Some say she wasn't human. She was human alright. Just not like the rest of us.
High desert of New Mexico breeds individual spirit. It always has. Not a place for poltroons or buffoons.
Heckuba wasn't any of those. Her roots were singular. One of kind. Personally, I doubt she was born, but just came into being, like a fog. She'd put the bravery of Amazons to shame. She never told her age.
She is gone now. Leaving memories like a wispy vibration of a hummers wings. But, I remember well her spirit.
I was young when I first came upon Heckuba. Was a scathingly hot summer. There she sat, under a rock ledge, naked as a jay bird. Eyes the color of turquoise. She wore hair the color of a clean, but old mop head, that flowed across her shoulders and down her back.
"Shuck your heat sheaths and join me," she said with a smile. Tapping her walking stick on a spot a dozen hands away from where she perched.
Plopping down like a half empty gunny sack of pinto beans, I took her all in without trying to be crass-like. Her body was young as mine, but her face and hands were old. She had the longest toes I ever saw.
"My name is Heckuba. You'll always be calling me 'Hekky'," she said to the desert beyond.
"Why wouldn't I use your name?" I asked.
"Your spirit be informal. Be that way always," she replied.
"You be a shaman or witch?" I queried.
"Be a dibby more than both," she said quietly.
Thus was the beginning of a friendship and my awakening of that, that is and that, that isn't. Hekky traveled roads within roads and still managed to forge her own path, beaten and all.
All I ever managed was to poke along getting nowhere and finding every sharp stone along the way. Hekky called it an informal path. I didn't discuss my wobble on the path too. She'd call it an informal gait, knowing her.
Late Spring, during a time Luna be pregnant with light, Hekky and I got permission from our horses (carrots helped) to ride them across the white gypsum sea to Dome Lake. A holy place where the harshest of life comes full view. Hekky wanted a shaft of gypsum crystal to grind up. I was one score and one.
"What ya want with a crystal to grind up? Be 275 square miles of the stuff sit'n on the ground you can scoop up with a spoon!" I sputtered.
"Never disturb the ancestors. Crystal holds new spirit. Look with your eyes then see with your spirit," she said as softly as a star falling above.
"Ancestors still have spirit. Just older," I mumbled.
"Old spirit be wiser. Young spirit be unbridled," she replied with a grin.
It was a moon past Winter solstice. A coveting cold. Smoke froze. No whisper of air passed its grip. But, there was Hekky tapping on the window of my hovel, dressed in bib over-alls and barefoot to boot.
"Goddess bless a jackalope!" I screamed. "Out there dressed for fish'n the Pecos! You done gone woo-woo!" as I jerked open the door.
Hekky walked in on her toes, threw a bundle on the table, leaned her walking stick against the table and sat down on a stump. She wasn't even blue or her nose red from the cold.
"Brought ya somethining. You'll like it. When you going to get chairs?" She gushed.
"Hekky, you do'n peyote or something? Walk'n around in this cold dress'd like that," I replied exasperated.
"I ain't cold. So, ya got any fry bread?" she asked, while pulling the wine jug across the table toward her.
"Ain't cold? How the hell can you not be cold?"
"Simple," she said, "People arrive in the world naked. Spirit learns the body. How it works with imagination. Get older you forget."
"Huh?" I said, while putting a wood bowl filled with hot fry bread in front of her.
"Spirit controls body, existence and imagination. I didn't forget. So, I ain't cold," she replied with a hunk of fry bread in her puss.
Me? I just stood with my butt in front of the fire pit to keep warm. In the bundle was a hooded cloak of deer skin so soft, it made butter feel like slivers of schist.
All Hallows Eve at the edge of the green glass sea. Where secrets of the stars brought death. I was one score and eight.
Hekky whispers, "Earth's spirit be sterile here. A wound from the behemoth, Hubris."
For once, I understood feeling with spirit, instead of the senses.
Heckuba's vibration rolls through my spirit now and for eternity. Friendship does that sometimes.