Chapter 2. Nine Wells
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Lucia Gammersley parked her truck in front of a white 3-bedroom house with flower boxes in the windows on the eastside of Tucson. Stoner, who, like Arthur and Shell, had grown up in Godwin, parked his van behind her truck. Lee and Sandra, still another Godwinite, and Bjorn climbed out, and Stoner and Bjorn lifted Arthur, in his chair, from the back of the pick-up to the ground.
They had come to see William Nine Wells, a Hopi medicine man. Ala, his daughter, stood on the front porch, and as Arthur was being lifted from the truck Nine Wells joined her. Lucia went to them and each smiled broadly and hugged her. Inside the house the walls were hung with rugs, eyes of god, and other colorful weavings. A child-sized bow and arrows hung on one of the walls. The old healer sat on the couch, Arthur in front of him in his chair and the other young people in a half circle to Arthur's right and left, some on chairs and some on the floor.
"How have you been, William?" Lucia said to Nine Wells.
William Nine Wells was past eighty. He was barely five feet tall and weighed no more than 125 pounds. His gray hair hung straight to his collar. He said he had been well, and Lucia introduced him to her friends as Ala, a few inches taller and 20 pounds heavier than her father, offered them parched Indian and yellow corn.
"Can I do anything for you?" Nine Wells asked.
"I'd like you to check me over," said Lucia.
"This girl, she was in trouble, too much trouble for one so young," Nine Wells said, addressing his guests.
Lucia and Nine Wells had met at the recent conference, at which he had been a speaker.
"It is lucky you have met me,” he had said. “Had you not, you might have died from this in six months. This will hurt, but it will fix you right."
It had hurt, and tears had flowed down her face.
Now he stood and had her take his place on the couch so that he could examine her.
"She is much better," he said, again speaking to everyone.
"I will hurt you less today," he said to her. "Come with me."
They went to a room at the other end of the house for perhaps ten minutes as those who had remained in the living room chatted and ate from the basket of salty corn; in the kitchen, separated by a half wall from the living room, Ala's daughter was baking bread and watching television.
"Who is next?" Nine Wells asked when he returned.
"Arthur's leg is swollen." Lucia said.
"I will see what I can do," Nine Wells said, moving to stand beside Arthur. "Why are you like this?" he said.
Arthur said that fourteen years earlier he had been in a car accident in which his neck had been broken and his spinal cord damaged, leaving him a quadriplegic. A paraplegic is paralyzed from the waist down but has normally functioning hands and arms. A quad’s cord damage is higher, and the upper body is affected. Arthur’s cord damage was at the sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae and his hands had been paralyzed, but he had normal biceps and nearly normal triceps. He lacked appropriate sensation from the nipples down.
"And what is the matter with your leg?" Nine Wells asked.
"I don't know," said Arthur. "Of course both of them are always paralyzed, but the morning of the conference my right thigh was swollen even more than it is now. I went to the hospital and was there two days and was told it isn't broken and there's no detectable blood clot."
"Let me see," the old man said.
He squatted without visible strain next to Arthur and rubbed his hands together vigorously. He brought them to his mouth, cupped them, blew into them and spit into them; blew; rubbed; spit; rubbed.
Suddenly, as though snatching up a small wild animal he had stalked, he grasped Arthur's leg midway between thigh and knee with both his stubby-fingered hands. It jumped at his touch and, shrugging backward, he let it go as though he had been startled, held still, and after a second moved close and grabbed it again.
"Let me have it," he said, seeming to struggle with something inside Arthur's leg. His grip was tight now. "This will hurt," he said.
The old man's face contorted in pain; he jerked his hands away as though they had been stung or bitten but stayed close to Arthur this time. Feeling other’s pain was part of his gift, and he accepted it as such. Arthur felt no pain, though he did feel deep dull sensation of a sort with which he was familiar where he had been held.
Nine Wells reached forward again and started rubbing vigorously behind Arthur's knee.
"Here," he said. "It is here. The circulation has almost stopped but I will fix it."
He moved his hands downward until they were around the younger man's calf, and this time when he jerked them away he seemed to be holding something. Lucia could see a string of thick murky gray-green poison being drawn from Arthur's leg. The old man threw it away and shook off what remained on his hands; he gripped Arthur’s calf and squeezed as he pressed downward, relaxed and moved his grip higher, then squeezed down again.
"Let me have it all," he said, and then spoke to the stuff in Arthur’s leg as though it were alive, or, for all Arthur knew, because it was alive.
"You cannot hide," he said. "I have you.
"Come out," he shouted. "Come out now. I told you not to try to hide."
He spoke directly to Arthur: "Mister, let me have it!"
Finally, as though he had defeated whatever he had been battling, he stood and threw it from him and shook its residue from his hands. He came around and paused by Arthur's right shoulder, then moved behind him.
"May I?" he said.
"Yes," Arthur said, correctly assuming that he was being addressed.
The healer put his hands on Arthur's head, then his shoulders, then his neck where it had been broken. He prayed in Hopi and then spoke to Arthur in English.
"For your spine," he said, "I will give you a tea. It will be good for the paralysis. But I am not the man to heal you there. You must see my partner Charles for that. He will fix it; Mister, it is not too late. You must see Charles Hawk."
"Where is Charles Hawk?" Arthur asked.
"At Second Mesa," Nine Wells said. "Brother, --may I call you that?"
"Of course," said Arthur in the offered pause.
"Brother, it is not too late--see Charles. He will make you well."
Second Mesa was on the Hopi Reservation, 380 miles away.
Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 front cover
Gripping!