In the Sun's House

by Kurt Caswell

  “Okay,” she said.

  The waiter came over.

  “Double burger!” Judy said.

  He wrote it down. As he went around the table, each of the children ordered a double burger. Miles joined in. Lauren and I ordered Navajo tacos.

  When the waiter returned with a round of hot chocolates, Judy smiled. She picked up her cup. She looked inside at the dollop of whipped cream. She stuck her tongue into it, and set the cup back down.

  “Can I have this?” she asked.

  “It’s yours, yes,” I said.

  “This?” she said, holding up the cup.

  “The cup?” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “That cup belongs to the restaurant.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “What about dessert?” she asked again. “I want apple pie.”

  “You have to wait until after you get your supper,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said, and went back to licking the whipped cream.

  Each of the meals came with a salad, and the waiter brought them out, along with a tray of dressings and a basket of crackers.

  Judy looked at me. “What’s this?”

  “A salad,” I said.

  “Don’t you get one?”

  “No. The Navajo taco is like a salad. So I don’t get one.”

  She reached for the crackers. “Can I have this?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Can I take this?”

  She meant the basket. “No,” I said. “It belongs to the restaurant. If you take that home, they have to buy more baskets next time. And if everyone took them home, they would have to buy so many baskets the price of the food would be very high.”

  She paused and considered. “This costs money?” she asked.

  The waiter brought the food out on a big tray and set it down on the stand next to the table. Everyone’s eyes got very big. Double burgers all around. The waiter dealt them out like aces, and the kids went to work.

  Everyone was eating happily until Lauren asked for the salt and pepper. They looked at each other. They waited. “Tom,” Lauren said. “Could you pass the salt and pepper?”

  Tom looked at her. Then he looked behind him. Then he looked at Miles.

  “Pass the salt and pepper,” Miles told him.

  Tom didn’t move. Miles pointed out the two little shakers on the table. Tom picked them up and handed them to Lauren. Everyone started eating again. I don’t know how these children used salt and pepper at home—maybe they didn’t at all—but at school, it came only in little paper packages, and there weren’t any little paper packages on the table, except for the crackers.

  “Can I have dessert?” Judy asked again.

  “In a little bit,” I said. “First the waiter will come back and ask if everything is okay. You say yes. Then he’ll come back again when you are finished to take your plate. That’s when you ask for dessert.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  And it happened just like that. The waiter came back. “Is everything all right here?” he asked.

  Judy looked at me. I nodded to her. “Yes,” Judy said.

  The waiter went away.

  “Now he’ll come back one more time when you are finished eating,” I said. “And he’ll ask if you are finished so he can take your plate. If you are, you say yes. If you aren’t, tell him no.”

  And it happened just like that. The waiter came back. “Are you all finished here?” he asked.

  “No,” Judy said. “Can I take this?” She looked at me, a little sad this time, because every time she had asked so far, the answer had been no. The double burger was so big that Judy only ate half of one. Most of the kids were able to eat one burger, and still had one whole burger on their plate.

  “Yes,” I told her. “This you can take.”

  “For reals?” she said, and smiled big.

  “Me too,” everyone said.

  “I’ll bring some boxes,” the waiter said. He went away.

  “Can I have dessert?” Judy said.

  “He’s coming back,” I said. “He’ll give you a box to take home your double burger. And then he’ll ask if you want dessert. That’s when you tell him apple pie.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  He came back. The waiter set a stack of Styrofoam boxes down on the table. “All right,” he said. “Will anyone have dessert tonight?”

  Judy looked at me. Her moment had finally arrived. I nodded to her.

  “I want apple pie,” Judy said. Then everyone ordered apple pie.

  “Thank you,” the waiter said, and went away.

  Then Judy, who had been holding it back for far too long now, leaned across the table to Lauren and whispered, “Mrs. Sittnick, how does Mr. Caswell know what’s going to happen?”

  After supper, we loaded onto the bus and went back to our rooms. Valeria had brought a Nintendo video game console. She didn’t have a TV at home, so she rarely played. Like the cash that miraculously appeared every time we stopped for gas, the Nintendo seemed to me a mysterious possession. Why own one without a TV to hook it up to? I wondered where and how she got it? But no matter. We plugged it in and all the children sat on the bed around the TV in the girls’ room. They played until about ten, then Lauren and I sent them all to bed.

  Saturday. Spelling bee day. Everyone woke early to get ready for the big competition. In the boy’s room, Tom and Miles showered and dressed and sat on the bed watching TV. We waited on the girls for a long time. When they finally came out, primped and ready, we walked to the restaurant at the Thunderbird Inn for breakfast. That’s when Lauren told me the story about the showers.

  She was sitting on one of the beds waiting for the girls as they got ready for the day. She has roused them early so that they would have plenty of time to shower and get dressed. Two of the girls had showered and now stood at the sink outside the bathroom drying their hair with the blow-dryer built into the wall. The others were in the bathroom together, still using the shower. Sitting there, Lauren noticed a wide, dark stain on the carpet near the bathroom door. It was water. She knocked on the door.

  “Yeah?” the girls called from inside.

  “Are you okay in there?” Lauren asked.

  “Yeah,” they answered.

  “Can I come in? There’s water all over out here.”

  “Yeah,” they answered.

  Lauren went in. The shower was on, and steaming water poured from the showerhead as the girls took turns under it. They had pulled the shower curtain back and left it hanging outside the tub. Rotating in and out of the shower, one of them lathered up her hair with shampoo, and then stepped out for someone else to take a turn. Water and soap were everywhere, dripping off them onto the floor and splashing out of the shower. The carpet was soaked. The wallpaper was wet up the side of the walls. Even the framed picture on the wall was soaking wet.

  “Oh my gosh,” Lauren said. “You have to put this inside the bathtub,” she told them, pulling the shower curtain closed.

  “Okay,” they said, unmoved by Lauren’s panic.

  “Oh my gosh. All this water,” Lauren said.

  You see, this is the way they had always done it, when they showered at school. They did not have plumbing at home. They did not have running water. They did not take showers except at school, and those showers, sometimes called “gang showers,” did not require shower curtains. The water fell all around them in a tiled room with a central drain. So here at the Thunderbird Inn, how were they to know?

  “Hurry up now and come on out when you’re finished,” Lauren said. “I’ll have to try to mop this up.”

  “Okay,” they said.

  The girls took turns, standing in the shower for a very long time, with the curtain pulled closed now. Finally, after each of them had taken a shower, they came out, dried their hair, primped at the mirror, and announced that they were ready.

  Now they had some free time before breakfast. Despite the mishap, they
had been fairly efficient. They sat in the room for awhile watching TV. Then Valeria got up and went into the bathroom. She closed the door. The other girls heard the shower come on, but Lauren wasn’t paying attention.

  “Can I take a shower too?” Carmen asked.

  “No,” Lauren said. “You just did. We’re almost ready to go.”

  “But she’s doing it in there,” Carmen said.

  “Yeah, me too,” Judy said. “Can I again?”

  “Yeah,” said Carmen. “Can we? It’s so nice for us.”

  “No,” Lauren said. “We have to go soon.”

  But it was too late for her to change their course, and soon most of the girls were in the shower going through the whole drama all over again.

  After breakfast, we loaded onto the bus and drove out to the Chinle High School gym for the Eastern Navajo Agency Spelling Bee. Tom, Valeria, Vanessa, and Miles were all very nervous. Vanessa decided she really didn’t want to compete after all.

  “But we drove all the way here just so you could,” Lauren told her.

  “Is it?” she said. “But that’s okay,” she said. “I don’t mind.”

  She did compete, though. When her name was called, she stepped up to the microphone. She looked out at the crowd of a hundred people from all over the Eastern Agency, foreigners to her, all of them, except the little island that was us in the back of the room. A man at a table called out a word. He wore thick glasses and an unkempt beard. He pronounced the word clearly, almost too clearly. It was a word Vanessa knew, or at least a word I had known her to spell correctly in practice. Maybe it sounded funny to her, or maybe standing in front of the crowd like that was too much. She didn’t need to get this word right only to have to stand up there again in the second round. She missed it and sat down, her lip jutting out like she wanted to cry.

  Everyone consoled her, put their hands on her shoulders and said, “That’s all right. You did great,” and other kind things. Her lip returned to its usual position and she was okay again. It was all okay. In fact, she smiled. She was finished. Her long trial was over.

  Valeria made it into the third round, and so did Miles. Tom made it all the way to the finals, but didn’t place. And that was it. The Eastern Navajo Agency Spelling Bee was over. There were a few panicked moments when the judges didn’t seem to know what they were doing, and spelling coaches from various schools raced around in the hallways of the high school looking for a higher power. But things settled out, maybe because the teachers and parents put things in perspective and realized that these were just kids playing a game, trying to spell English words in a little town in Arizona on the Navajo reservation.

  We thanked our hosts and loaded the bus for home.

  In Gallup, we stopped at Furr’s Cafeteria for lunch. The children could see what they were getting and heaped their plates full and ate in peace, no nosy waiter to bug them. Then we loaded the bus again and roared off down Interstate 40 headed east.

  Somewhere between Gallup and Church Rock, we stopped for fuel one more time. Betty ordered everyone off the bus.

  “No one on board while gassing up,” she said. “That’s regulations.”

  The children hurried into the store to look at things and use the restrooms. I didn’t think they had any money left, but a few dollar bills came out of pockets as they entered the door. When they returned, everyone had something sugary to eat or suck on or chew. Judy had a pocketful of candies of all kinds, which she showed off as she sat down in the seat next to me near the front of the bus. She had something else in her hand too. I asked her what it was. She held it up. It was a little plastic doll with blue eyes and yellow hair tied in pigtails and dressed in a pink lacy dress like gossamer with ruffled sleeves.

  “Did you get that inside?” I asked.

  She nodded yes and busied herself straightening the doll’s clothes. The bus pulled out and headed down the road striking a rough rhythm that put Judy quickly to sleep. She fell into an awkward position against the window.

  A few minutes later, Linda, who had been so quiet for most of the trip, came forward from the back of the bus. She sat in the seat behind me. “Mr. Cas-well,” she said. “Judy took it from the store.”

  I turned to her. “The doll?” I asked.

  “Yeah, she took it from the store. And some other stuff.”

  “The candy too?” I asked.

  Linda nodded.

  “I see. Thank you.”

  “I didn’t wanna tell you, but she took it,” Linda said.

  Of course Lauren overheard us talking. We looked at each other helplessly because it had suddenly become obvious that Judy was not the only one on the bus with stolen goods. For the rest of them I wasn’t so surprised, especially Marcella, but little Judy? How could she? How could she shatter my image of her as a pure, uncorrupted innocent? I looked over at her asleep there in the seat. She breathed peacefully and happily, propped up against the window, the stolen goods held loosely in her hands. She looked like an angel. Perhaps stealing was innocent, to her. She was just doing what everyone else did who needed something they could not buy. It did not excuse her, but it was the way of things here.

  I scanned the back of the bus. All I could see was a busload of thieves. Every one of them looked guilty, even Linda. We had just knocked off a convenience store, and Lauren and I had provided the getaway car.

  An hour later, the bus slowed into the off-ramp at Prewitt, and we were as good as home. And just in time, too. I was ready to be home. I had had a good time, mostly, and I didn’t want the heist to sour my attitude. We paused at the stop sign to make our turn, and the change in speed woke Judy up. She rubbed her eyes and looked around. She saw a sign at the freeway on-ramp headed the other way, a green road sign that read “Gallup,” with a white arrow pointing straight up into the sky. Judy turned and looked at me. Her eyes were wide and white. She couldn’t believe it.

  “Mr. Cas-well,” Judy whispered, “Gallup’s in heaven.”

  TEN

  THE LAST BEST WALK

  I watched the New Mexican new moon over the rough-edged mesa from my desk, heard coyote calls, and stared out through my reflection in the window. It was Sunday, and spring, and everywhere on campus, no one stirred. I was alone, and alone with my thoughts, and my thoughts turned to Sakura, her visit to Borrego, and our walk out to the hogan. Images of that day flashed in my mind, and I was so absorbed that it was some time before I heard Kuma mewling at the threshold. He had been out romping in the early day, because on days like this, he could run free. No one bothered him. No one bothered me. But he had returned now, and he begged me to join him, to venture out.

  In good weather, I often left my trailer door open. I’d set a stone down in the sun to keep the wind from bringing it closed, while Kuma visited the old dog tied to a dilapidated wood box next door, and then the puppy tied to a little cottonwood in front of the cinder block duplex across the way. Once the Tsosies, who lived in that duplex, spent the weekend away. They left that pup tied there to the tree with no water and no food. I went out looking for Kuma—he’d been gone for at least an hour—and I found him there lying in the shade patch with the pup. He lay there like the pup’s guardian, as if he knew it was defenseless and so thirsty that it had grown lethargic and wagless. The pup looked a bit like a heeler, at least a heeler mix, a rez dog to be sure, but in its stillness it also looked old and sad, faceless and without a country. Kuma had decided, so it seemed to me, that if danger came along, he would rouse himself to that pup’s defense, that poor spent pup, that creature of the brotherhood. I knew I too had to do something. If I did not, I was certain the pup would die, waste away in the desert like the old horse fallen dead among the stones. I brought it water, and it drank and drank, swelling its belly round like a melon. As Kuma and I looked on, it choked and coughed and puked the water back up, then drank some more. I kept the pup hydrated for two more days, gave it a little food, and even moved it from spot of shade to spot of shade. When the family returned,
I saw the old man outside inspecting the pup, as if surprised to see it still alive. Had he decided he didn’t want to care for it and left it there to die? Or perhaps in his mind the pup’s fate wasn’t tied to his, and the desert would decide.

  To many Navajo people, dogs are among the lowest of creatures. They carry ticks and fleas and other unsavory bugs. They’re scavengers, like their cousin the coyote. And they get mange. They’re not good for much more than barking the alarm when a skinwalker comes around, or, in the old days, for working. Of course some Navajo sheepherders still use dogs, but those dogs are not pets. They work or they don’t eat. They are never allowed into the home. Every small rez town I drove through supported packs of free-roaming dogs, thin and grizzled, shy and beaten down, starving for food and love. Some of them were so sick with mange they hardly looked like dogs at all. Some of them made a meager living hanging out with drunks and addicts. I learned from the boys in my classes that the way they took care of their dogs was to throw them a few dead rabbits that they had killed for sport with a .22. And one day in class, when the subject of dogs came up, Shane Yazzie said, “I like it when they fight.”

  I, however, did not like it when they fought, and the shrieking cutsounds of Mary’s dog, Ranger, attacking the poor beast in Ganado we’d come to call Sidecar persisted in my memory as the most horrifying of experiences. Sidecar, a German shepherd mix, had adopted Mary and Ranger, as much as they had adopted him. Mary named him after his lame rear leg and the kind of life that that leg encouraged. The leg had likely been broken in multiple places, and, uncared for, it healed into a withered burden. It looked like maybe he had been hit by a car, accidentally or purposely, it didn’t matter. I envisioned him getting slammed one morning while crossing a Ganado road and then dragging his mangled back end behind him into a secret place to lie down, go to sleep, and die. But he didn’t die, and it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t mean to be alive. It just happened. And, being alive, now he had to do something about it.

  He appeared one spring morning at Mary’s door in Ganado, standing on his three good legs, looking for a handout. His powerful head and wide shoulders told the story of the dog he once was, and beyond those features his body skinnied into his ravaged rear hips and leg. Ranger didn’t have the physique or the fighting talent to best Sidecar, but Sidecar had lost all confidence because of the way the world had brutalized him. Sensing this weakness, Ranger charged Sidecar that first day when they met, and Sidecar cowered and whimpered and gave Ranger the captain’s chair. Thus acquainted, the two dogs became good friends, and almost every morning Sidecar appeared at Mary’s door. He accompanied her, with and without Ranger, followed her to school on workdays, and followed her with Ranger on morning runs into the red rocks country, and up onto the mesa tops, and down, hobbling alongside or trailing far behind, as best he could. When I visited, he followed us out on long wanderings up the Ganado Wash, or down to the Hubbell Trading Post, sometimes to the post office. He was always there, getting along quite well despite his leg, and he was as much Ranger’s sidecar as Mary’s. Kuma had met him too, and they seemed to get along all right. Mary spoke fondly of Sidecar, like he was her dog, and he would gladly have moved in, but she also thought of him as a creature of Ganado, a resident of that place and that time, and so never dared to let him sleep in the house, or load him into her truck to take him with her farther afield.