At La Fonda, there’s a Western swing band playing in the arcade bar, and the tourists are dancing like rhinestone cowboys and their booted cowgirls, so we take the elevator to the Bell Tower, to drink in the open air over the streets. It’s quiet and the evening is glassy with stars. Lifting her martini, she points out the constellations as they emerge — Bear, Spider God, Elk Skin, Coyote, Two Dogs. Tséh Dog speaks: “Why do we do this? James Dean asks Bud before the chickie run in stolen cars toward the bluffs. Why do we do this? the boy asks his father under the spokes of the sundance tree where the hooks hang. Why do we do this? Jesus asks his father from the bloodstained cross. You’ve gotta do something, Bud says, and is crucified in his car. So say the fathers, but that’s not it. Marlon Brando says, What’ve you got? Is it our fate to dash ourselves against the sky, to interrupt the stars with craziness?” I don’t know what to say to her. By now she is soft and melancholy with the alcohol. She is out on some bough of self, and it bends under her weight. There is her gravity. There is the earth’s gravity. There is Mars, and dead astronauts. She is on the rim of a red crater in being. Finally she says, “Fuck it. Let’s go down and dance with the cowboys.”
Unknown, I pass through the thick bodies as they two-step. They think it’s the warp of their drinks working on them. No, that shiver is a ghost through your flesh, insisting, Yes, yes, I’m here. A guitar string twangs. The hi-hat ticks. The air is heavy with perfume, as if it runs from the faucets of the rooms. These people make me nervous, and soon I’m waiting at the edge, beneath the surface. Alone, Tséh Dog grooves and ruts between them, and a little space forms. But they can’t get far from her. No one gets far, that’s what I’ve learned since 1881. That’s what it is to haunt and be haunted. A shadow is never merely a shadow, you can ask Pat Garrett. When the band takes a break, I sit beside Tséh Dog at the bar. She is panting. Sipping from her martini, she pulls out one of the relics of the third astronaut. Her smile is crooked. “I think this is the hotel,” Tséh Dog says, brandishing a ratty paperback, “from this book.”
Acknowledgments
As soon as I got this gig, I messaged Julia Goldberg, longtime editor of the Santa Fe Reporter. Yes, Julia would know where the bodies were buried. She climbed on as associate editor, and generously shared her vast experience as a journalist in this high desert town.
In addition to the talented team of Santa Fe Noir writers who went above and beyond their roles as contributors to share their secrets, I got early and invaluable input from the booksellers at Collected Works and op.cit.
Fellow noir editor Susie Bright consulted and cheered me on from Santa Cruz, and Akashic Books publisher Johnny Temple offered his understated advice and dark brilliance.
Thanks to Jess Clark, Cecile Lipworth, Maia Swift, Max Gore-Perez, China Martens, Rhea Wolf, Megan Moodie, Megan Kruse, Karin Spirn, and Michelle Cruz Gonzales, for your insights and support. And to my wife, Deena Chafetz, who makes the best red and green chile there is, for also keeping the wood-fired hot tub at a perfect 110 degrees.
— A.G.
About the Contributors
Byron F. Aspaas is Táchii’nii born for Tódichii’nii. Born and raised in Dinétah, Byron now lives northeast of the Four Sacred Mountains. His life is filled with six dogs, three cats, and a wonderful partner named Seth Browder. He is currently working on a few projects — soon to be finished. He is Diné.
Kevin Atkinson is a writer and performer in Santa Fe. A graduate of the College of Santa Fe, he was the recipient of the 2014 George R.R. Martin Screenwriting Grant.
Jimmy Santiago Baca was born in Santa Fe and began writing as a young man in prison. He won a 1988 American Book Award for his semiautobiographical novel in verse, Martin and Meditations on the South Valley. He has also won a Pushcart Prize and the Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature. Recent books include the poetry collection When I Walk Through That Door I Am... and the writing textbook Feeding the Roots of Self-Expression.
Ana Castillo is a celebrated and distinguished poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, editor, playwright, translator, and independent scholar. She is the author of So Far From God and Sapogonia, both New York Times Notable Books of the Year, as well as The Guardians, Peel My Love Like an Onion, and many others. Her latest, Black Dove: Mamá, Mi’jo, and Me, won an International Latino Book Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and a PEN Oakland Lifetime Achievement Award.
Ariel Gore has won a Lambda Literary Award, a New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, and an American Alternative Press Award. She’s the author of eleven books, including The Hip Mama Survival Guide, Atlas of the Human Heart, The End of Eve, and We Were Witches. Her spell collection, Hexing the Patriarchy, is out now from Seal Press. She teaches online at literarykitchen.com.
Katie Johnson leads by example with good glasses and excellent fashion. She originally hails from the California Bay Area, but has been haunting Santa Fe for many years. She earned her BA in creative writing and literature from the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. From redwoods to aspens, Katie has always been most at home in the forest.
Ana June grew up in Santa Fe, swapping stories of La Llorona with her friends and partying after Zozobra. In 2017, she earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of New Mexico, where she still teaches English. Her work has appeared in the Hip Mama anthology Breeder, the Rumpus, and the Santa Fe Literary Review. She is currently at work on a memoir and a novel, and lives on a mini farm in Belen, New Mexico, with her family.
Elizabeth Lee got her BA in English at Brown University and her MFA in creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. She’s currently working on a novel about two sisters separated during the Japanese occupation in Korea, Sunlight, Starlight, and a memoir about trauma, womanhood, and infertility, The Remembering Body. She lives in Santa Fe with her husband and her beautiful pup Annie.
Israel Francisco Haros Lopez was born and raised in East Los Angeles. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in English and Chicana/o studies and California College of the Arts with an MFA. He brings firsthand knowledge of the realities of migration, US border policies, and life as a Mexican American to his work with families and youth as a mentor, educator, art instructor, ally, workshop facilitator, and activist in Santa Fe.
Tomas Moniz is an author of children’s books and short stories, as well as the editor of the Rad Dad and Rad Families anthologies. He is the recipient of the 2016 Mary Tanenbaum Award and has participated in the 2016 Can Serrat, 2017 Caldera, and 2018 SPACE residency programs. His work has appeared in Barrelhouse, Acentos Review, and PALABRITAS. He is at work on a forthcoming chapbook and his debut novel, Big Familia.
Cornelia Read is the best-selling author of Valley of Ashes, Invisible Boy, and The Crazy School. Her first novel, A Field of Darkness, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Her short story “Hungry Enough” won a Shamus Award for Best PI Story. A reformed debutante, she currently lives in New York City.