The Pale-Faced Lie

by David Crow

I couldn’t put our family through another fight that would end like the final days on South Cliff Drive.

  When Dad’s attorney asked about the knife-throwing incident, I told him I’d been terrible that day. “I pushed her over the edge,” I said. “All of us tried to break her down—it wasn’t her fault.”

  He stared at his white pad, furiously taking notes. Then he asked if Mom could take care of us.

  I shook my head and cried. I might as well have stuck that knife into her heart.

  He stopped the questioning.

  THE JUDGE SAID HE WOULD make a final decision the following week. I knew he would rule against Mom. As we walked out of the courtroom, Dad’s lawyer told Lonnie and me that he had just explained to Mom that we thought she was unfit. How could I ever face her again? I hoped she had already gone home, but when we entered the hallway, there she was with her attorney.

  She stared straight at me. Her expression morphed into a deep sadness, and she sobbed so hard I thought she’d collapse. Mascara streaked down her cheeks. She slowly walked outside, shaking and crying. Before getting in her attorney’s car, she turned back to me.

  “Your daddy did me dirty,” she said.

  And I’d done her dirty too. Nothing she or the courts could do would change that. Dad’s law was stronger.

  A WEEK LATER, THE TRIAL still weighed heavily on me. But in my day-to-day life, survival was my immediate problem. Summer vacation would start soon, and I wanted all the bullies to see me beating Gilbert before then. Worried about losing my nerve, I flicked his ears when walking by his desk in homeroom. “Gil-l-l-l-l-l-bert . . . bah . . . bah . . . Blackgoat . . . Navajo princess.”

  He jumped up to go after me, and everyone in class started laughing—except for Miss Smith.

  “Stop that right now,” she said. “Get back to your seats or I’m sending you to the principal’s office.”

  Gilbert and I stared at each other with narrowed eyes and slowly went to our desks. After class, he bumped me in the hallway, and I shoved his shoulder hard.

  “I’m Cherokee, and I can kick your ass.”

  Gilbert grinned. “See you after lunch, Gáagii.”

  Even though making Gilbert challenge me is what I wanted, my stomach felt queasy the rest of the morning. What had I done? Could I really beat him? Dad said I had mastered the basic skills, and once the fight got going, my superior Cherokee breeding would kick in. “Trust me,” he said. “I’m always right.”

  At recess, I went to the far corner of the playground where all the fights took place. Arriving first, I shadowboxed to get ready. Moments later, Gilbert walked up with most of our classmates behind him. He looked angrier and more powerful than I had remembered. His brown eyes glowed as he curled both hands into tight fists and waited for me to make the first move.

  More and more people gathered around us. Soon most of the school had shown up to watch.

  I put up my fists, moved my head from side to side, rolled to the balls of my feet, and said, “Let’s go.” Circling Gilbert, I puffed my chest, flexed my arms, and shadow punched. A few of the girls giggled and the boys laughed. Gilbert broke into a broad grin. I think he thought this was another Gáagii trick.

  I bobbed my head, moved to his right, and stared him down. His smile fell, and his face got serious. Maybe I scared him shitless after all. I shuffled my feet and swung hard for his outstretched chin. Gilbert blocked my right hand easily with his left. Before my arm pulled back readying for my next punch, his right fist whistled through the air like an arrow to a bull's-eye. Both lenses popped out of my glasses, my nose spurted blood, and I looked up at him from the dirt. Shaking off the hit, I got up and punched him on the shoulder.

  His next blow crunched my jaw. I went down like a fat kid on a seesaw. Pain blasted through my skull. The coppery taste of blood flowed down my throat as I stumbled to my feet. Before I could regain my balance, he knocked me down again, falling on top of me, pinning both arms under his knees.

  Staring upward, I spotted the fuzzy outline of Sam’s white face in a sea of brown ones. His grin turned into a frown. Now I understood why he laughed at Dad’s boxing lessons. He knew my strength and size were no match for Gilbert. I struggled to get free, but it was useless.

  “You little shit . . . not Indian.”

  “Am too.”

  “You lie.”

  He raised his fist like a snake, ready to strike, but held it in the air the way Dad had held his belt in Gallup when I told him the Genghis Khan story. As blood continued to gush out of my mouth, I could tell Gilbert didn’t want to hit me again.

  “Okay. I’m not Indian,” I blurted, spitting out blood. I would have agreed with anything he said, even if he had called me a girl.

  “Told ya.” He climbed off me and walked away.

  The crowd dispersed.

  “You’re crazy, Gáagii.” Henry grabbed my forearm and helped me to my feet. Jim shook his head and turned toward the noon-duty teacher rushing over.

  “What happened?” asked the stocky Navajo woman. “There’s blood all over you. Did Gilbert do this?”

  “He didn’t do anything.”

  She placed her hand on my shoulder. “I can’t help you if you won’t tell me the truth.” When I shook my head, she said, “Go to the school nurse and then tell the principal. He’ll punish Gilbert for this.”

  What total bullshit. No one would have taken my side, nor should they have. “I’m fine.” Without waiting for a response, I walked toward the bathroom. She yelled something behind me, but I kept going.

  Looking into the mirror, I touched my face. It throbbed so much I thought I’d see it pulsing. Blood oozed from my lip and dripped from my nose. A purple streak outlined my jaw, which I could barely open. My right eye was swollen shut. With a wet paper towel, I dabbed at my nose, mouth, and lip as gently as I could, but every touch brought fresh pain.

  Gilbert was wrong about me not being an Indian, but he sure as hell proved I was no boxer.

  By the time the bell rang, I had cleaned off most of the blood and dirt, but I looked like a lumpy Frankenstein. It took every ounce of courage to face my classmates. Forcing my feet to the door of my room, I paused in the almost empty hallway before slowly walking inside. Everyone’s eyes followed me to my seat, except for Gilbert’s. He kept his head down.

  “Are you all right?” the teacher asked.

  “Yes.” I smiled gamely, but, no, I wasn’t all right.

  “Tell me who did this to you.”

  “No one,” I said.

  When I looked around the room at the hogan and trailer kids, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Their expressions were full of admiration. They respected the effort, while others probably thought I was an idiot.

  No one bothered me on my walk home that afternoon.

  WHEN I ENTERED THE KITCHEN, Sally’s mouth dropped. “What happened to you?”

  “Gilbert,” I said.

  Sam chuckled. “Dad’s boxing lessons didn’t help. I saw the whole thing.”

  “Not a bit,” I said. We all laughed hard, though it hurt my face.

  “You barely got in a punch before he creamed you.”

  Sally handed me a glass of water and put her arm around me. We heard the front door creak and turned to see Evelyn coming into the house. She froze when she saw me. Her big brown eyes looked frightened. Sally scurried to her room, and Sam went into the living room to turn on the TV.

  Evelyn let out a heavy sigh. “Come with me, David.” In the bathroom, she wet a washcloth and gently washed away the remaining dirt on my face. “You should not fight bad boys.” She kissed my forehead. “Why you fight?”

  I didn’t answer—I didn’t know how else to survive in Fort Defiance.

  WHEN DAD CAME HOME, he looked at me with disgust. The two of us sat at the kitchen table, and I waited for him to say something. Sam and Sally sat on the couch and watched us out of the corners of their eyes. Lonnie soon joined them.

  “Why didn’t you teach Gilbert a le
sson?” Dad said to me. “I taught you how to fight. What’s wrong with you? How do you expect to grow up to be a man?”

  I didn’t answer as tears rolled down my cheeks.

  “I told you to swing hard and first.”

  “I . . . I . . . did,” I stammered. “But he hit me hard and knocked me down again and again.”

  Dad’s serious face broke into a wide grin. “I knew that once Gilbert swung, you’d drop like a sack of shit.”

  Lonnie, Sam, and Sally had heard every word. They all broke out laughing, and I laughed too, though it wasn’t funny to me.

  Mud Flats became livable after that. Surviving Gilbert’s pounding helped me with the kids in school. A couple of the boys still gave me trouble, but most of them left me alone. Gilbert and I had come to an understanding.

  And I never picked another fight.

  CHAPTER 25

  MOST DAYS THAT SUMMER, SAM and I escaped into the hills. We would peer out the front window to make sure none of the hogan or trailer kids were watching and then we’d dash out, fill our pockets with rocks to fight the dogs, and run. We played catch or tormented the snakes and lizards. Sometimes we wandered into the arroyos.

  Occasionally a rock or a shot from a BB gun would whiz by our heads, or a Coke bottle with thick glass would hit hard. It always meant we hadn’t looked around carefully enough. We started walking backward to check if we were being followed. I eventually got better at detecting pursuers despite my poor eyesight and hearing.

  By that time, Dad was ordering me to get in the car almost every Saturday. “We need to run some errands,” he’d say after breakfast, using his code phrase for stealing and selling. Lonnie, Sam, and Sally had no idea what we were doing.

  As we drove off one hot morning in July, he said, “You and I are going to requisition tools from Uncle Ulysses S. Bia in Shiprock today.”

  That was Dad’s running joke—playing around with the USBIA letters—as though everyone stole from the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs and it was no big deal. We were common thieves, and it made me feel dirty to help him and listen to how unfair the world had been to him and his red parents.

  After stopping to gas up his sedan, Dad drove down Kit Carson Drive and then north on Indian Route 12 toward our destination, a full BIA warehouse. He always knew when a new shipment of tools had arrived. Since warehouses were spread all over, we were often gone most of the day.

  We drove for an hour in silence while I watched for roadrunners to dash through the desert. Without warning, Dad pulled over to the shoulder of the two-lane highway. At first, I thought we had car trouble. It was over ninety degrees, and heat waves shimmered off the asphalt. As far as I could see, the landscape spread out in a rugged, gigantic, uneven table.

  Dad went around and opened the trunk. He pulled out two towels, a water jug, a plastic bowl, and beef jerky. “Follow me,” he said.

  We walked about two hundred yards into the desert, the sun pounding on our heads.

  “See that coyote?” Dad nodded toward a limp creature lying on the ground several feet ahead of us. “It’s caught in a trap set by the Navajos.” Dad handed me the jug, bowl, jerky, and one of the towels. He wrapped the other towel around his left forearm. “Walk behind me—slowly. Don’t make a sudden move.”

  He crept behind the coyote, took the towel from me, wrapped it around the animal’s jaw, and gently lifted its head. With his left foot and right hand, he opened the trap, releasing the heavy coiled spring and the sharp steel teeth. His strength was amazing. The coyote shook its injured front paw, nearly cut in two, and growled.

  “Fill the bowl with water and place the jerky next to it.” Dad never took his eyes off the animal. “Now slowly back away and stay behind me.”

  He carefully lowered the coyote’s head and removed the towel. The animal bared its teeth and snarled, staring at us as we walked backward. When we stopped about thirty feet away, the coyote dropped its head, lapped up the water, and tore into the jerky. Then it limped into the desert, out of sight.

  “His paw will heal,” Dad said, his voice soft as he unwrapped the towel from his forearm. “I don’t think he was trapped long. His ribs didn’t show, and he had energy to spare.” He paused. “I’ve been freeing coyotes for as long as I can remember. They don’t do anything wrong—they need to eat like any animal. The Navajos are wrong to trap them. It’s cruel. They die a slow, awful death. I’ll free every trapped animal I find.”

  Dad always had more compassion for animals than he did for humans. I was almost jealous of that poor coyote. Why couldn’t he show the same kindness toward his four children and their mom?

  I squinted across at Shiprock, a mountainous rock standing alone on the horizon. According to legend, it’s all that remains of the sacred giant bird that carried the Navajo from the cold north to their lands in New Mexico.

  Dad took a drink from the water jug. “About 600 million years ago, during the Cambrian period, New Mexico and Arizona were covered by the Iapetus Ocean. The land mass underneath us collided, the tectonic plates shifted, and volcanoes rose from the ocean. Between two and five million years ago, water cut through the limestone we’re standing on, and when the ocean dried, sediment, fossils, pyrite, and other minerals formed.”

  He started walking back to the car. “You need to understand the world around you, boy—like the importance of Avogadro’s number and pi and the Pythagorean theorem.”

  I followed, astounded he was so smart. But he didn’t act like other smart people. He loved violence as much as he loved knowledge, as if they went hand in hand.

  “You should learn the stories in the Bible—not as religion, but as history—along with the works of ancient Greeks and the English greats. You can’t be ignorant about the world you live in, or the origin of the universe, or the laws that govern the planet or you’re no better than that helpless coyote.”

  WHEN WE REACHED THE SHIPROCK BIA warehouse, no one was around. I watched out as Dad filled the trunk with electric drills, saws, and various other tools. It was always a relief not to have to warn him. The previous two weekends, I’d had to throw rocks at the building when I saw someone coming, panicking that our luck had run out. But Dad reassured them by showing his USBIA badge and explaining that he was moving the tools to a different warehouse.

  After he filled the trunk, we took off for Gallup. Dad had arranged to meet with his Mexican buyers that day, not wanting to wait until Monday. The heat inside the car made it almost impossible to breathe, and I rested my head against the door for some air, though the hot breeze blowing through the window didn’t help much. Dad was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, as he always did to cover the scars from the EPNG explosion years before. I don’t know how he could stand it.

  Driving along Route 66, we passed the usual parade of young and old Navajos walking by the side of the road. Just outside Gallup, Dad slowed down and thumped me hard on the shoulder. “See that old man over there?”

  “Yeah.” The poor guy was stooped over, and his clothes hung on him like rags. He shuffled along by himself carrying a crumpled grocery bag.

  “If we killed that old man, where would we bury him? Where’s the nearest—”

  “Whoa!” I bolted up in my seat. “Why would we kill him? Why are you asking me that?”

  “We’re not going to kill him. That’s not the point, goddamn it. Listen up. I’m teaching you something here. Do you see a place where we could dump the body so no one would find it? Where’s the nearest police station? How many routes are there away from here? How many vehicles passed us in the last ten minutes in either direction? What color were they? How many people were in them? What were the license plates? State and number. What do you remember?”

  Another one of his games. Okay, I’d play along. “Three cars and a truck have passed us. Two cars were blue and the third was green. The pickup was red, and three Navajos were in the back. But, Dad, it’s not so much about how close we are to a police station. What really matters is how cl
ose we are to a car, or even a pedestrian, who might tip off the police.”

  He whipped his head around and stared at me, a smiling spreading across his face. “You’re right, David. You’re finally paying attention.” He sped up and passed the old man. “If you don’t know all these things, you can get caught. Murder is the easiest crime to get away with because you have no witnesses. Robbery, kidnapping, any of the other crimes—there are witnesses or people you need to depend on. The perfect murder will never be solved.”

  He muttered to himself and then said, “Most of the cons in San Quentin had committed several murders they didn’t get caught for. They got picked up for botching a robbery, passing bad checks, stealing a car in broad daylight. You have to be smart about the world if you’re going to survive in it.”

  I didn’t respond. I was done playing his game.

  “You’ve got to be observant and wary,” he said. “Rules are for losers. If you don’t believe it, look at the rules the Indians live by on this reservation while being forced to take rations from the white bastards who conquered them.”

  I couldn’t imagine that other dads took their ten-year-old sons to steal tools from their employer or explained how murder was the easiest crime to get away with or insisted that rules were for losers. I closed my eyes to stop him from talking to me, pretending to go to sleep.

  When we got to our rendezvous point with the buyers, Dad thumped me on the shoulder again and told me to keep watch. Standing several feet back from the dirt road, he talked with three fat, filthy Mexicans, their teeth badly stained, joking about making fácil dinero—easy money—by cheating estúpido BIA officials.

  If I spotted trouble, I was to bang my hand loudly on the side of the car. At one point, I saw a vehicle approaching, the dust kicking up behind it, and I banged on the car and yelled. It turned out to be a pickup filled with Navajos who raced by without looking at us. Dad yelled at me for being a dumbass.

  I was hot and tired and just wanted to go home and forget all of it.