Crisscross Moon - 13. Chapter 13

13.

"Well, somehow..." he said slowly. "Somehow, the princess knew to swim in the magic stream - I don't know how," he added quickly, hands raised, almost in surrender. "But that's how she escaped and was reunited with the warrior. That's how they lived happily ever after."

"She didn't care about her family? And all the other cliff dwellers?"

Cory shook his head.

"That's hard to believe."

He agreed. "It's just a story... a legend."

"But one you've thought about all these years?"

"Well, it's hard to forget a 1000 people starving in a cave. I mean, whole families... kids... All sealed in."

"Why do people keep telling this story?"

"Maybe they don't... at least, not outside our family. Maybe they realize it's disgusting and stop... But the warrior is our ancestor. It's our legend. And... in some ways... In a lot of ways when you first hear this as a six-or-eight-year-old, it's a really neat story."

I was silent for a moment. "If you forget the massacre."

"I said I never did."

"No."

"I never could."

"But you've always tried to it figure out?"

He hesitated. "I wanted to be exonerated, actually... Me and the handsome warrior. I didn't want all my relatives to be the bad guys..."

I laughed at that. It was easy to understand that.

"And ever since I was old enough," he went on, "I've used the subject for term papers and reports... Mainly for the chance to do more research..."

"And that's how you know so much?"

"Or so little..."

"Then how does my sister fit in this?"

When I said that, Cory just laughed. We hadn't mentioned Sallie before, though there were pictures of her all over the house.

"I promised I wouldn't mention Sallie," Cory admitted.

"How could you think I wouldn't know?"

He shrugged. "Well, there's no real connection between Sallie and the legend... Or even with my being here... It's just... well, when I started asking her about the caves... when I met her and realized she was from this part of the country... a part I'd always heard about and read about but had never actually seen... When I started asking her questions, and she said she knew about a cave that sounded like the one I meant... When I asked if she could show it to me, she said she couldn't get away. But she told me that her brother - you - knew the area as well as she did... Only she warned me never to mention her. Because she said she was always doing dumb things like setting you up with guys who might get you out of Hogbutt, New Mexico."

I had to laugh at that because it sounded just like Sallie. Especially the Hogbutt part, though I think Cory was being polite. And if it didn't begin to clear up the mystery of the Indian princess, at least it explained the smaller one about Sallie.

"What else did she say?" I asked. "About me?"

"Nothing much."

Cory followed that with a shrug, and I could tell he was lying.

"OK," he admitted. "She told me you were brighter than she was... and hot. She used that word - don't blame me.. And she said you were wasting your time, hiding out, because you'd had a bad experience teaching."

"Bad experience teaching" didn't begin to cover my meltdown with the middle school kids. But it would do for Cory. I'd been stupidly optimistic, and it had all gone very wrong, very quickly. Still, even my most boring days in the gas station was better than the five seconds of actual teaching I managed to do in my three month battle with the eighth grade boys.

"Thanks for telling me about Sallie," I told Cory. "And you're right, she's not important. But I've been curious about her since this morning."

"She'd probably say 'hi' if she knew you knew."

"We write all the time."

"She's really great."

"I know... but she's not why you're here. So how does this story end?"

Cory shrugged again. "I told you. The good cliff dwellers get sealed in by the wicked Apaches. The Indian princess escapes miraculously through the magic stream. And there's wanton sex forever more."

"Except for the cliff dwellers"

"Oh, yeah... no sex for them."

I ignored that.

"So what are you looking for?" I asked.

"It's what I'm not looking for," he insisted. "It's what I don't want to find... The bodies... Or the skeletons."

"Where do you think they went?"

"I don't even want them to exist. I want to discover something else... That the cliff dwellers never died. That they simply migrated... went off somewhere happily, to better farmlands."

"No one's ever been sure of that..."

"I know... I've read plenty about that... probably too much. But what I've always been afraid of is this story I know is less a legend than oral history. That the cliff dwellers really did go into a cave one day and never came out. And that I'm the only one who's ever connected that part of their history with this legend."

"Because your family's the only ones who told it?"

"Well, there weren't a lot of other survivors."

I thought about that. "Who else?"

Cory looked glum. "That's just it. There was only the handsome warrior and his tribe. The murderers."

"They were bragging?"

Cory was silent.

"That does make them rats."

"Something much worse."

"And they're your ancestors."

Cory frowned. He seemed really unhappy. But I simply had to laugh.

"I can see where that might haunt you for 20 years," I said.

Cory frowned again at that, so I quickly added, "I'm sorry."

"Why?"

"For you being tormented all that time when you should just have been growing up."

He seemed to consider that. "I wasn't tormented," he said quietly. "I have a great family... my dad and brothers... My cousins and aunts... Uncles... grandparents... I came out fine... At least, so far."

For a moment, we just looked at each other.

"And now it's time to go to bed," he announced.

"Yes," I agreed.

"I'll see you in the morning."

"Well, later..." I had to point out.

He smiled slightly. "Yeah."

"Good night."

"G'morning."

"Yeah."

And we went to sleep. And I didn't exactly dream about a 1000 cliff dwellers starving to death. But I woke up thinking about them.

(continued)