“Hosteen, you’re lucky I didn’t have my gun. I woulda shot you sure for that knife.” Thomas had never liked Hosteen Benny and likely would have been harder on him had Charlie Yazzie not been there. In his drinking days Thomas had a considerable reputation as a scrapper, and Hosteen, once he saw who had him by the throat, felt himself lucky there was a witness present. Thomas’s voice became dangerously quiet and carried an edge when he asked if Benny had seen Harley Ponyboy, shook him again by the throat, then realized he would have to release his grip if the man was to answer.
Hosteen gasped for air and sputtered, “By Hell… I haven’t seen Harley in over a year, Begay. You got no call to rough me up like this. You know how it is… a person has to look out for himself down here. I didn’t know it was you.”
Thomas hadn’t felt such anger in a long while; it wasn’t good for a man’s hozo to feel that kind of rage especially against another human. His hands were still trembling when he looked up at Charlie with a weak smile. “I told you it could get a little rough down here.”
A soft voice came from behind them. “That’s right, boys, it can get a little sporty here from time to time. Especially when people come around poking their noses where they’ve got no business.” Johnny Deboe leaned against the corner of the shed, cradling a shotgun in the crook of an arm, and though he didn’t point it directly at anyone, Charlie got the impression he meant business.
“You’re not going to sneak up on many people in that diesel truck, Begay.” He turned and spit toward the trees. “I been hearing you coming for a while now.” Bad Johnny was smiling when he said this, but turned sour when he declared, “I don’t appreciate people coming down here and roughing up my customers.” He straightened and came a step closer, looking only at Thomas. “Word has it you’ve quit drinking Begay?” The bootlegger grinned and there were a few additional empty spaces where teeth had been the last time Thomas saw him.
Bad Johnny stood there a moment, weighing his options, then apparently decided against shooting the pair outright and conceded, “Harley was here bright and early, drunk, and looking for credit. I’d have thought he’d known better… hope springs eternal, I reckon.”
Thomas gritted his teeth and measured both the man and the shotgun before asking, “Who’d Harley come down here with? He’s a little short on friends and transportation right now.”
Deboe didn’t hesitate. “I don’t know who he was with for sure; they pulled up to the house but the driver didn’t get out, and Harley didn’t say. We don’t ask questions down here, if you’ll recall.” The big man gave him a broken grin, and Charlie thought for a moment Thomas was going to say something they might both regret, but Thomas had learned better long ago… and the hard way. Bad Johnny was not one to be trifled with.
~~~~~~
As he let the truck idle its way back down the track from the bootlegger’s, Thomas studied on what Johnny Deboe had told them. “All Harley’s people are up in Tsé Bii’ Ndzigalii…” he said, using the Navajo name for Monument Valley. “I doubt he’s up there now though; it’s a long ways from here and a long ways from any booze either.”
Charlie nodded. “I thought about that… though I wonder if this mystery person hauling him around isn’t one of his cousins he’s run into somewhere?”
Before Thomas could answer, he slammed on the brakes and cursed under his breath as a person staggered out of the brush and directly in front of the truck.
The old woman wore the long, traditional velveteen skirt and blouse from another time, dirty now, covered with bits of grass and leaves. A tattered silk headscarf obscured her vision, and she didn’t seem to take notice of them––until Thomas laid on the horn. She turned then and gazed at the truck, squinting through the dust with rheumy, bloodshot eyes, and then cursed them in a shrill, reedy voice.
Thomas knew her immediately and rolled down the window to call out in Navajo, “Ho, Grandmother, you should be more careful out here in the woods… a bear might get you.”
The woman searched his face and upon seeing who it was, cackled, “I would be lucky if it were only a bear, Grandson. There are worse things than that down here… as you’ll remember.”
Thomas laughed, and as the woman stood aside to let them pass, he pulled even with her, stopped the truck, and leaned out the window. “How is it with you, Grandmother. Did you keep warm last night?” He then turned to Charlie and whispered in English, “It’s Bloody Mary, you remember, from when we were kids. She’s of my father’s clan….” Thomas canted his head and momentarily tried to remember where she fit in the clan hierarchy. “…I thought she was dead.”
Charlie eyed the woman and whispered back, “I remember. She has to be near eighty by now.”
The old woman came up to the window and her voice turned petulant, wheedling. “Oh grandsons, you wouldn’t have a couple of dollars to spare for an old woman this morning would you? My throat is dry as dirt, and my old man lost our money shooting dice up at that evil house last night. He’s still asleep over there,” she said, pointing with her chin at an opening in the undergrowth. “I guess he’s asleep… or maybe he’s dead… I don’t know. But, if he’s not dead he’ll give me a good whack if I wake him.” She glared at the hole in the brush. “Anyway, I know he don’t have no money left.” She dropped her head and wrung her hands in a most pitiful way, then watched with hooded eyes.
Charlie frowned, reached in his pocket, and then nudged Thomas with two one-dollar bills. He hated to see these old people reduced to begging. This is what alcohol has brought us to. He knew, in the end, the money only made things worse, but like her, he couldn’t help himself.
When Thomas handed her the bills, the old woman flashed a toothless grin and snatched them from his hand.
Charlie smiled across at her. “You didn’t happen to see Harley Ponyboy down here this morning did you? We heard he was here, but they say he left with someone… we don’t know who that person was.” Charlie knew his Navajo wasn’t perfect and even if she understood, thought the question a long shot.
The old lady concentrated on her gout-swollen big toe, visible through a flap cut in the front of her shoe; it was painful and interrupted her thinking. She wiggled the toe despite the pain. “I saw him,” she admitted with a grimace at the toe. “I saw he was with someone too. I think she was your relative,” she said this looking at Thomas, “It is a long time since I saw that person.”
Thomas looked at Charlie Yazzie, winked, and shrugged his shoulders, then turned again to the old woman. “I don’t know who that could have been Grandmother… maybe you were mistaken.”
“Maybe so, I guess, but that’s what I thought at the time.” The old woman was anxious now to get away and spend her two dollars on a little drink of something to ease her dry throat and dull the pain. In parting she hesitated and then added, “I hear Anita left him… something about a witch––maybe they meant Anita was a witch––maybe that is how it was.”
Then the woman turned her back and with a wave of her arm began her slow and painful way up to the house. They heard the sound of the Beauty Way song come floating back in a high thin voice; the old woman was greeting her morning and giving thanks for the little she had.
“What do you suppose that was about?” Charlie was still watching the woman in his side-mirror, “That part about your relative… and she said she? I don’t know what woman would have taken up with Harley; I doubt it was Anita.”
“No… it wouldn’t be Anita. I think Anita’s through with Harley for good this time. She never actually moved out on him before ya know. She’d maybe stay gone for a day or so down at her mother’s but she never just packed up and left.” Thomas had no clue now as to where their friend might have gone. Nothing made any sense to him at this point. As he started the truck and kicked it into gear, he had an uncomfortable feeling… even more so than before.
~~~~~~
It was well after dark when Anita Ponyboy answered her mother’s phone. She didn’t recognize the
voice, a calm but rough voice with an underlying tone of urgency. “I’m calling to tell you that Harley Ponyboy is in bad shape down at Johnny Deboe’s place.” There was a pause. “Looks like he tried to walk out, drunk, and got hit by a car––he’s bad hurt and he’s calling for you; he gave me this number. He’s right past the turn off at the edge of the trees… under the big dead cottonwood… the one right by the road.”
“Who is this?” Anita thought there was something familiar about the voice.
“I’m not nobody, an’ I don’t want to get involved no more than I already am––it was my car that hit him, so I got my own problems.” The person turned from the phone for a moment, coughed, and it sounded like he almost dropped the receiver. When he finally continued, his voice grew impatient, harsh. “I’m already back in town now. It’s going to get cold down there by the river tonight. The little bastard could freeze maybe. The cops won’t call anyone out for a drunk Indian. If you think anything of him, you maybe better go get him… he said you’d come.”
After the line went dead, Anita went to the window and looked out. It was cold and it was dark and the wind was coming up; little swirls of dirt were trying to climb the light post by the barn. Her parents were gone visiting her sister… the one sister left that didn’t have a phone.
Anita had expected Harley to come whining around… days before now and when he didn’t she just figured he was staying drunk instead of manning up and admitting he was wrong and sorry. Those were the two things Harley was as far as she was concerned––wrong and sorry. She damned sure didn’t intend to go out there to Johnny Deboe’s and poke around in the dark looking for him, not after all the heartache he’d caused her. She wasn’t in the drunk-rescuing business anymore.
But even as Anita firmly decided she was through with her husband for good… she was taking her coat down off the rack and feeling for the keys in the pocket.
It was a long drive from her mother’s place to Bad Johnny’s, and after she made the turnoff, she went only another hundred yards before seeing the dead cottonwood, stripped of bark, and shining white in the moonlight. Even in the dark Anita could see the lump of someone or something lying under it.
The Surprise
Paul T’Sosi hadn’t gone with the children and sheep that morning. He told them he didn’t feel well enough to go to the upper hogback, where the grass was best. “I’m too tired to go that far,” he said. “You children would have to carry me back home maybe.”
Caleb Begay laughed at this, “Oh, Acheii we could not carry you so far as that!” This caused Ida Marie to smile.
The old man beamed at them and called up the dog. They would be all right, he told them, what with the dog to help and watch out for them.
Lucy Tallwoman stood nearby listening and wondered if she should go with the two youngsters, but she had only a few days to finish the work on the loom. She herself had been herding when she was no older than they, and at the time thought nothing of it. She agreed with her father. They would be all right.
Later, Lucy was still thinking about the children when she discovered she needed some little something from town, something to do with the weaving, and asked her father if he would like to go along. The old man declined, as she knew he would, saying he had best just hang around the place in case the kids needed something; he was tired, he said. Lucy Tallwoman smiled and nodded, told him she would be only an hour or so, depending on whether the co-op had what she was looking for.
After his daughter left, the old man sat in a kitchen chair outside the hogan door and watched as the children, nearly out of sight now, worked their way up the side of the hogback. He could no longer hear the bell on the lead goat, but could still make out the faint barking of the dog as it kept the sheep moving. Truth be told, the dog was probably capable of taking the sheep up there by himself… and could probably bring them back home again, too.
It was the weekend and there was no school. Paul thought it would be good for the kids to get out and get some exercise. He was a firm believer in exercise, and in youngsters learning a few traditional skills as early as possible, too. Being outside could do them no harm. It bothered him that they had to spend so much time indoors at their day school. He didn’t recall children having such light complexions when he was a boy. He remembered that first time Charlie Yazzie came home from university, how pale he had seemed, almost like a white boy––talked like one, too––still did in fact. Even so, Charlie had turned out all right in his opinion, so there was probably no great harm in it… but still.
He had almost fallen asleep there in the sun when his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a motor and he opened his eyes to see an old brown sedan laboring up the hill to the camp. The muffler was nearly dragging the ground and left a blanket of white smoke in its wake. The old man shaded his eyes with one hand and ran his fingers through his hair with the other. Who could it be, dropping by in the middle of the day? He was certain he had not seen that particular car before and finally rose from his chair to get a better look. Not a lost tourist, for sure. You couldn’t do much touristing in a car like that.
The dust-coated passenger window rolled down and the old man saw Harley Ponyboy leering out at him. Drunk, Paul immediately thought, but he raised a hand in greeting as anyone with manners would do. He was sure Harley had been drinking even before he got out of the car. The other person––a woman, but not Anita––opened the driver door and also stepped down. Paul scratched his head, and when Harley called a greeting in Navajo, he returned it in a like manner and waited for the two of them to come closer. There was something familiar about the woman. His eyesight was no longer what it once had been, but still he had the distinct impression he should know who she was.
The woman, by her unsteady gait, appeared to have been drinking as well (though still better off than Harley) and she came right up to the old man and threw back her headscarf.
Behind her, Harley shouted in a pleased voice. “Look who I found in town!” He said this in Navajo, his words slightly slurred, and Paul saw the woman probably didn’t understand what he said.
“Hi, Grandpa.” The young woman canted her head and held out her arms. “Don’t you remember me… Alice?”
Paul had been ready for almost anyone to be in that car… but not his granddaughter, whom he had long ago made a great effort to forget. It was her all right, a little heavier now, older beyond her years. She didn’t look healthy, but he attributed that to her white blood. He had never met her Anglo father––Lucy’s music teacher at boarding school––a charming man by all accounts and good at leading young girls astray. He had been dismissed by the time Paul went to settle with him, and probably good that he had; Paul had no idea how to find such a person once they left the reservation. The school people told him there was a warrant out for the man’s arrest, but Paul was never notified that he had been caught and assumed he hadn’t. The incident remained always in the back of his mind, however, and he kept the man in his prayers, but not in a good way.
“My name is Alice Harney now. I’ve been married a long time.” She raised her head, almost defiantly. “He’s a white man.”
The old man had thought he would never see this granddaughter again and now didn’t know quite what to say to her. The woman stood staring him in the eye. Nothing makes a Navajo more nervous than that. She was waiting and finally he nodded and took her hand. “A-hah-la’nih, At’éé, have you written us letters? Because we haven’t received them if you did.” He didn’t know what else to say.
He tried for a moment to return her stare, thinking that must be how it was with those white people she lived with now, but he couldn’t hold her gaze and finally had to look away. He remembered those bad times before she left. The rages and mental disconnects. She had grown better looking now, almost pretty, but not so pretty like her mother.
Paul turned to the hogan, “I better bring some coffee. Your mother will be back soon, and I doubt she will want to see you like this… or y
ou either Harley. When did this happen?”
Harley, grinning ear to ear, only said, “Coffee would be good… do you have a little something to put in it?” then giggled and shrugged his shoulders as if to say he was joking.
The woman hesitated. “I haven’t been drinking Grandfather.”
Paul looked from one to the other, frowned, and went into the hogan without a word. When he returned with the still warm breakfast coffee and two cups, Harley was sitting in the old man’s chair, but no longer looked happy. Alice walked unsteadily about, seeing things she remembered from her unhappy past. She had spent most of her younger years right here in this camp. Still, there were few fond recollections. She did, however, have good memories of her grandfather, though even those were shadowed by the mental turmoil that shadowed her then. Fits of depression, followed by delusions, and incoherent thoughts––not a happy time for any of the family, and especially not for her new husband Thomas Begay who was himself in a state of confusion brought on by drink and despair. They should never have come back to live with her family, she thought. But Thomas had no people left in that country to speak of, and said they would only stay until they could find another place. That had been a mistake.
Paul poured them each a cup of coffee and stood waiting to hear the reason for their visit.
“Do you have any milk and sugar?” Harley asked, without thinking it in any way rude. He was beginning to feel sick and when Paul returned with the condiments, dosed his coffee before gulping it down––then rose and went off a few yards to the arroyo where he threw up. The granddaughter seemed to take no notice and fixed her own cup, drinking it down with no apparent ill effects.
After finishing the coffee, she turned to Paul. “So Thomas is still here, living with my mother? That’s what I hear, anyway.” She raised her voice slightly when she demanded, “Is that true?” Working in Gallup’s back-alley bars had apparently done little to enhance her social skills.
Magpie Speaks Page 3
