by Win Blevins
“Here will be fine,” said Winsonfred.
“Who’s Ed?” Red blurted out.
“I sent him a message. He’ll come in a minute or so,” said Winsonfred. He spoke softly and precisely, like a precocious child. “Ed is a buzzard.”
Red thought, Oh, shit.
“You don’t have to hide words like that from me,” said Winsonfred. “I know what they mean. Like most Navajos, I just choose not to say them.”
Jeez, thought Red, then corrected himself. Anonymous Source, he even knows my thoughts.
“Who is Anonymous Source?” said Winsonfred.
“The Big Man Upstairs I don’t believe in.”
“Odd that you’re talking to Him, then.” Winsonfred set down his pudding carefully, reached into his shirt pocket, and drew out the makings.
Red watched fascinated as a single 103-year-old hand-rolled a cigarette, flipped a Bic, and lit up. The younger man wondered why the Ancient One didn’t use both hands.
He drew deep on the cigarette, holding it between thumb and forefinger. “Tony doesn’t let me smoke in the house,” said Winsonfred. “He’s so modern he acts like tobacco isn’t sacred. If you’d like a cigarette, help yourself.”
Red wanted to try to roll a smoke with one hand. He licked the edge of the Zig-Zag paper, and tobacco fell into his lap. Winsonfred smiled. Red fumbled. He fumbled some more. Finally, he gave up, rolling it badly with two hands, and he flicked Winsonfred’s Bic.
“I saw you,” said Winsonfred. “Not you, but what you did. I knew something was going to happen. You, you’re bringing it, whatever it is.”
Red dropped the burning cigarette and had to pick it up. “What did you see that I did?”
Winsonfred let smoke spiral from his mouth into the night sky. “A big flash of light and an explosion of water. Parts of a boat whirling into the air, and the main part sinking. It was chaos.”
Oh man, Red thought. Nothing he could say to that. He felt short of breath.
He matched the Ancient One’s plumes of smoke, rising like clouds in front of the moon. It seemed like ordinary, secular tobacco to Red. Without appearing to, he scanned the dark skies for buzzards. The one he’d seen today was enough.
Again without appearing to, Red edged his attention sideways at the old man. Winsonfred gazed at the moon with unaltered raptness.
“Here’s Ed,” said the Ancient One. “I’m going away for a little while.”
Red felt very alone. He smoked and fidgeted and smoked and wondered where Winsonfred was, if he’d actually gone somewhere, but there he was, right beside him. Red fidgeted for a very long time.
Winsonfred took a deep breath and gave a little sigh. “Okay, I’m back.”
Red leaned forward to make sure Winsonfred was all right. “You’re back?”
“I went off to talk to Ed.” The old man began to eat the tapioca pudding with his free hand, scooping it up with his index finger.
Red looked him in the eyes now, and for the first time they seemed unnaturally bright.
“You’re a lost soul,” said the Ancient One. He licked pudding off his fingers slowly and delicately.
Seemed like Red was transparent to everyone. What he didn’t say was that he’d lost his soul years ago.
“Ed watched you out at the petroglyphs this afternoon.”
Another one Red had no words for.
“He flew over your van in the canyon, followed you into town, and saw that cop stop you.”
Red felt his eyes do a whirligig, but he held his tongue.
“Ed said you’re a seeker. Moonlight Water is full of those. I told Ed, ‘Something else, too. Something’s gonna happen ’cause he came here.’ Ed and I, we don’t know what that is, yet.
“Ed said, ‘This country will heal the man.’ It doesn’t do that for everybody.”
Red gazed into the desert darkness, scared and excited and wanting to run as fast and far as he could. I didn’t come to the end of the earth to sit outside with a 103-year-old man who’s half in this world and half in the next, blow smoke at the moon, and talk to buzzards. Especially if he sees my past and future.
“Yes,” said Winsonfred, “you did.”
A long shiver ran up Red’s spine, and then it tiptoed back down.
“There are good things for you here, very good,” Winsonfred said. “If you open your heart.” He patted Red’s knee.
Right. A woman who thinks I’m a clown, a buzzard who spies on me, an old man who reads my thoughts, and a cop who hates me—maybe not such a brilliant adventure. Red could not imagine what Gianni had been thinking, setting him up to stay here.
“Ed said you’ll be okay here, even good, but I’m a little worried about whatever’s going to happen. Anyway,” Winsonfred said, “you’ll see Ed hanging around, watching over you, just to make sure.”
Red held the old man’s eyes. They were brown, friendly, clear, simple. Questions spun Red’s mind dizzy.
“If you want to ask me something, anything, go ahead.”
Why the hell do you think you can talk to buzzards? How’d you see me blow up my boat? Are you a psychic?
Winsonfred grinned at him.
Red settled on something other than anything that had to do with himself. “Why did you call Neville the patriarch your enemy?”
Winsonfred laughed. “I guess a man’s got to have a few enemies to feel alive. Navajos and the Mormons came to Moonlight Water the same spring. People doubt, but that’s the way it was. Came here with different ideas, real different, ideas that have been fighting since human beings first came onto the earth. Sad to say, Neville’s spirit still inhabits this country, partly through his descendants, and they strengthen the evil.
“I walk with the forces of harmony and peace with other people, other creatures, and the world—I know these are stronger than all the striving and greed that oppose them. The harmony Clarita spoke of, Red, is harmony within yourself—walking in the right way with your own nature, with your family, with other people, the right way with the earth. If you do that, you walk in beauty. That’s what the medicine man sings in a ceremony. Remember, I used to be a singer. ‘May you walk in beauty.’ It means inner beauty, rightness.”
Red didn’t know what to think. About any of it.
Winsonfred said, “I’d like to go back inside now. I just needed a little visit with Ed, and with you.”
Red marveled at the old man’s spryness, standing up, climbing the stairs.
At the landing Winsonfred turned back and dove into Red’s eyes. “How you heal, young man, you go out around the country, breathe the air, see everything, feel everything. Also, you listen to the stories. All the stories, from people here hundreds of years ago and people here now. Four-legged people, rooted people, winged, all. And the river, too—we call it Old Age River—it knows many stories and murmurs them along its way. For the old stories, listen to the rock and to the waters.”
Red had heard every New Age phrase that washed into the Bay. He couldn’t help it—his knee-jerk response was a cynical grin.
Winsonfred said, “That’s not good for you. And, Red, however many years you’ve lived? I’ve lived more than twice that long. That’s a good reason to listen to me.” He gave Red an endearing smile.
Winsonfred leaned on the door and pushed it open. Red stayed a moment, listening for the sound of the river, wherever it was. Nothing. He followed Winsonfred inside.
11
THE LONELY RANGER AND TONTO
Don’t watch a river flowing swiftly. You’ll get dizzy and fall in.
—Navajo saying
Ri-i-i-in-ng! Ri-i-i-in-ng!
The shrill phone and thundering footsteps woke Red up.
Tony’s sharp voice snapped, “Leeja?!” Said in the tone of, Why the hell are you calling at this hour?
Silence. “Okay.” He pressed a button on an intercom. “Zahnie, come in and talk to Leeja.” He looked at Red and said, “No surprise, right? We don’t have cell phone service in Moonligh
t Water.”
Tony started the coffee and put something in the oven to heat. Zahnie banged through the screen door into the kitchen and grabbed the phone. “Yeah.”
Red sat up and got his bearings. TV playing on mute, walk-in closet beneath a set of stairs, full-length beveled mirror, baby grand. Yeah, he remembered, he was in the old polygamist’s house in Moonlight Water. Never made it upstairs to bed.
“Leeja, I don’t care what Sallyfene and Wandafene do with the Jensen boys.”
The woman was muy guapa but mouthy.
“Oh.” Silence as she listened. “Jeez.”
Red wanted to go back to sleep.
“I’ll go get them.”
Tony brought Red a cup of black coffee and a cinnamon roll right out of the oven. Then he brought the same for Zahnie and himself and plopped down on a corner of the couch. The cinnamon roll was delicious, the real thing.
“What’s up?” That was Gianni, coming down from upstairs, his silk pajamas a maze of wrinkles.
Tony said softly, “Leeja.” To Red he added, “Zahnie’s sister, a nurse.” Gianni got himself a cinnamon roll.
Zahnie held up a hand for silence. “I’ll take care of it right now.”
Pause.
“No, I’ll kick their asses today. Bye.”
Zahnie turned to face them. “Leeja’s daughters are loose on the river with the Jensen boys. Evidently rowed to Serpent House yesterday to camp out. They so-called borrowed a BLM boat to go.”
Tony laughed.
“Okay.” Zahnie spoke like a command officer. “I’m going after them.”
Tony said, “Zahnie, so they might get pregnant. So they stole one of your boats. So what?”
Zahnie gave him a look of disgust. “My nieces do not take advantage of me being a ranger to steal from the BLM. Second, the rapids at Echo Canyon are really dangerous at this water level. Even the river guides are lining the boats through it. The Jensen boys won’t have that much sense. Which means,” she finished, “this is how I spend my day off.”
“The way she spends most workdays,” Tony told Red.
“Take our new guest with you,” said Winsonfred. He was buttering his own cinnamon roll very slowly.
Zahnie glared at him.
“Our new guest,” said Winsonfred. “Good for him to see the river, hear it. Good for you.”
Zahnie said to Red, “Want to take a ride down the river?”
Gianni said, “The guides charge big for that.”
“Okay,” said Red, sounding half-okay.
“I want you around here awhile anyway,” said Gianni. “Something special to show you.”
Red raised an eyebrow at him.
“You’re gonna love it, but it’s not ready yet.”
“Gianni, help us with the boat,” said Zahnie.
“I’m on it,” he answered.
Zahnie flew into motion, stuffing gear into a pack. Then she hustled back to her house and came back wearing her uniform, with some kind of radio or phone on her belt. A little more work and she flew out the door, Red and Gianni trailing.
“Jolo, we’ll need two lunches,” she called back.
“Make that lunch for seven,” Red yelled. You could never have too much real food.
“Let’s move!” Zahnie barked to Gianni and Red. “Gimme your keys.”
She drove like a madwoman. When they started bouncing all over the dirt road, she hit a rut so hard that Red whacked his head on the roof. “I’m just along for the ride,” he murmured, “but I’d like to keep a few of my brain cells.”
“That Jensen kid Hal, he gets crazy when he drinks beer,” Zahnie said. “When they go into those rapids, I hate to think.” She slammed to a stop at a big garage or barn with no walls.
In a jiffy Gianni was pumping up a huge rubber raft with a machine that made a piercing whine. Obviously, he knew the drill. Zahnie grabbed a laminated sheet with an equipment list and began to call out items and hand things over to Red. “In my Bronco! Sleeping bags, thermal pads, tent. Five-gallon water bag, two big wet bags, two small wet bags, two water bottles…”
Red packed it all in, including extra batteries for the flashlights, and Gianni pulled the boat trailer toward the government truck.
They connected the hitch together. Red kept thinking, Don’t say a word or she’ll change her mind.
Jolo showed up with a cooler of food and gave Gianni a ride back to Harmony House.
Zahnie’s foot was heavy-plus. They slid onto the highway too fast, drove west too fast, skidded around a corner onto a dirt road too fast, and bounced their way toward the river. The best thing that happened to Red was when she skidded the Bronco to a stop.
She did the work so fast he had almost no chance to help. Trailer backed to the water, boat into the river, tied to the rail of the trailer, gear into one end of the boat, net snapped over it to keep it in, big water bag snapped to a D ring, everything shipshape right quick.
“Sit on the back tube,” she instructed.
She untied, waded in knee deep, boarded, got into position, and hoisted the big oars. As she took the first stroke, he wondered, not for the first of many times, what she was really thinking.
* * *
Three hard pulls toward the far bank, where the current was.
Zahnie was irritated. Damn her nieces for their carelessness. And damn herself bringing someone along.
She looked at the stranger on the rear tube. Why had she brought him? Because he was well built and good-looking? And where had that gotten her in the past?
She thought of the flotsam her love affairs had washed into her life through the years.
And she was irritated about something else: Why had she brought anyone on a river trip? She knew better. She liked being alone with all that she loved on the river, the great blue herons, the bighorn sheep, the vultures, and most of all the ever-pulsing current. Taking passengers along violated her personal code. She didn’t think the Old Age River was crazy about it, either.
Across at last, she felt the pull of the river, rested her oars, and just let them float. She drew a deep breath and let it out, took another, and told herself to let her irritation go. She wasn’t going to let anything spoil this moment. She always loved to feel the current take hold and sweep them into the rhythm that went on forever, downstream, downstream, downstream, drawing these waters everlastingly to the salt sea. Even now, maybe her thousandth time of paying attention to this unappreciated energy, she was delighted to feel the irresistible current. Deep red canyons, swift green river, a slot of blue sky—this was Zahnie’s world.
It was also her beat. She checked boaters on the river, making sure they had permits, the right equipment, fire pans, legal potties, and followed the rules. She floated the river and gave them tickets when they got out of line, cleaning up campsites as she went. She’d worked this job for nine years. Yes, it was untraditional for a Navajo to work the river. But she’d been fascinated by the river as a kid—she never believed that old-time story about Water Boy lurking in the waters, waiting to grab you—and after nine years she felt like the river returned her love and made her whole. It gave her more love than any man ever had, or her kid either.
She turned her face into the sun—another thing she loved about the river, hot sun and cool water, rays and waves.
She cocked an oar, whacked the water, and splashed Red.
He gasped from the sudden cold, then stuck his tongue out at her.
A perfect start. “Lay back,” she said. “Enjoy.”
He started singing a song in a haunting minor key:
“My heart goes where the river flows—
I gotta go-oh, where the river flows—
Rolling river wild and free—
The restless ones are you and me.”
Her heart pinged when she heard the line about “the restless ones…”
“New lines to ‘Cry of the Wild Goose,’” she said. “Where did they come from?”
“River guides I talked
to. I always imagined floating down a river and singing that song. Never thought I’d really do it. But here I am.”
What a strange guy! She looked at him. What the hell am I doing? Something’s not right with him.
She stroked back into the strong part of the current and rested the oars. No point in doing the river’s work. “Why did you leave California?”
He smiled and tossed out, “In search of America.”
“Don’t take anything seriously,” Zahnie jabbed. “It would spoil your act.” She let it rest.
“Will the rapids be dangerous?”
“Not for us.”
“And the rescue?”
“Let’s not think about that.” She watched him take a couple deep breaths.
“This all seems so, real, compared to the way I was living in San Francisco.”
“Real is good.”
“I needed something new.”
She decided to trust her cop instinct. “New name too?” she ventured.
He didn’t want to tell her, she could see. Maybe he was on the lam. She weighed that. Well, Grandfather Winsonfred liked him. She took a stroke, easing them away from an eddy line, giving him a chance to decide what to say.
“Yeah, new name. I used to be Robert. I’d rather not say the last name. I haven’t done anything illegal.”
She wondered what he was sidestepping. “You still look familiar.”
“I guess I’ve just got one of those faces.”
“Well, Red, what kind of guy was Robert?”
He looked at that question like maybe he didn’t want to know. “Robert had some dumb luck, was in the right place at the right time, and came by some money. Had two wives. The first one ran off with his business manager, a guy named Alvin Friedman. Alvin knew where every dime was. At the time Robert had to admire her style.”
“Then years of the single life,” Zahnie guessed. “In anything-goes San Francisco.”
“Yeah. And I got a female business manager, just in case I ever got married again. Matter of fact, I got Nora Friedman, the daughter of my very first business manager, Alvin. Then I met Georgia and married her three months later.”