Genuine Aboriginal Democracy

by Lorraine Ray

  ~~****~~

  George turned and backtracked across the lawn, and the road, until he found himself on the sidewalk in front of his beloved Indian museum, the State Museum, another red brick building of pillars and strange porticos, surrounded by cacti, palms and mesquite trees. Along with his title, George had retained an office in the museum for years, but when his wife had died, he'd cleared out, taking emeritus status, the small potted cactus she'd once given him, and the aggressive mess made by his published papers.

  Although he no longer had an office, George often entered the museum and offered to give museum goers a personal tour, even taking them to the basement where he shared coffee and wild tales of gunfights and danger, true stories of his early life as an archaeologist in Arizona, with them and any skeptical, but good-natured graduate students. But when he went in the dark front doors of the museum that day, there was no one inside but the ticket taker at the counter beside a display of Navajo ghost beads.

  George had forgotten the names of most of the Apache, Navajo, and Piute people he'd known decades earlier. He'd forgotten the names of digs-even some of the famous ones he'd unearthed-and many of the names of his former colleagues, but he knew everyone in the museum.

  "Who's on the roof, Susan?" he asked the Navajo woman at the counter. George had seen movement on the roof as he'd approached the museum.

  "The air conditioning man," she said, sawing her nail with a fingernail file.

  "Is it broken?" asked George with real concern.

  "I don't think so," she said. "Nobody listens to me. It's workin fine if you ask me."

  "I'll go see," said George immediately.

  "It's probably just that they're wasting money," she said.

  George paced quickly across the linoleum floor, beside the huge tree ring slice, and up the marble stairs. The Anthropology Building backed onto the State Museum and the stairs in the museum led to their common roof. George's tiny figure climbed quickly to the top floor where he discovered a square of blazing sunlight. A lunch pail propped open the roof access door.

  George stepped out into the sunshine. Although he knew the workman was at the air conditioner, he walked instead to the roof edge and stood looking down with his leather satchel in one hand. He studied the tops of cypresses and mesquites and after a few minutes he had completely forgotten why he'd gone up there. His brain was full of dark thoughts about his life's purpose.

  "If you don't mind my asking, are you supposed to be up here?" said a voice behind George.

  George turned to see a short fat man in a khaki uniform rubbing a part with an oily red rag.

  "I like to watch any work on the museum," explained George, quick with his excuse.

  "I thought you were looking over the edge," said the man. "Any particular reason?"

  "Well, no," said George, walking toward the workman. He didn't like being cagey.

  "Are you supposed to be up here?"

  "Well, I'm George. I'm the museum's founder."

  "The founder?" replied the man in surprise. "Of this museum?"

  "That's right. George Reedy's the name." He contained himself before he'd said anything about being a Finger Lakes Boy.

  "That's something." The air conditioning man walked back to the unit and George followed.

  "I guess it is. Oh," said George remembering suddenly why he had gone up there, "is the air conditioning broken?"

  "No, this is just a yearly thing. An annual inspection to make sure all the parts are working."

  "Oh, that's all right then. Do you mind if I watch you?" George asked.

  "Not at all. Not at all."

  George sat on a nearby vent in the shade of the top of the stair shaft.

  "Do you happen to know the principles of air conditioning?" asked the man.

  "As I understand it, the chiller serves the purpose of extracting water from air," said George promptly.

  "That's fundamentally correct, sir. I congratulate you on your engineering knowledge."

  "Thank you."

  "Now, when I went to Carrier school in New York and-"

  "Wait! Do you know New York? I'm a Finger Lakes Boy myself," said George, building up some enthusiasm again.

  "I don't know New York at all. I'm from Arizona, third generation, and my mom is from Mexico, but I was sent to Carrier school there for a month and I was saying-"

  "I have a book I'd like to present to you." George quickly slipped one of his books out of his satchel and reached for his fountain pen in his shirt pocket. "It's a wonderful book which I happen to have written and-"

  "Whoa, a book?"

  "My book. About my adventures in early Arizona on the Mogollon Rim. At my digs. Let me get out my pen and I'll inscribe something in your very own copy that you can keep."

  "No need to do that," said the mortified man.

  "I have plenty of them. It's what I like to do."

  "Well, I still think-"

  "Now, you'll enjoy reading about my adventures with Indian friends up on the Rim. Do you enjoy adventure stories?"

  "Uh huh." The man turned back to work while George signed the book.

  "I had some wonderful friends among the tribes there. They were great people. So willing to help when I needed workmen. They have a deep appreciation of the world. I learned a great deal from them. From working up there."

  "Do you ever go back?"

  "To the Rim?" asked George.

  "Yeah."

  "No. Haven't in years."

  "It's just that I like to hunt up there," said the repairman. "I've been there before." The repairman was examining parts inside the air conditioning box as he spoke.

  "You don't say!"

  "They have some of the old Indian places up there, I guess that's what you mean by your digs, fixed up like and open for people to see now, you know," the repairman said.

  "Say, is that so? Well, I suppose I found most of them."

  "That's something!"

  "And people come in to see them?" asked George

  "Sure. Don't take my word for it, you ought to go up there in person and see. If you're the one who found those places, you of all people ought to see them," the repairman said sensibly.

  "Do you know, you're the first person to suggest it," said George.

  "You must have thought of it yourself before?"

  "Maybe, maybe, it's been a while. Maybe it's been a thought of mine. Sure, maybe. Tishba, do they see that?" George asked the man.

  "Tishba?"

  "That's the name of one of my digs."

  "I don't know the names of any of them. Sorry. Why not go up there yourself, though? It would do you a world of good, don't you think?"

  "Sure. That's been tickling my brain for years. I've thought about Tishba. I haven't seen it in years." It seemed to him possible that another, more remote ruin might have been a little further into the canyon. The Apaches who had been with him at the time had hinted of it.

  That was it. He would outfit himself for the autumn, see Tishba again and scout around a little for another tremendous site, something to rival Tishba.

  ~~****~~