Juanita of Downieville Book One Hyter

Prologue

Many sites, businesses, hotels, even restaurants, as well as cities, towns and villages are accurate and real. Even the cures referenced are as close to factual as the healers and witches will allow to world to know. With the exception of Josefa Loaiza, none of the characters are representative of real people, alive or deceased. If you think one of them is, or might be a relative, they’re not, so please don’t go around bragging that they are.

The Curandera continues to be a part of the Latin and Mexican culture. Curanderas are traditional healers or shamans in Latin America, who are dedicated to curing physical or spiritual illnesses. The role of a curandero or curandera can also incorporate the roles of psychiatrist along with that of doctor and healer. They are often respected members of the community.

Literally translated as healer from Spanish, their powers are considered supernatural, as it is commonly believed that many illnesses are caused by lost malevolent spirits, a lesson from God, or a curse.

A Bruja is considered to be a witch; one who may provide healing assistance or may be just as likely to cast a spell or do harm to a person, for a price.

CHAPTER 1

His demons were many, though not one seemed to have found him, not until the night before when they swirled into his dreams to claim him again. He awoke in a feverish sweat, flailing at everything and nothing as he fell from his straw mattress bed. They were back. They’d found him. Padre Michael’s immediate instinct, one of survival, had been to stuff his meager belongings in a sack and head out, in any direction, on his old mule Diablo, without a word or gesture of farewell to his parishioners who’d be awakening soon to start their days of subsistence living.

He found his way to the rectory, pausing by the carafe of blood red sacrificial wine.

No, don’t, he whispered to himself, Don’t start again.

Why not? one of his many inner demons mocked him.

His hands shook though he’d not had a drink for five years, maybe more. He retreated to the small adobe chapel and knelt in prayer, then felt the guttural howl before he heard it. Looking up to the crucified Jesus five feet above the alter, he crossed himself and asked for protection - for his parishioners and himself - from whatever had made such a sound. Pushing to his feet, he ducked through a narrow archway and entered the church courtyard through a side door. The static May morning air promised a day warmer than most May days should be, and the Padre said one last prayer; for peace, for this day.

Two kilometers away, down a narrow rutted road that paralleled the twists and bends of the Rio Grande River, nine year old Rudi Santiago, in a tattered gingham dress faded from weekly scrubbings on smooth river rocks stood on the cool sand of a gentle cove in the river, clutching the wooden bucket with both hands. It was she who fetched the first bucket of morning water for her family and this day was like all the others before it, except for the sudden thrashing just beneath the otherwise smooth river’s surface as she stooped to scoop the pail into the river. Rubbing traces of sleep grit from her dark brown eyes, she took no heed as she squished her toes into the wet sand, set down the bucket, and bent low to splash water on her face.

She did not, could not, perceive the inevitable outcome of the moment as a razor-sharp dorsal fin, attached to a scaly human faced mutation, erupted from the river and slashed her jugular vein. The foot long monstrosity fell at her feet and she watched in slight wonder as it caught a slick of wet sand and surfed its way back into the water. She was already feeling woozy as it slipped back beneath the surface, and didn’t notice when it paused and turned a protruding purplish eye towards its butchery.

Lightheaded, Rudi stumbled backwards into a gray boulder still cool from the night air, slumped against it, tried to catch her breath but couldn’t, then slid down the rock’s smooth surface. She settled in the sand with her dress twisted around her slender hips and watched in her child-like manner as the crimson stain seeped down the front of her dress. For a fleeting moment her eyes flashed wide as she thought of the scolding her mother would give her for soiling her newest dress - she had but two - though the worry passed as fast as her life gushed from her. An angelic smile creased her paling lips as she crossed silently into eternity. She was smiling just as sweetly when her father found her a half hour later.

Simultaneously, across the river, near a cramped stone cabin that expanded into a large natural cave with a hard packed dirt floor, came another cry that surely was not human. It shrilled upriver, skipped across the water’s surface, and ricocheted off ancient boulders, shooting tendrils of piercing fear through every soul on its path. Esmeralda awoke, soaked in sweat, eyes awash in nightmarish fear. She lay paralyzed for what felt like hours but was really only minutes. Eyes glazed over, she stared out a small single pane window towards the river. Forcing herself to her feet she wavered; then stood, the dirt floor cool to her feet. Then, uncontrollably, her bladder let go and urine splashed down her legs.

CHAPTER 2

On his wedding day twenty years earlier, Rudy Santiago had asked his bride for seven sons, and had held his name for the last, as though it might magically ensure all boys. Rita Maria had obliged him, almost. Their seventh child, though baptized Maria after her mother, was, for all of her nine earthly years called Rudi. She adored her six sons; loved them dearly, but lived and breathed each day for her beloved daughter.

Rita Maria was struck by a tendril of the howl as it reverberated off the canyon walls and found its way across the desert floor to her heart. Her womb, though long empty, trembled and goose bumps seared her spine as she ran barefoot across the dirt yard to where her husband was chopping wood. Rudy’s face was wrinkled as it often got when he was deep in thought or worried, and Rita Maria saw he’d already set his axe deep in the Mesquite chopping block and she knew the horrific sound had found him as well.

Rudy, go and see to the boys, she called out as she approached him. She always included Rudi in her references to ‘the boys’ since Rudi, having grown up surrounded by six older brothers acted more like a son than a daughter. He frowned at her, puzzled that she might think he would do anything else. He also knew he was to check on the ‘youngest son’ first; her Rudi.

Prisa, she exclaimed, Prisa mia marido, pushing him in the small of his back as though he were moving too slowly, and perhaps he was. Rudy’s stomach churned and in the hollow of his soul where a man hides his most private thoughts; those he does not share with other men, does not tell his wife, his priest, perhaps not even his Maker, he felt a rush of fear that his life was never to be the same. And it wouldn’t.

Two hours later, a shrieking, hysterical Rita Maria Estabar Santiago stumbled into the village retching alternately from physical cramping and maternal torment. Collapsing before the chipped and peeling concrete statue of the Virgin Mary that sat in the center of the churchyard under the thorny mesquite tree, she threw her head back with inconsolable anguish, pounded her thighs with clenched fists and wailed to the heavens, to her saints and to her God.

CHAPTER 3

The Curandera Dona’ Anita was known throughout the countryside as a great healer, midwife and spiritual advisor. Over the past few years she’d been called upon by many Mexican families - and by many gringo families - when their doctors could do no more. She’d traveled as far west as San Antonio del Bravo to remove a sea of black postulant warts that had spread across the chest of a man who worked at the Chios Mining Company; after the Anglo’s hospital had sent him home to die. At the request of the Cebelleros who worked for the Two Bends Ranch, she’d gone as far east as Langtry and driven Devils Tongue from a score of cattle. It had taken three days and three nights of constant tending to the beasts, and not one had been lost. And, it was told, she’d gone south one winter to midwife triplets in Saltillo, in the state of Coahuila.

It was also said that she crossed the deep snows of the Sierra Madrae Oriental Mountains wearing a wool cloak and leather thongs given to her by an Indian ghost guide, who, in a dream, told the Curandera that he lived on with the spirit of Padre Kino, one of Mexico’s most revered missionaries, dead now for four hundred years. The triplets were now master artisans who, never having married, lived together in Mexico City in a luxurious house and gave much of their earning to the church. Though it had been forty years since she’d seen them, they still kept a lit candle at an altar for the Curandera and for their mother who died less than an hour after their births.

Even Padre Michael, after two days of torturous agony from the many scorpion stings he’d suffered after stepping barefoot into their nest, allowed the Curandera to wrap his swollen feet in cotton gauze treated with a poultice of her herbs. In a matter of days he was ambling about as though it had never happened, and on the following Sunday after Mass as he wandered amongst the parishioners in the churchyard, he was not ashamed to tell all that she had most likely saved his life; though he kept to himself that it was not the first lifesaving experience he’d had with a Curandera.

There’d also been a trip to Chihuahua for a family of wealth. They’d heard of Dona Anita’s skills as a midwife and had sent a wagon for her, along with a payment so great they knew she would not refuse. Out of fear, when asked to return the following year to midwife the couple’s second child she’d refused. The family had thought she was holding out for more money but no matter the offer, she would not go. Not understanding her reasons, the family was angry and spread untruths about her in Chihuahua. Soon after, the family found the heart of a dog smeared with rotten eggs in a box on the front steps to their home. They were certain it was from Dona Anita for their lies, though in fact it was not. The family neither spoke poorly of the Curandera again; nor did they request her services.

Esmeralda was the natural child of Dona’ Anita, a revered Curandera - and said many, a Bruja – from the small village of Iztapalapa, just south of Mexico City. No man ever admitted to being Esmeralda’s father, and Dona’ Anita had little use for men overall; certainly not in marriage, and if she had let a man into her bed, it was not a thing that occurred after Esmeralda’s birth. As the natural daughter of a Curandera, Esmeralda, from birth had a calling she could not refuse; to learn the secrets of a Curandera from her mother and follow her destiny as a healer. And such was the pity, as Esmeralda was a lovely child, who grew into a beautiful young girl, and then into a stunning, voluptuous woman. Unlike Dona’ Anita however, she enjoyed men, adored them actually, and no man who looked upon her could keep from admiring her, nor deny the tightening in his loins as he studied her. As Esmeralda matured, her sexual appetite became somewhat of a legend and her needs drove her to often invite one or more men to her bed. Despite this, she too would become a much sought after Curandera.

As a Curandera, Dona’ Anita had not only attended to the ailments and worries of those in her own village but to those in several villages within a day’s walk. She’d raised the chickens whose eggs she used in cleansing rituals, walked the desert by moonlight to pick medicinal roots and herbs and spent much time in spiritual consult with her Aires. All of this was done with Esmeralda at her side; the child watching, listening, assisting as she learned. If the patient was in the next village Esmeralda had walked the distance beside her mother, no matter how far, sat at her feet as Dona’ Anita cured, slept and ate with the patient’s family as her mother did and never left her mother’s side unless sent for items her mother needed. And so not only did Esmeralda learn her mother’s curing ways, she became known in every village and to every family they assisted. When Dona’ Anita received payment for her services, she always gave a portion to Esmeralda as the patient and family looked on, though she was quick to recover it once they had left the village.

By the time she was thirty, Dona Anita had been the midwife at over one hundred births. It was said that she had never lost a child at birthing; an astonishing suggestion, a myth that was to be her undoing.

CHAPTER 4

Eighty or so kilometers east of Mexico City, in Ciudad Puebla, lived the Familia Albanos, a well-known and quite prosperous family. Don Pedro Albanos was a merchant, a politician, a respected man, a feared man. He had not gained his wealth and social position in the city without difficult moments, incidents that required convincing with more than words, and Don Pedro had never delegated the less than pleasant tasks of doing so. He insisted on being sure problems were resolved to his liking, and in everything he did, he remembered his father’s words, if more than one person knows, it is never a secret.

In the spring of 1816, Senora Teresa Albanos, Don Pedro’s wife, was in her seventh month of pregnancy. She carried not one child but two. A month before, the doctor from Mexico City had told her that the babies were positioned improperly for a normal birth. He had said, in no uncertain terms, that it was most likely one of the children would be lost during birthing. He told her also that it was likely she herself might not survive the birthing if an attempt was made to save both children. Don Pedro would not accept this and he took his wife from doctor to doctor demanding that they come to a different conclusion. None did.

Unlike her husband who had been born in the hospital in Mexico City, Senora Albanos had been brought into the world by a midwife, in her parent’s bed, in the village of Iztapalapa. When Teresa’s mother heard of her daughter’s plight she wasted no time. She hired a wagon and driver to take her immediately to her daughter’s home where she arrived in the middle of the night. The next morning, at breakfast, she asked her daughter and son-in-law to sit for a moment and listen to what she had to say.

Teresa, when you were about to be born the midwife who attended me told me that you were going to be a breech baby; you were upside-down inside of me. I did not know right away of the seriousness of this. We were simple people, with no way or money to go to a hospital and I feared you or even both of us might die when you were birthed. My mother, your grandmother, she said looking directly at Teresa, "Dona’ Josefa Loaiza, sent for the Curandera Dona’ Anita. It was known throughout Iztapalapa and the whole region that she had attended to a hundred or more birthings, many very difficult, and it was said she’d never lost a child or a mother. I was skeptical when I heard this but all of the women in the village said it was true and no one was able to come forward to say otherwise.

When Dona’ Anita arrived she asked that a bed be placed next to mine for her and that your father move into your brother Raul’s room. Dona’ Anita spent many hours the first few days setting her hands upon my stomach, and it was peculiar, because if you were kicking or moving about when she did so you settled down immediately and a great feeling of relaxation would come over me. On the third day she told me she was going to put me into a sleep. At first I was very scared and didn’t want to do this, but she gave me a cup of herbal tea to help me relax. As we talked her voice became singsong and soothing and then I fell asleep. That is the only way to describe it. But I didn’t really fall asleep as you might think it. My mother said I had fallen into a trance and that Dona’ Anita had chanted unusual words, ones she did not understand.

She said it lasted for several hours and then suddenly I was awake, feeling like I’d slept for ten hours or more, and I can’t ever remember since feeling the luxury of such a sleep. I felt so good and you were so calm inside of me. It turned out there was one thing my mother had understood Dona’ Anita to say. Just before I awoke she said ‘you will awaken at my touch to your brow and you will feel as though you’d slept many hours on a mattress of duck feather covered by fine silks.’ And I did!"

What has all this to do with Teresa’s condition? asked Don Pedro, with obvious irritation.

"There is more, please, let me go on. Dona’ Anita did this every day, at the same time, in the same place and every day I awoke feeling so refreshed and secure. I stopped worrying about you being upside down. And on the last day, after I had fallen into the trance, Dona’ Anita called to my mother to boil water and bring clean linens for it was time. My mother was puzzled since I had not gone into labor, nor had my water come, but Dona’ Anita said to hurry; it was time.

When everything was ready Dona’ Anita laid both hands upon my stomach. Remember now, I was in a sleep like trance and I am telling you exactly as your grandmother remembered it. She laid both hands upon my stomach, palms over you and her fingertips pointed towards my head. She started chanting again, slowly, over and over and then she began to move her hands clockwise slowly, ever so slowly. It took her more than an hour, but finally her fingers were pointed towards my feet. She had not once removed her hands from my stomach and the moment she did my water broke.

Dona’ Anita touched my brow and I awoke immediately, a labor pain shot through me and less than a minute later another. My mother looked terrified, no one ever had a baby this fast, but I was so calm, I knew all would be well, and in less than thirty minutes Dona’ Anita pulled you from me – head first."

For a moment they all sat still. Not a breath seemed to come from anyone.

Surely you are not suggesting that we have a Curandera perform spells upon Teresa; upon your pregnant daughter. Surely you are not suggesting that she have these babies here instead of in the Hospital de Jesús - the finest hospital in Mexico City - in all of Mexico, attended to by the best doctors? asked Don Pedro.

Not yet said Teresa’s mother, but I would hope that you would at least let Dona’ Anita come and see Teresa. I know I can arrange it. We are from the same village and she would be honored to assist the next generation.

During this whole time Teresa had not said a word, she hardly looked up from her lap and swollen belly. I would like to have Dona’ Anita come to see me. I would like to hear what she thinks.

And so it was that the change in the lives of so many, Dona’ Anita, Esmeralda, Don Pedro and his young wife Teresa; even Teresa’s mother, was set in motion.

CHAPTER 5

The small pine coffin lay open on a makeshift table next to the fountain in the church’s side courtyard. Rudi rested in a crisp cotton gown, with a silk lace scarf as bright and clean as the soul of their Jesus, arranged just so to hide the horrible gash across her neck.

Desert flowers, brilliant in their late spring bloom were everywhere - on the ground, in vases next to and behind the whitewashed coffin, crumpled in the hands of mourners. Red flames dripped from the Ocotillos in the courtyard. And each morning great white Saguaro blooms trumpeted the end of their nightlong vigil just before the desert sun struck them down and the wrens consumed them on the ground beneath.

Except for a young son or a hired hand left behind to feed and water the stock, the ranches and small farms along the Rio Grande Norte, as far north as Lajitas and south to Sierra Chino, sat ghostly empty for nine days and nine nights as the region gathered together to mourn. In any direction, one hundred kilometers and more, they all knew Rudy Santiago; had known his father and his before him. And so, despite the heat of the Sonoran Desert, they’d traveled to Santa Elena with their families to honor him as he kept vigil over the soul of his sweet angelita. They’d also come out of fear to hear firsthand the story of his child’s death for few believed the story as it traveled from village to village. The women came to care for Rita Maria and to help her anoint and prepare her daughter’s remains in the traditional ways with salt and vinegar so it would not be offensive during the days and nights of mourning. And though they said not, they came to trade whatever they could for cures, potions and advice from Dona’ Esmeralda, the Curandera who lived in a stone house across the river with her simple minded daughter Cassandra.

Early, very early on the eighth morning, the day before the actual funeral, before the sun again peeked over the high canyon walls that steered the river through it, Padre Michael knelt alone before the altar of the small church he had called his for so many years. He asked his God to tell him what terrible person could have done this to such an innocent. He’d heard the murmurings of beasts, wild animals, sadistic Indians