The Big Wander

by Will Hobbs

  For a long time Clay waited on the alert for a strike, but as the tall canyon walls started to provide shade, he thought he deserved a nap and he lay down on the beach.

  He thought it might be fun—he’d never tried it before—to tie the line off to a big toe, and then just make himself comfortable and doze off, letting his big toe warn him if the salami found any takers. He was thinking about what a great fisherman his uncle was, and what a strong swimmer too. They were fishing from a canoe once out at Goose Lake when his uncle suddenly stripped down to his skivvies. “What’re you doing?” he’d asked his uncle.

  “I want to see if I can nab that big turtle over there basking on that log,” Uncle Clay had said.

  “How come?”

  “I just thought it might be interesting.”

  “You won’t get within fifty feet before he slides into the water, and they’re great swimmers. You know how they are.”

  “I know,” his uncle had said as he lowered himself over the side of the canoe. “That’s what’ll make it interesting.”

  Clay started to doze off. The sand sure felt good. He hadn’t known his body was so sore. The roar of the rapid seemed so restful as his memory drifted him back to Goose Lake. He could remember his uncle swimming so slowly toward that log, with only his nostrils stuck up into the air like a turtle himself, he’d begun to wonder if Uncle Clay had a chance. Maybe he’d get within thirty feet…. And now he pictured his uncle submerging with fifty feet anyway yet to swim before the log, and then he didn’t surface for what seemed too long a time, until finally Uncle Clay burst out of the water like a dolphin with arms. The turtle splashed into the water out of his reach and then Uncle Clay kicked and dived after it. He stayed under until he surfaced with a victory cry and held up that big turtle with both hands. The way that shout exploded from his lungs, you could have heard it from clear across the lake….

  It was late afternoon when the alarm on his toe—something tugging hard—brought him out of a dream, a sweet dream in which Marilyn was trying on his Stetson just for fun. What a combination the black hat made with her blond hair. For a second as he woke up, he could almost remember her face but then it slipped away.

  Anyway he had a fish on the line and there’s nothing in the world quite like having a fish on the line. There’s a current running through the line that connects you in that moment to everything that’s beautiful and mysterious and wonderful. In this case the current was running into him through his toe.

  Clay took the line in his hand and gave it a couple of wraps. No time now to free his toe—he had a big fish on. Up and down the beach and out onto a sandbar he fought it, trying his best to ignore the fact that he had a piece of fishing line connecting his hand and his toe.

  Working the fish up and down the sandbar, he was having a hard time trying to stay on his feet. That piece of line kept tripping him up, and twice he fell down in the water. But he’d seen the prize: a big silvery fish almost like a salmon, but with a smaller head and the fins different. Once he was onto a big fish, there was nothing in the world but him and the fish and victory or defeat. Clay could feel the world blurring away at the edges. There was only him and the fish in all the world and the current of the world was running through him.

  Behind him, Curly was barking. Curly must be pretty excited about the fish too, Clay thought. Pal was snorting loudly. Even Pal was inspired by the battle. It isn’t easy to give and retrieve line when your hand is the fishing reel and the line’s cramping your palm and cutting your fingers.

  Now’s the most critical time, he thought. He’s in the shallows and I haven’t got a net.

  Twice Clay tried to wade in after the big fish to get close enough to grab it. But when the fish saw him coming it was off to the races. At last Clay saw no other way than to pull on the line hard enough to drag the fish into shallow water, and so that’s what he did. The big fish was coming onto the shallows. Clay thought he’d won the day when he heard that sickening ping, the distinctive sound he’d heard too many times in his life before with salmon or steelies on the line, the distinctive sound of fishing line under high tension snapping.

  Seeing his long-fought prize heading for deeper water, Clay splashed in after it hoping to grab the fish somehow. But he forgot all about the length of line connecting his hand and his toe. He fell flat on his face in the river.

  As he sat up, he replaced his hat on his head and turned around toward the shore. That’s when he discovered two Navajos, a man and a boy, dark-skinned and dark-eyed, mounted on spotted horses right there on the shore and just looking at him. No expression at all, unless there was a trace of amusement around their lips and eyes; it was hard to tell.

  Curly was looking from Clay to the Navajos and back, and wagging his tail ever so faintly.

  Clay was sitting in the river with only his head and shoulders out of the water. He knew somehow that they had been watching him for a long time. The man was big and barrel-chested, his face broad and heavily lined under a flat-brimmed, tall black Stetson. Hammered nickels ringed his hat and large silver conchos belted his waist, prominent against his vermilion shirt with the tails worn long. Large silver bracelets studded with turquoise adorned both wrists.

  Clay couldn’t believe he’d had an audience for the worst fishing episode in his entire life.

  Everything in the man’s appearance and demeanor spoke authority, and for an instant Clay was afraid that the man was hostile. But the glint of humor in the man now grew and spread across the broad face as the man said in English, “You horsed him.”

  Now father and son, as he took them to be, broke out laughing, and Clay was laughing with them. He stood up and water streamed from his clothing.

  Hatless, the Navajo boy wore a red headband and a string of red coral beads around his neck. His shaggy hair spilled over the back of his collar. The boy’s smile flashed as he said, “We were wondering why you have your fishing line tied from your hand to your toe.”

  Clay shrugged and smiled back, and said, “Oh, just to make it interesting.”

  Suddenly the boy became greatly animated. He pointed in Clay’s direction with his lips, then spoke rapidly to his father in Navajo. Among the boy’s words, Clay picked out these two: “Hosteen Clay.”

  12

  “‘Hosteen Clay’?” Clay’s heart was pounding fast. “Did you say ‘Clay’? I’ve come a long way, and I’m looking for my uncle—Clay Jenkins.”

  He walked up onto the sand and reached to pat Curly, whose tail spoke happiness at having Clay back on solid ground.

  “We know your uncle,” the boy said proudly. “You sort of talk like him, same neckerchief, same hat. You’re Clay Lancaster.”

  “You know my name?”

  “Your uncle spoke of you often,” the man said. “And you have a brother Mike.”

  “Yes, but he’s not with me, he went back home….”

  For a moment both Clay and the two Navajos fell silent, each trying to put together the pieces.

  “Are you from the Yazzie family? I met an old couple in Oljeto….”

  “My grandparents went there,” the boy acknowledged. “They aren’t back yet. My name is Russell, my father’s name is Sam.”

  Clay noticed the silver work in the horses’ bridles. He’d never seen the like of it or of the splendid spotted horses.

  “Your horses are really something. I’ve never seen such beautiful horses.”

  “Yes,” the boy said. “Hozhoni—beautiful. They’re gifts of your uncle.”

  “Really? Your grandparents were trying to tell me something about Uncle Clay and horses!”

  “There’s much to tell,” Sam Yazzie said with great seriousness, and even a touch of what may have been sadness.

  “Is my uncle’s with you right now? I mean, back at your camp? I want to see him as soon as I can.”

  “No, he’s no longer at our camp. He’s across two rivers,” Sam Yazzie replied.

  “He’s all right?”

  “
We see him again on the twenty-seventh of July.”

  “Nine more days,” Russell Yazzie said. “I’ve been counting.”

  “Why the twenty-seventh? Where’s he coming from? Where will you see him?”

  “Let’s make a camp here,” Sam Yazzie said. “It’s too far to return tonight. And there’s some things you should know before you meet your uncle.”

  “Can I go with you when you go to meet him?”

  “That would be a good thing.”

  It didn’t concern the Navajos that they had no overnight gear. They would stay close to the fire, Russell said. They’d spent nights out before, it wouldn’t bother them.

  Clay wondered what was troubling Sam Yazzie, if there was something bad he wasn’t telling. Russell’s father had left them after briefly speaking to his son in Navajo, and his face seemed clouded with concern. Clay began laying out his stores, thinking about what he might offer his guests to eat. “Chili con came …” he was thinking aloud. Suddenly there was a big commotion and Clay looked up to see Pal crow-hopping around and making a big spectacle of herself.

  “What’s she doing?” Clay exclaimed, all alarmed. He jumped up, ran over and grabbed the tie rope, freeing one of her legs which was caught.

  “Oh, I’ve seen that happen before,” Russell said with a smile. “She was scratching her chin with one of her hind feet and it got caught in the rope.”

  Clay hobbled Pal so she could get around a little and graze. Sam Yazzie was down by the river assembling three long forked sticks, green willows he’d cut along the river, into a conical frame.

  Clay asked, “What’s he doing?”

  “Building a sweat hogan,” Russell replied. “He wants to … to purify himself before he tells you the things he needs to tell you.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  Now the boy’s face clouded. “It’s very difficult for Navajo people to talk of certain things … to talk of people who have … but my father believes you need to know these things. If he prepares himself in the right way, it will be all right.”

  “Uncle Clay’s okay, isn’t he? What’s happened to him?”

  “He’s all right. My father will explain everything. He won’t eat tonight, and we won’t speak to him until he’s all finished with the sweat hogan.”

  As Clay and Russell were collecting firewood and getting the fire started, Clay watched Sam Yazzie lean upright sticks against his frame and then slabs of juniper bark. He was leaving a doorway facing upriver, to the east, chanting as he worked.

  Clay might not have been able to hear the chanting over the roar of the rapid, but the wind would shift and carry the man’s high-pitched singing their way, riding on a rhythm so regular and monotonous the song would have seemed to be sung to the accompaniment of a drum. Clay had never heard anything like this singing. It reminded him a little of the coyote sounds he had heard in the night.

  Russell was mixing up some cornmeal for corn bread. “Wait until you get to the summer hogan,” he said. “We’ll have lots of frybread.”

  “I’d like that. I haven’t had any bread since Oljeto except some biscuits I fried up.”

  Russell added a little more water. “This corn bread isn’t as good as frybread, but it’ll be good with your chili.”

  “A trader told me I should have some cornmeal, but I didn’t know what to do with it.” Clay was happy to have someone to talk to who talked back.

  Russell greased Clay’s deep frying pan and set it on the coals to heat up. “I’m glad you’re going to stay with us. Everyone back at the summer hogan is going to be excited to see you. We’ll have plenty to eat…. Everyone will be happy to see the second Clay. Everyone will want to hear the story of how you came searching for your uncle.”

  Russell spooned the batter into the pan and covered it with a metal pie plate. He spread most of the coals out of the way with a stick, then started the corn bread baking on the thin layer that remained. Picking up a coal at a time, he used two twigs like chopsticks to cover the lid with coals.

  “Did my uncle live with you at your sheep camp? When?”

  “Last summer … it was a happy time for everyone.”

  “But not this summer? He doesn’t live with you anymore?”

  Russell didn’t say.

  It wasn’t long before Clay could smell the corn bread. He rummaged for his honey. The bread was done and so was the chili.

  “What’s it about, what your father is singing?” he asked Russell as they ate. “Is it a ceremony or something?”

  “It’s not really a ceremony,” Russell answered. “It’s his own way of preparing himself. What he’s singing right now, it’s about Bik’é hozhoni, the trail of beauty. This is what he’s saying:

  Beauty before me, with it I wander.

  Beauty behind me, with it I wander.

  Beauty below me, with it I wander.

  Beauty above me, with it I wander.

  Beauty all around me, with it I wander.

  On the beautiful trail I am, with it I wander.”

  “That’s what I feel like, Russell,” Clay said, “being out in these canyons.”

  “Then it’s your song too.”

  “Do you like peaches?” Clay asked him.

  “I love peaches.”

  “Then let’s open two cans for dessert. Hey, I’m sure lucky I found you. I mean, I’m sure lucky you found me. And that you speak such good English too. I couldn’t talk to your grandparents at all. I mean, I don’t know any Navajo….”

  “Oh, I go to a boarding school…. They only let you speak English there. At home everybody speaks in our own language. When Hosteen Clay was here my father got to use his English again. My father was in the marines in World War Two—he spoke English all the time then, except when he was a code talker.”

  “What does that mean—a code talker?”

  “There were about four hundred of them,” Russell said proudly. “All over the Pacific. The Navajo code talkers. If the enemy ever cracks your code, they know all about your biggest secrets for all the landings and battles and everything. But no matter how hard the Japanese tried, they could never crack the code made from the Navajo language.”

  “I never heard about that before! That’s really something, that your dad was one of them.”

  “He was at Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal, lots of different battles.”

  “Uncle Clay was in the Pacific too, and so was President Kennedy.”

  “I know. PT 109! The Japanese sank his PT boat and he had to swim through the flames.”

  “Maybe Uncle Clay and your dad and President Kennedy all met each other in the war, only they didn’t even know it…. What does that word mean, Hosteen?”

  “Like ‘honored.’ It’s usually for older men like grandfathers.”

  “Where is your school?”

  “Oh, about a hundred miles from our winter home near Navajo Mountain.”

  “You’re kidding! How do you get home?”

  “We don’t, me and my brothers and sisters. Only at Christmas, and a week in the spring. We live at the school. That’s what a boarding school is,” he explained. “You live there.”

  “That’s terrible! That must be really hard!”

  Russell shrugged. “Sometimes it is hard, especially at first, especially for the little kids. But that’s the way it is. Summer’s a lot better,” he said, indicating the canyon walls or the river or all of it with a twist of his lips.

  They built up the fire. In the outwash of the canyon, where the dry creek met the rapid, they gathered stones to be heated in the fire. Russell wanted round river rocks for his father’s sweat hogan. Sandstone explodes suddenly and can throw little slivers like razors, he explained.

  It was getting dark, but Clay could see that Sam Yazzie was packing the outside of the sweat lodge with mud now and sealing up the cracks.

  Back at the campfire, they dropped the rocks in the fire and added still more fuel. Sparks were flying into the night and joining the stars.
r />   His new friend was squatting comfortably back on his haunches but not quite touching the ground. Only his feet touched the ground. Clay could do that too, and now both of them sat that way with their hands on top of their knees.

  “What are the two rivers?” Clay asked. “Uncle Clay’s across two rivers, your father said.”

  “The San Juan here—we call it Old Age River—and the Colorado. We’ll meet him where the Escalante River joins the Colorado, and help him move the horses across.”

  “Horses?”

  “He’s going to be bringing some more wild horses out of the Escalante country and across the river like he’s done before.”

  “Wild horses! Is that what your grandparents meant by ‘horses’?”

  Russell nodded. “My horse and my father’s—they were wild horses. Mustangs. Hosteen Clay brought them across late last summer. My father will tell you how all those things happened.”

  Something was turning in the back of Clay’s mind, demanding to be remembered. “Es-ca-lan-te,” he repeated. “You said Es-ca-lan-te.”

  “It’s the name of the river and also the town where the Mormons live, up the river somewhere, in Utah.”

  “That’s it! Restaurant Hay! Escalante! My uncle called us from there, and I got the name all mixed up!”

  Russell laughed hard at that. “You thought the name of the town was Restaurant Hay? That’s a good one. We’ll have to tell that to my father.”

  The stones were glowing red in the fire. “They’re ready,” Russell announced. Carrying the glowing red stones on two poles they held together between them, Clay and Russell walked in the darkness to the sweat hogan. Then the boys poked and pushed the hot rocks into the hole Russell’s father had made in the wet sand in the floor’s center.

  They returned to the campfire and let it burn low now. The night air was pleasant and they didn’t really need the fire for heat. After a time Clay realized he was hearing the muffled sound of chanting from inside the hogan. His eyes must have asked the question because Russell began to explain. “He’s singing the Sweat Bath Song now. It’s an old story. It tells how First Man put down the first sweat hogan at the edge of the hole where the people came up from the world before this one. ‘Everlasting and peaceful, he put it down there, the Son of the She-Dark.’ That’s what the sweat hogan’s called—it’s really dark in there too.”