Crisscross Moon - 11. Chapter 11

11.

"And it did give me dreams when I was a kid. But they weren't bad. They were more like fantasies. The kind of things you think about when you should be doing better stuff... homework. Though there are parts I never forget."

"Like?" I didn't mean to ask, and Cory looked at me like I was really intruding. "Sorry," I quickly added. "It's not important." Though I kind of knew he'd tell me if he wanted. While I waited, I tried to imagine Cory as a kid. A little dark-haired farm boy in Minnesota, dreaming about caves and cliff dwellers.

He might have called them Indians. So many people did, no matter how carefully they try not to. Though specifically saying cliff dwellers, or Mogollon, is easier than saying Native Americans.

"My dad first told me the story," Cory eventually went on. "Told the four of us... my brothers and me. Then we told each other... Getting things wrong... Making things up when we couldn't remember... Leaving out parts we didn't understand... But no one ever left out the murders."

"Murders?"

"Well, we called it The Massacre, but it was closer to murder... genocide, really." When I said nothing, Cory added, "I warned you it was bad."

"What kind of massacre?"

"1000 people-or-so." He said it evenly. "Maybe more... all the cliff dwellers. They were sealed inside the cave."

"Wow."

"It always reminded me of the gas chambers."

He didn't have to explain that.

"And this is a terrible conversation to be having in the middle of the night," he quickly went on. "I know all this stuff... It's nothing new... nothing shocking. But it is for you."

He seemed to be asking me a question.

"I never heard about it," I said honestly.

"I didn't mean to scare you..."

"You haven't."

"I'll tell you some other time..."

Though it seemed he wanted to talk

"Go on," I said, sitting on the couch. "I don't have bad dreams... not that easily. And there's no point in making you wait."

He almost seemed relieved but still hesitated, as if waiting for my approval. I nodded, though it was another moment before he began.

"OK... My brother Dan first told me this... Danny... he's the oldest. I said my father told us, but Dan had to hear it from Dad first. None of our other relatives would tell Danny without Dad's permission."

That made it sound scarier. "It's a family story?" I asked.

Cory nodded. "Growing up, I never heard it anywhere else. But we were in Minnesota, and it's about here, so why would I? Later, I found pieces of it on the Internet... as I've said. But it's like the creation myths... every version is different." He hesitated again. "The other reason my friends didn't know is they weren't one-eighth Apache."

"Apache?"

"Yeah... my brothers and I and any of our cousins our age..."

I studied Cory. He was an ordinary, dark-haired, Midwestern-looking guy - the kind who models sweaters in family clothes catalogues. The most distinguishing thing about his face was that it almost totally lacked heritage.

He seemed to know what I was thinking. "You can't see it, can you?" He almost laughed. "There's too much homogenized Scandinavian... Swedish... Norwegian... It wipes out everything else."

"You look like someone on TV..."

"Sound like someone, too... We all do... my bland family." He laughed again. "But you're also a mix, too. You have Mogollon blood. And I can't see any of that."

"It's even more diluted than yours," I told him. "I'm not close to an eighth... And it only comes down my mother's side. The women on that side always married outside the family."

"'Family' meaning..."

"Yeah."

He grinned. "Well, I'm an eighth... My great-grandfather came straight from the reservation... And when you look at his old pictures, he seems pretty pure."

"When was this?"

"The 1920s... earlier. He fought in World War I, met my great-grandmother there, then followed her home to Minnesota.... to a farm almost in Canada. And he stayed there, despite The Cold."

He said the last part in a much deeper voice. Then he'd laughed.

"We really call it The Goddam Cold." Again, he'd used the deep voice. "My family always blames my great-grandfather for taking us from warm, sunny New Mexico and stranding us on a glacier."

"You could've left," I suggested.

"Most of us have... I wasn't even raised on the farm. Only my mother's family... who are something like tenth-generation frozen Norwegian... actually like the place."

I laughed with him, though we seemed to be getting further from his story. For a moment, I wondered if he was doing that purposely. Maybe he'd decided not to tell me.

He seemed to sense that. "I can tell stories all night," he suddenly admitted. "My family's full of them. One story leads to another, and we never really get the first one fully told."

I waited for him to go on.

"You honestly want to hear?" he asked.

I nodded.

"OK... But remember, this was originally from my brother. Then from my father, after we bugged him for all the details. We pestered my grandma, too - because it's from her side of the family. But she didn't like telling it much. In fact, I think one of my great-uncles first told Dad."

I knew, eventually, Cory would get back to his point.

"Anyway, here's what I know." He took a deep breath. "It starts innocently enough, with a young Apache warrior. Probably pretty good-looking... by whatever standards they used a 1000 years ago."

He was wandering again. "This was the days of the cliff dwellers?" I asked, to help focus him.

"That would be the time. You talked about a village... with thatched huts and just a couple of families... But I've always thought this was about the cliff dwellers."

"A much larger group."

He nodded.

"In any case, this young warrior was sent to spy on the cliff dwellers. He wasn't alone. He was part of a group of warriors his age... a small group..."

He stopped for a moment.

"That makes them sound romantic, doesn't it? Like adventurous pirates. You can really distance yourself from your ancestors when they turn out to be rats."

I only smiled, hoping he'd stay on track

"But that's the way the story's always been told," he went on. "That this was a romance... That this warrior was one of our ancestors... an important one... Because he fell in love with the Indian princess... the cliff dwellers' chief's daughter. That was pretty big."

"The Indian princess?"

"Yeah." He grinned. "Cool, right?"

I didn't want to distract him with questions.

"Of course, who knows how he met her or got her alone," he went on. "No one ever mentioned that part. But the Indian princess and the young warrior met, and they fell in love, and the warrior and his friends were spying on the cliff dwellers when another group of Indians attacked."

"Attacked the cliff dwellers?"

"Yeah."

"They didn't see the spying warriors?"

"Guess not."

"And your warriors didn't do anything?"

"What could they?"

He seemed to be distancing himself again.

"I mean, they were just a small group. In the story, the other group's always much larger... and stronger. And our warriors were young. The others had more experience. Ours were just sent to spy, to see what they could see. It was kind of a test. They weren't supposed to get in trouble."

Cory seemed about as far from his ancestors as he possibly could get. It made me wonder how bad the massacre would get.

(continued)