Moonlight Water (10 page)

Across at last, she felt the pull of the river, rested her oars, and just let them float. She drew a deep breath and let it out, took another, and told herself to let her irritation go. She wasn't going to let anything spoil this moment. She always loved to feel the current take hold and sweep them into the rhythm that went on forever, downstream, downstream, downstream, drawing these waters everlastingly to the salt sea. Even now, maybe her thousandth time of paying attention to this unappreciated energy, she was delighted to feel the irresistible current. Deep red canyons, swift green river, a slot of blue sky—this was Zahnie's world.

It was also her beat. She checked boaters on the river, making sure they had permits, the right equipment, fire pans, legal potties, and followed the rules. She floated the river and gave them tickets when they got out of line, cleaning up campsites as she went. She'd worked this job for nine years. Yes, it was untraditional for a Navajo to work the river. But she'd been fascinated by the river as a kid—she never believed that old-time story about Water Boy lurking in the waters, waiting to grab you—and after nine years she felt like the river returned her love and made her whole. It gave her more love than any man ever had, or her kid either.

She turned her face into the sun—another thing she loved about the river, hot sun and cool water, rays and waves.

She cocked an oar, whacked the water, and splashed Red.

He gasped from the sudden cold, then stuck his tongue out at her.

A perfect start. “Lay back,” she said. “Enjoy.”

He started singing a song in a haunting minor key:

“My heart goes where the river flows—

I gotta go-oh, where the river flows—

Rolling river wild and free—

The restless ones are you and me.”

Her heart pinged when she heard the line about “the restless ones…”

“New lines to ‘Cry of the Wild Goose,'” she said. “Where did they come from?”

“River guides I talked to. I always imagined floating down a river and singing that song. Never thought I'd really do it. But here I am.”

What a strange guy!
She looked at him.
What the hell am I doing? Something's not right with him.

She stroked back into the strong part of the current and rested the oars. No point in doing the river's work. “Why did you leave California?”

He smiled and tossed out, “In search of America.”

“Don't take anything seriously,” Zahnie jabbed. “It would spoil your act.” She let it rest.

“Will the rapids be dangerous?”

“Not for us.”

“And the rescue?”

“Let's not think about that.” She watched him take a couple deep breaths.

“This all seems so,
real,
compared to the way I was living in San Francisco.”

“Real is good.”

“I needed something new.”

She decided to trust her cop instinct. “New name too?” she ventured.

He didn't want to tell her, she could see. Maybe he was on the lam. She weighed that. Well, Grandfather Winsonfred liked him. She took a stroke, easing them away from an eddy line, giving him a chance to decide what to say.

“Yeah, new name. I used to be Robert. I'd rather not say the last name. I haven't done anything illegal.”

She wondered what he was sidestepping. “You still look familiar.”

“I guess I've just got one of those faces.”

“Well, Red, what kind of guy was Robert?”

He looked at that question like maybe he didn't want to know. “Robert had some dumb luck, was in the right place at the right time, and came by some money. Had two wives. The first one ran off with his business manager, a guy named Alvin Friedman. Alvin knew where every dime was. At the time Robert had to admire her style.”

“Then years of the single life,” Zahnie guessed. “In anything-goes San Francisco.”

“Yeah. And I got a
female
business manager, just in case I ever got married again. Matter of fact, I got Nora Friedman, the daughter of my very first business manager, Alvin. Then I met Georgia and married her three months later.”

“Let me guess. Twenty-two. Gorgeous, blonde, and what you might call untroubled by deep thoughts.”

“That can be appealing in a woman, but it wasn't Georgia. Thirtyish, seriously spiritual, a seeker. Well, a couple of months ago Georgia and Nora confront me. They're having an affair—they want to get married.”

Zahnie whooped. “This is too good.”

He clenched his fists.

“Sorry.” It wasn't friendly to whoop at a guy's catastrophes. And she knew the story had to be true. Only real life could throw you that kind of curveball. Your business manager steals your wife, and then his daughter, your next business manager, steals your next wife. Winsonfred would question Red's harmony.

“Of course, no one needed to tell me Nora had been burning the midnight oil, arranging my finances so Georgia's name was on absolutely everything. Wouldn't want to miss a dime in the property settlement.”

Zahnie lolled her head and crooned, “Even
The Enquirer
wouldn't believe this.”

“Some guys blow theirs on cocaine. I blew mine on business managers who stole my wives.”

She concentrated, rowed them into the tongue of a riffle, and they splashed through.

“So, Red Stuart, who's this new guy going to be?”

“I don't know yet. He's set out to make a new life.”

“With the safety net of a nice nest egg.”

“Very small nest egg. The money's gone. I walked out on the whole shebang. No more Robert, just Red. Just me.”

“Whoever you are.”

“When I hatch, we'll see.”

Time not to tease. “That takes guts. To start all over and figure it'll be okay.”

“To tell you the truth, I've been listening for the rhythm, you know,
the
rhythm. I haven't caught it yet.”

Nizhoni,
Zahnie thought, what her people called walking in harmony with yourself, your family, and the world. Though in some ways she wasn't a traditional Navajo, she paid attention to Nizhoni in herself.

Suddenly she saw it and pointed the Navajo way, a kissing motion. A giant blue bird floated gracefully across the river, neck and head curved back on its own body. At the far bank it spread its wings to slow down, landed, and perched at the water's edge. Suddenly it was as still as an aged cottonwood branch, a time-shaped sculpture of the eternal winds.

“Great blue heron,” she said.

The expression on his face said he'd never seen one before, and now he was in love with great blue herons.

Strange man, who are you?

He moved his eyes away from the heron to her. “You have kids?”

Sneak attack. She felt wary again. “One boy, Damon, seventeen.” She didn't want to talk about Damon.

“He doesn't live at home?”

She shook her head. “He lives in Santa Fe, doesn't do much but a few drugs and play music day and night.” She tried not to let her bitterness show, couldn't quite pull it off. “I screwed up.”

“Never been lucky enough to be a parent, but I have plenty of friends who are. Sometimes hard things just happen. No matter what you do as a parent.”

“Nice of you to say, but no, I screwed up mothering royally.”

She knew what Damon was doing was commonplace, but that didn't make it easier to swallow.

She looked across to where Wilcox Wash came in. She shipped the oars and checked out the petroglyphs, barely visible in the desert varnish from this distance—and no time to stop today. “There's a special panel of rock art over there. Make this trip when you can take time to really look at all the nooks and crannies along the river. You could spend a lifetime doing that, actually, and it would be worth it.”

The current took them close to the far bank. She eased her mind by taking a couple of unnecessary strokes. This was the Navajo side of the river, her side. Now she worked for the U.S. government and enforced its laws. She'd learned white people's customs—not only their spoken language but their body language and their social ways. Give people a peppy hello (which feels like an assault to Navajos), look them right in the eye (which feels like an invasion of privacy), worry a lot about whether things are getting done fast enough, do that paperwork, meet those deadlines. She'd spent her teenage years in Albuquerque and then spent more years going to their university. She'd even learned to push like a white person—mouthy as a Jewish American princess, her boss called her.

It's a disguise, a white mask. If you don't see through it, that's your problem. I am Navajo.

She wondered how much this man in the stern of her raft knew, what he understood. She decided to speak up. “Red Stuart, the big reason we're going to this effort, trying to protect my nieces and maybe help them grow up, too, is that we're all a big family, us human beings. You understand that?” She didn't look him in the eye when she said it. Just let her words float above the water. Her eyes followed a lovely green dragonfly, floating above her voice.

Red looked at her. “I don't have family anywhere, and I sure don't feel related to everyone in the great big world. Whatever connections I had like that, I've lost them. I've almost forgotten how they work.”

He reached for a reed floating on the surface, picked it up high, and let the sun make the drops sparkle. Red-brown water ran down to his wrist and off onto his lap.

“How come you live here in the boonies? Must get pretty lonely.”

“Albuquerque didn't cut it for me. More lonely in a big city than here. I came back home. My family's from across the river, Mythic Valley.”

Red cast his eyes around. “And then there is all this.…”

“Red-rock country? Yes, born to the Red House Clan, born for the Bitter Water Clan. My ancestors were born here. I'm Navajo.” She wondered what that meant to him. Who could blame him? Sometimes she wondered what it meant to her. Exactly.

Just then she looked up, and Red followed her eyes. High, high, two of them cruised.

“Buzzards?”

“Just one of them is,” she said. “Unusual. One buzzard, they're common as fleas, and a golden eagle—they're not so common. They're circling in different arcs, but this angle makes it look like they're actually together.”

Red grunted, and squirmed a little.

Zahnie asked herself,
Did Grandfather Winsonfred fill Red with stories of Ed last night, make him wonder if he was under a buzzard's watchful eye?

“What're you thinking about?” she asked.

“Hosteen Winsonfred. The Ancient One told me to breathe this country and feel it. I'm trying.” She saw him let his eyes roam the skies again.

He's thinking about Ed, all right.

She turned the boat fast, the current picked up, the roar started, and big waves rocked the boat. “Sand waves,” she called out. A whole row of them lined up. She hit them head-on.

“Ride 'em, cowboy,” Red hooted.

They both got soaked.

She slewed sideways and splashed him. They laughed and laughed more. Then the boat shooshed out into easy water.

“Why don't you take a swim? Just float along in your life jacket?”

Up, a quick cannonball, a big splash, and she was alone. She rowed hard, picked up the thrust of the current, got ahead of him, beached on a sandbar, got out a couple of sandwiches and two bottles of frozen water, and took a seat under a big cottonwood.

He dripped his way toward her and they ate in silence, a good-enough silence.

“Okay, enough. Time to get back on the water and find those nieces of mine. We can only go as fast as the river flows.”

*   *   *

When he pushed them off and clambered from the river into the boat, he took a risk. “You mind if I ask you some personal questions? I don't want to get in the way of finding the girls.”

“Depends on the questions. Talk won't slow us down.”

“Winsonfred is a traditional Navajo, right? Clarita is Navajo and Mormon. Are you a traditional Navajo?”

He watched her hesitate, but her words were firm. “My people don't consider me traditional. I think some of the old stuff is just superstition. Watch out for the river—Water Boy is down there and will get you. Don't go near a dead body, or a place of death, or say a dead person's name—their spirits may be hanging around and jump inside you. That one would keep me from going into the Anasazi ruins, which is part of my job, and I like it. I don't like the traditional white stuff either.

“There's a lot about Anglo culture that I'm not crazy about, mainly the rush, the push, the greed, not caring about other people, forgetting about your relatives. Sure, I've adjusted to it—I operate on the Anglo system of time, which Navajos don't take to at all—but I don't get swept up in it.”

She took three big pulls on the oars. He waited.

“Navajo tradition for me is believing in
Nizhoni.
Harmony. I like the inner beauty of the path better than Anglo technology.”

She studied the current a moment and took one stroke across.

“Relatives,” he went on, pushing. “You mentioned your son. I met Winsonfred and Clarita. We're going after your nieces.” His eyebrows made question marks.

“Lots more. Other sisters, other nieces and nephews, my whole clan—”

She interrupted herself. “Look!” Red followed her eyes.

At the bottom of the sheer red face of the cliff, in white rock, stood what looked like an apartment building that had been pushed forward or backward in time from some other world.

“Whoa!”

“Leaning Bird Ruin,” she said.

“Ruin? I'd give a million bucks for that place.”