Two nights after we got back to Tucson, I visited Don Pedro -- for the last time, it turned out. Ana Socorro was at the library studying, and Ehmet was still in the hospital. The big Indian had developed an unusual infection that defied diagnosis. The doctors were keeping him on intravenous antibiotics. Don Pedro seemed very worried.

"This may be beyond their power to cure. I have sent for someone from Mexico."

I couldn't ignore such a cryptic comment. I had set up the tape recorder with the idea of conducting another interview, but what I really wanted to know about was my experience at Pena Blanca with Ehmet and the mountain lions. And now I had Don Pedro's mysterious comment about Ehmet's infection arousing further curiosity. I was full of questions that night and Don Pedro was more forthcoming than usual. I learned many things about Ehmet - where he was from, who he really was, and how he had met Don Juan. The interview was then interrupted by the appearance at the back door of an elderly Indian man wearing jeans, plaid shirt, and a green bandana holding back his long white hair. Don Pedro shooed me off without introducing me to the visitor.

I left the Castellano residence that night like one in a dream - or one who has just wakened from a dream. The world seemed to open up around me as I let myself out the back gate into the alley. The moon was now full -- every tree, fence, wall, telephone pole, garbage can and junk pile was infused with silvery light. It was one of those sublime moments when everything seems to be more than it is. I felt like I had the power to bring anything to life just by apprehending it -- taking it into my mind. I picked up a small rock and hefted it in my hand. I knew I could throw it and will it to hit whatever target I wished. Throwing it would be just like reaching out and touching something with my hand. But looking up, I saw two figures approaching me. I dropped the rock, feeling suddenly ridiculous - and a little scared.

One of the figures turned out to be the short stocky Mexican who had been pouring his beer onto the bar at Tumbleweeds. He looked like he must be moving up in the world, wearing a dark guyaberra shirt and slacks. His companion was a tall lanky Mexican kid with slicked-back hair and an "SS" tattooed on his neck. A wife beater and chinos completed the impression of cholo muscle brought up from the south side. The stocky guy held me up against a tree -- the same tree, actually, that I had climbed and fallen from the night of my acid trip.

"Let's see how tough you are when your puta boyfriend isn't around to save you."

I had no response. The only thing my new mystical powers were doing for me at that moment was telling me I was about to get an ass kicking.

"I have a message for you from Raul Castellano. He knows who you are and that you have been secretly visiting his home. You aren't welcome there. Stay away from his home and away from his daughter."

The stocky Mexican sounded like he was reciting a small part in a school play. I wondered how many times he had rehearsed it.

"Is that all?" I replied.

"No, there's one more thing," he said, approaching his point with relish.

He delivered three blows to my midsection, leaving me crumpled on the ground next to the tree gasping for breath.

"If you are found at the Castellano home again, you won't be walking away from our next encounter."

*******

Excepts from the final interview with Pedro Luis Martin:

I first encountered Ehmet in the 1940s, when I would make frequent trips among the Nahuatls of central Mexico. I often lived for months at a time with the Indians, maintaining friendships from my graduate student days and collecting antiquities in the region. My pretty Rosalie tolerated these absences, having a strong spirit of independence - rare in those days - and I always returned with treasures for her shop.
Ehmet was the son of a chieftain and was being groomed to succeed his father. Yet

Ehmet had fallen in love with the beautiful daughter of the chieftain of a neighboring clan. This daughter had already been betrothed to an important member of yet another clan. The arranged marriage was vital to the good relations between all the clans in the region. Thus, when the clandestine meetings between Ehmet and the girl were discovered, Ehmet was threatened with violence from the other tribes and banishment from his own father.

Now Ehmet had long been studying with the shaman of his clan. He had much natural talent in this area and preferred the mystical life to the political. This shaman and others had become disillusioned with the clan leaders, who had been encouraging trade with the urban Mexicans and making concessions to corporate predation of their lands. This increased the wealth of the chieftains, but the native ways of life - which had been slowly eroding ever since the time of Cortez - were on the verge of disappearing entirely. Thus, when Ehmet asked for assistance in continuing to secretly meeting the girl, the shaman agreed to help.

Ehmet had been working for many years on developing his nagual. The Nahuatl people believe that they have animal spirits that guide them. The shamans assist the people in discovering these spirits and connecting with them. The rituals involve weeks of preparation, including the use of hallucinogenic plants. Advanced practitioners believe that they can actually take on the form of these animal spirits.

(I remember the term nagual from Castenada's books.)

Yes. In Castenada's books, the tonal is ordinary reality and the nagual is non-ordinary. This is broadly true - but for the Nahuatl, the nagual is really a person's animal spirit.

(I'm starting to see where this is going. Ehmet's nagual is a mountain lion?)

Let's not jump ahead. Let me finish the story.

([sigh] Yes, sir.)

[chuckles] Now a person's nagual is related to their personality and their strength - both bodily and of character. A strong dominant man will have a powerful animal for his nagual. The most powerful predator known to the Nahuatl is the jaguar, and this became Ehmet's animal spirit. In the deep jungles of South America, the jaguar is a large black cat -- but in the highlands of Mexico, it is the spotted feline that most people are familiar with. In the early parts of this century, Jaguars were encountered as far north as central Arizona.

So Ehmet spent several weeks in preparation, which culminated in taking the form of a jaguar and surreptitiously visiting his lover. He approached the girl as she bathed in a stream with other maidens of her clan. In his jaguar form he silently moved closer, leapt on the girl, and held her down while the other maidens ran away screaming. Ehmet drug the girl off into the wooded hills by the stream and, changing back into his human form, carried her until she recovered from a deep swoon. They then fled several miles away to a hideout that Ehmet had prepared.

At first the girl's clan mourned her loss to a jaguar. Though attacks on humans by jaguars are rare, they happened enough to merit plausibility. But soon some members of the girl's clan - including her father -- become suspicious about the attack. There was no blood by the stream where the girl had first been leapt upon, and no blood was found near her drag marks into the foliage. And, as carefully as Ehmet and the girl had avoided leaving tracks as they fled to the hideout, the signs of movement through the brush didn't look like those of a jaguar.

Ehmet went back to his village immediately after the abduction and continued to make his presence known during the day. But at night, he adopted his jaguar form and returned to his hidden love nest with the girl. Now two things foiled these lovers and their secret life. First, the more that Ehmet took his animal form, the harder it became to return to his human one. Ehmet rightly feared a night journey through the tropical woodlands in his human form; the safest, stealthiest, way was to travel as the region's mightiest predator. Yet he found that some nights it took many hours after he arrived at the hideaway before he could change back to his human form. The girl lay with him in his nagual shape and tried to comfort him with caresses while she looked into his frightened feline eyes, waiting for him to transform.

The second threat to Ehmet and his lover was that powerful shamans of the girl's clan - loyal to her suspicious father - had begun to patrol the region at night in their nagual forms: jaguars, pumas, and other stealthy nocturnal creatures. Ehmet barely escaped being detected several times as he made his way to and from the hideaway. Finally, one night, Ehmet could not transform back to his human form at all. He wandered through the woodlands as a jaguar all the next day, unable to return to his village.

That evening, still in his nagual form, Ehmet traveled back to the hideout and found that another jaguar was prowling in the area. He recognized it as a powerful shaman from the girl's clan. He silently observed as the shaman's nagual drew closer and closer to the camouflaged hut where his lover hid. Ehmet had no choice but to reveal himself to the shaman and try to lead him on a chase away from the girl. His tactic worked, but being in a weakened state from spending so much time in his animal form, he was soon overtaken by the other jaguar. A bloody battle ensued, resulting in the maiming of both, but the shaman was able to drag himself back to his village.

I had been living in Ehmet's village during the unfolding of these events, and the next day, when word reached us of the battle between naguals, I found Ehmet's shaman and asked him to help me search for him. I had taken a liking to Ehmet, watching him grow from boy to man, and I was moved by the story of his tragic love affair. The shaman and I, along with two of the shaman's protgs, eventually found Ehmet lying unconscious near the site of the battle - returned to his human form. We thought of the poor girl waiting alone in the hideaway, but we had no time to search for her. Carrying Ehmet back to the village, we sneaked him into the shaman's hut.

Ehmet's shaman treated him with Nahuatl medicine, but Ehmet had lost much blood. I convinced the shaman that Ehmet needed western medicine in addition to native treatments. We also knew that Ehmet's presence would soon be discovered. Early the next morning, we wrapped up Ehmet like a bundle of cargo and I drove him in my Jeep to the nearest medical help - several hours away. One of the shaman's protgs agreed to sit with Ehmet and hold hold him while I drove. It was a close call. Ehmet was near death when we finally arrived in a small town with a clinic, and there Ehmet received a blood infusion.

(So very conveniently, you never saw Ehmet in his jaguar form.)

That is correct. But I saw in those days many strange occurrences - animals that didn't act like animals but more like men. And I have my own experiences. All I can say of them that I felt transformed into something wholly different from my human self. An animal... perhaps.

(But were you taking hallucinogenic drugs at the time?)

I was. (laughs) If you want me to tell you that the story I just told you is absolutely literally true...I can't. Or I won't. This is the story that Ehmet told me after he recovered, along with my own small part in the events. And I can tell you that Ehmet absolutely and literally believes in the reality of his experiences. And now you have experienced strange things yourself that should be causing you to reconsider the nature of reality.

(Yeah, okay. But let me tell you about something I read recently. It was in a book about skepticism about the paranormal. The guy said that people see what they want to see. If they want to see ghosts, they will see them in things that are rationally explainable. If people want to see UFOs, they will see them. And sometimes there's a thing that happens where groups of people have mass hallucinations.)

I won't discount what this author says. In fact, I embrace it.

(So you are a skeptic?)

Perhaps, but not the same kind of skeptic as this author. Listen, people may see what they want to see. They may project their imagination onto their perceptions and see leprechauns and yetis and all manner of fanciful creatures. But if this is so, is it not also possible that when people like you and I see reality - reality with the big "R" - they are not also seeing what they want to see? And if groups can witness fanciful manifestations together, isn't it possible that reality with the big "R" is also a group delusion?

(Isn't that what science is for? To sort all that stuff out?)

What if the observations that scientists make and agree upon - the foundation of their theories -- are also group delusions? Personally, I prefer to live this reality with the big "R". Or perhaps I have no choice. I accept the findings of science, at least as theories that are valid till proven otherwise. But when we start to speak of people seeing what they want to see -- or of entire cultures experiencing a reality that we won't acknowledge and think is mass delusion -- then it only seems fair to me to question our own reality in the same way.

I am comfortable with different realities existing together. And...I think the world is a bigger and more beautiful place because of it.