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Chapter One

Here let me set down a tale of Neftoon Zamora. Somewhere in the southwestern United States, in a region unclear on the maps of its generations, there is said to exist a town named Chuchen. Those who suppose, suppose it only fancy, fluttering and sweeping with the sands in the desert wind, but those who know, those who have been there, place it in New Mexico, south of Gallup and north of Lordsburg, somewhere along the Continental Divide. I traveled there in search of the town and Neftoon Zamora and found what I thought were signs of the city, but I was never sure: only a few relics among some of the locales entwined in my own adventure. But the exact declinations of the town are not important. What is important is what happens there in certain times and its effect on our lives.

I first heard of Neftoon Zamora in the late 1900s, in the spring of the year. I was south of New Orleans, in one of the outlying swamps, visiting Doc and Aileen. Doc lived in the swamp in a house built on stilts with little more than a few sticks of furniture, a generator which he connected to a blender he used for margaritas, and his books, thousands of them.

He was a medical doctor, a neurosurgeon, but had retired from what he called the barbarism of his practice. He had become convinced healing could come about some other way than by cutting people open and manipulating lumps of their flesh. He was one of the wisest men I knew, so whenever I traveled anywhere near his home I made the effort to see him and Aileen. Aileen was his pet alligator.

I never knew what to expect from him, but through the years his words and thoughts had had a profound effect on my thinking and how I viewed life. So, on this visit I listened with great interest as he told of Neftoon Zamora.

His tone was reverential and he deferred his wisdom to Zamora's. Doc told me Neftoon Zamora had lived among the Indians in New Mexico for a time and was venerated by them as chief or high priest because of a heroic act, the details of which he was not certain.

The legend of Zamora's advent was most strange. According to the stories, he was part Zuni, part Martian, and part Delta blues player and had come from the Great Spirit, Mars, or some place in Mississippi, thousands of years ago. It was the Delta blues part that captured my immediate interest, though it turned out this was the least of it.

Doc said he had a recording of Neftoon Zamora singing some of these blues, rummaged around, produced an audio cassette, and played it.

For those unacquainted with the blues, it is not necessary to know much except all blues sound essentially the same. What counts is the individuality of the singer, the soul of the performer. Everyone plays the same three or four chords; the melodies are almost indistinguishable, so the captivating part is what the player brings to the form. In the presence of a rare and gifted player or singer, one can capture for a moment a special feeling. It may cause you to cry or laugh. Sometimes it can change your life. It is this essence that compels everyone who hears the blues to listen to more. That is what riveted me to the music of Neftoon Zamora that day.

The sound was ordinary enough, the words unremarkable, but the soul of Neftoon Zamora was indescribable. It crept into my mind like a great truth, ineffable, instructive, uplifting in the way it vaporized the illusion of the material world. I knew I would have to search Zamora out.

I suppose Doc knew this as well, since he took care to give me the very few details he knew of Chuchen. From time to time, most unexpectedly, something like this tape of songs will come into my life and rearrange my priorities. I will drop everything and head off on a search. These are the most exciting times for me, and these adventures require all my balance. Too fast and it's like tearing open the petals of a spring blossom to find the flower and in the process destroying what I was looking for; too slow and the opportunity slips away, closing around me like the sea into the wake of a passing ship. It was a delicate and precise act, this dashing off on an expedition into the unknown. But by this time in my life I was used to these impulses, `knew how to pack, when to run and when to walk, when to go and when to stop. This was a time for going.

I listened carefully to Doc's scant instructions, and determined at once to find Chuchen. I said an abrupt thank-you and good-bye, which would have been impolite outside the purview of our friendship and his deep understanding of the force that was upon me. Just as I was about to drive away Doc held up his hand to stop me, reached into his pocket, took out the tape, and tossed it to me. I had forgotten it. He shook his head in a knowing way. "Just remember," he said, "the New Mexico license plate says `Land of Enchantment' right above the number. A Dios."

I drove all day and into the night until I came to the small town of Quemado in New Mexico. At the cafe there I asked for directions to Chuchen. The man next to me, a Zuni I think, began to chuckle.

"Son, you've been tricked," he said. "Chuchen is a town Indians tell of when they want to make a fool of a tourist."

I told him I was really looking for Neftoon Zamora and he laughed.

"That's even more of a trick. Neftoon Zamora is an old myth, told by fools to children. Outsiders hear and come looking for him, but he never existed. You are searching for Santa Claus." He winked at the cook behind the counter, got up and left.

In the parking lot I was approached by an old woman selling jewelry. She held up some items and showed me one in particular, a small pendant. She said it had been made by Neftoon Zamora. I couldn't tell if she was serious or not, or whether she had overheard my conversation in the cafe. I didn't remember seeing her in there.

The pendant was unremarkable and just like many I had seen sold at curio shops. I decided to play along for a bit and asked her to tell me what she knew about Neftoon Zamora.

"Neftoon Zamora was from Chuchen, but Chuchen is gone now. It was east of here, in the mountains, in a place only hikers can get to. It was a small village with no connection to the world. There were maybe a hundred people there once. Neftoon Zamora lived there. She was their chief."

I shouldn't have been so surprised. I don't think it showed. I thought about the recording and realized the voice was genderless, sometimes low like a man's, sometimes high and lilting like a woman's.

"She was a big woman. Six feet tall. Very handsome. She had long sandy hair that hung to her waist and a beautiful body, hard and powerful. She dressed in many different ways, but most like the Navajo, with a velvet shirt and leather pants and white moccasins. This was the pendant she hung around her neck. It was the only jewelry she wore."

"Did you ever see her?"

"Yes. Many times," the woman said. "She would come from the mountains and visit the children in the towns. But all the people would come to hear her stories. This was in Old Horse Springs. She would tell tales and give the children some of the jewelry she had made. I was one of those children. She has not come for many years now. I last saw her when I was eleven."

"Have you ever been to Chuchen?" I asked. "Do you know where it is?"

"No, but there is a man at Apache Creek who knows the way. He is Little Horse. I haven't seen him for years but you can ask anyone there. Whether he is alive, I don't know."

I bought the pendant, as much for the story as anything else, thanked her, and decided to head to Apache Creek.

In the car I put the tape on and listened again to the voice. It was true. There was little to identify the sex. Sometimes Zamora sounded like a woman and sometimes like a man, though when she sounded like a man she really sounded like a man. But one thing was clear. Whether I was searching for Santa Claus or not, no matter if the old woman was playing me for a fool, someone was singing on that tape, someone who was real, someone who sang with an authority and purpose that springs only from the highest musical spirit.

It was night and I was tired, so when the gas station attendant told me of a gravel road that would cut some time off the trip to Apache Creek, I was grateful. I headed east to Pie Town and turned right onto the road. It would be about twenty-five miles to the next paved road.

The soft night air blew through the car window and the moon turned the sky purple as it rose over distant mesas. In this moonlight I could barely make out the figure of a man walking by the side of the road when he suddenly jumped in front of the car and waved me to a stop.

He was an old black man--how old I didn't realize until I pulled to a stop alongside of him and he stock his face in the window. He must have been ninety. His hair was snowy white and thin, barely covering his head, and his skin was a blue-black that shimmered in the night. His black eyes laid perfectly against pure white.

"Gimme a ride to the highway?" he asked.

We were on a desolate road, I hadn't seen another traveler since I had been driving, so I couldn't say no. He walked around the car and hopped in, sprightly and agile, the age I saw in his face not seeming to affect his movements or presence of mind.

"I'm looking for the town of Chuchen," I said. "Have you ever heard of it?"

"Oh yeah. The home of Neftoon Zamora."

"That's exactly why I'm looking for Chuchen. What do you know about Neftoon Zamora? What can you tell me?"

"Oh," he said, "I knew Zamora well ... was a long time ago, though. Been dead, mebbe fity-sisty years now. Only people I know tries to find Chuchen, really lookin' fu Zamora, not the town."

"But you knew him?" I was excited. Something in his casualness rang of truth. I didn't believe the old woman; I did believe him.

"Oh, yeah. See, I growed up in Chuchen ... well, not all the way up. Left there when I was fifteen. But Zamora come to town, I guess it was when I was around nine or ten. Was a mulatto, black as me but with light skin and long sandy-colored hair. Come from Mis'sipi, tol' me. Got run outta there fu'be'n white. Somebody was white somewhere's cause boaf Mom and Dads was black. Chuchen's a lil' town wif lots a different folks, lots a different face. Was even a Chinese guy there. But mostly Eyetalians. They was almost white but, you know, kindly green-like color to 'em. Chuchen been built up from lotta people got run off from they home. When Zamora gots to Chuchen's when the Indians showed up."

"I thought the Indians built Chuchen."

"Nossir, they was the Anasazi built Chuchen. They left when the Eyetalians come in. No, Indians, like, you know, Bombay and Calcutta. You know, from India. They showed right about the time Zamora come in. Lot of them thought Neftoon was Indian too. But I knows that weren't so. Zamora come from the Delta, tol' me, lil' town on the river called Chotard. Tol' me that anyways. But you know, I never knowed that fu'sure. Wadn' no Indian. Knowed that. Could play music too. A playin' fool. Played music better'n any I heard."

"I know." I turned on the tape I had in the player. "A friend of mine gave me this. That's why I came here, looking for him."

Zamora's voice rang out over the speakers and drifted out across the desert, over the Chamisas, into the night.

"That's Neftoon all right. You know it. Where'd you get that?"

"A friend. I don't know where he got it."

The old man smiled, obviously pleased.

"I haven't heard that sound for years. Oh, my but don't it sound good. Yeah, that's Zamora singin', playin' too. I remember that old guitar. It was a Silvertone or somethin'. Used to play to us and sing. How many songs you got. I don't remember no recordin'."

"There are thirteen on this tape. I've learned some of them, trying to learn all of them. I'm a musician myself."

We were approaching the paved highway and the old man was leaning forward, peering through the window, as if looking for something on the countryside, when the paved road came into view and he began to shuffle in his seat.

"There. This is where I can get out."

"But ... can I buy you dinner, or ..." I was trying to think of some way to get him to tell me more about Neftoon, anything to keep him with me a little longer. "Could you ... do you know where Chuchen is?"

I stopped the car at the intersection and he opened the door and stepped out into the moonlight.

"Where Chuchen is? Hmmm. Cain't get to it by car anyways. I don't think I could find it mysef. Nossir, not by mysef."

I took one last leap.

"Neftoon Zamora ... he was, I mean, he was real. Not like ... Santa Claus?"

"As real as me. Real as that tape. Real as those songs. Thanks fu' the lift."

He walked away from the car, down the highway, and was swallowed in the darkness.

I turned onto the highway toward town when waves of emotion began to roll over me, slowly at first, then wave after wave rushing in, somewhere between terror and awe, between sadness and loneliness, flooding the chambers of thought until it seemed I would drown in tristesse . I pulled the car to a stop on the side of the road, got out, and stood silently in the night air looking up at the stars. Who was that old man? Where was he from? What was his strange accent?

I leaned against the side of the car and gathered my wits. Up in the sky I saw a shooting star. At first, when I look up into a star field, it always appears static, but after a few moments, when the eddies of thought subside and my field of vision settles into expanse, the sky comes alive and I can sometimes see shooting stars. Watching the night sky for a few minutes, the anxiety faded, and I pondered my search for Zamora.

The word that kept rolling around in my mind was Spam . It had many popular uses now in slang but I realized it was more than a word, it is the only real American pate. A crow flew overhead--was this a sign of good luck? A song sprang to mind. I only remembered some of it but it seemed like a good song. Was there a clue here? Then it all faded and I thought about Spam again, a registered trademark for a food product.

I slipped back into the car and put on the tape of Neftoon Zamora. I wanted to see if his could be popular songs as well, but my heart froze as I listened. The tape had changed. It was a language course, in some unusual dialect and tongue. A woman repeated smarmy then said in the new language-- ungerret --then smarmy , then a man said ungerret .

Clearly I was being taught an unknown language. I ejected the tape from the player and looked at it. It was the same tape Doc had given me, but now it was different and Neftoon's songs were gone.

All the way out from New Orleans I had listened to the tape and had memorized many of the songs, so I still had them in mind, hut the feeling of loss was overwhelming.

It must have been that old man, that old black man with the funny accent who had somehow tampered with my treasured tape and put in this language course. For all I knew that old man could have been Neftoon Zamora himself. At the instant I had that thought another crow flew over--another sign of good luck?

I put the tape back in and listened to more of the language course. The woman said recalcitrant , then a long moan followed by a click of the tongue against the hard palate, then recalcitrant , then a low moan ending this time with a snap of the fingers. I didn't know whether to follow after the old man or continue on my journey, but it was certain I had been given a message. I was really getting ticked off about losing Neftoon's music. I wanted to continue my quest for Chuchen.

I roared up off of the shoulder, throwing a spray of tiny road gravel and screamed into the night. I began to sing the songs of Neftoon in an effort to drown out the language tape, but the louder I sang the louder the tape would play, even though I never touched the volume control. The woman said floral , giggled, and said what sounded like an Arabic number pronounced backwards.

Here, alone with the heartbreak of losing the tape, I became determined to shout down the new tongue. The woman said ineffable and then something like flamella then ineffable then a man said flamella .

A crow flew across the path of the car and I smacked into it, a black rag tumbling into the weeds. In my rearview mirror I saw the crow get up and try to fly off. It didn't seem to be doing too well, sort of listing off to one side and drifting into a circle in the sky. If he keeps that up, I thought, he'll end up right where he started.

I was going well over a hundred miles an hour when I saw the lights of town. On the outskirts a billboard, lit by the lights of my car, said WELCOME TO APACHE SPRINGS. A shudder shook my body. Wasn't this supposed to be Apache Creek? Up ahead the lights from an old diner streamed across the road. The sign above it said LITTLE HORSE DINER. The words below it burned into my mind. HOME OF NEFTOON ZAMORA AND THE LOST RELICS OF CHUCHEN. I pulled into the gravel lot and parked next to a jade-green Harley with whitewalls and a sense of purpose. The Harley was beautiful, the chrome shining in the lights of the diner. In the nacelle of the headlight were the words "try our Spamburger" reflected from a sign on the front door of the diner. Had that old man put a spell on me? I went inside.

The night air in New Mexico always moves, a restlessness that rolls along the great open spaces and makes even the slightest breeze feel as if it is on its way to somewhere. So when I walked into the diner the stillness was the first thing I noticed. The incandescence of the lights filled the interior with warmth: caressing, and very, very still.

From somewhere in the back, the kitchen I think, appeared a Chinese man. His accent had the ricochet cadence of a Chinese speaking English as a second tongue, but his use of the language was impeccable.

"You can sit anywhere you'd like" he said, dismissing me with this remark and returning to the kitchen.

The diner was spotless, with dark blood-red Naugahyde seat and stool covers bordered in cream piping, the floor checkered with black-and-white vinyl tiles, everything else stainless steel or chrome, even the walls. It was stereotypical, an impossible and perfect replica of something I had seen before in a picture. I sat down at the counter and looked around.

On the counter back, with a menu holster on each side, was a Seeburg remote jukebox station shaped like an old radio in bright chrome, with flip panels inside turned by external tabs to reveal the list of songs. All the songs on the jukebox were by Neftoon Zamora.

In each of the menu holsters was a pamphlet with a different cover. The one in front of me was titled What Is a Friend ? by Augie Rootliff.

The jukebox was five cents and I reached in my pocket for change. The Chinese man came back out from the kitchen holding a knife, fork, spoon, napkin, and glass of water. He saw me fumbling.

"The jukebox is free. You don't need any money," he said as he put down the setup. He took a menu from the holder and handed it to me.

I didn't look at it but said, "I'll have a cheeseburger, mayo only, fries, and a chocolate shake."

"Oh no. Nothing like that here. Only Moroccan food."

I ordered something wrapped in a leaf and studied the Seeburg. When I pushed the button next to the song "You Got to Trust the Pilot," the Seeburg lit up, clicked, swallowed the command somewhere into its electronics, and the song came over the speakers in the diner as well as from the big, mother-ship jukebox standing in the corner. An orchestra, mostly synthetic, began lush sweeps and someone who sounded like William Shatner began a half-sung, half-spoken recitation of the Zamora tune. I looked at the song list in front of me. It was William Shatner, sounding like he did on his recording of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." The song was by Neftoon and the name Neftoon Zamora was listed most prominently, so on first look it appeared that Neftoon was the performing artist. Then I saw, listed below his name, the actual performing artist, William Shatner. Then I saw the others. Clint Eastwood singing "Get Out the World," Leeza Gibbons; Crash Test Dummies; the Cranberries; David Letterman and Garry Shandling in a duet; Hamza el-Din, the oud player; Bobby Sherman; Dan Rather; all of them singing a Neftoon Zamora song. As Shatner proclaimed his way through "Pilot," the Chinese man returned with the food.

"I've never seen or heard of these recordings before," I said as he set the plate down.

"They are the only way I can get the songs in here. Everybody asks for the songs of Neftoon Zamora and these are all I could find."

I reached in my pocket and produced the cassette with Doc's scribbled handwriting of Neftoon's name. I held it for the Chinese man to see. I thought I saw a faint recognition, something quickly set in his eyes.

"This tape had the songs of Neftoon Zamora on it, sung by Neftoon himself. They were amazing. That was when I left New Orleans, but something happened to them and now it's some, some ... language course. All the songs I see on this jukebox were on this but ... I don't know what happened, they're gone. I was playing them in the car for a guy I picked up on the way here from ..."

"An old nigga?"

I choked and stared at the counter. I had not heard that word in normal conversation for years. For the last few hours I had been driving deeper into the the land of enchantment, it glowing rosier as I went, and now this? Did I hear it right? Were racists allowed in the land of legends and myth?

"That old nigga that wanders around here? He's a thief. I don't know how he does it, but he can steal anything."

I had to say something.

"If you mean the African-Amer--"

"Oh, bullshit, mister. Don't start that. He's an old nigga man, and it's what he calls himself and what I call him too."

"You may call him that, and he may call himself nigger , but don't say it around me." I was edgy, looking him straight in the eye. He returned the stare but with a subtle smile, like some kind of game had started, as if he was unabashed and engaged.

"I didn't say nigger , I said nigga . There is a difference. Nigger with a flat and hard r , like you say in Texas, is the pejorative. Nigga , ending with ah like I say it, is nomenclature. I can spot a racist for miles because of that simple shibboleth. You say nigger , I say nigga . Big difference."

I blinked. Was he right? Chinese is a language of infinite subtleties. The same word, used for widely different ideas, is changed in meaning by slightly varying inflection. Could this man before me tell intricacies of meaning by the emphasis, inflection, and pronunciation inside a word? I had never noticed the difference until he pointed it out. Was there such a difference? I was confused. Among the short-order fry cooks I had ever met, this was the trickiest, most nimble--even clever. Before I could muster protest, he plowed ahead, moving on, leaving me browbeat.

"But if you want to know his name ..." he let go a flashbulb smile: on, then just as quick, off; almost like a nervous tic. "It is Jefferson Washington. He was the unfortunate recipient of that equally unfortunate moniker because both his parents were slaves. Whatever his name is he is a thief. I won't let him in here because every time he comes in something is missing when he leaves. The last time he was in here the sign on the wall that said `plate of shrimp' changed to `boogie 'till you puke.'"

Shatner had mercifully stopped singing.

"Well," I said, "he must have stolen these songs too. They were certainly there when I left New Orleans and I drove all the way here to try to find the source of them. What does your sign mean outside, `home of Neftoon Zamora'?"

Another flashbulb smile, then he sized me up for a few seconds. He looked left, then right, then back to me, and must have known he sent a shock through me with these words.

"Exactly what it says, mister. That's Neftoon Zamora sitting right over there."

He pointed to the end booth. I could see the top of a head, obviously covered with long sandy-colored hair.

The quest, the quest. It ran through my mind as I looked at the booth where Neftoon was sitting. Beginning the second I had heard the tape I had been on a hunt, a search for something. I didn't want it to end yet. Besides, what if Zamora was something less than my fancy and the mystery surrounding him had made him out to be? As I walked slowly toward the booth, more and more of Neftoon Zamora came into sight and I became more and more entranced, then surprised.

She was beautiful. I have thought many times since this encounter about how I would write down what I saw that night and have dreaded the prospect because words fail me. I had never seen such an exquisite, comely presence. She did, indeed, have sandy-colored hair that fell to her waist. As I approached she looked at me through gray-green eyes with a dazzling light behind them. Her features were those of a perfect beauty, not defined, or absolute, but active beauty, the beauty of her time, the beauty of a loved one. Think of the most beautiful person you know. Not that you have ever seen, but that you know, right now. That was the beauty of Neftoon Zamora and it settled around me, an atmosphere, a magical, breathtaking loveworthiness.

There was also a courage to her face. I remembered the woman in the parking lot at Quemado describing her as handsome, and the person before me was certainly that. She looked directly at me and I felt as if I would faint. The look contained grace, serenity and a power that shook the night. Everything I had imagined about Neftoon Zamora was in that look; all the mystery and wonder, the enchanting tales, the overpowering sound of those songs Doc had given me, every impulse that drove me here from New Orleans in straight flight, was staring back at me through that look; inviting, embracing. This was Neftoon Zamora, of that I had no doubt. As I arrived at the table I could see more of her figure and she was clearly quite tall, over six feet, trim, wearing a white, Western-cut shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. As I walked up she was finishing a solitaire game of jumping little pegs, arranged in holes on a board, one over the other until only one was left. She set the board down.

Then words I'll never forget.

"Hey Nez, sit down." She motioned to the seat across from her while looking me in the eyes. It was as if she knew me. There was a comfortable, clear connection, old friends reuniting, friendship intact. She was easy and immediately intimate, but how did she know my name?

"How do you know my name?" I asked, incredulous.

"I saw you on TV. Didn't I?"

Of course she did. Years earlier I had been on television and had even made a few videos. Out here I had forgotten. Out here I was swept up in something enchanted. I wanted it to be telepathy. It was television.

"The fish eat my furniture?" Neffie asked it as a question. It was a line from one of my videos. I laughed.

"Mine too," I said, and she laughed with me.

I sat down. I instantly liked whoever this was.

"That guy just told me that you're Neftoon Zamora."

"I might as well be," she said. "That's what Li tells everybody. I'm his tourist attraction." She put all the pegs back in the little board and slid it off to the side of the table next to another Augie Rootliff pamphlet, this one called What is a Child?

"Well, are ..."

"There is no Neftoon. Santa Claus. I know everything there is to know about Zamora. Li hires me to come in and sit here and when someone asks about Neftoon Zamora he sends them to me and I spin the legend. Sometimes I say I actually am Zamora when I think I can get away with it."

"So Neftoon is a ... myth, a, a ..."

"Folklore. Just folklore. It's a good story, though. I can tell it to you if you want"

My eyes were riveted to this woman, and something deep in my mind, some ancient longing, was rejecting what she was saying, hoping instead she was Zamora, a desire to believe, almost overpowering.

"Yes, I would like that, but actually I have this tape of songs a friend gave me he said was Neftoon Zamora. That was a real person singing. So I ..."

"I'll bet it's Jefferson's great-grandpa. He used to sing the blues and was supposed to be the best. Do you have the tape?"

I pulled it from my pocket. "Yes, but something has happened to it. The songs are gone and now it's some language course or something."

She took it from me and studied it.

"Really?" she said. "That's odd. Have you got a tape player in the car? Oh, well, of course you have. Can I listen to this?"

She slid out of the booth and stood up. She was easily six feet tall, more likely six-two or -three. I followed her out of the diner and to the car where she sat down in the passenger seat.

I put the tape in and the language course came on. She laughed at the word flamella .

"That sounds like a comedy routine. What happened to the songs?"

"I don't know. After ... Jefferson got out of the car the songs were gone and this was on it."

She reached up and hit the direction switch on the tape player and the tape changed sides. The blues of Neftoon Zamora blasted out into the night. I felt like a dope.

"Wrong side," she said.

I looked down and then began to laugh again.

"You must have been enchanted. Oooooo. The land of sorcery and magic and an old hitchhiker that stole the songs from your tape. Li could have made a fortune off of you." She waved her hands around in the air like she was waving away spirits.

"Is this whole thing that big a scam? What IS your name? Why are you doing this?"

She leaned back in the car seat and listened for a moment to the singer.

"That's definitely Jefferson's great-grandpa. Call me Neffie. If I tell you my real name and Li hears you say it then he'll toss me for sure and I need the job. Have you heard the country songs of Neftoon Zamora?"

I shook my head no.

"Those are terrific too. I don't know who did them; sort of a cross between Hank Williams and Gene Autry. Really. It sounds like it would be weird but it's pretty good."

"Santa Claus, huh? Too bad. I was looking forward to digging around the mystical city of Chuchen, sitting at the feet of Neftoon, learning the wisdom of the ancients, hearing some stories and a little blues guitar."

"Let's go back inside." I followed her past the Harley and into the diner again, where she took up the same position in the booth. Li came over.

"You see. Neftoon Zamora in person. Like the sign says. Did she find the songs the old man stole?"

"Yes, I suppose she did."

"You want dessert? I'll bring you something." He walked away before I could answer.

"He'll keep the food coming all night. When you stop eating he'll find something else to sell you."

I wanted to know more about Chuchen and the songs and singer on the tape but it wasn't the same now. I had gotten deeply into the wizardry and wonder, so much that when I started playing the wrong side of the tape I was sure something mysterious was happening. I was enjoying it, but Neffie was final and spoke with such authority I was willing to let go of my fantastic journey. Besides, I was getting interested in Neffie herself.

"So, this is an unusual job you have here. Where are you from? I mean how did ..."

She looked up and motioned for me to be quiet. Li was approaching with a cup of coffee and a hot piece of apple pie with melted cheddar cheese on the top. He set it down and threw a look to Neffie.

"I am Neftoon Zamora," she said with some theatrics. "And I come from Chuchen. Chuchen was the landing site for the ancients who came to this planet many millions of years ago. I was sent as one of the last emissaries from my section of the galaxy and was there to help the evolving humans begin civilization ... Columbus, Ohio, but I was born in Geneva. I have two passports."

Li was gone.

"My parents died when I was a teenager. Very rough, let me tell you. But they were good folks. I inherited a little money from their estate that lasted for a while, and a good constitution that got me over the loss quickly and without as much pain. Went back to Geneva for a spell, brushed up on Italian and French, went to work in Paris as a model, hated it, but did it for a few years for the bucks, moved back to New York when I was twenty, did some acting, went to NYU and took some courses in Paleontology, dinosaurs, that stuff. Had a few friends, no regular lovers, but one sort of steady who gave me a tape like you have of Jefferson singing the blues and told me the story of Neftoon Zamora. I came out here, ran into Li, who took one look at my hair and set up the Little Horse. That's it."

"So it was the music that brought you here, like me."

"That and the legends. Once I got here I found out all kinds of interesting things about Neftoon. Makes good tales. And Chuchen. That really interests me. There is definitely something there but ... and so when the wise ones finally return I will go back to my home among the stars. Have you seen these?"

Li had returned and was holding out the same type of jewelry I had bought from the woman in Quemado.

"These are sacred symbols of fertility I make to remind you of your times with me and the lessons you have learned from these wise teachings."

"She makes them here," Li said. "You can have them only for five dollars and I'll give you this as a souvenir." He held out one of the pamphlets of Augie Rootliff. "These are the secret teachings of Augie Rootliff. Not listed in the pamphlets."

I looked at Neffie. She made a look like, "what the hell, it's only five bucks."

I sighed and handed Li a five.

"No, that's okay. I'll put it in the check." He walked away, leaving the pendant and the pamphlet.

I looked out the window and saw it was dawn, the first pink light coming over the mesas. I had been up almost forty-eight hours and I was beat. "Is there any place to stay in town?" I asked Neffie.

"You can stay in the motel up the road in Apache Creek."

"I thought this was ..."

"No, no ... Springs. Another one of Li's tricks. Apache Creek is up the road another four miles. Or you can stay at my place."

I was watching all my fantasies fade into the approaching dawn as my perceptions of Neffie coalesced into a present reality, her remarkable countenance undiminished by the status of my collapsed dreams, her beauty eternal. She easily overtook my journey. I was in her hands.

"Come on," she said. "I'll take care of you." She stood up from the booth and walked out the door of the diner as I went to the cash register and waited until Li came out from the back and totaled the check.

"You want breakfast?"

I shook my head, paid, and went outside, where I saw Neffie astride the Harley. She fired it up.

"Follow me," she said, as she rolled the big bike around and pointed it down the road. She tied a scarf around her head as I got in the car and started it up. She headed down the road and I, as she had instructed, followed.

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The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora

0312192967

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