But not today.
Today, as she drove her old blue Toyota pickup west on U.S. 64 toward Shiprock en route to a dutiful call upon Hosteen Peshlakai, she was feeling anything but cheerful. Her mother had been difficult, full of those personal questions that are tough to answer. Was she absolutely sure about Jim Chee? Hadn’t she heard that his Slow Talking Dinee clan produced unreliable husbands? Did Chee still intend to become a medicine man, a singer? Shouldn’t she see about finding another job before getting married? Why was it Chee was still just a sergeant? And so forth. Finally, where were they going to live? Didn’t Bernie respect the traditions of the Dineh? Chee would—at least he should—be joining their family; Bernie wouldn’t be joining his. He should be coming to live with Bernie. Had she found them a place? So it went—a very stressful visit that dragged on until she agreed to drive down and have a talk with Hosteen Peshlakai, who as her mother’s elder brother was Bernie’s clan father. It was a promise Bernie had been happy to make, and not just to break off the maternal interrogation. She admired Peshlakai, loved him, too. A wonderful man.
Wonderful late-summer morning, too, with a great white many-turreted castle of cumulus cloud building over the Carrizo Mountains and another potential rainstorm brewing over the Chuskas. Usually such dramatic beauty and the promise of blessed rain would have had Bernie happily humming one of her many memorized tunes. Today they merely reminded her of the drought-stricken look of the slopes where Towering House clan sheep herds grazed, and that the summer monsoon rains were too late to do much good, and that even these promising-looking clouds would probably drift in the wrong direction.
She could blame this unusually negative mood on all those probing maternal inquiries, but it was the “missed call” message on her cell phone when she returned to the truck that made her start thinking hard, and painfully, about her mother’s questions.
The caller was Jim Chee. The tone was strictly official—Sergeant Chee speaking with no hint of sentimental affection.
“Bernie, I won’t be getting to your place today.” Then came a terse explanation about having to help Cowboy Dashee help Dashee’s cousin, which required going down into the Hopi Salt Shrine area in the Grand Canyon, where he “might have to spend a day or two.”
At least, Bernie was thinking, he didn’t address me as Officer Manuelito. But there certainly was some wisdom in some of her mother’s questions. Would she, as her mother had wondered, be continuing her role as underling to a master by marrying her sergeant? Maybe mothers did know best. Bernie didn’t think so. Probably not. She wished that telephone call had included at least some hint of regret. Or of intimacy. And why didn’t he at least suggest she might want to come along?
Perhaps Chee didn’t remember her chattering away one day about how exciting it was when the science teacher took her sixth-grade class on a field trip into the Canyon. Taught them about its geology and biology, the different kind of frogs, etc., how the heat reflected off south-facing cliffs made different species of plants grow, etc., how thrilling it had been. Forgetting that conversation would be some sort of an excuse for him not inviting her to go along. But that would mean he didn’t pay attention when she talked. That was just as bad. Maybe worse.
At Shiprock, Bernie turned south onto old Highway 666, decided Peshlakai could wait. She would waste a minute, drive up the road along the San Juan and see if Chee’s car was parked by his mobile home by the riverbank. It probably wouldn’t be on this working day, but if he wasn’t home it would give her a chance to take a private look at his place.
She parked where Chee’s car would have been, got out, leaned against the door, and studied the place. The trailer looked as dented, grimy, and decrepit as she remembered. But the windows were clean, she noticed, and she credited Jim with that since he was the only occupant. The axles, where the wheels would be replaced when time came to move, were covered with canvas to protect them from rain, rust, or whatever would damage such machinery. The little “pet flap” Chee had installed on the bottom of the entry door was still there even though the cat was long since gone.
The flap revived a memory of how Chee’s mind worked. The cat, pregnant and abandoned by a tourist, had been chased up one of the trees shading his trailer. Chee had rescued it. While refusing to adopt it as a pet (which would violate nature’s sacred relationship between human and feline), he had arranged a feeding and watering place near his door, giving her some chance to survive until she learned rural ways while respecting her right to be a free and independent cat—and not a slave to his human species. After Cat, as Chee named it, barely escaped another coyote attack, he cut the hole in his door, attached the flap, and kept it open with the feeding dish just inside until Cat established her habit of coming in to eat, drink, or elude coyotes. But the arrangement remained strictly formal.
About ten feet down aluminum-siding from the door, a metal patch had been taped to the wall, covering a hole. A deranged woman, thinking Chee was a Skinwalker and had witched her, had blasted the hole (just over the cot where Chee slept) with her shotgun. Cat, ears attuned to stalking coyotes, heard the intruder coming and dived under the flap, awakening Chee and—as Chee told the story—saving his life.
Remembering Chee telling his version of Cat’s heroism caused Bernadette Manuelito to produce her first smile of the day. She walked around the trailer, trotted up the four steps to the plank patio he’d attached to the river side of it, sat in his deck chair, and considered the view.
The sound of the San Juan, flowing almost directly below, would be tamed to just a murmur by autumn. It had been a light-snow winter in the Southern Rockies. Thus the contribution being made by the Animas River upstream was minimal this season. The San Juan itself was still providing its final flow into the diversion channels of the Navajo Irrigation Project. The San Juan here—alas, all of this portion of the great Colorado Plateau—was thirstily awaiting the storms of winter. Or, even better, arrival of the rains of the summer’s already-tardy monsoon season.
Well, maybe they were coming now. Last night’s TV weather forecast had suggested that the great bubble of high pressure over the high desert was finally breaking up. Bernie found herself relaxing, her normal optimism restoring itself, discounting her mother’s concerns about whether Jim Chee would be incurably a sergeant, remembering his smile, his tendency to break the white-man rules in favor of Navajo kindness, remembering his arm around her, his kiss. Ah, well, Bernie thought, she would continue her drive down to Coyote Canyon and up the canyon to Hosteen Peshlakai’s hogan. She was pretty sure that Peshlakai would tell her what she was hoping to hear—his wise Navajo version of “love conquers all.”
And the clouds were building up in the west. That was always a reason for optimism.
7
