I curled up on the bed to read.
Although this mirror came to California from Spain, it is not Spanish in style. Furnishings of this period in Spain were based on imported French and Italian examples. This mirror is Rococo, a delicate and playful style that makes strong usage of creamy, pastel-like colors, asymmetrical designs, curves, and gold. Although there is no written proof, some believe this mirror was presented to Margarita Maria, a 15-year old Carmeleno Indian woman, on her wedding day. Her marriage was one of three intermarriages that occurred at the Carmel Mission in 1774. She married Manuel Butron, a 46-year-old Spanish soldier. Margarita had been baptized Catholic, and Father Serra, himself, officiated over the ceremony.
Margarita Butron? No way. Only an hour or so before, I’d been standing next to her supposed gravesite at the Carmel Mission. This was beyond crazy, coincidence to the hundredth power. Dr. Mendez would probably call it intuitive synchronicity, universal guidance, or some other such metaphysical term. I just called it weird. I closed my eyes and made the sign of the cross, unsure if I was expressing a sign of faith or warding off evil. “God bless you Margarita Maria Butron. God bless me.”
A voice, a new voice—not the Voice—responded. A wealthy guest attended our wedding. He gave us this pretty mirror as a gift. Beautiful things were rare in our crude mission, a mirror like this even rarer. It looked out of place in our humble home, but I treasured it, and I cleaned and polished it every day.
I bolted upright. My heart felt twice its size, ready to explode with its next chaotic beat. Margarita had lived over two hundred years ago and, as far as I knew, could only speak Costanoan and a smidgen of Spanish. How could I understand her, let alone hear her?
Hands shaking, I read the rest of the store clerk’s notes. The mirror’s last home was near the Tassajara Hot Springs, where members of the Esselen tribe had lived before their transport to the Carmel Mission. The last person to have owned the mirror was a member of the Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen Nation, who traced his ancestry all the way back to Manuel and Margarita Maria Butron of the Mission San Carlos Borromeo. The executor of the estate put all up for sale at public auction. Our store took delivery of this mirror only days ago.
“Jeez!” I slid off the bed and paced the room with the disorganized self-talk of a lunatic. “I’m crazy. There’s no other explanation. I see the grave of someone dead for maybe 186 years. Then my mind, already fertile for the impossible and the weird (disembodied voices, give me a break) attracts more weird stuff. Yeah, like a magnet, making me think I’m hearing Margarita, which is impossible. She is dead. She didn’t speak English, but then what about the mirror and the shopkeeper’s notes?”
Fear for my sanity had me grabbing my belted pouch and heading for the door. Time to learn more about Margarita Butron and the Rumsen Costanoan and Esselen tribes.
At the Carmel Valley Library, I searched through Local History until I found two Monterey County guidebooks, plus a thin volume on the Salinan Indians of California and their neighbors, including the Esselen, Chumash, Costanoan, and Yokut tribes. After checking them out, I headed for the restaurant next door to get dinner out of the way so I could return to my room at the Inn to read.
Over Meyer Lemon pizza with prosciutto, arugula, and mozzarella, I paged through the library books, only to find one small reference to Margarita—that she was of the Rumsen Costanoan tribe and married to Manuel Butron—which added nothing to what I already knew. She appeared like the blip on a radar screen and was gone, though there promised to be some interesting reading about her tribe at the Mission.
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Life in the Carmel Mission had been hard for the Indians. Fifty crude, straw-thatched huts had housed over 740 natives, and the Padres had ruled their lives. The sounding of a bell signaled time for work, church, and exercise, with the Indians working seven hours and praying for two, six days a week. On Sunday, the time for prayer increased to five hours, with the remainder of the day devoted to rest.
Both sexes received corporal punishment for an assortment of crimes, using stocks, irons, and whips. Women were whipped in an enclosed, somewhat distant place, so their cries wouldn’t cause the men to revolt, but the men were punished in full view of their fellow citizens.
When baptized, Indians pronounced a vow for life. Attempts to escape frequently resulted in lashes with a whip on the runaway’s return. Indians had no civil liberties and were often no better off than slaves.
I wondered about Margarita and how she had adjusted to this strange world. Had she married the Spanish soldier by choice or had their marriage been arranged? The culture shock must have been enormous. Manuel, at least, would have been free to continue socializing with his friends, but Margarita had probably been cut off from her family and tribe, with little choice as to how to spend her days.
I dozed off and, while in a dream state, heard the voice again. I look into the mirror and see who I am. My eyes shot open, and for a while, I had the strangest feeling I wasn’t alone.
My phone registered 4:00 a.m., too early to get up, so I prayed the rosary as I had as a child, using my fingers as markers in place of beads. The repetitious words stilled my mind and lulled me back to sleep.
I woke at a more reasonable hour and the temptation to call Dr. Mendez proved too difficult to resist. I told him about the voice I’d heard and repeated what she’d said, then explained about the mirror and its history and how I’d been thinking about Margarita when I’d drifted off to sleep.
“Maybe your mind just wants to give the voice a name,” Dr. Mendez said.
“No, this wasn’t the Voice I’ve been hearing, the one that speaks directly to me. In this case, it seemed more like Margarita’s world and mine had overlapped, somehow, and that I was overhearing her thoughts. What concerns me . . . what really blows my mind . . . is how a spirit can cross over from another dimension and make its presence known to me, if only indirectly. This destroys my concept of what’s real and what’s not. I can no longer ignore the invisible.”
“Our current understanding of reality is incomplete,” Dr. Mendez said. “The tangible reality of our lives is a kind of illusion. You may have entered a state of consciousness through which you penetrated the hologram created by the accumulation of humanity’s psychological states and experiences. In other words, you may have tapped into the holographic labyrinth that connects all.”
A labyrinth that is doing a pretty good job of sending me over the edge. “Is there a way to control when and how I enter these connective states?” I asked.
“There is a technique that combines accelerated breathing with evocative music to induce altered states of consciousness, but it is best done in a controlled setting.”
I didn’t want to induce these altered states but prevent them. Anyway, I hadn’t been doing any fancy breathing or listening to music when Margarita came to call.
“In the meantime, I suggest you continue to write everything down,” Dr. Mendez said, “including the events that trigger your visions and the voices. Who knows where this may lead?”
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I fueled up at the Village station, picked up a sandwich and bottled water at the deli, and, following the map in my guidebook, set off.
Cachagua Road turned out to be little more than a paved path, so winding and narrow that I feared what might happen if a car approached from the opposite direction. Steep cliffs plunged to unknown depths, so I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road. If I drove off the pavement, there was no way of knowing how far the Jeep would plunge before coming to a stop, or if I would live through it, let alone find my way back.
Eventually, the panoramic view of folding and faulting ridges and valleys numbed my fear enough to risk stopping and stepping out of my car. And what met my eyes nearly made the treacherous route worth navigating. I couldn’t tell if I was looking at large hills or small mountains, studded with hundreds of trees. The light and shadow-enhanced landscape was bathed in silence—no wind, no traffic, no birds.
As I drove through more wild curvy country, hitting my brakes and feeling like I was carving a new path out of the rocky walls to my left, I lectured myself about never coming this way again. I passed a mailbox, several rustic buildings, and a tall fence that ran on for miles before I came across a sign with the name of a winery. I pulled into the narrow entrance only to encounter a closed gate. I slapped my hand on the steering wheel. “Damn.”
No sooner had I backed out of the entrance than a Toyota pickup with a woman behind the wheel pulled up alongside me. The blue-mirrored lenses of her sunglasses shimmered in the way of guardians and messengers who appear at just the right moment to guide the way. She lowered her window. “Can I help you?”
“I was hoping to visit the winery,” I said, trying not to sound as disappointed as I felt.
With her eyes hidden behind the sunglasses, I focused on her nose, which was slightly curved with a perfectly defined tip, as though great care had gone into sculpting it. She introduced herself as Marianne and explained that the tall fence and closed gate were there to keep out hungry deer, not humans. “Would you like a tour?”
“Absolutely.”
I’d read about this winery in my guidebook. In addition to its Cabernet, Sauvignons, and pristine vineyards, it was famous for its twelve thousand rose bushes.
“Okay then, follow me,” she said.
Without Marianne as a pilot, I would have gotten lost. Roads veered in all directions, weaving in, around, and between fields of budding grapevines, blooming roses, wildflowers, and ancient oaks. At the peak of a hill, we pulled into a lot next to two barn-like buildings painted a startlingly crisp white, presenting an aura of neatness and cleanliness.
Marianne’s bleached-denim shirt, Wrangler jeans, and cowboy boots and the way her brown hair hung in a long single braid down her back, indicated that she had work to do, yet she treated me like a valued guest.
We passed a grape press outside one of the barns, and I could almost hear the squish, swoosh, and splash of juice separating from the fruit.
In one of the whitewashed barns, Marianne pointed out a wall of stainless-steel tanks. “This is where the liquid grapes begin their transformation into wine.” Then she indicated the wooden barrels stacked nearby. “Following fermentation, the wines to be barrel-aged are poured into oak barrels.”
Although Marianne’s mini lesson on the wine production process fascinated me, the information she shared about the roses interested me more. “The roses are cut and sent all over the world as fresh bouquets,” she said. “At the end of the season, we pick the remaining flowers and use their petals for events such as weddings and concerts, where they’re scattered on tables, bridal paths, and dance floors.”
“The amount of labor involved in the wine-making and rose-growing process is mind boggling,” I said. “What do you do around here for fun?”
The echo of Marianne’s laughter bounced off the barn walls and wine barrels like a gift. “Sometimes we actually take time off for play. In fact, Saturday night we’re hosting a Western barbecue with live music and dancing. This particular event is open to the public rather than restricted to club members, so you’re welcome to come. No need to RSVP.”
“I appreciate the invite,” I said, “but no way will I navigate that long, winding road I took getting here ever again, especially at night.”
“You must’ve taken the long way in,” she said, “enough to test the nerve and patience of even the locals. There’s another road leading here from the opposite direction, without the cliffs and sharp turns. The concert starts at six-thirty. Just say I invited you, in case anyone asks.”
Before heading back to the Jeep, I asked Marianne if she knew anything about the history of the local Esselen.
“A bit,” she said, “but not nearly as much as my friend, Ben Mendoza. I’ll give you his number.” While scribbling the digits on the back of a wine label, she said, “Most people around here know Ben by his Indian name, Gentle Bear. He’s an eighth-generation descendant of the Esselen tribe and guides trail rides when he’s not busy on his family’s cattle ranch. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind talking to you.” She then instructed me on the alternative route back to town, and, after a warm thank you, I was off.
Not far from the winery, I spotted a small general store tucked into a clearing on the right side of the road. Since the bottled water I’d brought along had run out about halfway through the mouth-drying, throat-swelling drive up, I pulled in to buy another.
The entrance to the store was locked, but a neon sign next door flashed Open. After my eyes adjusted to the dimness inside, I realized that I’d entered a country bar with rickety tables and plastic folding chairs, arranged haphazardly, in a space no larger than a storage room. Three men pinned me with their stares—not especially friendly, not hostile either. They gave off an aura of suspicion and annoyance at the intrusion, hardly conducive to business from outside visitors. “What can I do for you?” the bartender asked.
I ignored the rude leers of the two men sitting at the bar. “Bottled water, please.”
He reached behind the counter and said, “That’ll be a dollar.”
I paid the bartender, thanked him for his time, and headed for the door in quick retreat.
“Did ya know you got a double in these parts?” one of the stool-straddling strangers asked.
I glanced back, not about to snub these men and fuel a misunderstanding. “So I’ve heard.”
The speaker was handsome enough, but his eyes were unpleasant in their vacancy. And the uninviting patches of stubble on his face—hardly the perfect five o’clock shadow—made it plain that he hadn’t bothered to groom himself in a while. I managed a smile and was nearly out of the door when he said, “Could be Vonnie’s twin, huh, Tommy Boy?”
Something about the men in the bar put me on edge and weighed on me all the way back to the Inn.