He’s standing on the side of Indian Route 12, just out of the short pines where the road starts to dip, by the sign that reads “No Passing,” a plastic bag hanging heavy from his hand. Sticking his thumb out into the wide-open sky.
He opens the door and settles the bag on his lap, holds out his hand.
They call me Raymond, he says.
Well then, he says.
He says, Where are you from boy? You look like you could be Bilagáanaa. Or from up north somewhere.
He says, This place used to be barren. Overgrazed like a white man’s bald head. Or my grandma’s ha!
Raymond says, Why am I telling you these things? You’re just a stranger. Who knows anybody anymore? My relatives are strangers to me just like the rest of them.
Raymond says, Whoa, Dammit! Watch out for them cows. You know better than that. You made me drop my eggs and now they’re broken. You can’t do that. No friends that way no sir.
Raymond says, Do you know your clans? Because how can you even call yourself a Navajo?
He says, Okay someone taught you that. But can you say anything else?
He says, When I was a young man all the women wanted to be with me and I had to fight them off at the squaw dance. Do you know what the squaw dance is?
Raymond says, It means when the night gets dark in the summer and all you can hear is singin. It’s like the night will swallow you up. Could you even imagine something like that? I used to live for those nights.
He says, Okay you’ve been to one doesn’t make you an expert.
He says, You gotta watch out for them damn cows jesus.
He says, My uncle ran for tribal president a few years ago and he needed the Enemyways done for him the four night sing because of all the enemies he made on his way there. Did you know people get jealous like that? And sometimes even hire witches to do evil work on you. Do you know? Because you don’t laugh at this. I seen people die of it. Drop dead like giant grasshoppers. Or smashed by a truck while walking down the highway. The kids these days think I’m silly but I know what’s right and what’s wrong. They haven’t killed that out of me yet. Those nuns tried to kill it out of me but I ran away and kept running until they locked me up.
Raymond says, They closed that place down that place in Winslow and whenever I drive by I spit. Have to because the bitter taste in my mouth.
Raymond doesn’t say anything for a while and we bounce along the bumpiest part of the highway.
He laughs and says, Do you know what they call this stretch here? Chidí naalgeed. Yep that’s what they call it. Do you know what that means?
He says, Okay you’re on the right track not quite but something like that. It means the bucking truck. Like a horse. Like we’re riding it trying to break it and it’s just bucking with us. Better hope we have a good saddle huh? Tied on right. Boy we have some crazy words don’t we?
Raymond clears his throat and looks out the window.
Don’t get old, Raymond says. Don’t let the diabetus get you. The doctor says I might lose my foot. So that’s why I’m out here I gotta walk and walk and walk to keep the blood in there keep it flowing because if I don’t. Well. What do they know? All they know is chop it off chop it off! They think it’ll grow back?
They’re just like the boarding school, Raymond says, just like those nuns but with white coats instead of black ones. Goddammit they don’t know nothing.
He says, But I couldn’t keep walking it got to hurting so much. Too much. Doodah couldn’t do it. I’m trying to make it to my sister’s house she lives out there by Greasewood. My damn truck won’t start. My damn truck won’t start for three years now do you know what I mean? You have a little truck out here and you’re rich that’s right. But what do you know? What do you know about these people and this land? Do you call yourself a Navajo? Do you say that when you’re away? Do you tell people who you are?
You don’t know that one do you? says Raymond. Do you?
Raymond says, Used to be there were sheep everywhere you could see all over these hills but now they’re gone. Used up. Sold. They took them from us is what happened. Killed them in front of our eyes. Do you know what it means to be Diné? Do you know what it means? It means to wake up every morning before the sun comes up to say your prayers to saddle the horse and ride after the sheep. That’s what it means right?
Raymond laughs. Raymond doesn’t know if that’s what it means really. That’s what these men tell themselves he says, these rancher types, but it means more than that. He wants to know, Do I know the old people?
Raymond says his uncle lost that election to a man from Klagetoh and there was definitely some fishy business. One morning his uncle woke up and didn’t feel right, like he couldn’t breathe right you know and he finds out it’s his heart, his heart is giving him problems, his heart is beating fast then slow, then not at all and he wonders how he’s still alive and standing but it doesn’t feel good not at all, it feels like a hummingbird is flapping around in his chest and banging against the windows and breaking its beak, going blind. Finally he heard it was someone from that Klagetoh camp, the medicine man sat down with him and diagnosed it.
But it was the people too, Raymond says. They didn’t see what kind of man his uncle could be, what kind of president he would make, what kind of leader—a powerful one for sure. All they saw was that he took some money from the Council. Sure, but it was to help other people—he paid for cow vaccinations for the people from his chapter, for a new phone system at the chapter house, even for expensive testing for a local boy who had a rare disease that eats your insides. And maybe he did use some of it for himself, for a new saddle or a down payment on his truck, but hey we all need money right?
Raymond says this lake didn’t used to be here. When he was a boy it used to be a watering hole, a big marshland where the water would gather after the big male rains and every once in a while it might be big enough to jump in, but then the government came and dammed up one side and made it a lake and made the whole area of pines and nice land into a rec area. Then they backed up a truck with a water tank on the end of it, opened the plug and out came hundreds of little trout.
This is a real pretty place, yessir. He used to come here with his wife and fish. Just throw a line out there. His mom would get mad at him because we’re not supposed to fish you know, the fish are our relatives they say, and she would get sick to her stomach when he brought the trout back to her house so he stopped bringing them. But those were good times with his wife, she would bring her umbrella and sit on the shore reading her book and he would be out there casting and waiting. Even if she grumbled when she saw him digging out his gear, she liked it, the quiet.
And where’s your woman? Raymond says. Where’s your maid in the white dress? Every man needs someone to come home to at night and roll around with. Hey do you know what I’m sayin?
Raymond says, Hey watch out for that dog. People drop their dogs off around here just dump em you know. Around this place too where the road gets windy and you have that creek on the side and going over it up here you gotta watch out for cows and horses they like to drink the water and eat the grass that grows here. There’s no cattle fence and there’s all kinds of accidents specially at night. The cows will walk out of the trees and stand with their asses on the pavement and necks leaning down to eat on the shoulder and because their heads are out of line with the highway they think they’re safe but their whole ass is about to get hit. Stupid cows. And if you’re in a small truck like this one they could really hurt you.
But really, he says, do you have a girl? You’re at that age when you’re needing a wife but I see you don’t have a ring. See this ring? My uncle made this ring—not the President but the other one he’s a silversmith does it the old style really good turquoise made one for me and my wife she’s gone now but I still wear this for some reason. Looks good I think. What do you think?
So who are you going to marry? I have to give you advice because if you marry someone outside, your kids won’t be Navajo. I mean I guess the tribe can say they’re one quarter but their mom won’t be Diné. You’re lucky your mom is so your first clan is us but your kids if you marry outside won’t be and then it makes it hard when you bring them around to ceremonies or stuff like that. So this is serious I’m telling you right now.
Why would you go and do that anyway? All it does is create problems. I wonder why the women go and do that they leave and they marry other men. What are we not good enough or something? Is there something wrong with us with these men around here? I bet that’s what your mom thought huh? Were the Navajo men not good enough for her? I’ll bet she only liked what was out there. Those white boys or the blacks or the Mexicans. That’s who she wanted to be with. Yeah I’ll bet it was like that.
Raymond says he has to speak the truth.
Raymond says he can say what he wants.
He says he can talk about anyone’s moms or dads it’s a free country, it’s his free damn country.
Raymond says, Whoa whoa whoa!
He says, Okay okay okay. Just get back on the road he won’t say nothing else.
Raymond shuts up for a while.
Raymond says he’s sorry.
He says these eggs these damn eggs are getting on his jeans.
Raymond puts half a cracked eggshell on his head and pretends he’s a hatched chicken. He says, Look! Look at this, man I’m a chick!
He says he saw someone out here for sure a few nights ago. He’s been seeing this person and he doesn’t know who it is but he has a feeling. He thinks it’s probably his wife and she’s walking around out there at night all alone and it’s because he cried too much. They told him not to cry so much his aunties his little moms but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t let her go when she died. He felt guilty the way he loved her.
She had the cancer and in the end it went bad and the last few months were just terrible. She was his sweetheart, his only one. She was half Jemez and had grown up in the pueblo. They had two weddings, one at her place but the first one was up here at Greasewood and all his relatives came and they set up an arbor with fresh aspen and oak branches and can I believe it, when it was time to do the ceremony all her people came in dressed in ribbon shirts and moccasins and the women wore dresses with flowered scarves tied at their necks and the men wore white pants and headbands and they were singing.
They walked into the arbor singing their Jemez songs led by her father who held a drum to his belly and kept the beat. His people had never seen such a thing, Raymond says, and they still talk about it to this day, they still talk about the singing people as they came into the arbor and everyone outside, all his relatives and the people who weren’t his relatives but who had just come anyway uninvited, everyone was standing and stretching their necks on tiptoe to see them walk in. And the food, oh the food, they had never eaten such good food, the spicy red stews and fluffy oven breads. They still talk about it to this day.
But they don’t talk about her when he’s around, Raymond says, because they saw him go crazy when she died and he’s probably still crazy—after all he sees her on these roads at night. Hwóla, he says, who can say about these things?
Raymond says didn’t he tell me to watch out for these horses watch out for these horses, what am I trying to do here, kill him?
Raymond says, Young man young man, you go ahead and make your way in the world but everyone has to come home sometime. You may just be visiting but sometime this place will call you back and when it does you have to listen. I know because it happened to me out in Oklahoma working on the railroad. One night I woke from a dream and all I remembered from the dream was my mom sick. That morning I packed my stuff took my check from the foreman and rode the train back to Gallup and then hitched home. All that trip home my back ached bad so I couldn’t sit down because even though we don’t use the sledge hammers to lay down the track nomore driving the spikes with those hydraulic machines will tear you up. I got home and she was waiting just waiting for me the last one of all my brothers and sisters to get there. She said Okay finally my little son has come back my baby. When you hear your mother say that then you know the truth. You know what it means your mother has said it to you too. You’ll never find that anywhere else. So when it calls you back. You just know.
Raymond clears his throat, turns away and looks out his window. He rolls it down with the crank and puts his face in the wind. He hocks a good one and spits it out. Don’t worry, he says, that one didn’t get on your truck. He takes the broken eggshells and tosses them out too.
Raymond says we’re coming up on it now just a little ways further. He says he hopes my grandma taught me enough about who I am. With my skin and my face I could be from anywhere—Mexico, Canada, someplace else, so just be careful, he says. He says when I go back to school out there at the big university just remember. We all know there’s plenty going on here all the time and I just gotta sit down and watch it, get up in the morning with the sun, feel it warm on my face in a cloudless blue sky and the grasshoppers still cold and the dóliis flying around here and there, mush on the stove and maybe some bacon.
And don’t forget to marry a girl and get on with your life. A real nice one don’t keep her waiting.
Anyway you can let me out here just pull over to the side of the road and I’ll walk the rest of the way. No need to drive me all the way on that dirt road it’s just a half mile maybe.
Look here comes my dog. Ha! He heard your truck. Shush Rambo shush! Quit trying to scare him. This damn dog won’t listen to no one he’s spoiled. Shut up Rambo dammit. If you just be quiet I’ll get your food. Got you that good canned food this time huh?
Hey man if you could just help me out I’d really appreciate it. Just a little something can go a long way. Just a little bit. I know your people from down that way right? Yeah I’ve heard about them, good people good family. That’s what I’ve heard.
He says, Sometimes I do get lonely out here that’s for sure.
Raymond holds Rambo by his collar and closes the door, then leans against it with his hand.
But that’s what the squaw dance is for right? Yep it’s that time of year again. Yessir I can smell that spring flower in the air. Oh it gets your heart. What do you say?
The first grasshoppers of the season clack and whistle through the air and one jumps through the open window.
Really? You’ve got this nice truck and these nice clothes. You’re telling me you don’t got no cash? I don’t believe you.
Raymond tilts his head back and looks at me suspiciously. He winces suddenly and grabs his leg.
Stupid foot, he says. He stands up slow, reaches into the window and closes his hand around the grasshopper, picking it off the seat.
That’s okay man, he says, that’s okay.
It flaps against the box made by his fingers and palm. Raymond brings it up to his face and looks at it.
Well, he says, maybe next time then. Next time you might have some cash.
He throws the grasshopper into the air over his shoulder where it clacks to life and zigzags into the field behind him.
You go out there and find yourself a woman. Find yourself a good one.