Priestess In A Desert Night

By Paul Rizzo

Priestess in a Desert Night is a drama that begins on a desert night, when Sam and Justin pull into a roadside tavern In El Paso, Texas. Sam decides to go for a walk in the immediate surroundings of the tavern. The moonlight gives Sam enough light to stroll about and eye the desert floor and its dwellers. Justin, Sam's buddy, heads into the tavern to get a table. The foreshadowing is on display as Sam eyes a desert owl large in stature. The owl waits for its evening prey to slither along. The owl eventually is attacked by hawks, and Sam encounters the owl's demise. The owl's final resting place is, in part, a foreshadowing of a present danger. The desert is the soul and stage of this story. The priestess is an old story of a Navajo woman, presented to Sam by Becky, a lady he meets by chance in the tavern. The story of the Navajo priestess runs concurrently with this drama. The tale of the Navajo priestess is the crux or bridge of this story. The priestess of days gone by has fatalistic importance to this novel. She, the early priestess, was captured by Spanish soldiers; and she, White Sun, escaped and returned to her tribe. The elders had dismissed her. She had to go into the desert for days, and if she survived, she could rejoin her people. What happens to White Sun in her trial has bearing hundreds of years later to the fate of Sam and Becky and an American hero, Virginia, a Navajo descendant, who is instrumental in this drama concerning Sam, Becky, Justin, Connie, and Uncle Jack--ordinary Americans fighting to keep their farms.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637101971

Book preview

Copyright © 2021 Paul Rizzo

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books, Inc.

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2021

ISBN 978-1-6371-0196-4 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63710-197-1 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Acknowledgements

Friends Along The Way:

Ashley Tyler, Publication Assistant, Fulton Books

Dr. Gilman, Boston University

Dr. Moses, Boston University-Penn State

Allison, Friend

Mark Edmundson, Friend, University of Virginia

Steve Sapienza, N.H

Mike Price, Gloucester Ma.

Sammy and Josephine Piscitello, Gloucester Ma.

John the Baptist Calabro, Melrose Ma.

Conrad Vitale Friend (Deceased)

Chapter One

Sam’s thoughts had been flashing like a beacon long into the foggy night as he watched the first light of purple and gray sky spawn a budding orange horizon. Sam wavered on the Gloucester knoll as a gust of northeast wind whipped through his frame. The cold wind brought moisture and curled his jacket collar. He exhaled, smoke rose from his lips into the premorning fog. He eyed his small thin cigar and flicked the ash and butt into the wind, which placed the cigar on the back of a dark incoming wave.

Below him at the pier overlooking the harbor—black tons of water rose and smashed into foam, receding along the granite rocky shore of the inner harbor. He reread Becky’s letter. Becky had married, and Becky still loved Sam. Sam realized that Becky had found happiness, and Sam was truly joyous for his friend. Sam had recalled the encounter in Texas like it was yesterday. Sam had helped Becky and her uncle and an old Navajo woman save their farm. It had been more than five years since he traveled to that farm in San Elizario, Texas. And on this predawn, as ocean fog gave way to light and orange heat, it seemed to Sam that it was only yesterday that he and Becky had parted ways on that dusty desert road.

His legs felt heavy as he put the letter back into his jacket pocket. He rested his body against a birch tree, his heart pounding. Again, he looked down below the grassy cliff. The incoming waves heightened their elevating mass, lifted rock, sand, and seaweed, which swelled and released into granite ghosts and pools of foamy incoming tide. Sam smiled to himself. He was excited for his soulful girlfriend.

Life had been good to Sam, but not so for his sister, Marlene. She had been deceased now nearly seven years. He held Becky’s letter, weighing fate and fortune. Becky relayed in her letter how much she thought of Sam. And she knew that he loved her. And he also realized that Marlene, his sister, would never experience what Becky had just disclosed in writing to Sam. Becky’s marriage. Sam stood alone beneath the limited and scarce New England stars, not wishing or wanting, just reflecting upon the hand of destiny and how it cast a shadow on his sister’s life. Yet he sometimes felt her presence and spirit close to him. Becky and Marlene had never known each other, yet they shared a similar goal in reference to aspirations. Becky got past the dream and harsh reality of dancing and acting. Marlene, however, on her way through her walk, met a horrific fate and was crushed to death. Sam, still in pain over his sister’s passing, could take it better now; for in knowing Becky briefly, he felt renewed. He was able to save Becky and her farm. This act somewhat numbed his feeling of loss. The personal guilt, like an albatross around his neck, had lessened. Sam pondered maybe Marlene’s spirit had helped him meet up with Becky to explain to him what she could not and was not able to reveal. Maybe karma whistled at him. Sam felt a bond between his sister, himself, and Becky that renewed his psyche. A mind’s eye that revealed itself through Becky that he would always feel his sister’s light within other entities. And the final entity, Erin, the vessel the Holy Spirit spared.

As his reread the letter, he could feel her lips against his. But there was a sadness. He remembered he could not stay in San Elizario. Now it appeared, as he recalled vividly, a sealed fate had brought them together for just three days. A time Sam remembered as strange, yet very necessary. Sam smiled. He tried to dismiss his stormy encounter yet warm feeling of Becky and regard her as a beacon of light perched upon a harbor lighthouse or a white tail comet that passed through his universe. As Sam sat on damp dark granite rocks, he wondered again. Was this a test? He felt it was. He didn’t want his thoughts to linger with Becky. And he did not want to continue to feel anger and guilt in reference to his sister’s death. He must focus on the present. He must focus on the living. He subdued the rising emotion within his spirit. Yes, he loved Becky. He loved her the moment they met. A tunnel of light had pulled at him. But he always put that presence, that picture of her, in the back of his mind. There was something telling him it was not to be. It just couldn’t happen. And that is what initially made him confused at times because these forces were beyond him and he could not discuss them with anyone. It was his cross. A let’s wait and see why this love can’t happen. And the answer had come when he returned home. Like a chain reaction. A triple play—father, son, and Holy Ghost. An everyman character walking down a path like Hansel and Gretel. The mystery complete. The circle of intrigue complete and revealed from above.

Sam had always hoped Becky and her sister, Connie, and her Uncle Jack and Virginia, the sheep herder, would someday come east for a visit. Now it seemed apparent that thought was just a distant ghostly illusion hovering over the incoming tide. Becky would not be visiting Sam. She had finally married. He was at peace. They would always be kindred spirits that had escaped a trap in Texas years ago. A harrowed situation. Two entities that met spent a few days together and overcame a monumental trap.

Sam again focused upon the black swells as the harbor rocks ripped swollen dark waves into white pools along the gray granite and pebbled raw windy beach front. Sam gathered his composure. Sure, Sam loved Becky. He loved her more than anyone he had known, except for his sister and his sister’s young friend. What Sam felt for Becky was encompassing, silent, and on this windy rising dawn, her presence seemed to be everywhere. But to revisit a past flame even in that quicksand called San Elizario, Texas, now seemed clearly just a fog, a wavering shadow, a silent memory that Sam put into a timely perspective. Something more powerful was filtering through his heart. He had little control over this volcano that was firing lava in his soul.

Sam walked on under the full moon and shadowy flickering streetlights. Wind, rustling leaves, and branches of elm trees that lined the cove and hilly streets behind him. Sam smiled to himself as a red cardinal appeared on a birch tree stump on the knoll by the harbor next to him. It always seemed that when he thought of San Elizario, Texas, some sign would appear to reassure him Becky was fine. A brightly colored cardinal sang and flew above Sam. The cardinal soared out toward the harbor as it let the east wind take its gliding wings into the lush, damp, and quiet woods of Gloucester. Sam lit another small cigar and eyed the cardinal as it winged its way through the windy dawn and gray outstretched branches that stretched into the pitched sky. The cardinal found a strong oak tree branch to rest upon.

Sam’s vision soon became blurred, his body very, very heavy. He stopped his walk. He rested outstretched on the grass within the local ball field. The spray of surf rising from below. The ball field could not shake his sleepy state. In time, as he rested, a flow of warm wind rose up from the southeast. The autumn’s foggy chill moved inward, heating the moist gray rocky coastline.

Sam felt a tepid breeze so intense and calm that his mind melted into a deeper sleep, and he continued in dream. He dreamt of a time in Atlantis by the equator, where the ocean, sky, people, and energies were in harmony. Suddenly he felt a rift in the dream. He was being pulled away from his dream and his memory of love. A cry from his soul.

Sam awoke in his room as he listened to a low groan coming from his rested body. He was not at the Harbor Cliff that housed the ball field. He had been dreaming. A vivid dream. He rose from his bed, his body dripping in cold sweat. He moved in the shadows of his bedroom to find the light switch. He fumbled through shadows to find his sink. He filled a glass of water and drank. He felt trapped. He stumbled from his sink and opened his bedroom window a few inches above the faded white sill. He thought to himself, Dreams! Lately, Sam had these dreams of longing. Longing of the past. And fearful of the future. Yet he knew in the form of the girl next door there was no escape. But he hid this emotion as best as he knew how. He mumbled to himself, Ah. Just imaginations of an active mind. He returned to his bed and drank another glass of water and put the glass on his night table by the bed. His legs were heavy, and his eyes inflamed. He closed them again. He felt electric currents move through his lower limbs. His reflexes twitched, as if they were denied reentry into a better dream or a more private, comfortable world. He wanted to rise and sort it out, but the heaviness of sleep pulled him back like an undertow. Again, he placed his palms one on top of the other, left over right, across his stomach. His breathing, for the moment, relaxed. He sensed a calm in this predawn moment.

Perhaps it was at this instant between dark and dawn, light and gray, conscious and subconscious that a fine line of truth emerged to align Sam’s mind and soul. The soul, a source from which the mind draws, like a fawn drawing water from a pool. And when it was time for conscience to grow in real terms, the soul energy force moved and mirrored thoughts to the human spirit and its conscience, as if springing the ego from its manic prison and taking the conscience to a higher space of understanding and wisdom where light shines. Where peace and wisdom reign. Sam’s soul had drawn his mind’s eye to the ocean outside. He connected with life in a dream. He floated in suspended time. What choice did his essence have?

So in fact, was Mr. Sam Faulk coming to terms with his mind and soul experience and the love he left behind in San Elizario, Texas. A love that would not quite leave him. A love he struggled with until his soul moved that love to a safer and stronger and higher place, beyond the cove and rocks and swells and wind of emotion.

He must place that feeling with the winged cardinal, higher than the coastal elm and oak trees. The cardinal had wisdom. A wisdom that could only blossom with time which would heal the cutting torment he still felt. Eclipsed. Eclipsed from a woman he had to leave. And now he felt closer to her in a sisterly manner, remembering on the day he left her bewitching glow on that dirt road in a humble Texas desert. Yet he knew it could never be. A force inside his spirit told him to wait for another love that he would patiently deal with. The universe and fate were stronger than Sam Faulk and his emotions. That was his inner battle, which had entered his thoughts daily.

Sam slept, a disturbed sleep, within his dark oak bedroom, which consisted of an oak thick framed bed and a mirror framed in oak, which hung above and between his wooden shelved cabinets and dressers.

At times, Sam wasn’t sure if he was awake or dreaming. Flashes of spirits would come his way in faint lit representations of spiritual warriors, and he would stare them down until he was at peace. The heated spirit of emotion battled with his wisdom that was his stage in dream. He struggled in his mental heaviness to rise, but he could not awaken. Suddenly, above him in a red sky appeared a large spirit. The spirit’s legs were strong like that of a hunter on the western plains. The spirit bounced about in a headdress of white, red, blue, yellow, and black feathers. White feathers and white beads fell from this spirit’s headband to his bare back. The feathers of the headdress fell to the middle of his spine. And he wore deer skin britches and elk skin boots. The shape of his ankles as he danced were high and lean and strong, and his muscular calves and thighs and feet continued in dance, revealing power and explosiveness of movement. This spirit danced and sang, baring his white teeth. He hummed in chants while circling around a bewildered Sam Faulk.

The spirit prophet was stoic in appearance, except for his eyes, which translated a red-gray stare. The Indian spirit, even in dance, was quiet. His step and intense gaze were piercing, clever. The prophet spoke. You must run with the white buffalo. You are Running Fox. I have been sent by the great spirit of the twelve tribes to try you. Sam eyed the prophet with extreme bewilderment and awe. The Indian spirit an ethereal angel hovering in slow motion. A spirit that had never failed. His face lean, chilled. His eyes piercing, illuminating, light blue, tightly focused, like a hawk. Yet this great Indian spirit was not arrogant. He was kind, forceful, and direct in his tone and manner.

You must pass the test, Running Fox, to move on. What test? Who the hell are you? I am Running Stream. I give life. I can move quickly and protect many. You look like an angel, answered Faulk. Faulk tried to continue—but the Indian silenced him with an outstretched gesture. You must pass the test. Are you willing? Yes, Running Stream. I am. Sam trusted this spirit, though Sam’s body was now weak. He felt along his neck with open palms. He thought to himself was he sleeping or awake. He could not tell, and it did not matter.

He had not trusted anyone ultimately in his life but his sister and mother, yet he felt a presence in this spirit that filled him with hope and inspiration and a peace. Three braves accompanied this spirit prophet and lifted Sam up and put him on a twelve-foot radius circular bed of straw and wire.

The bed was fringed with red dyed hawk feathers. The three braves, plus the great prophet, represented the four corners of the earth and its healing power. Each brave took a place by Sam. One brave by his head, one at his feet, and one on either side of his body. Sam eyed the majestic spirits that had placed themselves beside him. They strapped Sam’s arms, then his feet. They stretched his body with cord until his limbs were numb.

On occasion, his body shook as he felt pellets of energy move through his being. The prophet leaned over Sam and proclaimed him protector. He named Sam Running Fox. The spirit placed healing needles in Sam’s forehead, hands, arms, and earlobes, similar to those used by the ancient monks in Northern China. Soon his body rushed with revived vigor. Open streams of energy moved through his blood stream. He felt more aware of the life energy running through his body. After a long silence, the medicine prophet spoke. You must purify the present. Your heart is strong. All is in your favor. Harmonize with the wind, trees, ocean, and land. Let the renewed blood of your ancestors run its course in your veins to help you see beyond sight, to feel beyond touch, and to know real wisdom and real love. Look within your heart. There is a young woman on a white pony waiting for you. Do you understand this universe now?

The prophet folded his arms in front of his chest, and the features of his hard lined face spoke in bold silence. The three braves raised their outstretched palms over Sam’s body and continued to chant and dance. And with a sudden gust of wind, the braves and prophet were whisked away in a white fire hued in blue and amber.

Sam lifted his head. Running Stream, how do I leave this bed of twine? A voice now in the distance over the bay echoed, When it is time, you will break your bonds. When you know that she is for you and you for her. Sam laid motionless for many moments. He felt a cold sweat, which broke into wet streams over his chest. Suddenly, a fire rose in his belly. His spirit swelled, a warm lighted hue filled his mind, and with a deep yell, he broke the shackles in which the dream had bound him.

Chapter Two

Sam now lay awake, his pillow drenched with moisture. He slowly took deep breaths. Gray weak light filtered in through his bedroom window. Tree branches swayed, their dark fingers scratching at the sky. Becky’s letter rested on his table by the bed. Next to the letter was a picture of his sister, Marlene, and his mother, and next to the small framed picture was a larger picture of his dad in uniform taken with his platoon during the Korean conflict. Sam clutched the framed five-by-seven picture of his sister and mother and felt the texture of the frame. It was smooth stained pine and strangely now very warm.

He was not startled or confused by the touch of the warm frame or the visitors he had just met. He accepted their presence as a matter of fact. Sam now relieved himself of the Celtic cross Becky had given him and placed that cross by the picture of his mother and sister, the Celtic cross that Becky had given him nearly five years ago in a desert town in Texas. He sensed the tremor of disturbed sleep leave his temples. He felt along his forehead and legs and hands. No telltale marks from the prophet’s chord of twine or healing needles. Wow! What a dream? Or was it? White pony? Young woman? He shook a little inside.

Sam laughed at himself and eyed the bathroom mirror above the old porcelain sink. His face had never looked so drained. His blue eyes seemed to be hiding deep in his skull. Too much driving. Not enough sleep. He looked skyward in mock humor. What’s next, Lord? he asked as he felt the sweat around his neck with the open palm of his left hand.

Though he looked drained, at this moment, he was at peace. And Sam now consciously accepted it all in good humor, like a naive son being scolded by a judge or, in this case, a prophetic spirit. Sam tried to move beyond it all and call it a phenomenon. The dream, Becky’s letter, and his brief stay in a desert oasis that became a twister of deceit and revival. He gazed out his bedroom window below, viewing the beautiful display of elm and oak and maple trees that lined his street and neighborhood.

Sam listened and watched a squirrel scratch at his bedroom window. The gray ball with a nervous tail sprang from Sam’s windowsill and clawed at the bark of a maple yard tree. The squirrel continued his quest for food and scurried along the telephone wires to other yards in search of that end. A storm was approaching. Thick clouds were blowing in from the sea, hovering westward toward the harbor. The sky was getting melancholy and thick gray. Mist continued to blow westerly and rise above the decadent, worn, cracked granite curbs and asphalt streets. The fog continued to move, spiraling through and above weathered telephone poles and black steamy tarred rooftops. Wet light accompanied ethereal mist, which crawled toward Sam’s bedroom window. Sam returned to his bed after he lost sight of his adventurous squirrel. Sam rested. Then he got up again. In Sam’s life, there was a new day dawning.

Sam walked back to his bathroom sink and filled it with water. He plunged his head into the cold water a long moment then wiped his face with a towel. He returned to the bedroom window and watched as a black patch of winged blackbirds pierced the heavy solemn low sky. Some of the less ambitious blackbirds formed a row; they rested on the telephone wires that lined either side of Sam’s street. The blackbirds were squawking, warning all of the upcoming storm as sea gulls soared and descended, racing in from the coastal waters, their long gray wings outdistancing the new storm front.

Below Sam’s bedroom window, the streetlights had just come on. Sam had slept a long time, and children in silhouetted shadows through dreamlike fog made athletic cuts in the tar street below. Their flickering shadows moved away and toward the hallowed iron rod lamp posts that lit the winding black road. Heated young voices spiraled up to Sam’s bedroom window as the boys ran. Their outstretched limbs chased high arching laced passes into the night air. The boys converged on the beat-up pigskin football with an array of gestures and contortions of hips, arms, and legs. A human quilt of youth and shrills that battled for the football.

Sam Faulk pleasingly watched the street game from his bedroom window. His arms crossed on the sill. Ah! Time to get his thoughts and emotions in check. Below his bedroom window—a chubby boy chugged along the inner stone curb after a miraculous catch. The boy ran with controlled wildness along the lamplit street to the last curved street pole, and just as he strode to the last designated pole, the goal line, he was pushed out of bounds.

The husky chap, with the help of an overzealous defender, became airborne and skidded on the curb, raking away flesh on both his forehead and knees. I’m in, claimed little Harry. Russo, the defender, half in shock and half in ecstasy, toppled over Harry and skidded into a brick wall hidden by bushes. Russo rose from the dead and yelled back, pointing a bloodied finger just outside the goal. Right here, Harry. Right here.

Harry would have none of it. I’m in! He pointed his Converse blacks just past the goal line. Well, name-calling and pushing followed as both boys checked their wounds in the night air. Harry wouldn’t budge. He limped around the goal with the football secured in his arms. Russo stood stoically by, about to claim the football. The rest of the boys were split. Ah, said Tommy. Give it to him, Russo. Russo, a stickler for the truth, would not cave in. I got him Toots before he crossed.

Sam, seeing where all this was leading to, yelled, Why don’t you guys just buck it up and stop acting like babies? The kids looked up. They knew the sound. Tommy yelled, Sam, when did you get in? Early yesterday morning. Guess I slept a long time. You going to be home for a while, Sam? Sure. Couple of days, then I have a trip to New Jersey. Little Russo jumped in. Sam, you sure been going to New Jersey a lot lately. Well, kid, New Jersey is a good market for lobster. The boys missed Sam on his long runs. It seemed that each year, Sam’s job was pulling him further and further from his time at the old youth center and coaching.

Harry was ecstatic. His baseball coach, Sam, was home for a few days. C’mon down, Sam. Sure, Harry. Give me a second. Sam eyed Harry. Harry eyed Sam. Sam again folded his arms on the windowsill. It wasn’t a touchdown! Harry’s eyes filled with water. It was the greatest catch I have ever seen, Harry, Sam deliberated. But Russo had you at the goal line. Russo, not much for grand standing, looked away from everyone. He did not want to be singled out.

Harry’s smile was back. Really, Sam, you saw it all? "Yes, and you guys are acting like babies. And if you fellas don’t shake hands, I’m not coming down.