Thunderbird

by Susan Slater

  But where was the pilot? He must be close by. Someone had sent up a flare. She started to stand when the muffled but persistent chugging of an engine pushed into her consciousness. Instinctively, she crouched before looking to the west, away from the plane. A large, closed-bed truck was slowly picking its way down the arroyo opposite of the way she had come.

  Brenda watched as it bumped over foot high rocks and flattened cactus and brush. The star and circle Mercedes emblem, centered on the grill and big as a pie plate, bobbed and ducked then popped into view as the truck collected its strength to push over the arroyo’s rim and roll to within reach of the plane. Its hooded headlights cast light directly in front of the front wheels and nowhere else. Brenda absently wondered at such a unique feature. Certainly not standard issue, she guessed.

  She shrank against the sand. Doors on the back of the truck flew open and five figures jumped out and ran toward the aircraft. Their excitement was apparent. She didn’t need to see their faces to know that. And she couldn’t see their faces, anyway. Flexible black suits that looked like ribbed rubber covered every inch of their bodies ending in hoods pulled well down over foreheads. Their goggles were some kind of wrap-around type like the shades favored by senior citizens. Boots and gloves were also black and snug fitting as skin. And not one person was under six feet tall.

  Yet, it was the language that stumped her. She couldn’t understand a word they yelled back and forth. Then one person vaulted up a slanted wing to the cockpit, but it was quickly apparent that he didn’t find what he’d expected. It was also apparent that he was angry. Gesturing wildly with a large hand-held weapon, the man yelled at the others until two men quickly scrambled up beside him.

  Then the man with the gun repeatedly slammed the butt of the weapon against the canopy but to no avail; it didn’t budge. Finally quieted by whatever the men said, he slid to the ground leaving the two to work on the Plexiglas—but he wasn’t quiet for long. He paced up and back in front of the plane and shouted at the others.

  Brenda strained to understand. Surely she would recognize English, Spanish—a little French or German—but this language was unintelligible. She propped herself on her elbows, brushed her bangs out of her eyes and continued to listen to words that had no meaning.

  But there was very little talk now, just grunts and pointing as four men formed an anthill assembly line to pass along pieces of the instrument panel. There was one man inside the cockpit now who dismantled what looked to be gauges and display screens and handed the pieces quickly to waiting hands who in turn passed the chunks on; the last man in line racing with his parcel back to the truck. They worked fast; Brenda had to give them that. They were redefining the word efficient. She’d heard that carjackers could do this—strip and run in less than two minutes.

  She pulled her body in close to hug the sand. She didn’t quite let the thought surface, but at some level she wondered what would happen if someone saw her. She risked a peek over her left shoulder. She could clearly see her can pickup bleached by the moonlight to blend with its environment, and she almost laughed out loud. From this distance, Elmo looked like he had been junked, dumped out on the Rez like a hundred others to rust, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. With the drooping bumper, missing tailgate, crumpled fender and primer-spotted paint job, who would think he had gotten there under his own power, and recently, even? She was suddenly absurdly happy she drove a vehicle that wouldn’t attract attention.

  A burst of rat-a-tat-tat brought her head back with a snap. The one who was so angry was spraying a 180-degree area of the ground with bullets. He stood in front of the plane pointing the machine gun away from where she was hiding but he was turning slowly; his body spasmodically jerking with each round of fire. She pulled her elbows into her body and willed herself to become small and one with the embankment as bits of rock skipped and zinged through the brush coming her way. She’d been right. Her life depended upon not being seen. Then abruptly the shooting stopped.

  She was afraid to even breathe. Had she given herself away? Were they walking toward her right at this very moment? Her heart thudded in her ears and she squeezed her eyes shut. Time dragged and even in the cool night, perspiration formed on her upper lip and at her hairline and her underarms were clammy. She practiced taking soft, shallow breaths, exhaling with her mouth open.

  But the quiet wasn’t interrupted; even the talking had stopped. She inched her left arm to within a few inches of her face. The luminous dial on her watch said 10:43. She fought an urge to peek over the edge. Then she heard the slam of a door, once, twice … and the hiccupping start of an engine. They were leaving. Could that be? Slowly she raised up. The truck was backing at a snail’s pace, angling away from the plane while two figures dragged a third man, someone not wearing a head-to-toe black cover-up suit and flopped him face down under the cockpit. Had they found the pilot? But why were they leaving and not helping him? He was unconscious.

  Or maybe he was dead. She sharply sucked in her breath. Yes, of course, that made sense. The man with the machine gun killed him. Brenda felt a stab of dread. But what if he was only wounded? She watched as the men jogged back to the truck and jumped into the back. The last man in lowered a black, fringed skirt that skipped across the sand-packed arroyo and flicked up bits of gravel erasing all evidence that they’d been there. Suddenly, the truck accelerated, turned and jolted over the arroyo edge picking up speed as it disappeared.

  She didn’t move until the chugging persistence of its motor had faded to a low-decibel, diesel throb. Then carefully she stood, dusted off her jeans, tucked in the tail of her chambray shirt and all the while eyed the ransacked plane and its limp companion. She looked around her. Things seemed to be back to normal. The frenzied activity of wildlife had slowed, only a Coahuila scorpion scuttled out from under a boulder to disappear under another one. Still, she couldn’t make herself move toward the man on the ground.

  She rolled up the sleeves of her shirt, slipped the ribbon off of the heavy knot of hair drawn back at her neck and tucked the wisp of plaid into her pocket. Then she fluffed her hair, running the fingers of both hands up and through before hooking the thick mass behind each ear. There’d better be enough water to wash when she got home or she’d look like a mess tomorrow—the kids would tease her unmercifully. But wasn’t there an old saying about only ghosts washed their hair after sundown?

  Why was she stalling? She knew she had to help—try at least. She glanced again at the man on the ground. He hadn’t moved. She couldn’t leave without seeing if he was alive. Yet, she was reluctant. She couldn’t get the picture of the black-suited man with a machine gun out of her mind. She knelt and retied the laces of her right Nike running shoe, then stood and surveyed the plane again. Oh, this was being silly; she couldn’t put it off any longer. She took a deep breath and stepped out of the shadows.

  In the next instant she was flying through the air. The explosion was so powerful that she was thrown backwards into the brush, blinded for a brief second by an apocalyptic flash that could have heralded the end of the world. The tongue of heat that rolled out from the plane seared her forehead and left her gasping on her knees. And her ears ached from a sound so shattering that Brenda feared permanent damage. But she was alive. Black oily smoke swirled above the flames that had burst from the mid-section of the plane. She could still see the man on the ground. He wasn’t touched by the fire, not yet, anyway.

  Without giving her safety another thought, Brenda sprinted toward him. The heat was staggering but she dropped to her knees and crawled the last ten feet, her face just inches above the ground. There was a burp of sound and she covered her head with her arms and braced for another blast of fire, but none came. So far she was lucky, but she had to hurry.

  The man was stretched out on his stomach. She tugged at a shoulder but couldn’t roll him over; he seemed stiff and the flesh was puffy above the collar of his shirt. She didn’t expect a pulse, but she placed two fingers on the carotid artery. Noth
ing. That was no surprise. Yet, there was no apparent cause of death, no blood anyway. He was just a man, mid-thirties, Anglo, clean-shaven in a crisply pressed blue shirt and slacks, parts of a uniform sans jacket … and he was very, very cold. There was nothing she could do—she had to get out of there. She didn’t even want to think about the taboos of handling the dead. Had she upset the man’s spirit? She’d seek help later.

  She backed away, still crouching, then stumbled in haste, her hands stinging from the blistering heat of the sand. She clapped her hand back over her mouth. She didn’t dare look up and risk breathing in any more of the toxic fumes than she already had. She should have tied something around her mouth and nose. But it was too late now. There was a rumble somewhere above her, and the plane lurched to its side in a shower of sparks.

  She stood to run but was rooted to the spot by a hand that clamped down on her shoulder. She jumped and screamed, throwing her head back hoping to connect sharply with her captor’s chin, as strong arms crushed her chest pinning her arms to her sides. She wiggled forward and aimed a couple well-placed kicks upward and back that only served to make her lose her balance. But she didn’t fall. Her assailant simply picked her up and didn’t flinch at lifting one hundred and fifteen pounds cleanly off the ground and running with it. Her screams died in the rough glove pressed against her mouth while terror rode up the back of her throat in vile-tasting phlegm.

  Her captor slipped down the lip of the arroyo and threw her facedown knocking her breath out, then slammed his body full length on top of her. The popping and crackling of the fire seemed close. She gasped and tried to turn over but she was pinned to the ground. Behind them a series of blasts rocked the earth, and she could feel his hot breath on her neck and his chest heave as he fought to breathe evenly. Brenda spat sand and sputtered to get the dirt out of her mouth; then, she suddenly wrenched her head to the side, looked into the eyes of her captor and almost fainted. She blinked, willing her heart to stop pounding. How could it be? This sort of thing only happened in movies. But this wasn’t Hollywood. Were her eyes tricking her? Couldn’t this just be her imagination? With a moan she let her head drop forward and didn’t feel the hand encircle her neck and squeeze the pressure points that brought on blackness.

  CHAPTER TWO

  10:25 p.m., September 14

  Amos Manygoats slept outside because his wife was a capitalist. And a shrew. But it was his daughter he blamed—a graduate of a business school whose senior project was to offer her family’s traditional hogan as a bed and breakfast. At first, he couldn’t believe his wife would even listen to such irreverence. But there had been a business plan, a budget, even a forecast. Her professors had praised her as “innovative, daring, entrepreneurial in spirit.” So, as a sacrifice for his daughter receiving an “A”, he left them alone.

  He didn’t even help with the second outhouse. Or enlarging the cold box in the juniper that acted as a fridge in the winter. She named her family hogan, Tse Li Gah Sinil Hospitality—Two White Rocks Hospitality and sent out flyers. His daughter advertised that the traditional Navajo hogan was built around four posts, each representing one of the sacred mountains of her homeland. She’d added that the door of the hogan faced east; men sit in the south; women, north; and guests, west. Her professors encouraged her to add other bits of lore—whatever she could say without incurring censure. So she chose the story from the Blessing Way of how the first hogan came into being.

  Reluctantly, Amos helped her with it. Wasn’t it better to know what was being told? To make certain she didn’t over-step boundaries? He helped her tell the story of how the first hogan was built by Coyote who had gotten the logs and instructions from the Beaver People. The first hogan had a fork-stick frame. The first two logs were a fork-tipped and a straight one. The male straight log was joined at the top with the female forked log. This symbolized a strong union of husband and wife. This first hogan was a very holy place. Precious turquoise, white shell beads, obsidian, jet and abalone were buried under the frame and songs were sung in its honor.

  His daughter’s professors were thrilled with the flyers. They assured them that the hogan and breakfast idea would be popular, a one-of-a-kind experience that hundreds would want to try. Amos wasn’t so sure. He’d balked at the hand painted sign above the door but lost.

  The first to come were anthropologists, strange lanky men who wore pants with many pockets. And like tonight, had kept him busy with questions. A man and his son had wanted to make Navajo arrows and learn about the rites of passage. The two other men were foreign. Even his daughter had trouble understanding their English. But each had paid $125 and extra for the child to sleep on piled sheepskins, in the octagon shaped hogan of rough-cut logs bonded by cement. The roof was covered in green tarpaper; the opening for the stovepipe allowed a glimpse of sky. The winter nights were often bitter. Yet, their visitors came all year round. One hundred and twenty-five dollars. Amos marveled at the money.

  Dinner was almost always a savory mutton stew and warm fluffy fry bread. He had to admit that he ate better on weekends. One Saturday night he’d come into the hogan to share the evening meal, and a visiting anthropologist got him talking about the squaw dance, a coming-out ceremony that his daughter had taken part in. The man even knew that originally it had been an important ceremony, the Nda or Enemy Way—a celebration for warriors returning from contact with the enemy. Since the man had known so much, it hadn’t seemed wrong to correct him here and there. After that, his daughter subtly advertised that Amos was part of the package. Conversation with an elder. Better than a textbook, wasn’t that what his daughter had said?

  The mornings would usually bring blue-corn mush but sometimes bacon and eggs—he guessed this group would want the latter. He licked his lips. He almost didn’t care that he’d have to throw down his bedroll behind his sweat lodge. Tonight everyone had gone to bed early. No talking until the sky stretched pale across the earth’s edge. Even his daughter and wife retired to the half-finished hogan behind the house—the one he’d started to build for his daughter and her husband. Then the husband got a job in Albuquerque.

  It didn’t help his arthritis, this sleeping on the ground, but it helped his general constitution. He was seventy years old—or young as his daughter would tease. He didn’t really feel old. Still, to have to stay outside, it wasn’t right.

  He rolled his blanket, tucked it under his arm and walked past the entrance of his hogan. Outside he motioned four times away from his body and toward where the sun had set. He’d been instructed to do so as part of the Blackening Way, a ceremony that would restore hozho, the balance between harmony and peace.

  But how could there be peace? It was unnatural, a hogan and breakfast. And the money didn’t make anyone happy anymore—not Pansy, and, most of all, not him. His daughter stayed away from her husband longer and longer. That would bring no good. But the worst? The business was making Pansy crazy. She was having spells.

  When he’d mentioned her problems to his daughter, she’d insisted that her mother see a doctor. What she called “a real doctor” over at the clinic. Amos knew she didn’t believe in the tribal rituals. She didn’t even speak the Navajo language very well—her own language by birth—at least not as well as Amos thought she should. When she didn’t want to take the time to explain something in her native language, she’d just throw in an American word. It hurt his ears. But she’d offered to come all the way from Albuquerque to take her mother to Crownpoint. And Pansy had agreed to go. That in itself was an achievement.

  The doctor gave Pansy some pills, but she’d fed them to the Billy goat when she got home and the goat colicked. So Amos had to agree with her that maybe those little pale pink pills weren’t the answer. That big black and white goat could eat anything. But it still left Pansy with her spells.

  When he traveled the forty miles to the IHS clinic in Crownpoint and told the young bilagaama doc from back East what had happened, he’d just laughed and said not to worry, they were
placebos anyway. Placebos. Amos had looked the word up in a dictionary from the library on wheels. But then he knew for sure that the doctor had lied. There was no way on this earth he would believe that “nothing” had made that goat sick.

  The doc had joked that that’s what he got for marrying a younger woman. But Amos didn’t think that twenty years made that much difference. It was obvious the doc wasn’t going to be able to help. So Amos stayed away from the hospital even when the young doc suggested he make an appointment for his wife to see Ben Pecos, the doc who worked on your mind. If a real doc’s nothing-pills almost killed a goat, what could a doc do who only talked to you? It didn’t sound good to Amos at all.

  And then the doctor said he wanted to try hormones. That Pansy’s problems might just be menopause, and then had poked him in the arm, winked and said something else about a younger woman. Amos had looked up that word, too, menopause.

  But it was confusing. If that’s what she had, the sickness that made her scream and throw things and stay up all the night, then she needed a cleansing, a ritual that would cost five goats and a couple hides. And Amos better set about finding someone to do it and not waste his time running across the country getting bum information.

  Then things had quieted. Pansy had taken to ignoring him. Sometimes she’d fix food for the two of them, sometimes she’d just wander off. She’d closed the hogan & breakfast and his daughter had taken her into Albuquerque for a week. That seemed to work wonders. Pansy had dressed in her best skirt and blouse, took her squash blossom necklace out of her chest of clothing, and fastened thin polished slabs of turquoise to her ears. She’d already been back ten days, and her good humor was wearing off. But she still stayed to herself, didn’t bother him much. She did all the cooking for the guests but never stayed for that.