Settlement

From the Origins & Namings section of Technicians of the Sacred we have a list of Aztec Definitions:

A Mountain

High, pointed; pointed on top, pointed at the summit, towering; wide, cylindrical, round; a round mountain, low, low-ridged; rocky, with many rocks; craggy with many crags; rough with rocks; of earth, with trees, grassy; with herbs; with shrubs; with water; dry; white; jagged; with a sloping plain, with gorges, with caves; precipitous, having gorges; canyon land, precipitous land with boulders.

I climb the mountain; I scale the mountain. I live on the mountain. I am born on the mountain. No one becomes a mountain - no one turns himself into a mountain. The mountain crumbles. 

Another Mountain

It is wooded; it spreads green

Forest

It is a place of verdure, of fresh green; of wind - windy places, in wind, windy; a place of cold: it becomes cold; there is much frost; it is a place which freezes. It is a place from which misery comes, where it exists; a place where there is affliction - a place of affliction, of lamentation, a place of affliction, of weeping; a place where there is sadness, a place of compassion, of sighing; a place which arouses sorrow, which spreads misery.

There is no one; there are no people. It is desolate; it lies desolate. There is nothing edible. Misery abounds, misery emerges, misery spreads. There is no joy, no pleasure. It lies sprouting; herbs lie sprouting; nothing lies emerging; the earth is pressed down. All die of thirst. The grasses lie sprouting. Nothing lies cast about. There is hunger; all hunger. It is the home of hunger; there is death from hunger. All die of cold; there is freezing; there is trembling; there is the clattering, the chattering of teeth. There are cramps, the stiffening of the body, the constant stiffening, the stretching out prone.

There is fright, there is constant fright. One is devoured; one is slain by stealth; one is abused; one is brutally put to death; one is tormented. Misery abounds. There is calm, constant calm, continuing calm. 

Secret Road

Its name is secret road, the one which few people know, which not all people are aware of, which few people go along. It is good, fine; a good place, a fine place. It is where one is harmed, a place of harm. It is known as a safe place; it is a difficult place, a dangerous place. One is frightened. It is a place of fear

I take the secret road. I follow along. I encounter the secret road. He goes following along, he goes joining that which is bad, the corner, the darkness, the secret road. He goes to seek, to find, that which is bad. 

He stayed the night with a friend in Port of Spain. They went to a club and looked at girls. They drank vodka in a roped area. Some kind of birthday party. People promising to learn Kung Fu. Tomorrow, they said. I’ll start learning it tomorrow. 

Tourists swelled the room. His friend disappeared with a British girl, six foot tall, wild titted, her face streaked with mascara, slurring marriage talk, adoration. Sherwin pushed his way out the front door into the street. It had rained and the cobblestones glowed in the lights from construction barricades stacked at the mouth of an open trench. A group of thieves waited for drunks along the banks of a canal. He walked the other way to a diner full of cops and prostitutes. He ate a plate of dobles and watched the whores smile. In the morning he hired a van to take him south to the Caroni Swamp. Protestors were marching on the federal banks and they were an hour getting out of the city. Tellers and guards locked in behind great steel gates. Militants in masks howled and beat the bars, rolled barrels of burning trash. Old women sat in the road with their eyes closed. 

1

At the Hotel el Rancho in Gallup the snow was coming down and to the east the cloud ceiling dropped down black on the horizon. We ate hamburgers in an empty dining room next to an empty dancehall. The waiter was a young Indian. He spoke Indian to the dishwasher and Spanish to everyone else. We asked him what he thought our chances were making it to Albuquerque. He said they could close the interstate but probably they wouldn’t. Probably it would be alright. 

My father looked at silver in the gift shop. Rings and bracelets. The attendant woman was old and had never married. She said as much. We bought nothing and went outside. In the truck the dog was shivering.

We drove east. The snow came down hard and then it came down harder. The sun set or appeared to set. Traffic at a crawl. Visibility at nothing. At Acoma we pulled off the highway and talked chances. The motels were filling up, the snow a foot and rising. We put gas in the tank and bought an ice scraper. 

We moved into the dark. Out of the dark came the wind and with the wind came sheets of snow burning in the headlamps. We rolled at barely over an idle. Two lanes and then one, the highway gone white and the shoulder washed away. Ice blowing sideways through the beams, vapor spools rolling off the frozen ground.

One by one cars spun out, were lost in the darkness and distance. Someone following too close tries to stop short or swerve, fishtails down the bank into an arroyo, hazards tocking, a wife holding her nose, Christmas presents sprayed over the backseat, the husband starting to assess, always assessing, the heater already sputtering.

At Sky City they shut the highway and moved everyone off. A cop directed traffic from the offramp into a roundabout. I put down my window.

Where do you want us to go?

Just keep moving, he said. You’re obstructing. 

But where are we going?

The gas station. 

I got back in line. Hundreds of cars streaming into a slush lot between a truckstop and the Sky City Casino and Hotel. My father went to see about a room. I let the dog down to sniff but she wanted none of it and jumped back in the truck. I smoked a cigarette and watched the cars come on and on, families struck dumb, blinking in the casino light. Men stretching in the drifts urinated openly on their hands.

My father came back to say that there were no rooms. They were giving people blankets and putting them up in the bingo hall but they had run out of blankets. 

I went through the lobby to have a look. Children asleep in chairs or playing fantasy adventure games on portable electronic devices. Women curled on the floor, staring at the carpet. Old men wandering off to play the slots. A mobile smartphone device plugged into every available outlet.

We sat in the truck and talked chances. We did not like the bingo hall and we did not like sleeping in the truck but worst case was we got stuck and slept in the truck. We had plenty of gas.

I circled the lot and turned out to try to get back on the freeway. A patrolman waved me down and yelled for us to not get back on, that this was the end of the line. We asked about another road and he pointed to an orange truck. 

He’s gonna try to find Route 66 but I can’t recommend you follow him. You can follow him but I can’t recommend you follow him. 

I said I understood. We followed the orange truck down a rutted cow path in the utter black until we came to Route 66. 

If he goes left we’re going right, said my father.

The orange truck turned left and was gone in the dark. We turned right and kept on east where the road ran parallel with Interstate 40. 

All the little houses set back in the hills. Cars sunk in heaves of white. The silence and the ratcheting dark. We stopped at a bar to ask directions, predict outcomes. A sign said, GRAB SOME. A Buick parked by the front door buried up to the windows. Inside the bartender sat at a table playing solitaire smoking a long cigarette. The television showed a program where the police hunt for fugitives in Texas or Florida. 

My father asked if Route 66 ever got back to Interstate 40. 

The bartender shook her head. 

No road does.

We drove on. We passed a church lit from the inside and decided to remember it in case it came to that. After an hour we came to a turnoff for the interstate. There was no highway patrol and from the overpass I could see the the interstate deserted in both directions. I dropped down the onramp and kept going. 

For hours we saw no one. No thing moved. Cars lost off the road on both sides. Semis jackknifed, trailers twisted, splintered off the chassis. I drove with my face against the windshield, my father watching for the edge of the blacktop, keeping me centered, calling out left or right. In the flurries I saw things moving that were not there. Animals there were not there. Dogs and bears. I shook my face.

Whenever the wipers froze I stopped and my father swung out to break the ice off the blades. After that we kept going. When the blades froze again he broke off the ice again. That was how it went.

Occasionally there were lights in the distance. A wrecker on some dark errand. A circle of police cars huddled up, patrolmen pacing outside. As we passed, one of the pursuit cars left out from the group and pulled in front of us, lights on full bright, accelerating and holding. We followed him for ten miles before he turned off. At the top of the exit we stopped next to him and he came over to talk. 

Why did you get off? he said.

I was following you. 

Where you going? 

Albuquerque. 

Then keep going. But watch the drop on this side. That’s what happened to him.

I let out the brake and crept down the slope and saw where a semi had gotten caught across the ramp, the cab hanging off the road and the trailer blocking most of both lanes. As I pulled around another pursuit car went by with his lights on. He tried to stop and couldn’t and tumbled off spraying into the dark. I did not see him again. We drove on.

Little by little the road came back, the track came back, the lines came back. Little by little we saw the desert again.

Just before Albuquerque there was a billboard for a father and son casino lounge act. Hurricane Al and Hurricane Al Jr. Indians both. Senior holding a guitar and junior wearing an eye patch. We drove down the mountain into Albuquerque, the only car moving in any direction. 

That night in Santa Fe I thought I would dream of the snow and the shapes I saw moving in it but I did not dream of it and I did not dream of anything. On the table by my bed a pair of sparrow wings, a stick of sandalwood. 

Some days later I returned to another part of the country where it does not snow. I returned to my cottage by the ocean and I returned to my porch to sit and to return. Still I did not dream of the snow or the things that moved in it. 

After the new year I returned to the gym. A four hundred pound man wearing a Starbucks uniform worked the handcrank machine. On the television there was an important notice that revealed Katie and Russell were ending their marriage. On another television it was revealed that a husband and wife had posted photos of their children bound in duct tape to a popular social networking website. A third television played a news broadcast that revealed an eighteen year old widowed mother had shot and killed an intruder in her Texas home. In front of the cameras she rocked an infant bottlefed. 

I knew the man I killed, she said. I knew him from the rodeos. He used to watch me do the barrel racing. 

Later it was revealed why she was a widow. That her husband had died of cancer on Christmas.

I walked the aisles and watched the women on the treadmills. The secret of the world lies in these murders.

Now a cold front has come off the ocean. At dark and at dawn the stars are the same stars. I think about the snow in the mountains. How it was there and how we came through the dark into the bright lights of the city. How we were alone when we did it and how the dog slept the whole way. How my father’s hands looked through the glass when he got out to break the ice from the wiper blades. 

I lie down to dream but I do not dream. Nextdoor I hear the girls talking in their kitchen. 

I know how to make my life better, says one.

How? says the other.

Every time I have a negative thought I replace it with a positive one.

Yes. I have a book that says that. It says that works. That it makes you better.

It does. It really does.

In these murders the secret of the world. 

I lie down to dream but I do not dream. At work a stranger asks me when I’m going away.

You mean, when do I get off work?

No, he says. When are you leaving?

Am I leaving?

I thought you were, he says. I thought you were going away. 

Am I? Maybe I am. 

I think you are, he says. I think that’s what I heard. 

The televisions. The President saying things. Iowa. Women on treadmills. Girls on balconies. The paint on the cars. The secret of the world in these murders.

I lie down to dream and finally I dream. This is what I dream:

In the beginning water went they say. Land was not they say. Grizzlies were not they say. Leopards were not they say. Stars were not they say. In the beginning only water they say. It was very dark they say. 

Breakfast

This morning at breakfast a man crosseyed in a Yankees camp spoke of cinema from the kitchen. 

That movie I saw, he said. Don’t go see it. 

What did you see? someone said. 

I saw that detective movie. The one with the Iron Man. Don’t go see it. Don’t even go. 

No good?

The crosseyed man shook his head. Teardrops tattooed at the corner of his eye.

Someone asked if he’d seen the first detective movie. 

Yeah, he said. I saw it.

Did you like it?

I don’t know. I can’t remember. 

Down the row of tables a man with a very expensive watch read an old edition of A Moveable Feast. The owner and her friends made a crossword. A man showed a woman the best trails to take on a certain mountain on a windy day. A child used a laptop to look at pictures of imaginary animals. 

In the courtyard the rain on the black steel tables. The rain on the banana trees, the leaves fat and greasy. 

A boy came in shaking his slicker. Soon it was revealed he used to have long hair but had recently cut it short. Everyone spoke to him and touched his ears. 

At the counter a bald man was helping the chef frost a birthday cake. He asked the boy if his girlfriend still liked him.

It’s interesting, said the boy. 

It was revealed that some of the people had been to a party on a boat the night before. The party had featured a game involving a model train set. Finding hidden things within the model. A red boathouse. A snowman with a missing arm. A house with a blue door. 

I ate my blueberry pancakes. The child found photos of animals that did not exist. 

When I left outside the man with the very expensive watch was reading under an umbrella in the courtyard. I had not seen him leave the cafe and now a retriever in a red bandana slouched at his feet. 

I told him he had at least two good things in his life. Hemingway and that dog. 

The man smiled and held out his hand. I shook it. 

I got her in Nicaragua, he said. They don’t treat dogs right down there. 

I said it looked like her life was alright now.

Sure, said the man with the expensive watch. When my wife got a hold of her it was all spa treatments and aromatherapy. Now I think if she saw Nicaragua she’d turn right around and get back on the plane. 

It was Saturday. Day of days. The ocean gray. The hotels wet and the patios empty. A garbage man in a reflective vest leaned on a garbage can reading a beauty magazine he’d pulled from the trash. The pages were glossy and wet and he turned them without pause. He turned the pages and did not look up as I went on by.

Beer spoke of his father. How it had been in older days when Arizona was still dust and empty tracts and roads scraped through the ruins of Anasazi pueblos. All was construction. Resorts and ranches grew up out of the desert ahead of the city. Indians delivered water in dromedary sacks on carts muledrawn to feed fields of cotton. Prospectors raked the red cliffs and foothills for copper. The soil full of gold and dinosaur bones. Endless citrus. Mexicans. Transit land. Front yards on the frontier.

When work started on the dam on the Nevada border Beer’s father went north. There by the river men built towns of rags frozen in winter. They rode on machines and wore coats lined with coal. By day the rock and the steam and by night the freeze. Men died outright and were catalogued by height and weight, lumbered up on trucks and shipped back south. The machines picked on. Beer’s father gambled by firelight with the survivors. A gypsy read his future in a toss of pistachio shells. 

He quit the dam and returned home to find his wife pregnant. He got work painting flagpoles. Drive here, drive there, said Beer. Shimmy out over a ledge a dozen stories up, paint the flagpole, shimmy back. On long trips he slept on the soft shoulder in the trunk of his car with a boot propped under the latch. One night a highway patrolman tipped open the lid with his service revolver crossed over his flashlight. Beer’s father felt the beam shaking across his eyes. When he sat up the patrolman screamed, did a spin in the dirt and came back holding his hat.

I thought you were dead, he said. I thought I was looking at a corpse. 

Half a year later Paul Beer was born. At his first haircut the barber was drunk and cut off the top of his ear. His father had pulled the barber out of the bar to do the haircut. On slow days that was where you could find him. Young Beer held a towel to his head and felt himself bleed. Later he became a pilot and then later yet a man.