Moonlight Water (21 page)

He gave her a quirky, funny look, made a motion like beating a drum with both hands, and sang, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” while making drumbeats out the side of his mouth.

She giggled. The band had done a powwow version of the nursery song, wonderfully silly.

Zahnie faced him, held up their hands, and looked at him. “I'm getting too comfortable with this.”

“That sounds like a good thing to me.”

“The comfort—it freezes me solid.” She stopped walking. She faced Red and let go of his hand. “You're still a problem.”

“My switch of lives?”

“Partly, yeah.”

“What are we going to do with me?”

“Maybe lose you in Lukas Gulch?”

“Whatever.”

“Red, I know what you want. I'd like to give it, but I can't.”

He looked at her, opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but closed it again.

“We're very different,” she said. “Not white-Navajo stuff, or at least not just that. You have your dream, the zing of song, the uplift. I don't. It's not me. And I wish it was.”

Into the night she walked.

*   *   *

Pretty soon the passenger door opened and Winsonfred climbed in. “Want company?”

“Sure.”

“Don't worry about Tony. He's gonna be okay.”

Red doubted that, and felt ashamed for being so absorbed in himself he almost forgot about his friend.

“Wanna talk?”

“Please,” Red said.

In the eerie glow of headlights Winsonfred gave Red a look. “I watched you and Zahnie tonight. I know what troubles her heart.”

This old man doesn't waste time,
Red thought.
He reads your mind, sorts out the important questions, and answers them.

“White people would say she has a hole in her heart. Navajos, we say she's out of balance, not in harmony with herself, the community, and the world. Maybe it comes to the same thing. No matter, she's my favorite grandchild. You want to know a little about her?”

“Yes.”

“Zahnie would probably give you a lot of things, especially mulishness, before she told you her story. I call her Little Turtle Without a Shell. She was nine, maybe—this was before her family left living with us around Mythic Valley. We had several hogans where we grazed the sheep, and we were at this one. She was the oldest child, Zahnie. She's had the least trouble to see from the outside, but plenty on the inside.

“Their mom and dad, Mirv and Lina, they converted to the Assembly of God and were thinking of moving to Grand Junction, near their church. No problem there. You're Navajo, you can keep your feet on the road of harmony, go to any church at all, makes no difference. You don't have to give up the Navajo way for any religion. The path of the Dineh, it's a way to walk. Religion, that's just a belief. A way of walking is something more. Mirv and Lina, they needed to quit drinking, and the Jesus of that church, he helped them quit, for a while.

“What bothered me was them going away from the family and the land. Good job, strong church, good schools, shopping, movies, learning the white way—all that is tempting. But Navajos belong between the Four Sacred Mountains. Maybe you go to a new place, find a new house, think you can live good in it. But a Navajo needs to be part of the big harmony of all the Navajo family and the land we were given to live on. You know, when we went on the Long Walk and lived in that place way south, outside our own country, we died. Outside the Four Sacred Mountains, we can't live right.”

Winsonfred was silent for a long moment, his eyes on a long-ago time. “Anyway, that summer, after a gully washer, Zahnie found a funny little turtle crawling around the gully, or trying to. It didn't have a proper shell, that turtle, just a thin, soft, half-formed thing, no protection. You could see right through the shell. Poor thing wasn't born proper, misbegotten. I knew it wouldn't live long. The sun could shine through on its innards, and every stickery thing in the desert would scratch and hurt it. I told Zahnie to leave it be.

“She was entranced, though, brought it home. She kept it under the trailer, in the shade, brought it grass and leaves, all like that. After a few days it died.

“After that I called her Little Turtle Without a Shell. She seemed like that turtle, too vulnerable. She was the oldest, but her brothers and sister, they seemed harder, tougher, not so easy to hurt.

“Mind you, I'm not sure hers is not the better path to walk. Living in your truth, you're vulnerable.

“After the parents took the family to Grand Junction, Zahnie went away to boarding school, then found a way to go to the university in Albuquerque, got a good education, lots of good things. She showed up back here one day, kinda lost. She was twentysomething, didn't know where her parents were anymore, probably in some gutter outside an Indian bar in Gallup, or dead. Barely had any contact with her brothers, them gone chasing a living, one of them even working an oil patch in Arabia. Her sister, Leeja, that's another story. She was back here, her and Roqui and their kids living with me. Zahnie had a little boy, no husband, didn't own any sheep, had no way to support the child. Hard path.

“She stayed with me and Leeja here in Mythic Valley for a couple of weeks, but her and Leeja couldn't get along. Anyhow, there was nothing for her here. She had a college education, studied environmental something, didn't want to spend her life on sheep, and didn't want the boy to learn just watching tails twitch, she called it.

“So she left little Damon with us and went job hunting. Two years she waitressed, cashiered, did everything. We all thought maybe being around his dad would be good for Damon, but Roqui, he's a no-good, then and now. Finally she got the BLM job and took Damon across the river to Moonlight Water. Boy went to school with other Navajos, had a decent place to live.

“Zahnie, though.” He shook his head. “She never did fit. Acted like she wasn't Navajo, turned away from the Navajo path—explained to me once she's an agnostic. Best I understand that, it means a path of doubt, and I don't know how you get any footing on doubt. She didn't act superior or anything, but she thought the Navajos were a superstitious bunch of old fogeys. She didn't go to dances or nothing like that.

“How it come out, she wasn't Navajo, and she wasn't white. The white people let you know that pretty quick. Indian face—back of the line. Eventually, she came halfway back to being Navajo, and moved in with all of us at Harmony House.

“I kept calling her Little Turtle Without a Shell. She knows why, but we don't talk about it. Turtle always has a home, wherever it goes, because of its shell. Zahnie, she don't have no home, no matter where she goes.”

Winsonfred stopped, and Red didn't say anything, didn't need to, a story like that.

The old man added, “She's got a good act, though, just like she's built a strong shell to keep you out.”

They sat for a while. Winsonfred closed his eyes and Red thought he was asleep, but the old man's lips moved and he said pertly, “Ed says you oughta search out Lukas Gulch for some pot hunters. See them or not, they're around there.”

Winsonfred was quiet for a long moment. “You wanna hear something else from Ed?”

Red said, “Sure,” though he wasn't.

“That ruin where you slept when Zahnie got taken away on the whirlybird, Ed liked the way you took care of yourself, liked the way you used your eyes and ears and your true mind. You have possibilities, he says.”

Red thought,
One reads my mind, the other spies on me.

“Don't be scared on account of I know what you're thinking. I've learned a few things on this planet. And don't get rattled by Ed watching you—he's a good fellow.”

“How come you call him Ed?”

“Why, that's his name. I knew him when he was a slouchy, gray-bearded white man. That book you got in your glove box, the one Gianni gave you, he wrote that.”

“Edward Abbey?”

“Yes, that was his name.”

“Should I read it?”

“I never read any book, but that one seems to help white people. Ed paid attention and wrote down what his spirit eye saw.

“Course, he's got a better spirit now. He used to be kinda grouchy, which disturbs the digestion. Now he sails high, and he sees, and don't have to figure things out—he just knows.”

Red let that sit. In a moment he heard the slow, deep breathing of sleep. He followed the Ancient One's lead.

*   *   *

Winsonfred and Red got home first. The next afternoon they were sitting outside in the shade when Zahnie and Clarita pulled in. For the first time Red got a good look at Zahnie's personal car, which looked like a Raggedy Ann doll stitched together from junkyard lots. It bore, in contrast, a clear message, black print on white bumper sticker: WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN SELDOM MAKE HISTORY.

Tony squirmed out of the backseat.

“Thank God, you're all here,” said Tony. “I didn't meet anyone in jail I want to breathe the same air with.”

He waltzed up the front stairs. He turned, faced everyone, and spread his arms wide. “Here's the story. I'm going to jail, and Harmony House is being destroyed. So I say, we are a family. Let's eat, drink, and be merry while we may.”

He led the way in. “Jolo, lemonade!”

They sat around the dining table, and Jolo brought pitcher and glasses.

Clarita was practical. “How'd you make bail?”

“Gianni put it up.”

“And the prognosis?”

“Simple. We're going to lose our license. We won't lose the house. You can stay, Clarita, and probably Winsonfred, since he's your uncle, and Zahnie, but we'll have to do something else with our residents.”

“No chance of catching a break?” asked Red.

“None. People in this county are retro as rocks, and marijuana is one of their big bogeymen. The Mormons say we're dirty hippies who spend every night having orgies or tripping on weed. Never mind that their high school kids are snorting cocaine. The county is slavering to prosecute me.”

His eyes red with unshed tears, he looked up into Red's face. Red wanted to reach out and cover Tony's hand with his, just for a moment. He made himself do it. Tony gave the hand a firm clasp and let go.

“The real problem is the state board. They will jerk our license. We may not even get a hearing. I don't know.”

A tear leaked. “Virgil, Edie, Agnes, Bernice, Agatha.” He raised a finger and circled it to indicate the bed-bound residents upstairs. “What are we going to do, send them to roost with the buzzards in the big cottonwoods on the river?

“Or the ones who would come after and don't want to be a punch card in this county's old folks' institution.” Tony wiped his eyes, fished for a Kleenex, and wiped his cheeks. He sat back down in front of what looked like a stack of bills. “I've failed them, failed them all.”

“What could you do different?” asked Red.

“Nothing. Sometimes it's against the law to take care of human beings.”

With the tips of his fingers Red brushed away a sneaky rivulet, a tear of his own.

 

25

LUKAS GULCH

Don't walk along the track of rainwater. You'll cause a flood.

—Navajo saying

 

Red woke up when Zahnie sat down on the edge of the bed that Winsonfred never used. He looked into her face and felt a pang.
Close as I've gotten to you, or probably will, Little Turtle Without a Shell.

“It's been long enough, and it's time to get mad and get going. Let's head for Lukas Gulch.”

So, looking for looters. And she was treating him like the buddy she wanted along.

She already had the Bronco loaded with camping gear.

On the map, and to the untrained eye, the gulch looked like a Chinese painting of a dragon doubling back on itself in huge loops and with curlicues going out in every direction. Red figured it was almost as complicated as the human psyche.

“This may turn out just to be a camping trip,” she said. “The canyon's huge and, with all these side canyons, nearly impossible to find anyone in. Our best hope is to see a track or hear an engine noise. A long, long shot.”

Red wondered how many days for the camping trip. He hoped they wouldn't find any looters—maybe the trip could become a honeymoon of sorts. Unlikely.

Zahnie squeezed his hand a couple of times, but she was back in her cop mode. Also, it was hot, damned hot. Heat didn't bother Red. He much preferred Marin County's weather, which got into the nineties in August, to San Francisco's, where you were always chilly. But this desert heat burned away social graces, and most soft feelings.

She stopped where her SUV had been parked the evening Wayne Kravin had searched it. “We might be able to get a partial track here,” she said, “but the ground is hard packed.”

“Give me a minute, will you?” Red asked.

They were almost in front of the ruin where he'd spent the night, and he wanted a moment to remember. He'd made a promise to Kokopelli to come back with a guitar and animate the flutist's legs.

After a couple of moments, Zahnie said, “Forward, march.”

When she cranked the starter, it struck Red that it would be very inconvenient, and perhaps fatal, to be without a vehicle this far from nowhere.
Keep the keys in your pocket.

She reversed and took a track that presumably angled into the main gulch. In one muddy spot tracks were embedded. “ATV,” Zahnie said. “Gotta be Wayne.” Which did not thrill Red.

They rolled along at half speed. “I hope Wayne Kravin is as nasty as looters get.”

“He's not. Used to be that pot hunting was mostly old-time Mormon families doing what they've always done, hustling up a few extra bucks on public land. The business has changed in the last few years. The crackheads are at it now. Half-crazed guys dig up dead people's belongings, sell them for a few grand, grab enough crack with the money to get really crazy, and do it all over again. They say some big-time money's moving in, too, for bigger rip-offs.”