Picture House has been bombed!” I told my mother, and she had me run for my dad. I told them everything I thought I could tell them, and it made them sick. They worried that the pothunters would return again and soon. My dad called the Bureau of Land Management ranger in Encantado, and tried to put me on the phone, but I guess the ranger didn’t want to talk to a kid unless he had to. I was relieved. My dad told him everything just the way I had said it; he even remembered to mention the matchbook. After all of that my father asked what was going to happen with the corpse of the medicine man.
My dad was slow to speak after he placed the phone back on the hook. “Well, what did the ranger say?” I asked.
My dad glanced from me to my mother, who was just as anxious. “He’s trying to get ahold of the sheriff right away. He didn’t sound hopeful. They never have much luck catching pothunters, much less convicting them. But he’s going to send someone from the BLM office to watch Picture House, in case they come back.”
“What about the medicine man?”
“He said he’d call one or more of the pueblos near Santa Fe. The elders will come and rebury the medicine man in some secret place—the ranger thought they’d try to get it done right away.”
“This is really bad,” my mother said. “I just hope those pothunters get caught. Let’s hope they’re still at the motel.”
But when the BLM ranger called back twenty minutes later, we found out they were gone without a trace.
My father couldn’t go back to work. He stewed all morning, trying to get ahold of the sheriff himself. I was so worn out I thought I might fall down on the floor. My mother was encouraging me to take a nap, but I had to know what was going to happen.
Finally, during lunchtime the sheriff called back. My dad was upset when he got off the phone.
“The sheriff said they were obviously professionals, and they’re no doubt long gone by now, probably in another state. They used false names at the motel, but with Tep providing their first names and their physical descriptions, plus the fact that they were brothers, the computer just might spit out who they are—especially if they have a history of pothunting. Even so, the sheriff said it’s really hard to get a conviction in these kinds of cases. Hates to waste his time, he kept saying.”
“But I saw the whole thing!” I objected. “I can say where they got the seed jar and the medicine bundle. They dug them up on public land, and that’s a federal crime!”
“You’re right,” my dad said. “I agree with you. But the sheriff said that just your word wouldn’t be enough. They’ll need proof—they’ll need the seed jar and the medicine bundle. I guess he’s tired of all these cases just getting dismissed in court. But he did say that if they happen to catch those guys and recover the artifacts, this time they won’t be able to claim they dug them up on private land. That’s what usually happens. You’ll be a witness that they dug them on public land, and then they’d be convicted.”
My mother and my father began to talk about the fine points of the pothunting laws, and a minute later I gave in to my weariness. My elbow slipped off the edge of the table and my soup spoon fell to the floor. I caught my head falling sideways and snapped back awake. Dusty was licking the spoon, and my parents were smiling.
“You’re exhausted,” my mom said. “Why don’t you go to sleep now?”
“I think I will,” I agreed. “Soon as I take a shower.” I was going to scrub a long time, to see if I could somehow wash off this whole mess. I was already wondering if the packrat had given me hantavirus.
“Good job, Tep,” my dad said. “I love how you scared them off with the flaming tumbleweed.”
I nodded dumbly, unable to take any satisfaction in this whole episode.
I slept the afternoon away. In the early evening I woke up, relieved in the moment I awoke to find myself in my own body. But then, the sun hadn’t gone down yet. I found my parents working at the big table, answering letters from fans of our seeds and addressing the labels on seed packets that were going out in the next day’s mail. I mustn’t have looked very good. “Are you feeling sick?” my mother worried. “Can I get you anything? Some soup? Tea with honey? We’re going to have dinner after a little bit.”
“I feel fine,” I said, but really I wondered if I was starting to get hantavirus. On top of that, I was full of dread that I might turn into a packrat once again.
“I know how sad you are about Picture House,” my mother added.
“It’s not just that….”I said.
Both my parents were looking concerned. “Can you tell us?” my mother probed gently.
I thought about it. I really thought about it. But I shook my head. “I’m just tired, I guess.”
“Even nighthawks need some sleep,” my father said helpfully. “You have a lot to catch up on.”
After supper, I excused myself before dessert. I’d been watching the sun carefully, and it was dropping low. With a heavy heart, I climbed the ladder.
My last glance before I closed the door on the landing of the loft was of Dusty down at the bottom of the ladder, looking up at me solemnly with those huge brown eyes of hers. Old Faithful. Was she wondering if it would happen to me again tonight?
I shut the door behind me and got to work on what came first: plugging up Ringo’s entry hole. I wedged a chunk of petrified wood in there, and it fit perfectly.
Now, what of my own things did I need to protect from the rat? I didn’t have any food in my room, that’s what he’d go for first.
That’s when I remembered the seeds I’d brought from Picture House, the ancient corn I was going to plant before the summer rains came. The handful of kernels was still in my jeans, which I’d thrown in my dirty-clothes basket. I retrieved the seeds and sealed them in an old fruitcake tin where I kept my dad’s very first tepary beans and other small treasures I’d collected over the years. I jammed the lid down extra tight.
Looking for some hope, my thoughts drifted up to Picture House. I hoped that the Indian elders had come this evening, that they’d already hid the medicine man away somewhere. If they said the right words, then maybe the magic would let me go.
It wasn’t fair, I thought, that I was paying for the pothunters’ crime. They were the ones who should have turned into packrats. I lay in bed shivering, terrified, as my room darkened and it happened again.
I can’t say I wasn’t responsible for the rampage that followed, because I saw it all happening. But it felt as if I was looking through a tiny window. It didn’t seem my willpower could begin to resist the cravings and compulsions of the rat.
The first thing I went after was the corn inside the fruitcake tin. I was clawing and scratching at the lid trying to pop it loose. Finally I had to give that up, but then I started carrying things around in a frenzy, picking one thing up and dropping another. Every small object in the room was ending up in one corner, I didn’t even know why. When I’d made a pile of everything from my room that was portable, I squeezed under the door and onto the landing.
Fortunately my parents had gone to bed. Dusty had been put outside for the night. If she’d been indoors, maybe she’d have saved me somehow from making such a fool of myself.
All the lights were out, but a packrat’s large eyes are made for the dark, and I scurried down the ladder in search of anything I might bring back to my pile. Carried away in all the excitement and confusion, I must have made a hundred trips up and down that ladder. I’d find something that looked perfect, like a book of stamps, and then I’d drop it in favor of something else, like a spool of thread. On top of my parents’ desk I discovered the seed packets that had been prepared for the mail, and I chewed into them voraciously, eating some seeds, spilling others, packing some upstairs.
And then, halfway up the ladder, I dropped a spoon. It crashed on the cabin’s wood floor, and I ran the rest of the way up the ladder. The light came on with a blinding glare. I froze, trembling. It was my mother, and she was looking right at me, up on the landing.
She smiled a curious half-smile, and then she turned off the light and went back into their room.