by Kurt Caswell
I followed the Ganado kids and one of the volunteers until we stopped in front of one of the high fences. We set the buckets of bloody parts down, and the three wolves in the pen came right up to the fence. They knew what was about to happen. They stood waiting, their eyes looking past us or through us, as if we were not there. One of the wolves, a male timber wolf with a beautifully soft-looking gray coat, stood at least six inches taller at the shoulder than the other two. His head was huge, wide and powerful. He pushed at the other wolves, jostling for position. The volunteer instructed us to throw the meat over the fence. We took hold of huge slabs of half-frozen animal parts, our fingers cold and bloody, and tossed them up and over. The heavy pieces came down hard against the dry ground. The big male seized the first pieces for himself. He collected several in his mouth at once, dropping one piece onto another, and then carried it off. In moments the wolves had settled the issue of who got what. We watched them stand over the bloody flesh and tear and gnaw and swallow huge pieces whole.
Kevin came up behind us. “That’s what it means to wolf down your food,” he said.
The Ganado kids stood watching. They hardly made a sound.
“C’mon,” Kevin said. “Let’s get the rest of this into the pen.”
They all set to work throwing the rest of the meat over the fence. Some of the soft strings of fat tangled in the branches of the trees. The wolves slowed, and then lay down, looking content and happy to work at the bones in the warming sun. We stood watching for awhile longer, then helped Kevin carry the empty buckets back.
We rejoined the other groups at the still-sizable pile of carcasses. The kids held their bloody hands out, comparing them with each other. Kevin needed to make a trip into town to take care of some business in the Mission: Wolf office. Our tour had reached its end.
“I’ll come back this afternoon,” he said. “Maybe I can join you all tonight at the fire.”
“That sounds great,” Mary said. “Okay, let’s go. Everyone back to camp.”
Mary and I set up a wash station in camp, and everyone filed through to wash the blood from their hands. The kids were buzzing with stories about their experiences. Mary and I noticed that for the first time, the two groups seemed to be interacting on their own. The Borrego kids were talking with the Ganado kids as they told their stories about feeding the wolves. The trials of the day and night before seemed worthwhile now. The friendships Mary and I had hoped to help foster through our project seemed within reach. The sun was warm and the air clear. The trip had had a rough start, but everything was smoothing out.
Then, as Mary and I prepared lunch, a rock fight broke out near the tents. Renee came fast around the end of the bus and Vanessa ran just behind her. Teresa came into view, turned back and punched at the air with her fists, and then ran in fear, smiling and laughing. Sitting near the fire pit, Redd held out his arm and the girls rushed into it, shouting and complaining and making no sense. Three Ganado boys stepped into the circle around the fire and announced that Renee, Vanessa, and Teresa had pelted them with stones. One of them had a bruise on his leg to prove it.
I asked the girls if this was true.
“They’re not Navajos,” Vanessa blurted out. “They can’t talk Navajo!”
The boy with the bruised leg said, “Yeah, well, you can’t even talk right.”
“That’s ’cause we’re Navajos,” Renee said, and she picked up a stone off the ground.
“Renee!” I said. “Don’t.”
She clutched at the stone a moment and then threw it down hard against the ground.
“They ripped our tent!” one of the Ganado boys said. And they had. A stone had torn a little hole in the wall of the boy’s tent. “That’s my tent,” he said. “And now it’s ruined.”
“That’s ’cause they were laughing at us,” said Vanessa.
“Yeah,” said Teresa. “So we’re gonna get ’em.” She made a motion toward them.
“Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait,” I said.
“Okay,” Mary said. “Let’s take a break here.” She led her group away to the edge of the hill in the sun.
The Borrego girls, even the girls who weren’t involved in the rock fight, filed onto the bus and pushed the door closed.
I thought it was best for them to cool off before I tried talking with them, so I finished setting lunch out. Mary came back with her group, and they lined up at the picnic table to make sandwiches. No one on the Borrego bus stirred.
“Let’s take them out for a hike after lunch,” Mary said.
“Great idea,” I said. “I’ll go tell them.” I pushed the bus door open and stood next to the driver’s seat. “We’re all going for a hike after lunch,” I said.
“We ain’t goin’ nowhere with them,” Teresa said.
“Yeah,” Jolanda said. “They ain’t Navajos. They’re bilagáanas. They’re white, like you!”
I tried to pretend I hadn’t heard it. “Also, it’s lunchtime. Why don’t you come out and have lunch?” I went down the steps and left the door open. I heard someone push it closed again behind me.
I expected the Borrego girls to come out after all the Ganado kids had moved through the line. They didn’t. I waited a bit longer, then went back to the bus. I pushed on the door, but they had latched it. I knocked and waited. I knocked again. No one moved inside. I went around to one of the bus windows. I could see Renee through the glass. She looked trapped, like a fish in a bowl. She stared straight ahead, frowning, as if she didn’t see me. Her big glasses made her face look round and sad. I reached up and tapped on the window. She didn’t look at me. I tapped again. She stood up and put the window down.
“I hate you,” she said, and then jacked the window up.
I had endured all kinds of insults from my students at Borrego, but none of them had so far said anything like that. At least not in English. What’s more, it was Renee who said it. Gone was the little spot of joy I had felt earlier in the day when I thought that the trip just might work out. Despite its shortcomings, Mary and I had invested a great deal of time in this trip, in this exchange. I knew at that moment that it was over. The project was finished. I felt disappointed and relieved at the same time. It would be a lot easier not to follow through, and I was sick of being tolerant and open and understanding. Or sick of trying to be tolerant and open and understanding. I had not come to work at Borrego to be treated like this. I didn’t want to do it anymore. I didn’t want to work with these kids anymore. In fact, I knew then that I didn’t want to teach at all. I would finish out the year, I thought, and then try something else. I didn’t know what, but if teaching entailed this big an investment with this small a return, it wasn’t for me. Then the awareness that I might be overdramatizing the moment flashed into my mind. I would have to be hardier than this if I was going to make it though the year, I thought. I’d probably settle out later, not feel so crushed. Renee, who was a child after all, impulsive and emotional, would eventually take it back. I hoped she would, anyway. I decided she didn’t really mean it.
I stood in front of Renee’s window a moment. I watched her sit down. Teresa and Vanessa stood up over the seat behind her and patted her on the shoulder. She looked back at them and smiled. Teresa pressed her nose and lips against the glass and made a face at me. I turned away and went back to the group.
The rest of the trip slipped by, almost without incident. We returned from the hike at suppertime. The Borrego girls still sat on the bus. We had made a little loop up and over a knob visible from our camp. From there we had looked out on all of Mission: Wolf, the wolf pens and volunteer housing, and the snowy mountains running north. The Ganado kids had worked up a good appetite. We set to work cooking supper at once.
Redd took the lead grilling up beef patties over the fire. We set out the condiments, heated beans, toasted buns, tossed a huge bowl of green salad, and opened several kinds of dressing. When the food was ready, the Borrego girls filed off the bus, loaded up their plates, and filed back on. They
didn’t say a word to anyone.
Later that night, while we were all seated around the fire telling ghost stories, Linda came out for a supply of chocolate and marshmallows. She whispered something in Redd’s ear as he was nodding yes, and then she slipped her hand into his coat pocket and fished out a can of Skoal. I was about to stand up and confront Redd and Linda, but Kuma was curled against my feet. I looked down at him, not wanting to disturb him, and then realized I risked being a hypocrite. I had asked Redd to bend regulations so that I could bring my dog, so how could I complain when he did the same for the girls? They chewed all the time at home anyway. What good would it do to make a scene here at the fire? In any case, I was angry and beaten and vengeful; I didn’t care what those girls did to themselves. Let them chew! I pretended I didn’t see it. I let it go and turned back to the group and to the songs and stories at the fire.
Kevin came out of the dark and joined us for a short time. He sat on the ground next to me, and Kuma went right to him. He had brought a small piece of meat and bone from the wolf pile. “You don’t mind?” Kevin asked me. I nodded that it was all right. Kuma accepted the offering and lay between us, happy and content. An hour passed. Kevin stood and walked off into the dark. One by one, the Ganado kids went to bed too, then Mary, the drivers, and finally, so did I.
Somewhere in the night, I heard the wolves. I lay awake in the tent listening to them calling from pen to pen, first from one side of the property, and then howls from the other. I heard Mary breathing beside me. I could feel the warmth of her body and where Kuma lay in the folds between us. His head rose up. He listened. He drew up onto his front feet as if ready to pounce. He lay his ears back a little in the dark; I could see his silhouette in the bright moonlight bathing us. Mary woke then as Kuma howled, his sharper, higher tone reverberating inside the tent. When he stopped, we heard silence. We heard the night air of the Sangre de Cristo in the silent moment as the wolves seemed to be listening. In resounding chorus, all of them, it seemed, answered the little dog. Kuma joined in again. I put my hand on his back, wanting to quiet him, and then withdrew it and let him howl. I listened with Mary as the wolves and the dog sang to each other and to the wild, wild night. We drifted off to sleep again after the wolves settled out and bedded down. And finally, Kuma too curled up and went to sleep.
On Monday in class, the girls glared at me. They were hostile, angry, ungrateful. Renee’s words remained alive in my head: “I hate you,” she had said, and when she looked at me that way in class, how she squinted up her eyes and her mouth turned hard and monstrous, now, only now did I believe her. She did hate me, and so did the rest of them. But why? Hadn’t I gone to a great deal of effort and trouble to take them on a journey to Mission: Wolf? Did I not sacrifice my personal time away from the classroom to give them an experience of the wider world? Did I not introduce them to Navajo people they otherwise might never have met, and so offer them a glimpse of Navajo life in another part of Navajoland? I didn’t deserve this kind of treatment, did I?
“Renee, Vanessa, Teresa,” I said after class, “have you got a minute to talk?”
“Not for you,” Vanessa said.
“Yeah, not for you,” Renee said.
Teresa stuck out her tongue, which said it all.
“I don’t need much time,” I said. “I won’t keep you long.”
They stood there looking angry. I don’t think their silence meant “Yes, let’s talk,” but I started in anyway.
“You see,” I said. “I know the trip didn’t go so well all the time, but you have to know that I put the trip together for you. I thought I was doing something good for you. I’m sorry you got cold, and that it wasn’t much fun with those Ganado kids. I hoped it would be better.”
They stood there motionless, angry, rigid as stone, but fragilelooking, like if I touched them, they’d shatter into a million pieces.
“So I hope you’ll accept that those bad parts were not fun, but that other parts of the trip were fun. That you had an experience you learned from, if nothing else. I hope maybe you learned something.”
Still silence. I wondered if they had agreed together to give me the silent treatment, and then walk away angry. Perhaps they wanted to hang on to that anger for something. Maybe it was useful to them.
“And Ms. Juzwik said too that she hoped you had at least a little fun, and that—”
“Why did you have to have sex like that with that other teacher, then?” Vanessa said.
“Yeah,” Teresa said. “Why did you?” And she smirked a little, thinking of it.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Ms. Juzwik? We weren’t having sex. Why did you say that? We weren’t having sex. Do you think on a school trip that I’d be in a tent next to yours doing that?” I was insulted, and little embarrassed.
“No,” Vanessa said.
“Do you think so, Teresa?”
“No,” she said.
“No,” added Renee.
“Then why did you say that?”
“I don’t know,” Vanessa said. “But you didn’t have to sleep in there.”
“All right,” I said. “I might have slept in another tent. You’re right. I’m sorry I did that. I didn’t know it would upset you.”
“Well, it did,” Vanessa said.
“And those Ganado kids,” Renee said. “How come you went hiking with them? And how come you had to go around with them all the time?”
“Yeah,” Teresa said. “You like them more than us, ’cause they’re white like you.”
“You like them better than us,” said Renee, in case I didn’t get it the first time.
“No I don’t,” I said.
“Yes you do,” Vanessa said. “You didn’t take care of us.”
That hit home for me. That made sense. That seemed to explain why they were so angry. At the time, I didn’t realize I wasn’t taking care of them, but now that Vanessa said it, I realized she was right. I was angry at them, true enough. And I felt they were against me. And in feeling so, I positioned myself, if even in subtle ways, against them. They felt that, and responded to it.
“Besides,” Vanessa said. “You’re just here for the money anyways. You don’t care about us.”
I wanted to protest, to defend myself, to tell her she was wrong. But she wasn’t all wrong, and she knew it. Offering a defense was just a form of denial anyway, a way of telling them that I didn’t care about their feelings, which is what I was being accused of in the first place.
“Okay,” I said. “I understand. I’m sorry I didn’t take care of you. Thank you for staying to talk with me. See you next class, then?” What more was there to say?
They went out the door without another word.
I thought long about that night at Mission: Wolf, how the girls lay shivering in the dank green tent, and how small and helpless and scared they looked, but also how determined and forceful and resolute. I thought that despite their angry faces, their hands that threw the stones, their words that cut so deep, they were just children looking for guidance and support and love. To prosper, they needed a sense of safety and home. Maybe I hadn’t been able to offer what they needed over the weekend because I was too preoccupied with my own fears, my own desire for that same sense of safety and home. I vowed to overcome my misgivings, the failures and mistakes I’d already made. I didn’t really know how to get beyond the hostility I encountered every day in the classroom, sometimes in the cafeteria and on the playground, but I vowed to take care of my students, to care about them. For the next several weeks, though, I would continue to fail.
SEVEN
CARDINAL RULES
It was late, maybe ten o’clock, when someone knocked at my door. Kuma and Bud, my parents’ Queensland heeler mix, went into a frothy attack, rushing the door, snapping and barking, and then snapping and barking at each other. My parents had arrived a few hours earlier for the Thanksgiving holiday. I had been talking nonstop since dinner about my life at Borrego, about my teaching, about the kids
at school, while Kuma, still a wee pup, tested himself against Bud. He hid under the leather chair Juan Carlos had loaned me, and when Bud approached, he rushed out and snapped at him and then ducked under again for cover.
My mother kept saying, “I can’t believe that pup! I just can’t believe that pup!”
“He’s really aggressive,” I said. “He doesn’t seem to back down to anything. Even me.”
“Well, he should. He should just roll over on his back with Bud. I just can’t believe him. You’re really gonna have to work with him to train that out of him.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe it serves him here. You gotta be tough to live here.”
“Well, maybe so,” my mother said, “but you’re gonna have to be real careful with that dog. If he bites someone—”
That’s when the knock came. The room went still a moment, then the two dogs went for the front door.
No one ever knocked at my doorway out here, especially at night. And certainly never the front door. Even I rarely used the front door. I always used the back door. Beyond Gay DeLuz selling pies (and she came to the back door), the only other time someone knocked on my door was that night two drunk Navajos were fighting in the roadway in front of the school. I heard a commotion out there in the dark and looked out to see the shapes of two men faced off in the trough of light made by two idling cars headed in opposite directions. It was as if the two men happened to cross paths there, both remembered some unfinished business, and stopped to take care of it. I could see from my window that one of the men was much bigger than the other, taller, thicker, a huge dark shadow. I watched them rush each other and punch and swing and fall down dead drunk. It didn’t seem they could do much damage to each other, as drunk as they were. They would probably do more injury to themselves just from falling down. Or more likely they would both be killed, eventually, and maybe take someone else with them, driving around drunk like that, especially at night.