by Win Blevins
In her role as the wounded Chihuahua, she was down and fading out. Her part in the first shot was simple. For some reason, evidently Mature battling himself as he did the cutting, Mr. John asked for another take and another and another. What he was looking for I couldn’t tell, but he got sharp with everyone, and we were going to be late for lunch. Mr. John kept calling Mature over for quiet talks. Linda was tired of playing the suffering and expiring beauty. That wasn’t her. She was vibrant and full of life. Make-believe dying was getting old.
When Mr. John finally called out “Print,” she sat up from her deathbed, looked straight at me, and snapped her head to the side, meaning, Get your tail up to the cabin.
I did, expecting her to be drained.
What a woman. In the cabin she threw off her clothes and came at me on fire. I’d never experienced anything like it, so wild, so much of herself, but even more so. It was a little odd. She still wore the makeup that made her look like she was taking her last breath. The contrast was macabre. Not that I didn’t get a kick out of everything she did.
And suddenly it was over. She said, “I have to sleep now,” closed her eyes, and turned her death-mask face away from me.
Outside sat Colin, alert as always, and the makeup guy, Raphael, who was folded into what he called “the lotus position” on the ground under the usual cedar. He was an odd duck, about sixty, toilet-seat bald, with long stringy gray hair from the ears down, a monklike appearance. He was what we Navajos call a nadle, a guy who likes other guys. To us such men are special. They have the powers of men and women, and are often the creators of beautiful sand paintings, ceremonial baskets, and the like. But white people have names for these men that are nasty.
“She ready yet?” Raphael asked.
Though Mr. John’s shooting with Linda was over, the stills-photo guy wasn’t satisfied with what he had of her, so he wanted to get some more shots, her dancing and swirling her skirts in the tavern and such as that. Some of the pictures would be turned into posters to be plastered in movie theaters around the country. He planned to shoot them this afternoon, while Mr. John was filming elsewhere, and the stills would go out to the press as publicity material. I assumed that tomorrow morning, driven by Julius, Linda and I would head for La Posada.
I plopped down next to Raphael. “She’s taking a nap, and she needs it.” Pause. “And she needs you too.”
He shrugged. “I made her look like death twice-over this morning, and I’ll make her look more gorgeous than ever this afternoon.” He checked his watch, ever dissatisfied with the amount of time Linda and I left him to do his job. He sighed, and said, “Wait. Wait. Wait. It certainly makes this part of my job tedious.”
Eyes front, Colin said, “Miss Downs isn’t coming up to the cabin this afternoon.” The Irishman stayed ready, like expecting bad times ahead made up his very core.
Some days Cathy came to the cabin after lunch, whenever she saw I’d left, and got her own nap. While Linda was with Cathy, I usually sat under this cedar, Colin and I covering both actresses.
“Enough. I’m going to meditate,” Raphael said, “while the princess recovers her glow.” He closed his eyes and was gone.
I propped myself against the tree and tried to feel easy. Waiting was tough, no arguments there. I couldn’t stop thinking about the finality of what was coming. Losing Linda and probably never seeing her again, or hearing from her. Being back home at the trading post? Not much consolation in that.
I thought of being daring and asking her to stay a couple of nights with me at La Posada and catch the Super Chief on its run to Los Angeles. I didn’t. She might be wild about the idea, but it would go pretty hard on me if she said no.
Still, I yearned for more time and a romantic good-bye. I dreaded the moment of handing her on board, bound for Los Angeles, her home in Bel-Air, and her husband—a universe beyond my reach, beyond even my imaginings. Yes, I belonged here. I might not be crazy about it, but I knew it. But I could already feel the hole Linda Darnell would leave in my life. Grandpa had lived his dream. Frieda lived hers to the hilt, and Iris was living hers. Mine was to make a big life. Like Linda’s. Like the rest of them. Come what may.
Soon Raphael opened his eyes. He claimed he could nail thirty minutes of meditation right on, no need for a watch.
“Oh, please!” he said. “No sign of her yet?”
“None.” Amazing how our conversation didn’t distract Colin one inch.
“Why don’t you let me get you started meditating?” he said. “God knows that trying to get her moving, when she isn’t in the mood, is impossible.”
“I can’t close my eyes,” I said. “I’m on the job, watching out for Linda.”
“Blah, blah, blah,” he said. “Try twenty minutes. I’ll sit right here and help Colin keep watch.”
Colin looked at Raphael and let out a loud laugh. Then he apologized.
“No problem,” Raphael said. “I wouldn’t want me for a guard dog, either.”
This was the third or fourth time he’d asked to teach me meditation. He must have thought I was a real wreck. Whenever I said I’d pass, I got a lecture about how meditating didn’t belong to one religion but fit with all, and then a rambling talk about metaphysics, and I never figured out what that is.
Sometimes white people are funny. A few, including the Hollywood types, think Indians are noble savages who bear a special spiritual wisdom, but they feel obligated to tell us about their own beliefs. I think our hózhó is as fine as anything they know about. So why do they always want to teach us, not learn from us? They don’t see the irony of that.
On the other hand, most white people think we’re dirty, drunken savages.
Noble savages or drunken savages, either way we’re savages. For them, there is no way out of the corral inside their minds. Maybe we all have corrals, and rodeo arenas too, in our minds. Places that we go to rest, places we go all out and test ourselves to the limit. And they are not known to other people.
“Meditating will change your life,” he said. “It—”
I held up a hand. “Okay, okay.” I’d heard his talk until I could have given it. Colin was in charge right now, and this was the last time I’d see Raphael. I figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a try.
“You watch that cabin sharp?” I said to Colin.
“Damn sharp.”
“Now,” Raphael said, “let’s get you in the lotus position.”
“That’s not going to work,” I said. “I’ve tried it. My legs aren’t bread dough.”
“Just find a comfortable position to sit. That will be fine to start with.” He ticked off instructions, most of which I’d already heard. He also gave me a mantra to say over and over, a magic word that is supposed to stay secret.
I sat beneath the sheltering pine, relaxed, and let a good feeling of calm settle inside.
“Now,” he said, “close your eyes, say your mantra in your mind, and feel each breath, the spirit of life, come in and out, in and out.”
I did it. Actually? I think I slept through it. But that was okay.
* * *
In twenty minutes, presumably, Raphael tapped me on the knee. “Can’t wait any longer,” he said. “Even a star can only push it so far.”
He padded up to the cabin door and knocked. No answer. Knocked again. Again no answer. A third time.
Finally, he tried the door. It was locked.
He turned toward me and Colin, his shadow filling the doorway. Raphael said, “I’m going to find Cathy Downs and get her key.” He trotted off.
I wondered What the hell? but there was no way Linda wasn’t safe. Three of us, and two had their eyes on the front of that cabin every moment. No doors or windows except in front.
Pretty quick Raphael came back with a key, went in, and just as quick came back out, leaving the door open. He gave me a peculiar look. “Back in a minute,” he said.
I hoisted myself up and walked groggy-like to the cabin door to see what was happening. T
he sight woke me up like being thrown into a fire.
Linda was huddled in the bed on her side, still stark-naked. She was whimpering. Her face was swelling up and going multicolored fast. It would be a patchwork of eggplants and lemons, mixed hideously with her pallid makeup.
I pulled a sheet over her, sat down on the edge of the bed, and took her hand. There were no words I could say that would be a bandage large enough to fix her hurts. “Sweetheart, what happened?” I’d never used such a word with her before.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, pulling her hand away. “Just don’t touch me.” Her bruised eyes were swollen shut, and I couldn’t tell if she knew it was me.
I quieted the hurt and shock I felt and tried to be a center of peace for her. I lowered my voice to a whisper. “What happened, sweetheart?”
“Don’t touch me. Do not touch me.”
I shook her hand a little. “It’s me, Yazzie. Who did this to you?”
I was rocking on a boat that had tilted from despair to anger. I wanted to catch the person who did this and make them pay for it in every possible way. I thought about the note on her door, about the letter she’d received. Mr. John and his anger and his worry. The way she had brushed it off. His fears had been absolutely right.
I looked around the room, my focus made bright, and I wondered how the person who did this had gotten in. The whole situation felt, and looked, impossible.
She snatched her hand away from me and got loud. “I said, DON’T TOUCH ME!”
At that moment Julius barged through the door, followed by Colin and Raphael. Julius clicked his eyes deliberately from one of us to the other, collecting details.
Now she ramped up to a scream, propping up in her bed and hurling words at the walls. Her voice went down to a growl that sent shivers down the back of my legs: “Get … away … from … me.”
Then I turned my focus to a different reality—I knew exactly how this looked to Julius.
Suddenly the barrel of his .38 revolver was in my face. Colin jerked both my arms high behind me.
“Goldman, hold still for the cuffs.”
Knowing the drill, I did it without one word.
Linda was still raving. Loud voice, blind eyes. My heart twisted like a wet rag being wrung hard.
I couldn’t imagine what had happened to her, how she felt, who had done this terrible thing. I wanted to hold her. To comfort her. To wrap her in blankets and kiss her. To kill the person responsible. All of those things.
I felt the clamp of Colin’s handcuffs and heard the snick. At that moment I hated him. He whispered to me, “Sorry, Yazzie.”
“Raphael,” snapped Julius, “go tell Mike Goulding to radio Kayenta for the cops. Then send Janey up here. Tell her we need everything she’s got.” Janey treated aches and pains for the cast and crew.
“Goldman, get out the door and away from Miss Darnell. Now.”
I did.
Julius and Colin marched me to the pine where I’d been dumb enough to close my eyes and doze. He cuffed me to a branch just above my head.
“I’m staying right here,” Julius said, “and I’d be glad to use this on you.” He held his .38 up. “Don’t try anything.”
The stogie was out of his mouth, and he was speaking distinctly.
“We’ve been idiots. I’m going to see that your ass is in jail for the assault, battery, and rape of Linda Darnell.”
Life turns on a dime, which is a very slim coin.
Ten
The tribal cops were sent, and they were Hugh Cly and Melvin Etcitty. Everything was desperate, turned upside down. Painful. But all was not entirely lost.
When they freed me from the tree and recuffed my hands, I turned and saw a small crowd around Linda’s cabin.
“Eyes front,” said Hugh, making himself sound tough. He marched me, with his baton poking my back, to the cop car. It was a pickup truck with paint so faded that the police insignia was almost invisible. We got into the front seat, me in the middle. The jail was in Kayenta, an hour’s dirt-road drive. We spoke in Navajo.
“Hugh, I don’t have a lot of time.”
“We know that, and we seen what they said you done.” He added, “And we’re not supposed to talk together. You know that.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“We called it in, and the Loot ordered us to arrest you.” Then Melvin added, “And we’re to keep you away from the crime scene.”
“Loot’s sending some guys who are smarter’n us to do the actual investigating,” Hugh said with a twist.
“Until the really smart guys get here,” Melvin said. “The Fibbies.”
Hugh got the cop car rolling.
I didn’t need any explanation. The FBI would be on the job as quick as they could get here. A crime by a Navajo against a white woman was federal jurisdiction, not Navajo. Would be anyway because the Gouldings’ little stretch of land wasn’t rez but what was called an “inholding”—they owned it, not the tribe. And a crime against a movie star, a celebrity, was the sort of case J. Edgar Hoover loved. The feds would be all over it.
“You know how it goes, Yazzie,” Hugh said. “We’ve got to move fast if we want to find anything out, because as soon as they all get in here—”
“You’re out, I said.”
“Yep. We’re not supposed to be smart enough to figure out crimes on our own. No more talking now.”
I had to watch out for my chance.
After about fifteen minutes I saw a decent place. Time to act.
“I need to relieve myself.” I’d picked a spot just before a sharp curve in the road.
Hugh braked to a stop. He knew what was up. He pointed with his lips, Navajo-style. “Over behind those rocks, maybe?”
I held out my cuffed hands. “To do this, uh, you know, I need…” Melvin shook his head, freed me, and kept the cuffs.
I clomped up a sandy gully, slipped behind the rocks, and waited. As soon as I was well hidden, Hugh and Melvin drove on.
I hoofed it up the gully in the opposite direction. Over one rise, then down the next canyon, up and across a mesa high above. A long walk ahead of me.
Since none of the big law-enforcement agencies paid much attention to Melvin, Hugh, or any of the other Navajo cops, it didn’t matter much what they decided or ordered. Melvin and Hugh were my clansmen, and I was going to walk free. Same story with a jury or a judge—clan came first.
Maybe it’s not a perfect system. For sure it isn’t. But in some ways it creates balance.
It was going to be a cold night, but I’d make it home before dawn.
* * *
I scraped the heavy front door open an hour before first light. Mom was up waiting for me. She gave me a wrapping-up hug.
“I’m out of a job,” I said. “And Linda has been hurt so bad … I can’t even talk about it. Not all the way.”
“Mike radioed us. She said that you’re also wanted by the police.”
She gave me a kiss on the cheek, leaned back holding my shoulders, and burst into tears. She’d been a-jangle emotionally, unusual for her, ever since I got home. Each night I came in late for a reheated supper and took off for work right after sunup. But arrested? In the company of an important woman who had been beaten? That was the last straw.
She said, “Gone for six years, and now?”
I felt as if I’d become a plague on her life. She loved me, but the effect was the same.
I heard Grandpa’s wheelchair. He was a light sleeper in his old age. He was going, “Ow, ow, ow…”
“Out of a job,” I repeated for his benefit, “and the cops are after me. Worst of all is Linda. What happened to her, and the shape she is in? It rips me up inside.”
Mom pulled me over to the couch, and I sat down. “I have coffee made,” she said. “Let me get you a mug.”
I sat, numb, willing to be led anywhere.
“Now,” she said, “tell us what happened.”
I told the story. “The most terrible part is that
I didn’t hurt her, I don’t know who did, the person is still out there.
“Yes,” said Iris. “And if there’s a jealous boyfriend…”
“… Or husband,” I added.
“She is still in lots of trouble.”
“And we may be, too.”
Mom shot a look at me. She didn’t know about the husband part, but it was very minor right now.
From just behind me, I heard Grandpa, a sea of turmoil rising and falling in his nonsense words. Iris said, “I think he wants the details.”
I gave them to him. He nodded in his lopsided fashion.
Iris said, “And what are the charges, exactly? Hugh came by, but he didn’t tell us much. He didn’t want to be seen around our house.”
I couldn’t look her in the eye, so I looked at Cockeyed’s screwy one. “The assault, battery, and rape of the movie star Linda Darnell.”
“That’s what I figured. What idiots. She’s your girlfriend, or paramour, or consensual fling. Something like that. How can a man rape his own girlfriend?”
“Iris,” I said, “it’s a rough world, and it happens all the time.”
“But not by you.”
“Absolutely not.”
Grandpa pulled out his chalkboard.
Iris said, her words falling like flaking paint, “This is too damn real, isn’t it? Paradise, dreams … they’ve been shattered. I can’t imagine what Linda is going through. She believes in those things.”
She turned quick to my mother and said, “Loan me the truck. I have to get to the hospital to see her. She doesn’t have any other friends around here.”
“I’m not sure she has many real friends in the world,” Mom said.
Grandpa scrawled crazily, shaking his head: IRIS + LINDA—NO!
“Grandpa, she needs someone.”
He waved his chalkboard.
“Iris,” I said, “I agree with Grandpa. You stay close to home. Whoever did this, Linda is his target, and you shouldn’t get too close.”
“But—”
“Iris, I agree with Yazzie and Grandpa on this, too” said Mom. “You have a big heart, but this is a world we know nothing about. Best to stay clear.”
