Chapter 17

 

 

Trini was just hanging up the phone when Ben walked into the office. Landlines. Soon they would all be museum artifacts. But out here he guessed he should be glad that there was any workable link to civilization.

“Oh, there you are. You’ve been chosen for a new job.”

“New job?”

“Lucky you, you get to deliver water this morning. There are three families roughly seventy-five miles from here that missed their delivery last week. It’ll take two trucks; Oscar will be driving the tanker and lead the way. Both are loaded and waiting in back.” Trini motioned out the window.

Ben walked out to the parking lot just as Oscar was getting out of the truck.

“Hey, Doc Pecos, do I have time to grab me something to eat?”

“Sure, not a problem.” Ben watched Oscar head toward the Two Sisters café. He sat down on the back steps to wait. He knew what he would be doing that day was tantamount to saving lives.

To have missed a water delivery put a family in dire need. It was difficult for the outside world to realize that forty percent of the households on the reservation had to rely on water being hauled to them—water for cooking, bathing, cleaning; not to mention drinking. Drawing a clean, clear glass of water from a tap just wasn’t a part of their lives. Ben knew dropping in a few ice cubes to make that glass more palatable wasn’t even a possibility in their wildest dreams. Yet, that was something he’d taken for granted all his life.

If the hogan was home to the infirm or elderly, it was not melodramatic to view a water shortage as a life or death matter. Deliveries had to be consistent, no dates missed. At least the trucks were filled from onsite wells. A well in this part of New Mexico and Arizona could be four hundred to five hundred feet deep. Often near the foot hills, a well partially dug through rock, tapped into an underground aquifer. Water was usually high-grade and limitless. One well provided water for up to two hundred residences within a fifty-mile radius. Many families had given up their fifty-five-gallon storage barrels and installed twelve-hundred-gallon cistern tanks, usually with their own wooden, well-shaded, lean-to sheds beside their hogan to protect the containers from the relentless sun.

Ben was always amazed at how people adapted. Ingenuity helped the Navajo live widely spread out over the rugged land they called their own. No longer did villages have to cluster around sources of water to exist. Yet, with stock to water and access to grasslands limited by federal regulations to keep animals from overgrazing, the bi’iiná, or ‘lifeway’ was always precarious and fraught with obstacles.

When he was young, his grandmother took him to see a herd of Churro, the sacred sheep of the Navajo, which the white man thought was inferior. Probably brought to the Southwest by the Spanish conquistadores in the 1500s, it was westward expansion that almost eliminated them. Kit Carson’s troops were ordered to destroy them when the Navajo were relocated. Much later the tribe carefully brought them back when they were allowed to return to their ancestral lands. Yes, they were smaller than other breeds, but the long, wavy, beautifully lustrous wool was a gift to Navajo weavers. They were an integral part of the bi’iiná Ben remembered his grandmother saying sheep were the backbone, the lifeline of the Navajo. For centuries they provided fleece for weaving clothing and blankets, sinew for thread, and, of course, meat for sustenance.

But it wasn’t until 1972 that the Churro made a strong and permanent comeback. Thinking it knew best, the United States government first introduced other breeds of sheep, forcing the Navajo to tend to them. It was not unusual to see the black-faced Suffolk roaming the reservation. But they were a poor substitute for the Churro. It was with unfailing dedication and scouring the hidden canyons on the reservation before enough Churro were discovered to form the nucleus of a breeding program. But the result meant that a way of life was preserved.

“Sorry I took so long. Sure you don’t want to share some fry bread?” Oscar held out a greased-stained sack with the scent of warm yeast dough.

“Thanks, Oscar, I’m fine.”

“Then let’s hit the road. We’ve got five stops and that will probably take us until late this afternoon. Did Dr. Henry talk to you? He wants you to keep an eye out for anyone who might be ill. He was going to leave a bag of supplies—thermometer, wipes, hand sanitizer—plus a box of hand soap to give away. We need to drop off some of these supplies at the school. Don’t know when it will open, but they’ll be prepared. I’ll run over to the triage tent and pick the stuff up.”

Ben could have done that instead of sitting around. Seemed like the waste of half the morning but he was feeling peevish and more than a little worried about his upcoming trip to Albuquerque. Ben climbed into the cab and pulled the truck he was driving in behind Oscar’s. Finally, they were off.