Sterling was not sure how much farther he had to walk; he had been to the snake shrine only a few times, and the last time, Sterling had been in the backseat of a tribal police car as they had raced to stop the movie people from filming the stone snake. Suddenly there it was. The stone snake’s head was raised dramatically and its jaws were open wide. Sterling felt his heart pound and the palms of his hands sweat. The ground near the snake’s head was littered with bits of turquoise, coral, and mother-of-pearl; there were streaks of cornmeal and pollen on the snake’s forehead and nose where those who came to pray had fed the spirit being.
Sterling had no idea what to do; he had no idea why he had walked all that distance to the stone snake. He sat down near the snake to rest. He had to think. What had happened to him? What had happened to his life? Education, English, a job on the railroad, then a pension; Sterling had always worked hard on self-improvement. He had never paid much attention to the old-time ways because he had always thought the old beliefs were dying out. But Tucson had changed Sterling. In Africa the giant snakes talked to the people again, and the buffalo ran free again on the Great Plains. Sterling felt haunted — he would never forget the child Seese had lost. Marching through his brain day and night were Lecha’s “armies” of Lakotas and Mohawks; Sterling saw them over and over in dreams; ghost armies of Lakota warriors, ghost armies of the Americas leading armies of living warriors, armies of indigenous people to retake the land. Sterling tried to forget the blood and the gunshots. He tried to forget everything Lecha had told him because she and the others at the meeting in Tucson were crazy. “Rambo of the Homeless,” “Poor People’s Army,” the Barefoot Hopi and Wilson Weasel Tail — the world was not like that. Tucson had only been a bad dream.
When the giant stone snake had first reappeared, Aunt Marie and the old folks had argued over the significance of the return of the snake. Religious people from all the pueblos and even the distant tribes had come to see the giant stone snake. The snake was so near the tailings it appeared as if it might be fleeing the mountains of wastes. This had led to rumors that the snake’s message said the mine and all those who had made the mine had won. Rumors claimed the snake’s head pointed to the next mesa the mine would devour, and Sterling had believed the mine had won. But the following year uranium prices had plunged, and the mine had closed before it could devour the basalt mesa the stone snake had pointed at.
Sterling sat for a long time near the stone snake. The breeze off the junipers cooled his face and neck. He closed his eyes. The snake didn’t care if people were believers or not; the work of the spirits and prophecies went on regardless. Spirit beings might appear anywhere, even near open-pit mines. The snake didn’t care about the uranium tailings; humans had desecrated only themselves with the mine, not the earth. Burned and radioactive, with all humans dead, the earth would still be sacred. Man was too insignificant to desecrate her.
Sterling didn’t show himself in Laguna for a long time, and then only to buy food. He had held his breath, but the Tribal Council had ignored him. His grandnephews and grandnieces let him stay at the sheep camp, but they didn’t trust him with sheep right away. There was gossip and speculation about what had happened to Sterling in Tucson. Sterling didn’t look like his old self anymore. He had lost weight and quit drinking beer. The postmaster reported Sterling had let go all his magazine subscriptions. Sterling didn’t care about the rumors and gossip because Sterling knew why the giant snake had returned now; he knew what the snake’s message was to the people. The snake was looking south, in the direction from which the twin brothers and the people would come.