4.

July, 1797
Makal, Tupnek, and Puluy Carry On,
The Heart Hidden in a Cave

from The Reeducation of a Turd Peddler
by John Henry Peabody, based on his
interviews of Fornay storytellers

WWHEREIN JUNIPERO SERRA’S HEART IS TENDED BY THE BOY TUPNEK, HIS MOTHER, PULUY AND MAKAL. THEN ONE DAY THEY DECIDE TO SEE WHAT IS REALLY IN THE JAR.

*

“Makal had reservations about helping the holy men and their soldiers build their new village. So the three of them headed west, with the heart in its jug, across the meadows and into the canyons where they found a swollen creek surrounded by oak trees, laden with acorns, grass and chaparral, rabbits and quail.”

 

WHEN MISSION SAN MIGUEL Arcangel rang its first bell on July 25, 1797, Tupnek—the son of the woman Puluy—was eight years old. His mother had finalized her partnership with Makal in the days after the bell raising, Makal treating Tupnek as his own son, although he had never had a child of his own or even been married.
  For some weeks they stayed away from the Spanish and the Mission Indians. Makal had reservations about helping the holy men and their soldiers build their new village. So the three of them headed west, with the heart in its jug, across the meadows and into the canyons where they found a swollen creek surrounded by oak trees, laden with acorns, grass and chaparral, rabbits and quail.
  They deposited themselves in the corner of a meadow, up against an overhang of sandstone which extended for hundreds of feet above. It was rounded and weathered, patched with mint-, orange-, black- and green-colored lichen. And there were caves. Some were too small to stand in and they used them for storage. Others were larger and deep. The largest they used for eating and fire. Tupnek took his own little cave, above his mother’s and Makal’s cave, to sleep in by himself. In the back of his cave, he placed the heart in the jar and surrounded it with small stones.
  As the months went by, Makal and Tupnek would venture out of the mountains to spy on the progress of the new village. Tupnek would see other children his age playing in the area. They played games he remembered from before the time the Spanish came. They threw sticks and counted. They played hoop and pole, throwing the hoop and running along side with a stick in hand to keep the hoop rolling along. Makal looked at Tupnek once when they were watching the goings-on at the new village. He wondered if the boy might be better off at the new village, with other children his age. He would have to dress as the Spanish wanted him to, and the matter of being able to come and go was a concern—they had seen the soldiers on horseback taking Indians back to the new village against their will. But maybe it was better for him to grow up at the new village.
  Although Tupnek didn’t know it, Puluy was now pregnant. The idea of raising a child hidden in the cave was a difficult one for Puluy. She had been used to the open area of her home village, with the people that lived there and visited from other villages.
  She discussed this with Makal. By this time, the three of them had created what was essentially their own dialect, although Puluy quickly took to her original language when she wanted to speak privately with her son. Six months into her pregnancy, this was especially important when she explained to Tupnek her growing belly.
  As the notion of leaving their hiding place increased, Makal thought through several ideas about using the heart as an introductory point for their arrival at the new village. The three of them discussed the subject until it had become a kind of pastime. Ironically, every conversation they had about the heart was never in its presence. The heart was always in the back of the upper cave, “Tupnek’s cave,” as his mother called it, surrounded by stones and covered by grass. Eventually, additional items piled up around the heart. There were hunting spears and arrows with bows, a hoop and pole, a dozen odd masks Makal had fashioned to entertain his mother and Makal. Once a mountain lion came snooping around as they roasted a young deer carcass and Tupnek put on his “bear mask” to drive the lion away. Other masks included a crow, an owl and a raccoon. He could change into any variety of animals when needed.
  “Here,” Makal said one afternoon to the boy. “Bring the container down here.”
Tupnek climbed the trail up to his cave and brought the heart back down. He placed the container between the three of them.
  “Now,” Makal said, pointing. “There it is. What does the heart want us to do with it?” Puluy smiled and broke into a quick laugh.
  “Do you really think it has an idea it wants to go somewhere?” Tupnek asked.
  “It’s a heart,” Puluy said to Makal. “It might feel something, but it doesn’t think.”
  “We’re the ones who think for it,” Tupnek said. “We’re the ones who walk for it, too. We brought it all this way and it didn’t have to do a thing . . . Stupid heart!”
  “Right, son,” Puluy said with another laugh. “Maybe if it was a brain it would think about things. But it isn’t.”
  Makal touched the container and ran his fingers over the glaze. He tapped it with his index finger and felt the top. “It could be a brain,” he said. “Or a heart. Or a hand. Or a squirrel. Or acorns. Or water. Or mud. Or—“
  “Or nothing,” Tupnek concluded.
  “Right. Or nothing.”
  “Makal,” Puluy said. “How was it you were so sure that not only it is a white man’s heart, but the heart of their head holy man, as you call him.”
  “` Tcherra.”
  “Who told you it was his heart?”
  “My father’s best friend, Pelepel, who I was traveling with when we found the heart in the meadow. He had spoken to a trader who knew that the Fontay who are from the south and live up in the round, rocky mountains on the coast—"
  “I met some once!” Puluy said. “When I was a younger. They came to the village. Some were dark and some were light. They spoke two different languages, mixed together.”
  “Like us!” Tupnek exclaimed.
  “Ha, son,” she nodded.
  “Pelepel told us the story that the Fontay were starting to collect the hearts of the white holy men when they died. Even the soldiers. They were keeping them from passing over by disturbing their spirits.”
  “Why?” Tupnek asked.
  “For coming here,” Makal, quickly. “For coming here and changing our lives. I didn’t plan on this life. And your mother didn’t plan on this life. Now we have a new person coming into our world and it will not have the life that our parents had. You won’t have that life either, Tupnek. It’s true that the white men can do powerful things. It’s true that they have their horses and can ride them. They have their guns,” he pretended to shoot a rifle and make a firing noise. “They have large boats and come from far away. This is true. If you have ever seen them handle a bear. They can kill a bear very quickly. I have killed three bears in my life with my father and uncles, all of our friends, and it took half of a day. We almost didn’t kill one and it could’ve killed us. The white men can send the point that comes from their gun,” he imitated shooting again, ”Right into the bear and not even be close to the animal.” He stopped and looked at the container.
  “What?” Puluy looked at him. Her son gazed at the container and the expressions on Makal’s and his mother’s faces.
  “Do you want to see?” Makal asked the two of them. “Do we need to really see for our own good that there is at least something in the container? Do we have to know that if there is something in the container, it is a heart?”
  “How would we know if it was a heart anway?” Tupnek asked.
His mother shook her head. “I have never seen one before myself. I wouldn’t know.”
  “Have you seen a heart before?” Tupnek asked Makal. “A person’s heart?”
Makal looked at him and nodded slowly. “I have. One time, when my father was alive, I saw a person’s heart. A cougar, like the one that came here, killed a man from another place who was close to our hunting grounds. He must have been just killed by this cat. I was out with my father and uncles and saw the cat dragging this man by the head. We couldn’t believe what we saw. The cougar sat the man down and tore open his belly and pulled out his insides—“
  “Makal!” Puluy looked at her son.
  “No, mother!” he stopped her. “I want to hear!”
Makal looked to Puluy who was covering her ears, slightly. She nodded for him to continue.
  “At the sight of this my father cried out and the lot of us ran forward, sending the cat away. Yes, but not before it let with a cry. The cat was so mad at us for finding it out. Then we came up to the man. He was certainly dead. The life was out of him. He had the leg and arm bands of one of the tribes to the east. Much of his scalp was gone—you know these cats want to get your head first when you’re not looking—but what was left, according to one of the elders we were with, was the hair style of an eastern tribe. We thought that perhaps his people were hungry and that’s why he had come so far west. He was thin. There was not much rain that winter and food was hard to come by for all us—including the cat. Think about it. He wanted to eat a man! We, too, we went far away from our village looking for game when we came across that scene.”
  “So how did you see his heart?” Tupnek encouraged him. “Tell me.”
Makal smiled. “You must never tell this story to anyone.”
  “I won’t. I won’t.”
  “My father talked with one of the other elders as we stared at this poor guy lying in the grass, his stomach wide open. Father came back to us. He said he wanted to teach us something we would never see again. Then he and the other elder began taking the parts out of the dead man’s body and telling us what they were for. The long tubes were where food was stored when you eat, each of the other parts were for different emotions and feelings that you have. Each part was related to a spirit either in the ground, in the forest, or up in the sky. And each of the parts looked nearly identical to the parts you can find in a deer, or a bear or any other animal that has four legs. And just like each animal is slightly different from one another, so too were the parts inside. One by one they took a stick and pulled more and more of him out of the tear in his belly, laying the parts on the grass. Each part was shaped different than the other parts—I had no idea there were so many parts inside.”
  “But why did you think that, Makal?” Tupnek asked. “We are like the other animals. We must have the same stuff inside us.”
  “You think?”
  “Yeah.”
  Makal gave a glance to Puluy. She hid a small grin on her face. He continued. “When everything was outside of is body, but still connected by the string and chords that keep them connected to the body, they lifted up his ribs,” he demonstrated with his hands, elbows high. “And my father and the other elder showed us the heart. We each put our hand on it in turn to feel it. Then they put everything back inside the man. We wrapped him in grass and reeds from the nearby creek and buried him in the soft dirt at the bottom of a cliff. The elders burned herbs, sang a prayer and together we went back down to the creek to wash and pray. Then we set out to find the cougar, but couldn’t. Eventually, we turned back to head towards our village and were rewarded by a herd of deer in a meadow. We stalked them. When all was finished, we came home to the village with two deer. Father swore us all to secrecy about the man that we found. I have never told that story before.”
  “Why did you tell it to us now?” Tupnek asked. “When your father told you not to?”
  “Well, clever boy, my father and that world are gone. I am the father now. And the lesson that I learned I am telling you. You have learned something today that you didn’t know yesterday. As well, I am swearing you to secrecy.”
  “We are the only three to know the story,” Tupnek assured him. “Mother?” he looked to her.
  “Tup,” she nodded her head with a growing smile. “Why would I ever tell that story to anyone? That’s a crazy story.”
  Makal laughed. “Alright, secrets or no secrets. Do you want to see once and for all if this container has a heart in it?”
  “Yes!” Tupnek bounced.
  “Puluy?” he asked her.
  “Go ahead,” she flipped her hand at him.
  “Alright,” he examined the wax sealing of the top part of the jug. “Let’s see how this thing opens up.” Makal began examining the jar, knowing full well that if something was inside, he would likely have to seal it right back up as it was sealed in the first place. “And by the way, Tup,” he said to the boy. “Through the years I have always thought about that man we buried in the side of the cliff.”
  “What about him?”
  “Well, we really didn’t bury him that deep.”
  “So?”
  “So there’s a pretty good chance that cat came back and dug him up.”
  “You think?”
  “Yeah,” Makal began carving the wax off the top. “Dug him up and ate him.”
  Tupnek looked at his mother wide-eyed who looked straight back at him, her face warming into a large smile. Suddenly, the three of them broke into extended laughter.
  “Yeah,” Makal said with the jug. “Just ate him right up.”

NEXT
5.
1800
To the Mission and A New World