Chapter Sixty
Home. I recognized the doublewide home under the piñon trees with the spectacular view out over the valley. In the distance, the small cluster of government housing was just visible to the naked eye. The village where I had been born and lived the first 12 years of my life, it didn’t look any better now than it had back then.
The solar panels I had designed and built for my grandfather were gone. Dismantled and taken away by Chase and Cameron’s men to reverse engineer for their innovative design.
There were dogs in the yard. I looked for my own, Zig and Zag but these were the typical nondescript strays that hung around the village - not Blue Heelers. They barked lazily at me but did not get up or come to investigate me.
There was a newer model pickup parked near the sheep pens and I heard the sounds of hens. Someone lived here.
Clothes hung from a line strung between the house and the nearest treeline. On it was men and women’s underwear, jeans and t-shirts, socks from feet both large and small.
I didn’t see any lights on inside or smell either coffee or food cooking. I swung the rifle up just in case but not pointing it at anyone in particular.
“Hello, the house,” I greeted in Siouan and the screen door banged open to reveal a short man dressed in jeans, wide belt with a dinner plate belt buckle, faded chambray shirt, and down-at-heels ropers. His skin was burnished copper kissed by sunlight, his hair cut short, spiky and iron gray. His eyes crackled deep as midnight.
“Hau,” I said and he responded alike, descending the steps to greet the morning.
“Coffee?” he asked and spoke over his shoulder to a dim figure in the doorway. A woman spoke, asking in a high voice what was wrong.
“Nothing,” the older man said. “We have a hiker from the woods.”
“You’re Dan Kitenanny from Bitter Creek,” I said suddenly. “Grandpop’s nephew.”
“You know Tungasila Strongbow?” he asked. “You are the one the government people told us to watch for.”
“What happened to Zig and Zag?” I asked, sliding off Tango. He stood quietly at my side where Cash ambled over to the barn letting himself in.
“The Blue Heelers? Calico Pete from Penny Lake took them, he needed a herding dog for his sheep at the Rancheria. You would be my great nephew, then? Lakan Strongbow.” He simplified the complex fraternal relationship. I thought we were probably fourth cousins.
I nodded and dropped the rifle towards the ground. I waved my free hand in the general direction of the house. “You going to call them? The government agents?”
“No. They are liars and not my family.”
“You inherited the place?”
“Only living relative,” he said in amusement. “Course, the Feds came and stripped the place before they let anyone back in.”
He did not ask me where I had been or what I’d been doing. The woman came out with two cups of black coffee and one of those non-dairy creamers. Homemade burritos that were cool and wrapped in aluminum foil. She was pretty but only a few years younger than Dan.
“My wife, Betsy Tsosie.”
“You’re Navajo?” I asked in Dine` and she broke into a delighted spate of words where her husband was more laconic. I told her thank you for breakfast but that I had come only to see the home place once more before I left for good. She wanted to know where I’d been, what I’d been doing and whether Grandfather had been buried properly.
“Yes,” I said softly. “As he wished and in the old ways.”
Both were silent as we gave my grandfather a moment of respect. “Will you come in and rest?” she asked.
“No, thank you, ma’am. There are people after me. Federal people. I don’t want to bring trouble down on you or the other villagers.”
“We will not tell the government liars that you have been here,” he said. His eyes flickered over to the two horses.
“Keep them. They were Grandpop’s and I can’t take them where I’m going,” I said easily. I took the mug from her with my left hand and flipped the rifle over my shoulder where it hung out of the way.
Adding capfuls of creamer, I made the coffee light and took a cautious sip. Hot and strong as a burning tire. “How long have you lived here?”
“Two years. Major Two Snakes called us and told us that Grandfather and you had disappeared and the animals needed care. He looked into Grandfather’s affairs and found a will filed at the Courthouse in Cortez. It left the place to you under my guardianship. We couldn’t find you, either.”
“Was there any money?”
He nodded. “A sizable amount - over 50,000 dollars. We haven’t touched it.”
“My mom’s life insurance,” I swallowed. “It’s yours. I don’t need it. When did they take the solar array?”
“Before we came,” he answered.
“You’re using kerosene or the generator?”
“Wood stove.”
“I can help you put in a wind turbine to generate electricity, you won’t need to buy gasoline,” I offered and he smiled.
“The old ways are good enough for us.”
“Yahtahey,” I said and finished my coffee. They watched me walk slowly down the long rutted road that had been our driveway. It was a two-hour drive to town by car but that was because you couldn’t go over ten miles per hour or you risked taking out your oil pan. Plus, I could take shortcuts a vehicle couldn’t.
I had spent more time hiking than I should have and by now, Mairy and Robin would have been waiting a day longer than they expected at the rendezvous point. Once I was sure I had a cell signal, I texted her a message and told them to meet me at the next point. I would be arriving by mechanical means. I put everything in Abenaki rather than encrypt the message and besides, the English translation was even more confusing than the Indian.
I reached town about noon, and the only sign of life was at the grocery store. Several old and rusty pickup trucks were parked out front. No one jumped out and said ‘hey! You’re dead!’ or ‘the Feds are looking for you!’
It was dirty and even more squalid than I remembered, the empty clinic building a strong, scary reminder that the government still decided the life and fate of the reservation’s people. I hesitated to pass by its broken doors and then opened the glass door to the store. Part grocery, pharmacy, post office and bus depot, it served the needs of the reservation in all ways but one. You couldn’t buy beer or liquor there but had to go all the way into Cortez.
The woman waiting on the few customers was Rosie Lopez, a half-blood Sioux that had known my mom but she was so busy that all she said to me was wait, that she’d be with me soon. I doubted she would recognize me, my hair was still blonde and my eyes brown from the contacts I still wore. I nodded and wandered the aisles, picking up a few candy bars, chips, and snacks. A cold Pepsi from the cooler, one of the few places on the rez that had ice. I drank it as fast as I could chug it. It didn’t mix well with the remains of the bitter coffee.
“You have a bus schedule?” I asked and she hooted as if I had said something hysterical.
“Ain’t no buses come out here, not since the clinic shut down. You want to catch a ride, you got to go out to Bitter Springs Corner and wait. One comes by every day or so.”
“Thanks.” I left a ten on the counter and told her to keep the change; her eyes tallied what I held and she nodded. Her voice followed me.
“You could hitch a ride with Deputy Chisholm. He’s going that way to Cortez.”
I pretended not to hear her but exited the store. The last thing I needed was to spend a few hours riding with a cop, even a Sioux Nation one. I walked across the street to the only gas station in town and re-filled my canteens. It was a long walk out to the Crossroads and no water between here and there. I bought a six-pack of bottled water from the clerk and stuffed it in the backpack. Putting one foot in front of the other, I walked the lonely road out of town. The only paved road in town. I stepped off to the side and squatted when the sheriff’s car flew by and he did not see me.
Dusk was nipping at my heels by the time I’d reached the state highway but here at least, traffic was frequent enough that I could have hitched if I wanted. I didn’t take the chance, I waited at the only stop sign for the last fifty miles, praying that a bus would come by before night fell. The only cover here was the encroaching darkness, the trees started at the base of the hills, a good hour’s hike from the road. Everything between was nothing but road and sparse brush. The shoulders of the road did not have a gully where I could have lain flat and hidden.
I set the backpack down on the ground, a dry reddish dust that had not seen rain in quite some time and sat with my legs stretched out in front of me. My feet hurt and my calves were tired. My whole body thanked me with eternal gratitude that it was prone and not moving.
I wasn’t sure if the bus driver would let me bring the rifle on board but might let me store it in the luggage compartment underneath the bus. Of course, it would have been better if the rifle was wrapped up or in a case but maybe because he or she was going through Sioux Sovereign Territory, he or she would bend the rules. It would be unloaded, in any case.
It was near enough to 9 p.m. when I spotted the big headlights of a bus or 18 wheelers. He slammed on the brakes before he got close to me, stopping a good bus length beyond the sign. I heard the air brakes chatter and the pneumatic hiss of the door as it opened.
It wasn’t a Trailways but another local company out of Tucson and the driver was a tough, no-nonsense Latino woman in a gray uniform. Her name was on the breast pocket of her shirt, Juana Rodriguez and she had a wedding band on her right index finger. She was around 40 with big hair and no make-up.
“Almost didn’t see you,” she said in Spanish. I held up my rifle and raised an eyebrow. Grumbling, she told me to unload it as she rose from her seat to join me at the luggage compartment. I handed her the bullets and she tucked them into her pocket as she unlocked a steel box welded to the frame in the huge space reserved for bags. I followed her in, taking an empty seat as she deposited the bullets into another lockbox near her feet.
There were quite a few empty seats with all the filled ones occupied by drunk Amerindians. “Twenty bucks for the fare,” she said. “Or a waiver card if you’re drunk.”
I handed over a crumpled twenty and she stared at me. “You’re not running away, are you? How old are you?”
“Sixteen. No, ma’am. My dad is meeting me at the Walmart in Cortez. I’ve been on my vision quest.”
“Did you have a vision?” she asked and realized that she had asked me one of those taboo questions; as personal and private as if she’d asked how I masturbated.
One of the drunks gasped and muttered a curse. She apologized and took my money, reseated herself as she popped the clutch. The big coach lurched forward. Soon, we were doing 80mph down the arrow straight blacktop and she didn’t slow down until we started climbing the hills into the city.
It was three in the morning when the big coach pulled into the bus depot. I started to rise but the driver told me that I could stay and ride the rest of the way to the Walmart as that was where most of the passengers were going.
“Probably to wind up in the drunk tank,” she muttered sourly. “That’s all I do, ferry drunks back and forth.”
“Maybe they can’t help it,” I told her. “No jobs, no careers and no hope. Just a shack on the reservation and a welfare check. No self-respect and we’ve lost our cultural heritage. You know that our teenagers have the highest rate of alcoholism and suicide in the country?”
“What about you, son? You don’t drink.”
“I’m a genius,” I shrugged. “One of a kind but there are times I’ve thought about suicide myself.”
One of the drunks came forward. “Hey, man. Don’t talk like that. You had a vision. I wanted to have one and never did no matter how many times I tried.”
“Yes,” I said quietly. “I saw the Firebird rise up from the ashes of the white man’s cities and burn it all to ashes. The only thing left standing was an elk and a red-haired boy on his back. An eagle fell from the sky and was snatched by a great bear who in turn, was destroyed by the Firebird as it changed from yellow flames to red and then blue-white.” I spoke in Siouan so she could not understand but the others did and it sobered them all.
“You,” the first man said reverently. “You are the Firebird.”