Welcome Back to Pie Town Read online

  WELCOME BACK TO

  PIE TOWN

  LYNNE HINTON

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to the women and men who serve our country and to their families and communities who welcome them home

  Epigraph

  With the zigzag lightning flung out on high on the ends of your wings, come to us soaring.

  With the rainbow hanging high on the ends of your wings, come to us soaring.

  With the near darkness made of the dark cloud, of the he-rain, of the dark mist and of the she-rain, come to us.

  With the darkness on the earth, come to us.

  With these I wish the foam floating on the flowing water over the roots of the great corn.

  I have made your sacrifice.

  —from the Navajo Night Chant, as translated by Washington Matthews

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  PART TWO

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  PART THREE

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  PART FOUR

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  PART FIVE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  RECIPES FROM WELCOME BACK TO PIE TOWN

  P.S.: Insights, Interviews & More . . .

  About the author

  About the book

  Read on

  Also by Lynne Hinton

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  The old man stopped and rested as he came near the top of Techado Mountain. The wind whipped around him as he took a few deep breaths, leaning on the walking stick he brought with him. He stood for only a few minutes, nodded, and continued moving up the narrow path. It was a difficult walk for him and one he wasn’t sure he would make many more times.

  When he finally arrived at the peak, he rested again and then headed to the center of the plateau. He glanced around at his surroundings, looked up at the sky. Then, using his stick, he drew a large circle around himself. When he finished he tapped his wooden stick, and a long narrow piece of metal fell from inside it. He leaned the metal pole beside his leg and dropped his walking stick outside the circle.

  He then bowed in the four directions, honoring the four sacred mountains that provided powers of protection and blessing to the Navajo people: Blanca to the east, Mount Taylor to the south, San Francisco Peaks to the west, and Hesperus to the north. He reached inside the sack he carried on his shoulder and pulled out a small leather bag of corn pollen. He held a handful of pollen in his fist, uncurled his fingers, and watched as his offering danced in the air all around him. He waited.

  The sky was dark, stars and moon hidden by the storm clouds of the early summer season. He felt the charge in the air and knew he had picked the right evening to prepare his herbs for the necessary properties of healing. He reached again into his shoulder bag and removed a bundle of leaves and pods and seeds tied in a small rectangular piece of cloth. He untied the cloth, opened it, and placed it on the ground. Then he drove the metal pole that had been inside his walking stick into the middle of the bundle of herbs and into the earth. He bowed once more, stepped outside the circle, picked up his cane, and headed behind an outcropping of large stones located at the northeastern edge of the mountain.

  He sat down, dropping the bag and walking stick by his side. He looked up and watched the movement of the clouds, the unsettled way the storm was pulling together and gaining strength. He studied the formations above his head, the direction of the wind, and thought of Sun Bearer, the father of Changing Woman’s twin sons. He remembered the story he had been told as a child, the story of the twins who killed Big God with supernatural weapons given to them by their father. He thought of how the twins defeated Big God and tossed away his head, which eventually became the famed Cabezon Peak, the mountain east of the San Mateo Mountains and north of the Cañoncito Navajo.

  He remembered his grandfather telling him that the twins, Monster Slayer and Born for Water, became faint and dizzy after defeating Big God, sick from the effects of war, the ghost of their nemesis, Big God, still clinging to them. The story goes that Kingbird and Chickadee aided their friend Changing Woman by shooting pine and spruce arrows over the twins and then treated them with herbs struck by the lightning from a storm.

  The old man smiled when he recalled his grandfather explaining that this was the first Enemy Way ceremony, the first ceremony used to cure a Navajo from the effects of war. He leaned back against the rock and thought of all the things his grandfather had taught him, the offerings needed for each blessing, the songs, the assigned times when the rituals were to be used. He had learned so much in his early life and in his many years as a diagnostician for his people. He was grateful for his lessons, for his role, for his place.

  He looked around and noticed the speed of the wind, the movement of the slender blades of grass beside him, the push and pull of a small piece of tumbleweed caught in the branches of a nearby piñon tree. He could smell the coming of rain. He could see the clouds tighten above him, and he felt the ground under him and knew the time had arrived. He stood up and could feel the charge all around him. He smiled. He had chosen the right evening. He waited as the electricity built up and was watching the top of the mountain just as a single crack of lightning discharged from the cloud above and hit the metal pole and then ran down until it hit the bundle he had placed in the center of the circle.

  He waited a few minutes, nodded his head in approval and acceptance, and then slowly walked over to retrieve both the bundle of herbs and the lightning rod. He replaced them all where they had been stored when he arrived on the mountain. Using his foot, he carefully erased the circle he had drawn, wanting to leave everything as it had been before he arrived, and bowed once more to the four directions, north, west, south, and then east. As he finished he turned once again to the south, his eyes falling upon the small village below him, and he felt a sudden shiver. The large bolt of lightning that would push the town into darkness had not yet fallen, but the old man could sense it would soon come.

  He reached into his sack again, pulled out the small bag of corn pollen, and emptied the contents in the direction he faced. He dropped his head and said a few words, a prayer to the gods, and turned to walk away, heading down the mountain and back across the desert to his home.

  The old medicine man hoped his blessing would protect the people in the small village below him. He hoped but could not promise that no harm from the lightning or the storm brewing around them would come to the people of Pie Town.
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br />   PART ONE

  ONE

  Everybody in Pie Town knew exactly where they were and what they were doing when the bolt of lightning struck the transformer at a substation near the edge of town, cutting off power for half of Catron County for more than two hours. It was late, about nine o’clock in the evening, and most everyone was home for the evening, and a few were in some stage of preparing for bed.

  Oris Whitsett was standing at the bathroom sink. He was shaving, something he liked to do at night after his shower. He found that the hot water, the steam, the clean way he felt, the freshness of a newly shaved face relaxed him and made it easier for him to fall asleep.

  Previously a person who enjoyed a morning shower and shave, he began this nightly ritual when Alice, his wife, got sick and came home from the hospital. He found that he had so much to do in the mornings getting her up and ready that he never had time until evening to think about himself and his own needs. She also seemed to appreciate his smooth face and his warm body when he would curl in bed around her at night before falling asleep. It became a part of his pattern of caregiving and intimacy, but even years after she had died, he found he liked a late night shower. He enjoyed an evening shave.

  He had a towel wrapped around his waist and another around his shoulders, and his face was covered in a white, thick, foamy cream. He was getting ready to place the razor just at the top of his cheek when the power went out. He waited. Oris was used to the flickering of lights that often happened in Catron County, New Mexico, during the seasons of spring and summer. High winds sometimes made for power surges in the area. Usually, there were only flickers, no real outages.

  He had noticed the signs of an evening storm earlier when he went over to visit his neighbor, Millie Watson, who had taken a serious fall a few weeks earlier and had just returned from the long-term care facility in town. Her daughter had come home with her, planning to stay a couple of weeks until Millie was able to take care of herself, and Oris had stopped over with two takeout enchilada dinners prepared especially for them by Fred and Bea at Pie Town Diner.

  He had stayed for only a short time, maybe twenty minutes, and was walking home about seven P.M. when he noticed the stirring of the wind and tight clouds bunching overhead. He considered then that he should take his shower and shave before it got dark, but then he had gotten home and turned on the television and become interested in some show about ghosts and haunted houses. Before he knew it, he had sat through two hours of programming, and when he finally got up to take his shower, he thought the storm had actually come and gone.

  Oris stood at the sink in darkness and wondered if he could shave himself without looking. With one hand he touched his face, and with the other he slowly pulled the razor down. It was harder than he expected, and after the second cut, his chin burning, he stopped, wiped his face clean with the wet cloth he found in the sink, and dried with the towel around his shoulders. He then tried to make his way from the bathroom to the den. He felt around for his favorite chair, sat down, and waited.

  He knew he had candles and a couple of lanterns, but for a few minutes, an hour even, he sat in darkness. He was a bit chilled, wearing only a towel, but except for the burning from the cuts on his face, he was not uncomfortable. He actually enjoyed the darkness. He closed his eyes and leaned back.

  He thought about the television show he had just watched. He thought about ghosts and haunted houses, and he thought about Alice and wondered if the clouds and the night winds and the storm might bring her back to him, wondered if this might be the thing she needed to return. He wondered if a cover of darkness could bring her to him, if she had been waiting for just this occasion to visit.

  It had been over a year since his last visit from his dead wife. Oris remembered how it felt when her presence was suddenly and completely gone after Alex, his great-grandson, passed away. And since that death, that horrible and grievous death, there had been no sign, no communication, no vision of his beloved, but he didn’t care. Every night he waited and he hoped. And even though he sat that night in complete darkness, his face burning from the blind shave, his body wrapped in a towel, he could not give up believing that the light, his light, might once again one day, one night, this night, come.

  TWO

  Roger and Malene had just gotten into bed, though it was early for them both to be getting ready for sleep. Roger had been up since four o’clock that morning, responding to a call from the FBI about a drug bust north of Datil, a small village just southeast of Pie Town. They had waited until the last minute to let the sheriff of Catron County know about the raid and request navigational assistance to an address somewhere close to Socorro County over on the Alamo Navajo land. They had called just after four o’clock and expected him to meet them on Highway 60 at the Broken Arrow Motel in Datil by four-thirty. When he arrived, they showed him the address and wanted him to drive them to the location via the most direct, and yet hidden, route.

  Roger knew the federal officer supervising the raid, having assisted him before in a couple of sting operations in Catron and Socorro Counties. He had never particularly cared for the man. He was brash and arrogant and usually ill prepared for the stings and busts he liked to organize. This one had been no different. The federal lawman had decided on a particular house and an alleged perpetrator based on a very unreliable informant. That was soon revealed when eight FBI cars and two DEA vans barreled down the driveway to a small ranch house just before sunrise and at least twenty officers surrounded it with guns raised and orders to fire on command, only to find out they were on the property of the new elementary school principal. Living alone and still in bed, sixty-four-year-old Maria Begay had to be taken to the hospital in Socorro because the raid had shocked and upset her to the point of a fairly significant heart attack.

  There were no drug dealers at that location, no drugs other than a few bottles of aspirin and stool softeners, and no apologies offered to the hospitalized school employee or to the sheriff, who had tried to explain to the federal officer before they sped up to Field’s Place, thirty-five miles north of Magdalena, that there were no drugs in the vicinity of the Alamo Navajo people. He had tried to explain that more than likely the officers were searching for the drug-running operation he had informed the bureau in Albuquerque about a couple of weeks earlier, an operation that he suspected had taken over one of the old sheep ranches south of Datil, near Old Horse Springs.

  Once all the commotion had taken place near Alamo—with the arrival of police vehicles, ambulances, and eventually even Albuquerque news helicopters—the sheep ranch off Highway 12 that Roger had suspected was a hideout for drug runners was completely abandoned and wiped clean. They arrived too late.

  It was well after lunchtime before he was excused from the wild goose chase and could finally respond to his own calls, which included investigating a burglary in Quemado and serving an eviction notice near Reserve. He didn’t make it home until after seven o’clock in the evening, only to discover his wife, Malene, asleep on the couch.

  She had had her own grueling day. She was at work by five-thirty in the morning, having agreed to relieve the third-shift nursing assistant, who needed to drive her husband to the National Guard Training Center in Santa Fe. She had completed that shift and then worked her own until she was finally able to leave at four o’clock in the afternoon. After work she drove to Socorro to do some grocery shopping, and she had just gotten home at six-thirty, sat down on the sofa, and quickly and easily fallen asleep.

  She awoke to her husband’s kiss on the cheek, and the two of them ate a quick dinner, read the paper, completed a few chores, and finally decided to go to bed when neither of them could keep their eyes open even though it was only eight-thirty. When the lights flickered and finally went out, Roger awoke and considered getting up, getting dressed, and heading out to the station to see if he was needed. But then, remembering that Danny White, a capable, smart deputy, was on duty, he rolled over, pulling the covers over his wife and him
self. He placed his arm around Malene and fell back to sleep.

  THREE

  Francine Mueller was just finishing up at the diner. She had come in late that evening to make the weekly pies. After baking six in the afternoon—two lemon meringues, two chocolates, and two custards—she had decided she wanted to try a new recipe, Tri-Berry Pie, that she read about in her New Mexico magazine. She had driven down to Magdalena and picked up the few ingredients that Bea and Fred didn’t have on hand and then stopped at her house and eaten a sandwich before walking back to the diner and baking three of the pies.

  Francine had become a very good baker in the last year. After winning the first annual pie contest at the church celebration the previous spring, she had taken a cooking class at the community college, and Fred and Bea had given her free rein in the diner kitchen in the late afternoons to practice her art. They were happy to get out of her way and let her create any kind of dessert she felt inclined to try.

  Bernie King had taken a particular interest in Francine’s baking skills: he had ordered two pies a week, every week, for a year. Nobody understood how the Catron County rancher was eating two pies a week all by himself, but no one ever said anything because in reality everybody was eating more desserts once Francine switched from being a waitress to being the sous chef at Pie Town Diner.