Cíbola Spring

Defiant and afraid Reyes walked away from Cíbola, the only home he had known. There was nothing to remember. It was better that way. He never understood why people were still there, after the endless wars, what could have been – had there been gold or greener fields. It was over for him. Tired of tales of want, the quest for title, to be somebody, to make meaning of scarcity– that was no quest - it had led to this day of hot sun and dusty gloom.

It was a walk of freedom, not from shackles that time and birth places on you but from custom, the acceptance of fate that others endow on the innocent mind. It was flight from safety of heritage, where flying in that feathery group of elders keeps the blood and direction the same and where uniformity in creed and color is paramount.

Declared a castaway and victim of heresy, he was walking on new ground, a new order, seeking refuge within the limits of sanity. He had accepted the target of learning but he wasn’t sure he could tell the difference between wisdom and prattle. The goal was to discover that knowledge of facts and strings of eventful steps that lead to newness, to solving problems, to probing the unknown, or the reordering of things for insight. That was the promise, articulated convincingly by so many of his high school mentors, whether or not they had found what their youthful dreams had sought.

There was this fear, slowly melting his feet as he walked, that he, an interloper, would be caught and sent back. It would be declared a mistake; his admission to the school would be re-assessed and declared invalid. Send him back! The words felt real as thorns - back to desert land with Spanish names where they fear devil worship and nightly beasts of self-doubt and fateful death!

It was the nightmare of sunbaked poverty, of having to visit the past again and again, the land now depleted, the debts of lineage piled up with no plan of escape. He had been born midst the glory old men tell, of a past that never happened, a tale to overlook the mottled skin, bristly hair and droop in spirit that failure endows. Reyes knew the Cíbola survivors who live listlessly in mud huts, trailer parks and pressboard shacks, accepting the lies that keep them there.

They look at him as another generation, another hopeful link in search of Cíbola’s treasure where the seed can finally yield the bounty that kings were promised, said kings whose names now mistaken for those of saints. Our blood is in you, they would say, although your name is not within the law of king and church. You are still our son if you find the gold, gain a title and ask for the right to walk among us and speak our tongue.

Survival was not enough. He was to promote and believe in a culture of ancient dogma, to live in the separate world, celebrating the colony that never bloomed, pretending that the aim of Cíbola was still alive, that there was hope things would work out in the end and lost riches in the new land would be found. The journey to the desert valley with inspiring mountain views and a miraculous river had been over; but after three and half centuries the flame was still alive, despite the dust storms, biting winters and relentless summer sun.

The church was still the same, holding captive the hope for a magic child, a better harvest, and a life filled with song and peace. And the language of psalms had transcended time, recognizable, written, spoken, and still holy, while corrupted by distance and indigenous sounds for it linked him and others to an ancient world, orphans as they were, waiting for relatives that never came. The crops and animals had followed and struggled in the new land, alive for generations despite the thin air and windswept days. But now, with tired soil and dwindling streams, the lambs now gone, this generation was being crowded out, still untrained for a mechanized age under an American flag. Only English is spoken here.

Los indios had preceded his kind and they had tried to live together, accommodating for the differences, the fires of enmity calmed down but not conceding that both had become the same under the sun, drinking from the same well and taking from a shared but stingy land. The blood of each side became thinner, the hair straighter as the beards receded. The difference was still there, the eyes and skin telling them apart. The chants were taught in sacred rooms; they learned their prayers in church and recited secrets with beads in front of roughened images, too crude for art but hewn of faith and form of divinity.

The time had come, far and away from ocean and displaced from kings and ancient lands, to take the vow of a foster father land, ready to enter a household which was reluctant in its welcome. At least for Reyes, it was the day to take leave of the valley and its search for nobility, becoming then a refugee in the occupied colony. He was to live with those who wore the badge of American dominion, the heirs of Mayflower religion and legacy of tobacco commerce, those who recognized ownership only through selfish power.

But could he learn from them and feast on clues that led from a murky past to an open future that could offer livelihood and safety? Could he cross the bar and pass undetected at least some of the time? No one from San Isidro had done it before. Language was the key to entering the new kingdom. It was the first move, the crucial step to mixing among the crowds, parroting utterances that passed the test, the speech without an accent, his gestures revealing no allegiance to an alien region or papal God. English words held the secret passage, the code for concealing his fear of falling away from the vanquished land.

¿Qué idea tienes? No eres nadie. Quien te va ayudar? Quesque el mundo está por acá.(in italics)