Wind and Lies, page 32
Magdalena backed slowly away. “Stay away from me,” she murmured.
“Why are you frightened, my dear? What have you to hide from God?”
“Stay away from me,” Magdalena said again, trying to sound tough.
Miriam rushed to her and slapped her hard across the face. Magdalena stumbled back against the wall and fell to the floor. She gaped in terror at Miriam. Miriam took a long pair of scissors and pressed the point into Magdalena’s throat, drawing blood and making her choke.
Miriam kneeled down between Magdalena’s legs. She switched the scissors into her left hand and held a large speculum in her right. She tore away Magdalena’s panties.
“Melinda Lopez thought that she could defile the holy Prophet of God. But I put an end to that. And then Sarai, poor little Sarai, letting herself be seduced by that disgusting Lamanite Tomas Pacheco. She didn’t even know whose baby she was going to bring into the world. They were slatterns, and God anointed me to destroy them. Art thou also a vile fornicator?”
Miriam pressed the long, cold prongs of the speculum into Magdalena’s vagina. Magdalena yelled out in pain.
Chuy threw open the door, saw the two women on the floor in the corner, and rushed toward Miriam. Miriam spun around, slashed the scissors at him, and gouged his left hand. Blood spurted out. Chuy smashed her a vicious blow with his right fist, and the woman fell over unconscious. Chuy kicked her away from Magdalena. He gently pulled the speculum out of her and lifted her into his arms.
Two days later, Roy Collins received Thomas Pacheco’s autopsy report from Stan Wolfe, the Pima County coroner. The most significant paragraph was the CAUSE OF DEATH:
Death was caused by severing of the pudendal artery and the dorsal artery, which occurred at the same time that the penis was severed and the scrotum was torn from the perineal body. The blunt trauma fractures to the skull were all postmortem.
Roy called Chuy and read him the report.
Chuy was surprised. “He’s saying that Pacheco’s dick was cut off while he was still alive, and he bled death?”
“Yip,” Roy said.
“Well, that leaves Miriam out. She isn’t big enough or strong enough to do that to Tomas while he was still alive.”
“So who killed him?” Roy asked.
“Who gives a shit?” Chuy said.
“You think maybe his wife?”
“Why would she kill him? He brought a hundred bucks home every month. That’s damn good money out in Sells. Now she’s got nothing. And who’s going to marry her with five kids?”
“So who’s that leave? Somebody killed him,” Roy insisted.
“Maybe Roberto Felix. Maybe he was punishing Pacheco’s adultery with Sarai.”
“Yeah, could be. You hear about Miriam?”
“No. Only that she was indicted yesterday.”
“Well, this morning they had to take her up to the state mental hospital in Phoenix. She was just sitting in the corner of her cell, shitting and pissing all over herself, babbling a bunch of gibberish.”
“Talking in tongues,” Chuy said. “It probably made a lot of sense to her.”
Roy laughed.
“By the way, I’ve got a little news for you,” said Chuy.
“Yeah?”
“Josiah Porter and his whole cult left the reservation. Just up and split.”
“Good news.”
“Damn right,” Chuy said. “Halleluyah. Hosannas in the highest.”
Chapter 32
Joshua was sitting in his office, trying to get excited about drafting a contract for a plumbing contractor to fix the toilets in the BIA tuberculosis sanitarium outside of Sells. Hardly anyone was willing to go seventy miles for a low-paying job that would take four or five days, with the work crew having to sleep in the beds of their pickups because there was nowhere else to stay. Except maybe Melinda Lopez’s shack. It was available again.
Edgar Hendly knocked on the doorjamb. Chuy Leyva was with him. “Got a little mail for ya,” Edgar said.
Joshua looked up, grateful for the interruption. “Just put it down.” He nodded toward the edge of the desk. “I’ve got to stay with this plumbing contract or I’ll never finish it.”
“The crappers at the sanitarium?”
“Yeah.”
“Just call Dick Hannah over at Southwest Plumbing and Electric. He’s the biggest shitbird I know, and he owes me one.”
“Must be a big one.”
Edgar handed Joshua a large kraft envelope. “I think ya might be interested in this one.”
It had been opened. Printed in the upper left-hand corner was the address of the supreme court of Arizona.
“Is it good?” Joshua asked.
“Well, at least you won’t go to jail over it.” Edgar frowned and sat in the chair in front of the desk. Chuy, his face drawn and somber, sat next to Edgar in the other chair.
Joshua took the document out of the envelope. It was twenty-three pages long, with the caption IN THE MATTER OF THE APPLICATION FOR A WRIT OF MANDAMUS, JESUS LEYVA, Petitioner, vs. HARVEY PEASLEY, Pima County Elections Registrar, Respondent. Next to the caption was the title, DECISION. It was written by Justice Levi Udall.
“The right of American Indians to vote in Arizona elections for state and federal officers has after two decades again arisen, like Banquo’s ghost, to challenge us.
“According to the facts set forth in the amended application, Petitioner Leyva is a registered member of the Papago tribe, he resides on the San Xavier Reservation south of Tucson, he is literate and has had two years of full-time study at Arizona State College in Tempe, he is a four-year veteran of the United States Marine Corps, decorated for valor under fire on Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal, he is the chief of police of the San Xavier Reservation under an employment contract with the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, he is fully subject to the civil and criminal laws of the state of Arizona and the United States, and Respondent Peasley refused him the right to register to vote in the next general election, scheduled for November 2, 1948.
“However, as insensitive as we may appear in making our decision in this way, it is our view that none of these averred facts are material to the denial of Petitioner’s claim that he has a right to vote. This precise issue was brought before this court in 1928 in the case of Porter v. Hall There this court determined that Arizona’s Indians were persons ‘under guardianship’ within the meaning of section 2, article 7, of the Arizona constitution, which denied the vote to persons who are convicted felons or are ‘under guardianship, non compos mentis, or insane.’ The only relevant issue in the present case, therefore, is whether this constitutional provision should be interpreted in the same way and should still be deemed to apply to Arizona’s Indians.
“The attorney general, as counsel for Mr. Peasley, has ably argued that the opinion in the Porter case is sound and should be adhered to. His argument follows closely the reasoning adopted by the distinguished author of the majority opinion, Justice Lockwood, and we submit that no better case can be made for those subscribing to the view that tribal Indians are not legally entitled to vote in Arizona than was made by Justice Lockwood.
“In direct contrast to this, Joshua Rabb, counsel for Mr. Leyva, labeled the Porter decision ‘unscrupulous,’ a characterization that so inflamed the sensitivities of the court below, the Honorable Carson Brown, that Judge Brown certified a transcript of Mr. Rabb’s remarks to the Arizona Bar Association board of ethics for review.
“Without paying unyielding deference to a decision of this court rendered twenty years ago, and without exploring for the moment the audacity of Mr. Rabb to employ the term ‘unscrupulous’ when describing a decision of the highest court of this state, we must have no hesitancy in reexamining and reconsidering the correctness of the legal principles involved, because the civil liberties of our oldest and largest minority group are involved, and it has ever been one of the great responsibilities of supreme courts to protect the civil rights of the American people, of whatever race or nationality, against encroachment.
“The recent ‘Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, 1947,’ brands the decision in the Porter case as being discriminatory and recommends that suffrage be granted by the states of Arizona and New Mexico to their Indian citizens. We quote from that report: ‘In past years, American Indians have also been denied the right to vote and other political rights in a number of states. Most of these restrictions have been abandoned, but in two states, New Mexico and Arizona, Indians continue to be disfranchised. The constitution of New Mexico withholds suffrage from Indians not taxed. In Arizona the state constitution has been interpreted to deny the vote to Indians as being persons under guardianship. Even Indians who do not live on the reservations have been denied the right to vote on the same theory.
“In a democracy suffrage is the most basic civil right, since its exercise is the chief means whereby other rights may be safeguarded. To deny the right to vote, where one is legally entitled to do so, is to do violence to the principles of freedom and equality.
“Until 1871, the United States Congress treated Indian tribes as separate ‘nations,’ and relations between the United States and these ‘nations’ were defined by treaties. This is no longer the case, and the core of laws now relating to the Indians are found in more than four thousand congressional enactments which are commonly referred to as ‘Indian Law.’
“In 1924, the Congress declared all Indians to be citizens of the United States. In 1940, under the Nationality Act, Congress reiterated and refined this irrevocable grant of citizenship. The legislature of Arizona has empowered Indian superintendents to issue marriage licenses solemnizing the rites of matrimony. In 1942, the Arizona law prohibiting the intermarriage of Caucasians and Indians was abolished. The superior courts of this state regularly grant divorces to members of Indian tribes and probate the estates of Indian decedents.
“Perhaps most persuasive has been the Indians’ service in harm’s way, in the best traditions of our military, on behalf of our nation. Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian living fifty miles from this courthouse, participated in the epochal raising of the stars and stripes on Mt. Surabachi on Iwo Jima. But at the present time, he cannot vote. Petitioner Leyva, too, served with great distinction and was decorated twice with the Silver Star for bravery and thrice with the Purple Heart for wounds he suffered to keep all Americans free. Yet he is deemed by our law to be a person under guardianship, and he has therefore been denied the right to vote.
“Who is guarding whom? one is tempted to ponder. And for what?
“Audacious, indeed, was Mr. Rabb in terming the Porter decision unscrupulous. Mr. Rabb is an officer of the court; he is not free to make statements which bring this court into disrepute. Is that what he has done?
“Justice Lockwood in the Porter case in reaching the conclusion that reservation Indians were ‘persons under guardianship’ as that term is used in article 7, section 2 of the Arizona constitution, assigned great weight to the numerous decisions of the United States Supreme Court designating Indians as ‘wards’ of the government. This terminology was first used by Chief Justice Marshall by way of analogy. He described Indian tribes as having a relationship to the United States which ‘resembles that of a ward to his guardian.’ Later judges began using this characterization literally without regard to the figurative sense in which it was first employed. The fact that the term ‘ward’ has been so loosely used is responsible for a considerable amount of the existing confusion.
“We have made an extensive search of the proceedings of the Arizona constitutional convention and are unable to find the slightest evidence to indicate that the framers of our constitution, in specifying that ‘persons under guardianship’ should not vote, thereby intended that this phrase also be applied to Indians. We feel that this barrier has been erected by a tortuous and unjustified definition of ‘persons under guardianship,’ by the supreme court’s decision in Porter v. Hall, which accomplished a purpose that was never designed by the framers of the Constitution.
“The statutes of Arizona prescribe only two reasons for the appointment of a guardian: that the ward (a) is not of age, or (b) is unable to take care of himself or manage his property. Yet neither of these grounds has been urged to disfranchise the Indians in the Porter case or Petitioner Leyva here.
“For the reasons heretofore stated, we are of the opinion that the term ‘persons under guardianship’ as used in our constitution was not intended to apply to Arizona’s Indians as a class. The decision in Porter v. Hall is expressly overruled.
“The trial court erred (though understandably so) in granting Defendant’s motion to dismiss and in denying Arizona’s Indians the right to vote.
“The trial court viewed with distaste the zeal exhibited by counsel for Petitioner Leyva. We have come to a much different view.
“I shall be honored to pick up Jesus Leyva and Ira Hayes in my automobile on election day and drive them to the polling place.
“Stanford, C. J., and LaPrade, J., concur.”
Joshua had tears in his eyes. He looked up at Edgar. Edgar was smiling broadly. He walked over to Joshua and kissed him on the cheek. Chuy stood up, reached over the desk, and shook Joshua’s hand.
About the Author
RICHARD PARRISH is the author of five other novels: Our Choice of Gods, The Dividing Line, Versions of the Truth, Nothing but the Truth, and Abandoned Heart. He spent two years as acting Jewish chaplain at the U.S. military chapel in the Palace of Justice, Nuremberg, Germany, and a year as articled law clerk to the chief of the domestic law division of the Israeli attorney general’s office in Jerusalem. In 1977, he created and became the first director of the Economic Crime/Organized Crime Unit of the Pima County Attorney’s Office in Tucson. He is now in private law practice.
Richard Parrish, Wind and Lies
