House Made of Dawn

Father Olguin hosts the annual feast of Santiago. Santiago is a folk hero, a knight who disguises himself as a peasant and rides into Mexico through the Rio Grande valley. During his journey, he stays with a poor couple. They shelter him for the night and kill their rooster to feed him. The rooster is their “only possession of value” (29), so Santiago thanks the couple when he departs and reveals his true identity to them. Arriving in a big city, he takes part in a tournament. He performs well enough as a knight to win the hand of the local king’s daughter. However, the king is displeased that an apparent peasant will marry his daughter. Santiago learns of the king’s plot when the rooster bursts out of his mouth and warns him about the imminent threat. He leaves the city and travels home. When he arrives back in Jemez, he sacrifices both his horse and the rooster. The sacrificed horse becomes the herds of horses that the local people ride. The rooster becomes the plants and animals that they cultivate on their farmland. Each year, the people celebrate the feast of Santiago.

The day is hot. Olguin and Angela walk to the plaza where the feast will take place. Olguin stops to talk to an old man, and Angela approaches the plaza alone, drawn by the sound of music. She smells the food and spices being cooked. Olguin joins her, and they enter the plaza, passing by the Middle, an “ancient” square designed for dancing. A group of men and boys enter the Middle on horseback. Angela notices Abel among them, as well as a “large, lithe, and white-skinned” (31) albino man who rides a dark horse and wears dark sunglasses. Each man takes a turn riding his horse through the Middle and grabs a partially buried rooster from the ground. Angela watches Abel with sudden sensual excitement. He fails, but she smiles at him as he rides past her. The albino man grabs the rooster. As he rides past her, Angela notes his unattractive face. The albino man selects Abel to take part in the remainder of the ceremony. He kills the rooster by smashing it “heavily, brutally” against Abel. Women throw water on the scattered pieces of the rooster’s body, completing the ritual. Watching this nearly overwhelms Angela. She compares it to the first time she had sex, which left her feeling empty.

Olguin returns to his rectory. He changes his clothes, drinks coffee, and smokes cigarettes. He reads an old, worn leather book, the diary of a priest who lived in the late 1800s. His journal was found among the “parish records” and is the closest thing the town has to an official history. The priest, whose name was Fray Nicolas, had an illness (likely tuberculosis). He addressed most of his entries to God. He described life in the small church and paraphrased Bible verses. Although struggling with his illness, he left the house to visit other parishioners. He visited a dying woman and oversaw her funeral, which followed Indigenous American traditions that Nicolas deplored as “dark custom.” His symptoms worsened. At Christmastime, he complained about an unfinished statue of Jesus Christ. As he wrote about his parishioners and his services, he complained about the Indigenous American music he heard outside. After a short trip away, he returned to his parish to learn that an albino child had been born. The baby seemed sick, so he recommended immediate baptism. Many of his entries in the journal were religious sermons or Bible verses, though Nicholas’s condition continued to worsen as he worked and wrote in the journal.

Olguin reads a letter from Fray Nicolas to his brother, J.M. The letter is dated October 17, 1888, almost three years after the first journal entry. Nicolas described his illness and seemed ready to face his imminent death. He mentioned his displeasure that his assistant, Francisco, refused to relinquish the “evil” Indigenous American rituals that Nicholas abhorred. To Nicholas, these Indigenous practices were satanic. Nicholas believed that Francisco had fathered a child with a local woman named Porcingula Pecos. Nicholas remembered once dragging the child Francisco from a freezing river and placing him by a fire to dry. Nicholas’s letter ends with complaints about his treatment, praise of God, and praise and blessings for J.M. Olguin finishes reading the letter and feels “consoled.” He considers Nicholas a holy man and is happy to have understood his work. Outside, Angela returns home and perceives her house as an elemental part of the landscape. She feels the “motion of life” (37) within her.

The valleys and landscapes that surround Jemez are defined by “time and silence” (38). Road runners, hawks, quails, snakes, foxes, bobcats, lions, and wolves populate the area. These wild animals live alongside domesticated animals that the Europeans brought to the region, which include sheep, dogs, cats, and horses and have an “alien and inferior aspect, a poverty of vision and instinct” (39). For 25,000 years, the area was populated by Indigenous people. These Indigenous people weren’t interested in change and often sought to continue their ancient traditions. However, they spent centuries contending with colonial occupation by Christian Europeans who sought to eliminate local culture.

Abel walks through a canyon near Jemez. Abel is no longer well enough attuned to the Indigenous language to truly reintegrate into the local community, so he feels like an outsider. Out in the quiet canyon, however, he feels more “at peace.” As he walks, he passes an old copper mine and an abandoned home. To his surprise, he finds himself walking toward the Benevides house, where Angela is staying. Nearby buildings house the mineral springs that brought her to the area.

Angela hears Abel enter through her garden gate. Without speaking to her, he begins chopping wood. After going for a mineral bath, Angela returns to talk to Abel. They sit inside her house together, and Angela plans to seduce him. As the plan unfolds, however, she finds herself in a quite different emotional state, feeling even “the slightest fear” (41). Nevertheless, she and Abel have sex.

In a cornfield near Jemez, an old man finishes a long day of cultivating his crops. As indicated by his lame leg, this old man is Francisco. The “whispers” in the corn leaves make Francisco think that an “alien presence” (43) is nearby. He says a quick prayer and then leaves the field to return home. The irrigation water flows between the plants. The albino man moves across the field.

Father Olguin feels at one with the community in his village. The community continues the feast. The festival draws Navajo people from the region to Jemez. They come on horses and wagons, dressed in magnificent costumes. Olguin debates whether he should visit Angela. He feels a “small excitement” when thinking of her but enjoys retaining his sense of religious dignity despite his attraction. After ringing the church bell, he walks toward her house. Olguin sits with Angela and “officiously” delivers a longwinded lecture on the history of the imminent festival. Outside, a storm gathers. Angela uses her knowledge of Catholicism to mock Olguin by saying the opening lines of the confession. Olguin leaves, feeling humiliated. He drives back to Jemez, and he’s so swept up in his embarrassment that he nearly crashes into two children and a wagon. In Jemez, the festival is underway. He walks through the crowds, feeling like an irrelevant joke. Olguin imagines that even the “shrill and incessant” (46) babies are mocking him. At her home, Angela welcomes the coming storm and appreciates its power to cleanse the “mean and myriad fears that [have] laid hold of her in the past” (47).

Francisco attends the festival. He smells the cooking food and thinks about his experiences with Navajos. In his mind, he envisions how the festival will happen along familiar lines. The statue of the Virgin Mary will be lifted above the crowd, and people will pray for a bountiful harvest. The ceremony is a mix of Indigenous, Catholic, and Spanish traditions, including a portrayal of the removal of the Moors from Spain by the Spanish forces. In this reenactment, the local boys paint their faces black and play the roles of the Moors. Francisco passes through the “wave of sound” (49), overwhelmed by the drums and music. He watches a theatrical performance involving bull and horse masks. The storm arrives in the village, but the dance continues, and Francisco watches the masked dancers, remembering when he plays the role of the clumsy bull chasing after the elegant horse. Francisco again recalls when he beat a man named Mariano in a ceremonial race.

As night falls, the ceremony concludes. Abel drinks in a bar named Paco’s, where the albino man engages him in whispered, intense conversation. Both men ignore the inebriated Navajos passing them by. The albino man has a “strange, inhuman” voice and an unpleasant laugh. The men leave the bar and walk to an empty patch of land near the highway. When the albino man reaches his arms around Abel, as if to hug him, Abel pulls out a knife and stabs the albino man. The violent stabbing mirrors how the albino man smashed the rooster against Abel’s body. Eventually, the albino man collapses to the ground. Abel remains kneeling beside the dead man’s body “for a long time in the rain, looking down” (51).

The next day, the festival ends with a procession, which includes a horse, a bull, and the statue of the Virgin Mary being carried back to church. Francisco leaves before the ceremony ends. Every other year in his life, he has stayed until it ends. In his wagon, he goes to the field and visits the snare he laid while collecting Abel from the bus station. The snare is sprung but is empty. Francisco believes that the snare was sprung by the rising river. As he works in the fields, he imagines the dancers in the festival. Feeling a profound solitude, he whispers his grandson’s name and knows that he’s “alone again.”