Moonlight Water

by Win Blevins

“I put his father in jail.” The glee rang in her voice.

  “No wonder he’s so fond of you.”

  “I caught the old man looting, called for help, testified against him, and he went to federal prison.”

  “Federal?”

  “Your government is tough on looters.”

  “Oh, jeez. Well, Kravin really loves you now.”

  “He and his family, old-timers here, they’ve been looting ruins for a hundred years, just like some of the other longtime Mormon families. Anyway, I caught Travis Kravin on public land bulldozing a kiva.”

  “What?”

  “Just what you heard. Knocking down a kiva with a skid loader. You saw how narrow and deep those ruins are in the canyon. Now they’re filled with blowing sand thanks to Travis. He wanted to get in the easy way—anything of value would be in the ground on the bottom—so he was taking the whole kiva out. He had to bring the skid loader in on a flatbed.”

  “What are those kivas for?”

  “Two things: men’s clubs and ceremonies. If I hadn’t already gotten past the Navajo taboo about going into ruins, kivas would have done it. Shadows of people past, sounds, intimations … never mind. Trouble is, pot hunters love them, too. Besides middens, kivas are where you’ll find the fanciest, most decorative stuff. If you found a whole pot in an ordinary ruin, it might be worth a thousand bucks. In a kiva you’d find a very unique pot, worth a lot more.”

  “How much?”

  “Depends on the quality and age. Through a New York auction house? You could be talking six figures.”

  “It’s legal to sell it openly?”

  “If it’s acquired legally on private property. Most of us find looting kivas even more disgusting than looting dwellings. Kravin totally destroyed the site and destroyed the chain of people past and future along with it.”

  Red snorted. “There’s no end to where greed will lead a man, and that’s the truth of it.” He could almost hear his grandfather’s voice, and for a moment he imagined Angus and Winsonfred having a smoke together on the back porch, bemoaning the loss of civilized ways.

  Red and Zahnie came to the river, and she tapped at her phone again. Same routine. “No answer at my office, no answer at the sheriff’s office. Those are emergency numbers, manned twenty-four/seven. Something’s really wrong.”

  She tapped another number. Zahnie identified herself to someone who obviously didn’t know her. She asked them to pick up three perps and got into an argument. Exclamations of surprise. Words of annoyance. Finally an abrupt hang-up.

  She grinned at Red. “That was the sheriff in the next county, San Juan. They have no jurisdiction to pick up anyone out here, and they can’t raise anyone at the office in Moonlight Water on the phone, either, no one in Redrock County. So…”

  She thought a moment. “They’ll send a squad car down there and deliver my message and the GPS coordinates. Maybe this evening or maybe not.” She smiled. “If Mrs. Nielsen doesn’t get to spend the night in jail, she’ll spend it sleeping with snakes and scorpions.”

  Red guffawed and untied the boat.

  * * *

  The rest of the way down the river Red and Zahnie whooped and hollered and splashed. They sang old songs. When they couldn’t remember the words, they made up new ones that were gross and funny. They recalled awful titles for country songs. She started with “My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink, and I Don’t Love You.”

  Red answered, “‘My Wife Ran Off with My Best Friend, and I Sure Do Miss Him.’”

  “‘Please Bypass This Heart.’”

  “‘She Got the Ring and I Got the Finger.’”

  “‘If I’d a Shot You When I Wanted To, I’d Be Out by Now.’”

  Red upped the ante. “‘I Got Tears in My Ears Laying on My Back Cryin’ over You.’”

  Zahnie grinned and said, “‘If I’ve Been on Your Mind, Please Jerk Me Off.’”

  Red bent over laughing, tears running down his face. “That’s it. I know when I’ve been topped.”

  They saw lots of cave swallows, a couple of blue herons, way too many buzzards, and four bighorn sheep bearing huge curls of horn.

  Red said, “Those sheep seem like magical creatures.”

  “They’re always on the Navajo side,” Zahnie said. “Don’t know why.”

  “Sure you do,” said Red.

  15

  NIGHT WATER

  Don’t stare at the moon. It will follow you.

  —Navajo saying

  Two hours downstream, they pulled into the hamlet of Splendora. Zahnie got a kick out of watching Red take in what the town was—a single enterprise combining gas station, motel, and café. No houses. Then she used the pay phone. When Leeja picked up her sister’s call, Zahnie listened hard and her heart slowed. When she hung up, she told Red, “Leeja’s got the girls. They’re across.”

  “Across?”

  “It means ‘across the river,’ on the rez. Anyway, they’re safe home with Leeja in Mythic Valley.”

  Zahnie dialed another number and spoke to someone at Harmony House.

  “Gianni will come right now with my Bronco to pick us up, and the boat. Half an hour. Want to eat?”

  “Always.”

  In the restaurant they were greeted by a middle-aged woman in a pioneer-style dress, high at the neck and skirt to the ankles. She bore three visible burdens: a lifetime of uncut hair piled on top of her head, a pair of the largest breasts ever, and an air of I’m not like you that looked heavier than either.

  She seated them in a booth with turquoise vinyl seats held together with duct tape. She turned and left. Zahnie said, “Thank you, Coralee,” to her back.

  Red whispered, “What’s with the dress?”

  A pretty blonde waitress came toward them bearing water, napkins, and silverware. She was a teenager and wore the older woman’s face and an almost identical dress. “Behold the granddaughter,” Zahnie said, after the young woman walked away.

  Zahnie shot Red a quirky smile. “Splendora’s a polygamous colony. You know about it?”

  “No.”

  “Look at her ankles.” As the young waitress walked away, her blue jeans were visible under the pioneer dress. Red and Zahnie grinned at each other.

  “You’re sitting smack in the middle of their business empire, such as it is, but where they live is eight miles to the southwest, up Dry Creek. Old-time Mormon polygamists. I don’t know exactly how many, but in the low thousands. Leftovers. About a century ago, when the Church abandoned plural marriage, they went up there because it’s a place no one would want and they could be undisturbed forever. It’s right on the state line. They put their houses on skids.…”

  Red gave her a look. “Okay, now you’re pulling my leg.”

  “No way. When they saw the law coming, they used teams of horses to skid the houses over the state line, one way or the other, depending on which state was coming down on them.”

  “Man, I thought Californians thumbed their noses at the law.”

  “These people are passive. I started to say they do ‘passive resistance,’ but I won’t. ‘Passive’ is it. You’re lucky Coralee’s husband isn’t here gooing things up. They call him Whip. I don’t know what it’s short for, but it’s a perfect description of his personality: whipped cream. Even his face and hair look like whipped cream. He has no definition.”

  The waitress came back with a pad.

  Zahnie ordered ha-nii-kai for both of them. “Stew of lamb marrow and white corn with fry bread. Navajo. It’s great.”

  He nodded at the waitress, who disappeared without a word. “Chatty little thing, isn’t she?”

  “They try not to have much to do with the outside world. This business is it—they only want to be left in peace with their religion.”

  “And they build their houses on skids.”

  “From time to time they used to get busted, but now Utah has an unofficial-official hands-off policy.”

  “Ah, free lust.”

  Zahnie looked s
harply at him. How much of your life has been free lust, stud? She thought miserably of her skin, which was far from fair, her lips, usually chapped, her eyes, muddy brown. Her chest tightened. It’d been a long time since she’d been attracted to a man. Lousy choice, she told herself.

  “It’s not free anything,” she said carefully, “I’ve known them all my life. For them it’s a responsibility. The men are mild and the women are stern models of duty. You’d find more lust in a convent.”

  “You’re defending them?”

  She shrugged. “My great-grandfather Winsonfred, he had three wives.”

  “I had two. Disaster.”

  She threw him her don’t-mess-with-me look. “You know I mean three at once. The government should damn well let all of us live the way we want to.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  The waitress set flowered cups of steaming coffee in front of them and left without a word or even eye contact.

  “They serve coffee as a concession to the gentile world. Gentile, that means you, me, black Baptists, Chinese Buddhists—anyone who isn’t Mormon.”

  Red lifted his brew and sipped. “Not bad.”

  “Sir Richard Burton,” Zahnie said, “the guy who wrote A Thousand and One Nights? He came here to check out Mormon polygamy and wrote about it. The City of the Saints, cool book. Only thing he found wrong with plural marriage—that’s what they call it—is that it kills the romance. He wanted the lust of a harem, and found out plural marriage was anything but.”

  Red smiled at her impishly. “It’s men who are romantic, and women who’re the practical ones. Too many practical people living under the same roof.”

  “Somebody has to raise the kids.”

  “Zahnie, I’m picturing you as a second wife. You walk two steps behind, and it’s only the senior wife in front of you. You—”

  Zahnie threw a handful of Splenda packets at him.

  “The man goes to the senior wife’s bed every night. When she’s unwilling, he passes on to yours. He hasn’t gotten through the senior wife’s door in eleven years. You have ten kids—”

  She tipped his coffee in his lap.

  “Whooee!” Red hollered. He flopped around on the seat like a fish out of water. “Hot! A little bit hot!”

  He grabbed his ice water and poured that on his crotch. Then he let out his breath and smiled at her. “Did I deserve that?” he asked with a tease in his voice.

  She eyed him. “Maybe not, but I enjoyed it.”

  “Grandpa Angus, he used to say, ‘We men, we deserve whatever women give us, and it’s usually better than we’ve earned.’”

  Zahnie softened. “I like your grandpa.”

  “I did, too. Excuse me, I’m taking a trip to the men’s room.”

  Red came back with a wad of paper towels.

  “So, how you doing down below?”

  “Strong and manly as ever,” he answered.

  She flashed a wicked grin. “I could fix that.” She lifted her glass of ice water as a weapon.

  “Hey, careful. I might need it again sometime.”

  The Navajo stew rescued them, and they both launched in with enthusiasm. Though Red said nothing, she could tell he liked the fry bread more than the fatty stew.

  At that moment Gianni barged through the door, followed by Eric of the Young Mormon Youth. “Let’s get to it,” said Gianni. It struck Zahnie that neither of them was in a good mood.

  They hefted the boat onto the trailer and tied it down in no time flat. All clambered into the Bronco, Gianni cruised through the dusk, and Zahnie watched the passing red rocks and hoodoos. The glow of lavender twilight on the stone was a beauty that always affected her. No one said a word.

  When they’d unloaded at Harmony House, Eric went inside to help Jolo clean up the kitchen. At the back door he turned and called, “Hey, dude, how’s it really feel to be dead?” The closing door cut off his cackle.

  Just then Yazzie came rolling in fast and skidded to a stop, his truck roiling up the dust.

  He jumped out and said, “The shit has hit the fan.”

  16

  ENTER THE FEDS

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

  —Navajo saying

  “Yazzie, this is my friend Red Stuart. Red, Yazzie Goldman.”

  Red grinned at the guy. The name was a good joke, but he wore Navajo jewelry everywhere he could find a spot for it, and though his face was elderly, his hair was pure black. He was also as tall as Red, about six feet five, and still fit, with long, ropy muscles.

  “Born to the Deer Spring Clan, born for Jew,” said Yazzie Goldman softly. He added with a return grin, “You don’t need the whole routine.”

  Red stuck out his hand and said, “Pleasure.”

  Yazzie Goldman squeezed the hand with a white-man shake. “I know. Unusual name around these parts,” he said, “but my grandfather Goldman was a Jewish trader here.”

  Crazy country, all right, Red thought.

  “I’m sorry, Zahnie,” Yazzie went on. “I wouldn’t have called out in trashy language if I’d known you had company.”

  “Let’s sit,” said Zahnie, and led the way to a picnic table. “Whatever business you have, Red and I have big news right off.”

  As they sat, Zahnie said, “Red, Yazzie is my boss at the BLM.”

  “I do the desk work, she does the river work.”

  Red nodded.

  “Go ahead,” said Yazzie.

  Red could feel a huge dam of will stopping the man’s tongue and his story. Zahnie spun the whole tale of the Nielsens, their probable looting, the intrusion of Kravin, his armed attack on her, and Red’s taking him down and out.

  Yazzie spoke to Zahnie like a cop. “You did not see the Nielsens doing anything illegal? You believed your presence would keep them from digging in the midden? You’re sure the location was on private land? Kravin cut off whatever you wanted to say and came after you physically? Kravin didn’t actually point the gun at you? Everything that Mr. Stuart did was in your defense? Nothing you saw would constitute excessive force?”

  Her answers sounded like courtroom stuff, and her descriptions were exact. She added at the end that Red’s threats might have been excessive, but his actions were not.

  “You believe that Mr. Stuart’s actions saved you a beating?”

  “Maybe my life.”

  Yazzie turned to Red. “Mr. Stuart, may I call you Red?”

  Red was always uneasy around cops, but he said, “Sure.”

  “Your testimony would be that you judged Zahnie was physically threatened by Kravin, perhaps gravely threatened?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Suddenly, remarkably, a big change came over Yazzie’s face. He smiled, shrugged, and said something in Navajo.

  Zahnie translated, “Now we’re done with the white-man shit and everything’s copacetic.”

  They all laughed. Yazzie Goldman slapped one thigh, and his face turned impish. “Sure wish I’d seen that. Red, you are the man.” Yazzie fished in a shirt pocket and tapped out a cigarette for himself.

  Red took a chance. “Allow me,” he said, and offered his pack of Balkan Sobranies. Yazzie took one, then accepted a light. He drew deep while Red lit up, and seemed to pay great attention to the tobacco taste. “That’s the best smoke I’ve had since … Never mind.”

  “Since he was around those Hollywood people,” said Zahnie.

  Red kept from dropping his jaw. “Hollywood people?”

  “That’s a story for another time,” said Yazzie. “Back to where we started. Even bigger shit has really hit an even bigger fan. Better take some notes.”

  He handed Zahnie a notebook and pen and got out his own assorted pieces of paper, alternately scribbled and typed on.

  “Whenever you smell a stink,” said Yazzie to Red, “it’s federal.” He took a big breath and launched. “This morning, on a weekend when all BLM officers were on the river or having a day off, like us, the U.S
. Attorney General sends agents into town like paratroopers. They arrested twelve of our Moonlight Water citizens.” He paused before adding, “All from the west side. Anyway, arrested twelve people for trafficking in protected Native American artifacts. Mind you, all charges are for dealing, not looting.

  “The big deal here, at least to you and me and the sheriff and every law officer in the county, is that this was a huge federal operation all the way. They didn’t cooperate with us small-time law enforcement, had no use for us. We live here, we know the people, but we’re small-timers. Sons of bitches.”

  He smiled at himself. “Sorry again. Anyway, they found a guy in Gallup selling on the Net. Not a big dealer, it looks like. I got an inkling it was somebody who used to be a local—he only deals with people here.

  “Seems they had this guy by the short hairs and offered him a deal. If he would give them all the dealers he got artifacts from—again, not looters, mind you, just traffickers—they would … Actually, I don’t know exactly what they promised him.

  “So, he gave them depositions and they invaded. Obviously, they didn’t trust us to be in on it, thought we’d tip people off.”

  “They’re right about the sheriff and deputies.”

  “Hell,” said Yazzie, “the sheriff’s brother got arrested. So, the sheriff is pissed off, and I am royally pissed off. This is my job in my territory. I’ve been fighting these looters for thirty years, you for a long time, too, so why don’t they trust us? We get pushed to the side like kids.”

  “Jeez,” said Zahnie, “twelve arrests. Everyone on the west side is related. That will touch every family.”

  “Just about,” said Yazzie. “I wondered at first if your run-in with the Nielsens and Kravin would make trouble for us, make the feds think we were intruding, but I don’t think so.”

  “So you came to tell me to back off and stay backed off.”

  Yazzie gave a smile that was angelic and demonic at once. “Not really,” he said.

  * * *

  The front door opened, cutting off whatever Yazzie wanted to say. Winsonfred led the way. While he padded, Gianni, Tony, and Clarita clomped down the stairs.

  “Yazzie Goldman,” Clarita said in royal elocution, “we have some questions to ask you.”