archaeological Area with my son, a boy ran across the trail in front of us. I put my arm out to stop my son from colliding with him. The boy ran to the cliff’s edge and vaulted over one-handed, and I hurried to see. Below the rock where he placed his hand lay a landing place, a narrow shelf padded thick with Ponderosa pine needles, the steep slope of forest plunging off below that. I nodded. Of course boys would do that.

It left me stunned as if from a head injury. I couldn’t stop thinking about that boy. What if scenarios kept playing in my head. But the one that played the most went like this: What if this boy changed everything about Anasazi society for just a little while? What if the Crab Nebula Supernova of 1054 set off a riot of violence, and this boy somehow stopped it?

Then I wrote it while learning how to write a novel. I’d been a short-story guy all my life. Novels? Too long. Just padded short stories.

Wrong. Of course. Long-form storytelling is not something you learn to do well quickly. Hence my goal: Write ten novels as quickly as I can to learn the craft. As I write this, I’m in final production with my third novel, and about to begin working on the first draft of number four. Less Than Nothing was number one.

Thank you for starting the progression with me.

Quotations

“You are less than nothing,” he said. —Pók to newborn Tuwa

“If you cannot give me a better son than this,” he said, “then there is no use for you in this world.”  —Pók

“The spirits that guide those who rule there are an affront to all that is right, all that is holy, all that my forefathers believed in. I cannot willingly go into this place. And yet I will. I will go with you. But not for your trade. I go for one reason and one reason only. Revenge. I go only for revenge.” —Tuwa to The Pochtéca

“If you have too much to live for, you may not be willing to take the ultimate risk. It could make us fail.” —Tuwa to Choovio

Themes & Symbolism

Revenge: You butcher and eat my grandfather, and I’d come after you, too.

About Author

Jeff Posey has a geology degree and worked as a petroleum geologist before he discovered the world of words. Since then, he’s been city editor of a metropolitan magazine, fiction editor for a national magazine, and then stumbled on his own ignorance: about business. So he earned an MBA, thinking that would solve everything. It didn’t. Now, after being laid off from corporate America too many times to be comfortable, he writes short stories and novels, most of them inspired by his nearly two decades of research and fascination with ancient Southwest cultures (mainly the good ol’ Anasazi). You’ll see allusions to the ancient ones in all of his work, which he thinks is rather like a huge meta-novel in progress.