Stealing Fire

by Win Blevins

  “Go easy, Yaz. We don’t want you tanked up on fizz and water.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “Well,” he said, “I didn’t get to chauffeur Mrs. Wright to Taliesin West, but I’d still like to see the place someday.”

  “It’s not going anywhere.”

  Harry took a swig of beer. “Iris called this morning. I told her you’d be at our place tomorrow, and you’d call her back from there.”

  My heart about fell through the floor.

  “Yazzie?” he said. “You look like someone just let all the air out of your balloon.”

  “My wife … Just hoping there’s not an emergency.”

  “Relax. She said she was fine and she just wanted to send you her love.”

  “Make a call for me, would you? Tell her that we’re okay here. And listen, I mean really listen, to her voice.”

  “I figured,” Harry said, “you might want to tell her yourself.”

  “She’s at Goulding’s?”

  “Yazzie, get a grip! I would have brought her with me, and ASAP.”

  “Sure, sure. This is driving me nuts. Sorry.”

  “Tomorrow you call Iris.”

  “I’m all for that.”

  “Also, there’s a large Indian guy who wants to talk to you. Paid me three times what a room is worth at my new little motel down the road. Worked as an extra for Ford on this film. Sort of a hobby with him.”

  “What’s he want?”

  “Only wanted to talk to you. Educated guy, speaks English well. I think maybe he wants to talk to you about buying the trading post.”

  “Grandpa will never go for that.”

  “Things change. Wouldn’t hurt to hear him out,” Harry said. “If you’re up for it, I’ll see if I can smooth the way. Someone else wants to speak with you, too.”

  “If he looks like a reptile in a pricey suit, it’s Jake Fine, and I’m done with that.”

  “It’s John Wayne. Ford talked you up, and the Duke wants a few words.”

  “Harry? How does a kid grow up in the back-end corner of the rez, part Navajo and part Jewish—how does this guy get to know the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright and John Wayne and a bona fide gangster?”

  “Just lucky, I guess,” he said.

  Right then I felt like anything but.

  Twenty-one

  Harry and I ate a ham sandwich, and then we both fell asleep in the rockers by the woodstove. Harry snored to beat the band, but it was rhythmic, and I was so tired I could have slept through a windstorm.

  Knocking on the front door, hard, rapid, impatient. A fist. I jumped out of the rocker, my heart going a million beats per minute. Gads, we had more people coming through here than we did in Santa Fe.

  It was Eno Kee.

  I looked at my watch, and it was ten minutes past time to pick up Wright and Grandpa. I shook Harry awake. He said yes, he’d like to come with me. I asked Eno to stay inside, said we’d catch up later, and told him to bolt the doors from the inside. Not to let anyone in but me. And no fights over love. That was the last thing we needed.

  I was talking fast, white-man fast. Eno looked stunned, but he got it. He’d sit and wait. I thought about those plans for the museum, and the large window that opens into the rug room. I decided to take the plans with me. Mr. Wright would brain me with his walking stick if I let them out of my sight.

  “You’ve got some big trouble.”

  “Yes, and I don’t know where it’s coming from.”

  “I come by to warn you that my wife’s uncle is on your tail,” Eno said. “Says you treated him real rude.”

  “He must have me mixed up with some other guy.”

  “That’s what I told him. See, this is why I think my wife and me got so many problems, her being Ute. We’ve got a history of hard times between us.”

  “Eno? Don’t let the uncle in.”

  “I would have bolted everything up without you telling me. He’s the last guy I want to see—large and nasty.”

  Harry and I climbed into the truck. Four in the cab wouldn’t cut it on our way back. Harry said he’d sit in the bed.

  We bounced down the two-track toward the river.

  “Eno does a real good job on our house, you’re right about that, but his life would go easier if he kept his pants up.”

  “He doesn’t drink,” Harry said. “That’s something.”

  “No, he fools around on his wife when he’s cold sober.”

  “Some people just have too much charm.”

  We rattled over the rocks about five miles per hour. The air was getting a little thick with words unsaid.

  “Harry, something on your mind?”

  He squirmed a little.

  “This is going to sound ridiculous, I mean, Frank Lloyd Wright is pure class.”

  “He’s a regular guy with hard times and good times, both,” I said. “Well, not regular. But he’s a man like anyone else. Pretty much. Never mind. What were you going to say?”

  “I thought maybe you’d all like to come over to my place tomorrow.”

  “We already talked about that. I’m for it.”

  “Well, I thought you might like to spend two nights, maybe three, play it by ear, and watch a movie being filmed. Think Wright might enjoy that?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I know. It’s silly.”

  “No, Harry. It’s brilliant.”

  “He’ll like it?”

  “Number one, he is crazy about movies and movie stars. Number two, because Jake Fine was in my house, easy as pie, I’d just as soon be somewhere else for more than one night.”

  “Too late to leave today.”

  “How about you and I trade places at the woodstove all night? Keep watch.”

  Harry laughed. “Who is going to shake us awake when we nod off?”

  “I shake you awake, and then you shake me awake. We bolt everything. And the old fellows aren’t allowed to wander around, not without taking one of us.”

  “They’ll love that.”

  “They’re going to have to get comfortable with rules for a few days.”

  “Good luck.”

  “After your place, if it seems safe, Wright and I will head to Taliesin West,” I said. “Then I collect my check, and I’m through.”

  “Want to leave your grandfather with us, or you want him with you at Taliesin?”

  “Easier to leave him at your place, if you’ve got room.”

  “I can always find room, and I can invent a job for him. Going over my art, pricing it, changing the prices if he sees fit.”

  “We sell my grandfather on that, and it’ll be a done deal.”

  * * *

  I had met with Jake Fine, twice, in Reno, Nevada. Nothing more than a cow town with slot machines, mines, and a few divorce ranches.

  Fine was headed to Vegas to make plans for nightclubs. He wanted input. I had no idea how you could build a classy nightclub with slot machines, but I humored the man. We worked out a plan that was good for both of us. I had no intention of running into Fine again. But then Helen happened.

  I had planned to use Helen, but that hadn’t worked out very well. I had a sneaking suspicion that she was using me. Maybe it was to get back at her father. Maybe to bounce architectural ideas around. It turned out that I’d been wrong about the second part. She was smarter than I was, but I would never let her know that. As far as women went, she was a perfect fit. The expecting-a-baby thing that I’d told Mrs. Wright was a complete fabrication. Something to keep her occupied and concerned about me.

  Then it came to me, just like one of those ridiculous cactus-shaped neon signs that line the street of Grants, New Mexico. (I couldn’t wait to get out of there.) I could turn my feelings—I hated having feelings—for Helen into a plus. She had a brother who, by all accounts, was a real loser but was trying to horn in on whatever Helen did with Fine. Take out the brother, get the drafts for the Guggenheim, sell them for a nest egg, marry Helen, and become her father’s new son. T
hat seemed doable. Winning her heart would be easy—no plan needed with a woman.

  The phone rang. It was her. She’d meet me in Flagstaff; she told me the place and gave me the number. She said she didn’t know where her brother was. That was disturbing. The woman was the suspicious type and she was gorgeous. A drop-dead combination.

  I hung up the phone and shut the door to the pay phone. A pretty little blonde with FLOOZY written all over her strutted by. She was wearing red short-shorts and a tight middy blouse. Very patriotic.

  She walked into teepee number 12. I gave her ten minutes and then knocked on her door. She opened it. I put fifteen dollars in her hand.

  “For this,” she said, “you get the full treatment.”

  Women.

  Twenty-two

  No sign of them at three thirty—they were even later than me. That was no surprise. Harry and I walked down the wash toward the river.

  Turn to the north, and you step back in time 1,200 years. There, above you, is the ruin that I love above all others. It looks out on the San Juan River. The rippling sound is sweet. Walk up tumbled rocks—Mr. Wright must have had a field day staying upright with his walking stick there—and you see a cliff dwelling following the shape of the alcove beneath the bluff. It is the image of water and sand and stone and wind creating the perfect home. Carved rock doorways, walks, hidden walls, grinding stones, corn cobs … all there. Feels as if the people might return any moment.

  How many lived there? Who knows. Their rock drawings and carvings are a story we can’t read, we can only feel. And there, painted across the back wall, is a snake about fifteen feet long and as thick as a man’s thigh. The Hopis revere it as the origin place of their Snake clan, and conduct a ceremony there every year. The Navajos also claim it as a sacred site. You can almost see the snake move across the wall, protecting and caring for all those who enter.

  Walk inside that cave and you’ve no longer moved 1,200 years back in time. You have lost time altogether. This is what I miss when I’m in a city. No places where time disappears. I take that back. At the edge of the ocean—if that’s where your city is—with your feet in the tide, yes, you lose track of time. The wide, magical desert, and the huge rollicking ocean. Both these places take your watch and toss it to the winds.

  Harry and I saw Grandfather and Mr. Wright sitting on stones inside the cliff dwelling. Simply sitting. No sounds. I couldn’t possibly blame them for missing three thirty. For missing three o’clock. What’s time in a place that swallowed it whole thousands of years ago?

  We climbed up the rocks and sat with them, no words, just part of it all. The smell of tall grasses, the light of cottonwoods laying down their leaves. The moisture off the river. The eddies and the blue herons. If a person had never known love, any kind of love, this is where I would take them.

  Five minutes, ten, Grandfather looked over at me and nodded his head. He stood, and I stood. Wright and Harry stretched. It is a place that is very hard to leave. You do not say good-bye. It would be like saying good-bye to the center of yourself that you knew before your birth. You walk away with awareness of your center. That’s all you can do.

  Wright broke our silence. “Glad you kept the drawings with you.”

  We walked through the wash, and we beat back the bushes. This time of year, no gnats. Some mountain lion tracks. We each put our feet in the tracks and then our hands in the tracks. Then we said, as one, “Wow.”

  Remembering you are part of the natural world puts you in your rightful place.

  By the time we’d marched to the truck, Mr. Wright and Harry Goulding were deep in conversation. They liked each other right away. I had learned that with Mr. Wright, there weren’t many shades of gray. He loved someone or he couldn’t tolerate them. So their immediate friendship was good news, at least for the next few days.

  Grandpa decided to sit in the truck bed. I think it made him feel vital to be back there with pistol in hand. He’d stopped hunting when I was a kid. Could not bear the sadness it gave him. Still, he liked target practice, and he loved his old pistol. So these were high times. We had a talk about him sitting back there, and he assured me he’d put on the safety. I could see us plowing over a bed of river rocks, the gun going crooked, and him blasting away part of the truck. Or worse, his legs.

  Harry said to Wright, “Mr. Wright, I’d like to know if you’re up for an adventure. Please feel free to say no.”

  Brother, those were the magic words.

  “Nothing I love more. Adventure is my life! What did you have in mind? And please,” he said, “call me Frank.”

  “I thought maybe you’d like to watch a movie being filmed. Get behind the scenes, you know?”

  I said, “Monument Valley, Movie Capital of the World. When I was a kid we never could have seen that one coming.”

  “Thank God for John Ford,” said Harry, “or none of us—white people or red—would have made it through those rough years before the war. Navajos were scraping dried corn off old cobs. Mike and I were ready to barbecue our shoes.”

  “Mike?” Wright said to Harry.

  “My wife.”

  “Interesting name for a woman. I like it.”

  “Be sure and tell her that. Anyway, they’re shooting some scenes right at Goulding’s. All over Monument Valley, of course, but Yazzie, I mean right at our trading post!”

  “How did you get them to do that?”

  “They thought of it all on their own, do you believe it?”

  “Between you and Mike, where else would anyone shooting a western want to be?” Absolutely true.

  “And get this—they built a stone cabin right next to our trading post and home, that’s supposed to be the office for ‘the beleaguered captain,’ played by John Wayne. The ‘upstart Lieutenant Thursday,’ that’s Henry Fonda, isn’t treating Indians with anything that resembles respect. Conflict between the two main characters, and there you are,” he said. “Name of the movie is Fort Apache.”

  I looked at Harry. “Boy, that’s getting close to a touchy subject.”

  “Cowboys and Indians?”

  “No. Respecting Indian people,” I said. “Ford’s going to be listed as a subversive if he gets too close to matters of race. It rocks America’s boat, and we happen to have a few extra-enthusiastic people in Washington right now.”

  Harry nodded in agreement.

  “I love the movies,” Wright said, plenty of oomph in his voice. “Absolutely besotted by stars and movies. But John Ford? I’m fascinated by his eye. You can tell he’s a Celt. Irish, I know, not Welsh, but the way he sees the world is transcendent. He doesn’t move the camera all over the place and make you seasick. He depends on light. He depends on the expression in a character’s eyes. Same as windows in a building, and that’s where the power is,” he said. “Ford is magnificent.”

  “It doesn’t mean he won’t get into trouble with the government if he gets too embroiled with Indians and their plight,” Harry said.

  “Spare me!” said Wright. “Only an idiot can have no opinion on this.” Harry and I said nothing. We didn’t count ourselves as idiots, and apparently Wright didn’t count us as such, either. He liked Harry, and I was three-quarters Navajo, so at least we weren’t on the wrong side of Wright’s rant.

  “‘We’ve treated Indian people badly. It’s a blot on our honor,’” Wright said. “‘We’ve robbed, cheated, murdered, and massacred them, but they kill one white man and, by God, out come the U.S. troops.’”

  “Did you just make that up?” I said. “It’s pretty good.”

  “No. I read it the other day. Ford said it. I worry about any man with a conscience. He’s a liberal among Republican studio execs, and it’s a tough spot to be in. No one knows that better than I.”

  “He is loved by this country,” I said, “and Admiral Ford isn’t going to get into any trouble with rabid radicals in D.C.”

  “I suppose you’re right—his bravery during the war will be his savior. But put his words
in someone else’s mouth and they’d be looking at their career going right down the drain or a move to Europe.”

  Harry said, and his voice was quiet, “I heard that a group of kooks is sticking a list together to go before some committee later this fall. A committee about people who aren’t real Americans.”

  “Well, if they were born here, for heaven’s sake, what are they?” Wright said.

  “Communists.”

  “Bah!” Wright said. He shook his fist toward the deep blue sky, and all the forces that were trying to run and ruin people’s lives.

  We pulled into the patch of gravel in front of our trading post. Grandpa made a good show of jumping off the bed. I got the pistol out of his hands as soon as I could. And, just as I’d suspected, the safety wasn’t on. I looked at the gun. I looked at him.

  “Don’t give me a lecture,” he said. “What good is a gun if you can’t use it when you need it?”

  Eno was still locked up from the inside, so he’d have to unlatch. Not even a red ant could have gotten into that house. Grandpa pounded on the door, and hollered for Eno to let everyone in. The tone of Eno’s words, muffled, said he wasn’t crazy about being penned up. I didn’t blame him. I was glad he was safe, and it was the only way I could figure how to keep him that way while we were gone.

  * * *

  Standing beneath a cottonwood with Harry while he had a smoke, I felt like I was in a puzzle within a puzzle.

  “I was in the navy,” I said to him. “The armed services fought with Stalin, not against him, and that whole calamity ended just a few years ago. This Americans against Americans thing is too odd for words.”

  “Ford has personal politics. Loves Wayne, he’s like family, and is disgusted that he didn’t enlist for the war. My advice?” Harry said.

  “I’m not talking to anyone about politics at your place,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Same crew of actors and stagehands?”

  “Yep—his favorites, John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Ward Bond, all the rest. This time they’ve got Navajos playing Apaches instead of playing Comanches. Still speaking Navajo, though. People are going to think every Indian speaks the same language.”