by Don Travis
Slowly, skillfully, Jazz drove them up the mountain of ecstasy and brought them over the top. Although he knew better, he felt as if this were his first ejaculation.
They lay beside one another basking in the afterglow of sexual satisfaction, Jazz on his back with Klah’s hand resting on his chest. Although he sensed his lover was asleep, rising doubts and fears tormented Jazz. He turned away from Klah and hugged his knees to his chest as recollections of exciting couplings floated into his consciousness. Trysts with Juan, beautiful, satisfying love spoiled by drugs and betrayal. The looming image of a man called Silver Wings brought a gasp and anger… and dredged up another name.
Haldemain.
DIBE PERFORMED a hand trembling and decided Jazz’s spirit was out of harmony because of the action of outsiders. He needed an Enemy Way ceremony. Neither Jazz nor the Hatahles possessed enough money for a nine-day ceremony like that. So far as Jazz could see, the Hatahles lived a hand-to-mouth existence. But Dibe made a pair of earrings for a local shaman and promised three hand-trembling treatments to induce Hosteen Pintaro to sing a few songs over him. It wasn’t a proper ceremony, but the old man sized things up.
“You bad outa harmony. What they say your name is? Jazz. That ain’t no name. You come to us because of a bicycle, tsi’ izi. So that’s your name to me. Bicycle.”
Jazz nodded.
“You ain’t got no people here to sing for you. What I done is all I can do without no proper ceremony. Costs money. Time. You understand?”
With nausea building in the back of his throat, Jazz swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Ní’ii’niti got a hold a you. Cocaine. That stuff makes a man live his life too fast.” He pounded his chest. “Heart beats like a drum. Nerves burn up. Belly dry up because you ain’t hungry no more. You keep it up, you look old as me in a few moons. How long you been on it?”
Jazz blinked and shook his head. “I don’t know. Not long. What day is this?”
“Day the whites call Tuesday. August 24.”
A little groan escaped Jazz. He’d come down to meet Juan in early August. “Maybe a month.”
“Uh,” the old man grunted. “Ain’t long, but that stuff grabs hold fast.”
Hosteen Pintaro asked how he took the drug and how often. Then they sat in silence for a long time before the old shaman got up and busied himself at a table. After what seemed like an ungodly amount of time, he shuffled back with a couple of mason jars full of something that looked like tea and a small pouch. He handed it all to Jazz.
“You hear me now, Bicycle. You drink that tea like it was your mama’s milk. When that’s gone, you get some more. You gotta pee out the cocaine. It’s gonna hide in your bladder and your liver and in all kinda places. You drink the tea.”
Pintaro motioned to the pouch. “Got some vitamin C and D there. Take ’em, and when they gone, take some more. You need zinc, so eat pumpkins seeds, garlic, sesame seeds, mushrooms. You need beans and nuts and brown rice and whole wheat bread and green leafy stuff. Red meat, fish, chicken, milk, cheese. You gotta eat that stuff so it’ll crowd out the cocaine. It’s stubborn stuff. It hangs on. And you gotta exercise and sweat it out. Run. Don’t walk nowhere, run. And when you get stronger, you gotta take a sweat bath. Lotsa sweat baths. I can’t do no more for you. But you do what I say, hear me?”
“Yes, sir.” The words were automatic. His stomach was turning over from the list of things the old man wanted him to eat. He didn’t want to eat. He didn’t get hungry.
He found Klah waiting outside the hogan as he left. He paused to take a swig of the strong tea and was surprised that it seemed to help his stomach cramps. They didn’t go away, but they weren’t as severe.
Dibe sat him down and peppered him with questions about his session with Pintaro. She nodded. “Them things he told you to eat, they got minerals and things in them. And you need eggs and beef liver and onions too.” She nodded emphatically. “The old man told you right. And you gonna run ever’ morning when the sun rises. You get up to ten miles a day and we’ll figure you’re a Diné warrior. Up until then, you just a kiddie playing at being a warrior.
“Dibe, how are we going to afford all those things?” Jazz asked. “I don’t have any money or any way to get any. Unless I go steal it.”
Gad looked at him sharply. “That what you wanna do?”
He thought for a moment before shaking his head. “No. Never stole nothing… except that bicycle, and that was to save my life.”
“Damned near snatched away your life. That bump on the head was worse’n we thought. You’re away with the fairies more’n you oughta be.” Dibe patted his hand. “Don’t you worry. We’ll figure a way to get what you need.”
The first thing they did was sell Klah’s three championship bull-riding cups to buy some of the food items. Jazz objected, but Klah said they were his to do with as he wanted.
The next morning, Jazz started to run. Klah ran with him, and even though his leg didn’t seem quite right, he outran Jazz, who had no strength, no stamina… no will. As soon as he recovered from the run, he and Klah stripped and crawled into the sweat lodge Gad prepared for them. Sweat popped out on Jazz’s exhausted body, enervating him further. After they’d had enough, Klah helped him out of the little hut. Jazz regained some energy fast when Gad threw a bucket of cold water over him to rinse off the sweat.
KLAH SEEMED perfectly fine with their new relationship, and Jazz came to understand that in Klah’s understated way, his new lover looked forward to their bouts in bed as much as he did. They acted normally around others, but they must have thrown too many looks at one another. It was hard to put anything over Dibe, and two days later she asked a question out of the blue.
“So it’s that way with you two, huh?”
“What way?” they both asked at once.
“You both happier’n a hound with two tails. Who you think you fooling? Is this the life you lived before we found you?” she asked Jazz.
“I-I don’t know. I guess so. At least, it feels that way.”
She threw a thumb at him. “This one’s trying to get back in harmony.” She cast her other thumb at her nephew. “And this one’s trying to throw harmony away.”
“One man’s harmony isn’t the same as the next man’s.” Jazz wondered where that came from even as he uttered the words.
“That’s true enough. And I’ll not judge.” She held a hand before each of their faces. “I feel plentya crap coming outa both of you but can’t rightly say if it’s this thing you found betwixt the two of you.”
Gad never mentioned the subject, although Jazz was certain the man knew what he and Klah did in the privacy of the little shack.
When he stopped being so totally absorbed by his own problems, Jazz learned that Klah would have been out on the rodeo circuit earning money—competing and working as a stable hand—but he was recovering from a broken leg he suffered when a bull he was riding went down. Klah got red in the face when Gad said he was a fellow who “rode ’em right into the ground,” but Jazz figured that beneath the tickling, Klah was proud of the proclamation.
Dibe earned a little from her hand trembling, but To’hajiilee wasn’t big enough to require her services that much. The place sounded big—78,000 acres—but there were fewer than 2,000 people living there.
Gad was a handyman, repairing all kinds of things for anybody who could pay him a dollar or two. Jazz surprised them both by pitching in and carrying more than his weight in the fixing-up trade.
“This musta been what you was,” Gad said. “Before your troubles, I mean. You handy with your hands, boy.”
Jazz shrugged. “Seems sorta natural, so maybe it was.”
In addition to running every day and helping out when he could, Jazz and Klah went small-game hunting with an old .30-30 single-shot Gad owned. Not much to bag other than rabbits, but they brought home plenty of those. His morning run built up his strength and his wind, so the hunting jaunts were pleasing to him.
>
One day as they walked back toward the hogan, Klah stopped dead in his tracks. Jazz turned and walked back to him.
“We ever gonna talk about it?” Klah asked.
“Wasn’t sure if you wanted to.”
“Bustin’ a gut to hold it in, and I don’t even know how you feel about it… about me.”
“Keep coming back for more, so I must feel okay?” Jazz said.
Klah flushed and stomped away. Jazz caught up and stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Sorry, man. But it wasn’t more’n a week ago that some white bastard owned me, and I had to give it to him.”
Klah’s eyebrows climbed. “Had to?”
“Had to if I wanted to eat. Or have a roof over my head.” Jazz stopped short, realizing how hollow that sounded. “If I wanted the crack pipe they brought me….”
Everything hit him at that moment. The enormity of what he’d allowed them to do to him. His complicity. His degradation. His shame. Jazz’s voice caught in his throat, and his shoulders shook.
Klah led him to the deep shadow of a juniper and held him in his lap, hidden from the world. “Don’t get heebie-jeebies, man. You be all right. We’ll be all right.”
Jazz clung tight and wept soundlessly, tears blinding him. Klah cradled him as he would a child, rocking back and forth with Jazz in his arms.
Jazz’s bout of self-pity passed, leaving him angry. “That fucking Juan. Turned on me like a snake!”
“Who’s Juan?”
There in his lover’s arms, Jazz told Klah about Juan and how great it had been until it wasn’t anymore. Until Juan hooked him on pipes and betrayed him to Silver Wings. At least he told the parts he remembered, but there were big holes in his memory. Klah listened until he ran out of words, then pulled him tighter.
“You don’t have to worry. I won’t do to you what that Juan did. Not ever. I-I got feelings for you, Jazz.” Klah pushed him up and held him by his arms, forcing Jazz to look at him. “You gave it to me honestly, so I owe you that back. I love you, man. Never said that to nobody before. Not even my girl. Guess I sound like a fool, but—”
Jazz smothered his words with a kiss. When they parted, he studied Klah’s inkblot eyes. “Don’t… don’t know if I can say it back. Not right now. I’m too crippled up. Too scared. But, man, I feel something.”
Just as abruptly, his mood changed. He scrambled away from Klah. “Don’t touch me, man. I’m dirty.”
“Dirty? How?” Klah reached for him, but Jazz shrank away.
“All those men. I did it with all those men. I paraded around and let them look at me in a swimsuit that didn’t even have a butt in it.” He shivered. “I musta liked it if I did that, huh?”
“Jazz, you did what you had to. When you say dirty, do you mean a disease or something?”
Jazz’s body shuddered like a witch gave him a good shaking. “Silver Wings made me wear protection.” He shivered again. “With everybody but him.”
“And was he… you know?”
“He was healthy… except in the head, maybe.”
Klah reached out and pulled Jazz to him again. “Then you ain’t dirty. Nothing those men did to you made you dirty. I can see right through you, Jazz. And you’re all clean. Squeaky clean.”
Just as Jazz began to accept Klah’s words, the stomach cramps struck… hard. He hadn’t brought any green tea with him, and the sickness and brain fog made him want to die. Perhaps he would have… if not for the comfort of his lover’s strong arms.
THE SUN lay low on the horizon before Jazz’s torment eased enough for them to move. With Klah’s help, he made it back to the Hatahle camp. He walked the last few yards on his own. Dibe wasn’t fooled.
“Look a little blue around the gills, boy. Bad ’un, huh?” She picked up a jug and ladled out a splash. “Take some of old Pintaro’s green tea. Seems to help.”
Jazz drank it greedily. “Thanks. It eases my guts some.”
“Gad and me been talking. Can’t decide if you’re one a them urban Indians or come from the big rez. I know you got some white blood in you, but your true blood’s strong.”
Jazz flopped down on the floor of the hogan beside the two and frowned. “Seems like my dad’s a blood. Mom’s… Mom’s….” His voiced died away as the image of a small woman with blonde hair that wasn’t quite blonde and pale blue eyes wavered before him. “I guess she’s a white lady.”
“And your real name’s Jazz Jasper?” Gad asked.
“Yeah. Well, Jazz and Jasper seem right, but not together.” His head started to ache.
“You don’t run into a man calling himself Jazz much. Me’n Gad’s heading up to Window Rock for a ceremony in a coupla days. You wanna go with us?”
Jazz glanced at Klah before shaking his head. “Don’t think so.”
Dibe pursed her lips but refrained from asking why. He felt obligated to explain anyway.
“I-I gotta figure out what’s going on first. There’s somebody out there hunting me. I gotta figure out what to do next. Best just to hide out here until then.”
“Son,” Gad said. “You ain’t hiding out. Ever soul at To’hajiilee knows there’s a Jazz amongst us. Likely some kinfolk up on the big rez does too… by now.”
Jazz seemed to shrink inside himself. Maybe it’d be better just to let them catch him. At least he wouldn’t hunger for a pipe every minute of the day and crumple over into stomach cramps and feel like throwing up. Shit. It was only sex, anyway.
He drew a shaky breath and squared his shoulders. It was a hell of a lot more than that. Crap, it wasn’t even sex. Not real sex. Not an urge created by love and desire. It was just animal grunting and satisfying someone else’s lust. Muscular contractions. Surely he was worth more than that.
WHEN JAZZ got to feeling better, Klah wanted to go to the little community of To’hajiilee. He didn’t say so, but Jazz suspected he wanted to visit his girl, someone named Mai Jinosa. The walk wasn’t more than five miles, but Klah planned on riding his rodeo pony, a pinto named Shin Bones, or sometimes just Bones. Came from when they were both younger, the pony kicked him on the shins whenever he got a chance. Gad owned a plow horse he hired out to do planting in the fall and agreed Jazz could ride Tankerous. Jazz figured the real name was Cantankerous but that slipped into the shortened form over the years.
As Jazz stood staring at the sturdy horse, it became crystal clear that he was a town Indian. He knew he was supposed to sit astride the big black’s back, but he had no idea how to get there or what to do after that. After Klah showed him how to mount and handle the placid animal, they rode northeast toward town.
Jazz figured Klah wanted to continue his talk about what was building between the two of them, but his lover didn’t open his mouth. They rode in silence. It was an easy, comfortable silence until Jazz figured out Klah was puzzling over what he’d say to Mai. He almost snickered when he imagined his bashful friend introducing them by saying “This is Jazz. He’s fucking me while I’m fucking you.” Then it didn’t seem funny anymore. Seemed like a problem.
The little community of To’hajiilee looked like a dozen others he’d seen. Some parts old; some new. Some very old. The people were familiar, making Jazz understand he’d spent some time on a reservation after all.
Klah pulled up in front of a double-wide mobile home with a little ramshackle stand facing the street in front of it. The place seemed deserted.
“Mai’s probably in the house. They only man the stall when there are tourists in town.” He was about to throw his leg over Bones’s back when he paused. “Wonder what an Albuquerque cop’s doing here?”
Jazzed glanced at a blue Ford parked a little way down the dusty road. “How you know that’s an Albuquerque police car?”
“Looks like one to me. License plate’s official.”
“Maybe it’s feds.”
“Uh-uh. State plate. Besides, I know a cop car when I see one.”
Jazz opened his mouth to argue when he observed a man standing near the car talking
to a woman. He thrust a piece of paper at her, but she backed off and walked around him. Jazz’s heart stammered. He slid off Tankerous’s back with the animal between him and the car. He snatched at Klah’s arm.
“That man, you think he’s a cop?”
Klah took a good look before sliding to the ground beside Jazz. “Yeah, I’d say so. Why? You know him?”
“Think so.” Jazz shook his head as the familiar ache started again. “Will you walk by him and see if he gives you one of those things he’s holding. If he does, just accept it, but don’t say anything. See if you can notice his name tag.”
“He doesn’t have one. He’s wearing civvies, man. You know him, go talk to him. Maybe he can straighten this all out for you.”
Jazz shook his head. “Think… think he’s one of the men chasing me.”
“The cops are after you?”
“I don’t know if they are, but he’s one of the men… you know, one of the men Wings gave me to. Chip, they called him. But I think they used phony names. Do it for me, please.”
Klah handed him Bones’s reins and walked down the street. Jazz watched from beneath Tankerous’s long neck as his companion halted when hailed by the man. Klah accepted what appeared to be a poster, scanned it, and shook his head. Then he sauntered on down the street, still holding the piece of paper while Chip moved closer, hailing passersby and giving them a copy of his poster.
Jazz’s breath caught in his throat. No doubt about it. This was the husky guy he’d tussled with when the man wanted to screw him. The one Wings had had to settle down. Jazz’s hands balled into fists. He fought to keep from stepping out and slugging the bastard, but Chip moved away across the street to accost a couple more people. After that, he got in his car. As the cop drove away, Klah appeared at Jazz’s side.
“Good picture, man. Sexy.”
“What are you talking about?” He grabbed the poster and stared at his own face looking back at him. Below the photo he read: Jasper Penrod, AKA Jazz Penrod, wanted for questioning. Below that was information on how to contact Detective Charles Zimmerman of the Albuquerque Police Department.
