by Win Blevins
Zahnie blinked at her.
“Really, I do,” said Georgia.
Zahnie gave Red’s hand another squeeze and let go.
“Gianni spilled it all to me, your fake death and your version of a spiritual quest. He also told me to get my ass up here.”
“I thought I’d done enough that was fake, I oughta to do something real. And good.”
Eyes lanced from face to face.
“The question,” said Red to Georgia, “is what do you want?”
Gianni spoke up. “She wants good things for everybody, herself, you, and Harmony House.”
“No,” said a voice behind them, “the question is: What does the law want?”
It was Rulon Rule, all chesty with uniform-bearing authority. Red was amazed that Georgia’s appearance had shocked him so much that he hadn’t heard Rule coming. “I’ve heard some stories about you folks today, quite some. So I’m going to ask the questions now, and I’m gonna do it in my office. But let’s start with this. Johnny Montella, you’re under arrest.”
* * *
The charges the sheriff wanted to bring against Gianni were bad. Looting was a crime that could send you to county court, tribal court, and federal court, giving them three chances to crucify you. And Gianni was guilty as hell. He had planned to loot, he had executed his plan, he had helped destroy an archeological site and archeological knowledge, and he had tried to make a bundle doing it. Make Red a bundle, too. The sheriff didn’t give a damn that Gianni had lost every penny.
True, Gianni had put himself in the line of fire to undo some of the damage—this mattered plenty to Red. Zahnie had mixed feelings. But not Sheriff Rule, who was a by-the-Rule-book cop.
Gianni made a quick call to Rosie Sanchez, knowing that a local lawyer, and a Mormon, was needed. She proved to be a fighting Saint.
Gianni presented Rose with a contract he’d written out months before and that Kravin had signed. It laid out the workings of a partnership. And in it Travis claimed he had found the site on private land. If Gianni had been deceived into thinking the excavation was legal, he wasn’t culpable.
Rosie wielded that piece of paper like an ax. She told the sheriff the only culprits he had were the ones buried under tons of rock at the Road to Glory Mine, all guilty as sin. And considering what they had done, the county should be grateful as hell they were taken care of, with Gianni’s help. What’s more, she could point out after a few days that most of the artifacts were in good shape, crated up a couple of hundred feet from the explosion, of considerable value, and could be used to educate the public.
Rose told the sheriff that if he charged Gianni in the face of that contract, she would be delighted to bring suit against the county for malicious prosecution. About that time Gianni seemed to be falling in love with her.
Still, Sheriff Rule might have looked around hard and come up with cause enough for a grand jury to bring an indictment. And a jury might have used its common sense and figured the piece of paper was strictly Cover Your Ass. Therefore, Rose paraded her client’s generosity in front of the sheriff. Gianni volunteered to help curate all the saved artifacts for the Museum of the Four Corners in Montezuma City, an act that would increase the museum’s prestige, demonstrate the community’s wise treatment of artifacts, and bring more tourists to town. He further volunteered to pay the museum’s costs in creating a display that would put the artifacts in proper context and explain their meaning to the public.
So, if Gianni had lost a hundred thousand bucks on his grab for a bonanza, he now got to chip in tens of thousands more. Red’s friend would be burning the midnight oil at the law firm for quite a while to get back to square one.
That didn’t seem unjust to Red.
* * *
Several days later, when her shift started at noon, Zahnie drove to Montezuma City and bought a certain something at the drugstore that she would never mention to Red. Not that she really needed to run the test. She already knew.
Later, in her own bathroom, she did the test. She sat there and watched the stick turn blue. She was terrified.
* * *
Red had troubles.
His emotions bounced around like the Ping-Pong balls used to pick the winning lottery number. The balls whooshed around a glass cage, blew against the walls, and went crazy. Then the air was turned off and the balls fell down the hole, the first one bearing the lucky number.
In that whirlwind Red’s brain didn’t have a chance to pick a winner.
Georgia had gone off to see the Grand Canyon for a couple of days while Gianni duked it out with Sheriff Rule. Red was half-crazy wondering what Georgia had in mind. She didn’t seem vengeful, but …
The fantasy of waking up every morning next to Zahnie Kee, preferably a naked Zahnie Kee, spun him to the sky.
She was apparently saying no, and that squished his Ping-Pong ball flat.
Zahnie wore a uniform, she had duties to perform, and she had a living to earn—these were her assertions. So every morning she kissed him good-bye and marched off. Every evening she came back home and took him to her bed. But she had an air about her. He could tell that she was waiting for him to ask her again to marry him and she was keeping no on the tip of her tongue.
He didn’t know why—he didn’t see any huge issues between them—and he didn’t ask.
He needed to get a clear view of the situation, but his insides were a dust devil.
* * *
On one of Zahnie’s days off, at the dining table, Red said, “Let’s find a place where we can spend the morning at the river and skinny-dip.”
She stood up and took their breakfast plates and silverware away. She couldn’t stand it. She had to push him back. Had to.
“I spend every day at the river.”
“Let’s walk up the canyon then.” He took their coffee cups to the sink.
“Damon and I are going to Montezuma City.” Red would know this usually meant grocery shopping. She began running the dishwater.
“I’ll come along and buy us all lunch.” He squirted some liquid soap in.
“I want this one just to be Damon and me.”
Zahnie and Red did the dishes, you wash, I’ll dry. She kept her head turned away and expressionless.
Suddenly he took her shoulders and looked in her eyes. “What’s going on?”
She looked out the window over his shoulder, pursed her mouth, and slid away from him a bit. “Just thinking about us. Differences. Things I can’t get around.”
She put her hands back in the hot dishwater and made a face. She was determined to say it and have him believe her. She had to. “I have family here. I don’t mean the Navajo people, or even the people of Moonlight Water. The people around the table in this house.”
She turned to Red and put it to him. “You’re alone in the world. Not just recently, because you ran off. I don’t think you ever had a family—a duo with your grandpa barely counts, and he’s been gone a long time. If you ever knew how to be in a family, you’ve forgotten.”
She saw puzzlement and doubt in his face.
She reached for an iron skillet and started scrubbing, searching for the right words. “But that’s not all of it.” She stared into the bottom of the skillet like ultimate reality was in the black iron. “You say you love me. You wait, but I don’t say, ‘I love you.’” She looked right at him to say the hard part. “Because it doesn’t matter. Whether I love you or not. This is fact. You dance to one beat, I dance to another.”
He stopped drying. “Again. Zahnie, what’s going on?”
She looked into his face. “We’re where we need to be, you and me. Let’s keep it there.” You have to leave, you’re going to leave, but not yet, please.
He waited for about three beats. “You think I’m going to split, don’t you? Run off, as you put it.”
“I know you are.”
“My choice or yours?”
“Ours.”
“This is so frustrating.”
�
�Red, it’s good, what we have for this short time. Don’t mess it up.”
She kissed him, made it warm, felt it get too warm. She turned her back, crossed her hands on her chest, and let her head fall forward. After a moment she made up her mind.
When they finished cleaning the kitchen, she led Red to the Granary, took him to bed, and made love with him lingeringly. For her, every gesture was an emotional good-bye.
“Let’s doze a little,” she said.
They spooned together, her in front, his arm across her.
“Do you understand?” she said.
“No,” he said. Long pause. “I don’t believe it’s what you want.”
Now, silently, came the tears. She wiped them away with one hand so he wouldn’t know.
40
IT’S BEEN WAITING FOR YOU
Don’t talk while the medicine man is singing. It will spoil the ceremony.
—Navajo saying
As Red walked back toward the main house the next day, Winsonfred popped out the back door. “Red,” he called, “let’s go down to the water!”
The river spot turned out to be a big eddy accessed by a two-track. Red shed his clothes zippety-quick, stood on the edge, and plopped in backward. Winsonfred sat under a big cottonwood well back from the water. Red thought Zahnie had said something about traditional Navajos staying away from Water Boy, and he wondered about that.
Ten minutes later Red was stretched out in his boxers next to Winsonfred. They didn’t speak, and that felt good to Red. He closed his eyes and paid attention to the breeze cooling his body.
After a while Winsonfred said, “There’s something for you to see over there. I picked it out special.”
Red stirred and put his clothes on. They walked through tammies to the cliff that lined the river, and Winsonfred led the way up a short slope to a huge rock slab that leaned against the wall and created a shadowed alcove. As they slipped into it, Red felt like he was being led into a secret hiding place.
Winsonfred flung an arm out. “Behold!”
Red was surprised Winsonfred knew that word.
What Red beheld was … nothing. Or rather a big, blank rock wall.
He looked at Winsonfred with question marks in his eyes.
“A long time ago there was a breakout, right here where we’re standing. A big hunk of stone came off. You can see the pieces laying down there, broken.” Winsonfred gestured to the slope.
“Before this space of rock—I call it The Canvas—before it could get weathered, this big slab fell down from above and took the leaning position you see, which protected The Canvas from rain, wind, and sun. So it doesn’t have the signs of time that most rock around here does, the ones that grow on an old human face, for instance, like mine. It looks youthful. Open. Ready.
“I told you to pay attention to the stories the rocks tell. How about the ones they may yet tell?”
Winsonfred took a long moment to run his eyes over the pristine stone. “You see, it’s virgin. To me, it cries out for a petroglyph. It’s waiting to be carved or painted, waiting for someone to make something on it that speaks to all of us.”
He stopped and looked for a while.
“I always thought I might do a carving here. No reason we modern people shouldn’t do what the ancients did, as long as we do it in a good spirit. But I’m not the one it’s been waiting for—you are.”
He turned and looked into Red’s eyes full on. “It’s what you came here to Moonlight Water to do.”
Red was overwhelmed, still. Finally he said, “What would I say?”
Winsonfred said, “First think of how to come at it. The ancients, pecking a figure in rock, it took them a long time. You see a big carving, maybe fifteen-twenty figures, that took a big bunch of time. What that tells me is, the carver had something important inside needing to come out. Something sacred, I think. It took a big effort to birth it.
“So you have to look inside you and see what wants out. Then you’ll know what to do.”
Winsonfred waited.
“But what would I carve? Or paint?”
“You already know,” said Winsonfred.
Red’s heart swelled up. “Kokopelli.”
“What else? You came to this country from other villages. You’re a musician. You’re also a trader. You have some things to give us. Your goodwill. Your friendship. Help with fighting some enemies. And seeds in the sack on your back, the seed gives women babies.”
Red felt a cold splash in the face.
“That’s what Kokopellis do, plant seeds in women.” Winsonfred gave Red the sweetest of smiles. “Now, you are getting what you came here for, renewal, wholeness, a path of beauty and harmony. Here’s your chance to pay a tribute to that.”
Winsonfred paused.
“Seeds. Are you telling me…?” said Red.
“Yes. And you already knew.
“Now let me suggest some things to you. Take your time. It might take you a week, a month, a year, I have no idea, and you mustn’t give that a thought. Also, don’t worry about whether it’s beautiful. If you bring a good spirit to it, a kind of sacred attitude, that will make it beautiful.”
“Zahnie’s pregnant?”
“I know.”
“I ask her to marry me. She says no.”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“Have you forgotten? Little Turtle Without a Shell. She’s too vulnerable. She’s scared.”
“I want her like I’ve never wanted anything. And I don’t know what she’ll decide.”
“Let that be part of the song you sing on the rock.”
Red looked for a while at the rock, without seeing it. He said, “Okay. I will.” He let the surface of the stone soak into his mind. He said, “I want to paint.”
Winsonfred lit up. “Grand. Anything else?”
“Yeah. Water-soluble paint. Better on this rock, a more matte look.” He paused. “It won’t last forever.”
“Here it will last and last, my friend. No sun, no water, no wind.”
“Don’t care. Let it go, let it stay. Either way. Me doing it, that’s what counts.”
“You got it.”
Painting it and … He couldn’t think about her.
“The basement at Harmony House has gallons and gallons of that kind of paint, and brushes,” said Winsonfred. “Go as the spirit moves you.”
The old man took Red’s arm gingerly. He stopped. He looked back at The Canvas. Then he looked into Red’s eyes.
“I have one saying that’s even better. You remember I told you about my Lakota brother-in-law? This comes from him. ‘When you paint, do not look with the two eyes of your head, but the single eye of your heart.’”
41
GIANNI PRODUCTIONS, UNLIMITED
Don’t point your fingers at a rainbow. It will break them.
—Navajo saying
The next morning Red, Gianni, and Georgia sat over coffee at the dining table.
“Me first,” said Georgia. She got up and walked to a clump of shapes stacked beneath a window. She threw the blanket off like a bullfighter’s cape. All three saw a display of cases and trunks with musical instruments.
Red jumped up, ran to them, and touched.
“Your whole collection,” said Georgia.
“Which I abandoned … Hey, even my steel drums.” He grinned. He was thinking of a particular use for those. He gave Georgia a hug and sat down next to her.
Gianni jumped in. “Now to business. This plan is mine. The idea is to get good things for Red, good things for Georgia, and good things for Harmony House. I promise you.
“The legal situation, California being a community property state, is that both of you still own everything but the house. That’s Rob Macgregor’s.”
“Who’s dead,” said Red.
“The right thing, emotionally,” said Georgia. “But—”
“Okay, I know, you need a divorce.”
“Otherwise I can’t touch a thing for seve
n years.”
Georgia smiled at Red.
Now Gianni pushed on in his chairman-of-the-board manner, manifestly pleased with himself. “I am acting not as a lawyer representing either of you, but as a mediator helping you reach an agreement. Believing I have a good idea what each of you wants, I have some suggestions to offer.”
He handed out several sheets of paper, a copy to each. “I had to do something in jail.”
Red was to give Georgia half of his liquid assets, entirely stocks and bonds, which were estimated at a value of a little over $6 million.
Red nodded. I have three million dollars and a house worth more—it was a discombobulating thought.
“Basically, okay?” asked Georgia.
“I don’t want the house,” said Red. “Done with that life.”
“We’ll work that out,” said Gianni. “Now we need the rest of the gang.” He called, “Come on in.”
Tony, Clarita, Winsonfred, and Damon filed in and pulled chairs up. Jolo and Eric sat on the sofa playing with the baby and listening in. Zahnie was at work.
“Now everyone be quiet,” said Georgia, “and listen to the plan of a legal genius.”
Gianni grinned and said, “This is going to sound strange, but it will work. I did something like it years ago.
“Right now your problem is that Harmony House is licensed by the state of Utah as an assisted living facility. Tony is right. When he enters his plea bargain, the state will revoke the license.
“As an aside, Rose Sanchez and I already negotiated a plea bargain for Tony. One to fifteen years, with the judge’s recommendation of leniency from the parole board.” Gianni smiled at Tony. “That should keep it to one.”
“I’m really grateful,” said Tony. He rolled his eyes. “I guess.”
“From here the question is a practical one: How do you continue to take care of elderly people without a license?
“It’s not such a trick. It involves a concept that sounds weird. Get past that and a lot of good things happen. Here it is: You make Harmony House a commune.”
“Commune?” All of them said the word at the same time, in tones ranging from disbelief to dismay.