Moonlight Water (7 page)

He drained the rest of the can of soda pop and threw it on the floor of the passenger seat. He kept a can of Foster's in the cup holder, unopened, to remind himself that he'd banned booze from his life.

Instantly, he heard a siren. A county sheriff's car in the other lane swung into a U-turn. Red and blue lights flashed in Red's rearview mirror.

Red slammed his fist against the steering wheel. He'd flashed the pop can.
Damn it, pop's legal. And I can't chance getting busted.

Red angled into the parking lot of the convenience store, his stomach roiling, and opened the door of the van.

The cop had the bulk of Arnold Schwarzenegger squeezed onto a frame maybe five and a half feet high, a comical effect, like a clothes dryer with wooden posts for legs.

As Red stepped out, the cop stopped and shot him the standard cop look:
Who the hell are you and are you gonna make trouble in my jurisdiction?

The cop's mouth snap-crackle-popped out words:
“Get back in your vehicle, sir.”

Red felt himself flush. Dumb to get out. Cops were big on the drill.
Really
dumb to have a van with California plates.

This cop, his nameplate said Officer Lyman, moved upward straight into Red's face. Red put his hands up defensively, and—whooee, the cop was fast for a man built like an appliance. Lyman stepped quick to the side, boosted Red's arm behind him with one hand, and shoved him ferociously on the back with the other. His face crashed onto the hot hood of the cop's car.

Lyman whumped the other arm way up behind Red and clamped his wrists together hard with a sinister
snick
.

The officer tightened the cuffs enough to make them hurt. Letting go, he stood back and smirked at Red.

“Show me some ID—now!”

Red's brain sprang to life:
Get smart. This guy would love an excuse to beat the shit out of you and take you to jail.

Trembling with fury, fumbling, hurting his own wrists with the cuffs, Red fished out his wallet and fake driver's license.

The cop snatched it. “Red Stuart,” he said. He strutted in a tight circle, a banty rooster with too many hens. “Mr. Stuart, we have a fine list of charges here. Speeding, open container, DUI, failure to obey the direct order of an officer, and attempted assault on an officer.”

Red squeezed out his protest. “I wasn't speeding, I wasn't drinking alcohol, and you assaulted me.”

The cop slammed Red's head back down onto the hood.

Rage. Red reminded himself of what mattered:
Don't let them make you.

“Charlie, what the hell are you doing?”

Gianni's voice. Running footsteps.

Then a female voice. “Charlie, back off! I mean it. Now!”

Red craned his head to the side. Gianni and a uniformed woman, a Native American cop.

Officer Lyman answered her with a tone of disdain. “Zahnie, you back off. I have a prisoner in custody. We're taking a little trip to jail.”

The Indian woman said sharply, “What are the charges? We saw everything that happened.”

“Speeding, open container, DUI, failure to obey the direct order of an officer, attempted assault on an officer.”

Gianni said, “Picking on a white man this time? This guy's my friend.”

The woman jumped back in. “You haven't done a field test, and we both saw you assault him.” She looked in the window of the van and grabbed the Foster's can and pop can and held them up. “Not even open. You saw this empty pop can. Throw out the container charge. Both of us will testify to your assault.”

She gave him a satisfied, twisted grin.

“Charlie, I've known you as a liar for thirty years,” said Gianni, “and a bad cop for twenty.”

Charlie gave him a look that could chop the head off a snake. “I'm giving him a field sobriety test.”

Charlie Lyman gave her a long look, took Red's cuffs off, and then Red went through the routine, demonstrating—nine steps forward, heel to toe, thirty seconds standing on one leg, the whole shebang—that he was sober.

Red hadn't touched booze in a month, and he could have passed the test drunk. Born agile. When he finished, he grinned at Officer Lyman.

“No probable cause to hold him,” the woman said. “You're lucky this wasn't another Navajo woman. I'd have you doing time.”

“You lousy bitch!” snapped Lyman. “I'm sick to death of you.”

“Consider me a permanent boil on your behind,” said the woman officer. “Get out of here.”

Lyman did.

Gianni bear-hugged Red. “Some welcome to Moonlight Water,” he said, grinning. “Zahnie, this is my best buddy, Red Stuart. Red, Officer Zahnie Kee.”

“Glad to meet you,” said Red. “You guys came along just at the right time.”

“Watching for you,” said Gianni.

Officer Kee didn't say anything, didn't smile, didn't offer her hand. Her eyes were on Officer Lyman's cruiser, speeding up Moonlight Canyon. Red noticed that her shirt patch read: Bureau of Land Management.

Suddenly, she remembered her manners. “Glad to meet you.”

“You saved my ass.”

“Sorry, but I'm not interested in your ass. I'm after Charlie Lyman's.”

Gianni said, “He stops Navajo women for traffic violations and gives them a choice—get a ticket or service him in the bushes.”

“His father did the same thing,” said Zahnie Kee. “The two sons of bitches did half the Navajo women in this county.”

“Zahnie went to college,” said Gianni, “and picked up bad Anglo habits like cussing.”

“Nobody but Charlie Lyman can make me cuss.”

Gianni said, “Let's get out of the east side of town. It can get a little edgy around here.”

Red gave Gianni a quizzical look.

“Moonlight Water is divided by a wash,” said Gianni, nodding toward the bridge. “East half is all Mormon, west half is Navajos and misfit whites.
Paisan,
give us a ride to the Locomotive Café.”

Red drove them across the wash in his van.

“All of Redrock County,” Zahnie said, “is officially ten thousand Navajo people, five thousand Anglos, and only half a dozen federal officers to police the biggest county in the U.S.”

A vigorous-looking blond fellow about nineteen or twenty came out of the café, stripping off his shirt as he walked. He looked at Red, registered surprise, gave him a big grin, and said, “Yo, dude! What's it like to be dead?”

Red quelled his panic and brushed the kid off with a wave. The kid waved back and moved on.

“What was that about?” asked Zahnie.

“Don't know,” said Red. “He's probably stoned.”

“Eric doesn't get stoned,” she said.

Red watched the young blond. He talked like a cool kid, but with his hair cut into a burr and his toned body, he could have been an advertisement for “our finest Mormon youth.” Red just hoped the guy wouldn't come back and call him Rob Roy.

On the porch of the Locomotive Café they found a comfy table outside with iron seats painted dark green. After a moment he realized Zahnie was studying his face instead of the menu. She was wearing a cop look. “Why is your face familiar? You're not tacked on the post office wall, are you?”

He lied with perfect glibness, “I am Red Stuart, late of California, now a wanderer and seeker.”

She ordered a Dr Pepper, and so did the other two. “I think you're full of it.” Her dark eyes nailed him to a cross of cuckoo truth.

“You got that right.” Red grinned at her.

Gianni squirmed and made a worried face.

She said to Red, “You've spent the last month, according to your buddy, wandering from state to state, looking for something. Find out what you want?”

“To live my life large, very large.”

“Oh my.” Zahnie kept her eyes on him and sucked on her straw until the last sip of Dr Pepper was gone. “Well, this place has enough room, and it's a magnet for lost souls.” One last slurp of bubbles made enough noise to turn the heads of the people at the next table.

Red turned his head away and grinned. “Might be a good place for me to spend a little time,” he said.

“Amendment: lost souls who are honest,” she said.

“I vouch for him,” said Gianni, easing the conversation into a different parking spot. “Red, this is the only place in town you want to eat. It's also the trading post, where Navajos go to pawn stuff, the general store, and the post office.”

“Not to mention,” said Zahnie, “where my vehicle is.” She motioned to the stone and beam building behind the trading post. “The far end is the BLM office, where I work. It used to be the jail.” The other buildings were a string of railroad cars set on uneven foundations, like tumbled dominos.

“The café is named after that huge rock.” Gianni pointed at a formation about a half mile away. “See that monument charging out of the rock wall, sort of the shape of a locomotive with an engineer at the controls? It's speeding forward at ten feet per eon. The trader here is the owner of the restaurant and the river ranger. I mean, the other ranger, along with Zahnie.”

“Let's go,” Zahnie said. “It's getting toward dark and we're having supper at home.”

Red walked with Zahnie to her BLM Bronco, opened the door for her, enjoyed the rear view of her bottom, and then climbed into his van. Zahnie stuck her head out the window and said with a grin, “By the way, Red, you're in luck. Because you're Gianni's pal, you have a free hotel—the old folks' home.”

Red raised an eyebrow.

“Consider this treat a preview of hospitality to come,” she said. “Follow me.”

“I'll ride with the lost soul,” said Gianni, and he climbed in next to Red.

 

10

MADHOUSE AND REFUGE

Don't look into a mirror at night. Your shadow might leave you and you'll die.

—Navajo saying

 

Zahnie's Bronco spat gravel. Red and Gianni trailed her in the van, north out of town and onto a dirt road leading up a wash. Red had already learned that a wash was a wide creek bed without a creek when he'd blown a tire exploring New Mexico.

“I haven't slipped up and called you Robbie once.”

“You better not.” They bumped along. The road was probably no smoother than the creek bed. “So this is the loneliest, most remote place in the lower foty-eight.”

“You better believe it.”

“Looks like the freaking edge of the planet. The creeks aren't even on speaking terms with water.”

“The water speaks in the spring, when the snow melts.” Granni pointed to the mountains spiking high at the head of the wash.

Red looked down at Zahnie Kee's taillights and had a vivid thought—maybe he'd give up intriguing women. He'd learned long ago that the interesting ones were a lot of work and the uncomplicated ones bored him.

She made a hard, skidding right turn onto a dirt road, and they bounced along for a while. “So what's this old folks' home?”

“Assisted living center, and they've got a room set up for you there. I help support them.”

“What about staying at your place? A motel? Gianni, this is pretty weird, and that woman doesn't like me at all.”

Gianni unclenched his teeth and took a deep breath. “This
is
my place. You wanted adventure. Open your door to this part of it.”

Red felt like a kid being dropped off for the first day of school.

“Zahnie's good people, a little rough around the edges, but we've all got edges.” Gianni looked sideways at Red, smiled like the Cheshire Cat, and thonked him on the knee. “This is Moonlight Water Canyon we're driving through. Stick your head out the window and smell the desert.”

Red did. The evening air was full of hints he couldn't catch. His eyes gave him rimrock walls on either side of the dirt road, the last of the sunlight making them glow red, the treed tops of the bluffs high and dark. On the canyon floor were the voodoo shapes of desert plants and rock formations, each one a goblin or leprechaun or space alien. The quiet was steep and layered, just like the ancient canyon walls. Dense, dark folds of silence held unknown civilizations and strange worlds of time, frightening, enchanting, enticing.
Eerie,
he thought,
maybe okay, maybe not. Adventure, I guess.

They pulled into a dirt driveway that circled in front of a big stone-masoned building, almost a mansion. Zahnie beat them up the stairs and shouldered open the sticky front door, its solid wood warped by time and solitude. They stood in an anteroom. The air swirled around Red, carrying a flood of memories and feelings.

He shuddered. There was a two-story living room, Victorian in style, with a balcony. Smells drew him to, to …

“
Ya-teh-eh,
” said a whispery voice behind them. Red jumped and whirled to meet the voice. A very old Navajo man sat in the shadows, deep in a battered recliner.

“
Ya-teh-eh,
” the old man repeated. His smile was Buddha with a pinch of chile.

Winsonfred crooked his finger at Red. The younger man bent down and put an ear near the elderly mouth.

“
Ya-teh-eh
means ‘hello'!” His smile was big and his cloudy eyes sparkled with delight. “You're supposed to answer, ‘
Ya-teh-eh, hosteen,
' which is a term of respect, such as you owe your elders.” He pronounced it more like
hah-steen
.

“I'm sorry,
hosteen
.”

“Grandfather,” said Zahnie, “this is Red. A longtime friend of Gianni's.” The old man extended a hand. When Red took it, the man gave him the faintest touch. “Red, this is Hosteen Winsonfred Manygoats, my great-grandfather.”

The old man added formally, “Welcome, friend of my friend. If you were a Navajo, I would tell you that I am born to the Folded Arms People and born for the Red Running into Water People, and from my grandparents the Bitter Water People and the Badlands People.”