Aza Palmer looked at the wrinkled face framed by the long gray braids. He’d made a mistake climbing into the old pickup with the dent by the passenger door. He should have told Mr. Duke no. Pressed him to come inside the hotel to talk. But he knew how hardheaded the guy was. Better to just get it done with.
“How long will this take?” Palmer took a drag on his cigarette, feeling the warm smoke in his throat, in his lungs. Exhaling slowly, savoring the sensation.
“As long as you want, once we get there. We don’t have very far to go.”
The old man cruised like a local, avoiding the potholes as he drove through town and then east on gravel roads. Palmer finished his cigarette and added it to the ashtray, a convenience he didn’t find in new vehicles. The one in Duke’s truck was half full of filters.
Palmer had been standing outside the hotel, smoking and thinking about poor dead Rick and wondering why Robert had grown so angry. He heard the truck approach, heading toward the entrance overhang. But it passsed the motel’s front door and continued straight ahead, to where he stood. He’d felt a surge of adrenaline.
The driver lowered the window. “Are you Mr. Palmer, the leader for the meeting about the Grand Canyon?” The voice was the man on the phone.
“I’m the mediator, if that’s what you mean.”
“Hello, sir. I’m Denny Duke. I’m a councilor with the San Juan Paiute. You heard of us?”
“Yes, of course. I recognized your voice on the phone. I got your letters and your voice mails.”
“I got your answers. I didn’t like them much, and that’s the truth. I need to show you something.”
Palmer told Duke that he was totally occupied with the mediation, asked him to make an appointment.
Duke interrupted. “No, sir, no. I need you to see something tonight. It’s connected with the big meeting.” His distinctive voice had a low, smooth, rhythmic cadence.
“Tell you what. Go get what you want to show me and bring it into the motel. It’s warm in there. We can sit in the lobby.”
“No, sir, that won’t work. You’ll be glad you came with me, but we need to go now.”
“I can’t do it. I’m out here enjoying a smoke and then I’ve got to get back to work and later try to catch some sleep. Like I told you on the phone.” He kept the nervousness out of this voice. Duke was too aggressive, too persistent.
“Your job as mediator is to be fair, right?”
“Yes, correct.”
“Well, you can’t be fair until you see this. I promise you, you won’t regret it. I’ll haul you right back here—I give you my word on that. I’m an old Indian with a bad knee and a beat-up truck. Why are you worried?”
Palmer faked a smile. “Oh, maybe because someone killed my nephew and blew up my car and because whoever did it is still out there.”
“I’m sure sorry about that, but it wasn’t me. Come on now. We could have already been there in the time you spent jawing. It’s warmer in the cab here than out there.” The old man grinned, showing what remained of his front teeth.
“Just let me finish my smoke.”
“You can smoke in the truck. Mother does it all the time.”
The decision was made to exclude Duke’s band of Paiutes from a seat at the table for several reasons, the most obvious of which was the band’s small population—fewer than five hundred tribal members. The mediator had invited them to submit their views in writing and to sit in the audience. He hadn’t noticed Duke in the crowd today, but he could have overlooked him with everything else going on.
Palmer said, “You know, a Navajo cop got assigned to be my bodyguard. He’ll give me grief if I don’t ask him to ride along.”
“Nope. This has to be just between us. Come on, brother. You won’t regret it.”
Chee got on his nerves and this old man seemed harmless. Interesting, even. In the research he’d done to prepare himself for the mediation, Palmer had learned a bit about the San Juan Paiutes. He’d found nothing about a cultural inclination toward kidnapping or murder. So he walked to the passenger side, pulled the heavy door open, and climbed in.
He noticed the rifle on the rack behind him. Even though almost every pickup in Indian Country had a weapon on a rack, he felt his stomach tighten.
Duke cruised through Tuba City and out past the town’s lights and pavement without conversation.
Palmer knew that this branch of Paiutes had a 5,400-acre reservation, an island inside the boundaries of Navajo Nation. The name of the band came from the San Juan River, which bordered their territory and which they, like the Diné, held sacred. The band had a distinct language, although some tribal members also spoke Navajo, Hopi, and English. They were known for their baskets; many of the wedding baskets used in the traditional Diné marriage ceremony were created by San Juan Paiutes.
Palmer glanced out the truck’s windows into the black night. “Are we going to your house?”
“No, sir, we’re driving to my mother’s place. She’s the one who can tell the story and the one who keeps it safe.”
“How much farther?”
“We’re almost there.”
The truck turned onto a rutted road and bounced over a cattle guard. The road became a track through the sandy soil. Palmer saw the beam from the headlights reflect off the dried vegetation between the tracks and heard the plants scratch the truck’s undercarriage. He looked through the windshield into the velvet evening, no human-made light in sight. That reminded him of the flashlight on his cell phone and that he should have at least called Chee.
He patted his jacket pocket for his phone, then checked his shirt and pants. No luck. He felt around the truck seat.
“Whatcha doing?”
“I think my phone must have fallen out of my pocket.”
“I’ll help you hunt it up when we stop. Those things don’t do nothin’ out here in the sticks anyhow unless you’re lucky. The radio in here used to work. I don’t know what’s gone wrong with it now.” Duke banged on the radio with the palm of his hand and turned the round knob. Palmer heard a click but nothing else. “Getting old like the rest of us.”
Duke slowed for a pair of bony horses caught in the beam of his headlights as they meandered across the road. Palmer stared out the windshield beyond them into unbroken velvet night.
“Do the people who live out here have electricity?”
“Not a bit, except a few who got generators. Mother gets by with her heating stove, kerosene lamps, and candles. She has water now, so I don’t have to lug it out for her no more. She usually goes beddie-bye by now, but she said she’d stay up till we got there.” They stopped in front of a house, and the truck lights illuminated gray cinder block. Palmer noticed a butterscotch glow seeping through a gap in the curtains.
Duke turned off the engine, then reached over to the passenger side and opened the glove box. Palmer saw a thin beam of light and heard the rustling of paper as Duke grasped a small black flashlight. He clicked it on. The beam flicked along the bench seat and then moved to the floor where it illuminated dirt and a cracked floor mat. “I don’t see your phone, sir. You wanna try?”
Duke handed him the light. Palmer opened the door and shone the beam along the side between the seat and the door and along the floor and under the seat. No phone, but he found a small silver earring and handed it to Duke along with the flashlight. The Paiute had the rifle in his right hand, barrel pointed to the ground.
“Mother’s been missin’ that. She’s waiting to meet you, sir. Let’s go on in. I’m sure sorry about that telephone, but it don’t work good out here anyways.”
Duke was shorter and a bit younger than Palmer had assumed. He moved fluidly, the strands of red yarn tied to the end of each gray braid swaying. As they walked toward the house, Palmer noticed a trailer, or maybe it was an RV, parked away from the dwelling. Stepping into the house was a journey back in time. Even in the dim light, Palmer noticed that the little home swelled with handcrafted touches, from the stone floors to the wooden furniture to the baskets, weavings, and pottery. A large drum, its hide top well used, sat in a corner beneath a curtained window. He inhaled the subtle spice of cedar drifting up from the fire in the large black stove that stood in the middle of the room.
The house reminded him of other Indian homes, modest on the outside, rich with tradition, family, and memories inside.
An elderly woman, a smaller, rounder, more stooped version of Duke, acknowledged his presence with a sober nod and wordlessly offered him a place at the wooden table. Spread out before him, Palmer saw a yellowed map, hand-drawn and elegantly illustrated, like no map he had ever seen before.
“This is what we needed you to come look at.” Duke leaned the gun against the wall and joined Palmer at the table. “Mother wanted you to see this now so you will understand why nothing can be built here.” He moved his hand to cast a shadow over a section of the map where, Palmer speculated, the Colorado River and the Little Colorado came together. The spot sat at the map’s center.
Palmer stood for a better look and studied the map for a long time, admiring the depiction of mountains, rivers, canyon walls, bears, elk, deer, and mountain lions. “It’s beautiful. Can you help me understand what I’m seeing?”
The old woman spoke for the first time. “You are Navajo?”
“I am.”
She settled into the stuffed armchair and arranged the pink blanket over her lap. “I will tell you.” Palmer knew a story awaited him.
Her English, even more than her son’s, had a slow, lilting, songlike rhythm. She started with a story of the love of a Paiute leader for his wife, a woman who died too soon. The profound depth of the leader’s grief stirred the heart of the God Taavotz. Taavotz promised to show the leader that his wife was happy in the world of spirits, but only if he could put his grief aside during their journey.
The old woman stopped speaking and looked at Palmer. Then she held her hand over a place on the map, a spot near the center marked with a graceful golden swirl. “This is where they came. Does your heart want to hear more?”
Palmer had listened to stories like this before, elaborate tales of sites so sacred that their existence benefited not only the people who knew their history, but everyone on the planet. He had never seen a map like the one on the table, which made the story more concrete. The map looked as though several Holy People had created it over a long span of time. “Please go on. I am honored that you would tell me this story.”
“Because Taavotz is a strong, strong god, he forged a trail in solid rock, a deep path through the holy mountain that guarded the spirit world. The leader followed this long, rough road. Then, where the trail met the river, he beheld his wife. She couldn’t see him, but he realized that she lived happily now, free from pain, free from sorrow, free from worry. The leader’s heart lightened and he followed the trail back to his homeland. Then Taavotz poured water into the path as a blessing to the earth and its people. See here?”
The woman moved her hand over the map, along the course of the Little Colorado River, southeast to northwest, stopping at the junction of the Colorado. “Taavotz told the leader to warn the people that the river would swallow them if they tried to visit the spirit world before their time. And so it is.” Palmer heard the tone of her voice darken. “It is wrong to disturb the spirits. Anyone who does this will bring great suffering to the world. The ancestors deserve a happy rest. That way they can send prayers to keep the world safe, prayers for all their children, even for you Navajos. Prayers for everyone. What would happen if they are disturbed? What tragedy will come to us?”
Palmer noticed the tears on her cheeks reflected like gems in the candlelight.
After a while, the woman said, “Our ancestors speak through us now. They ask us to tell you that there are many things, important things, that can’t be measured by reports and computers, by people from Washington or Phoenix. They remind us that there is more to being human than making money. I know you are not Báyóodzin’, not one of our people, but you are an Indian. I hope you understand this in your heart of hearts. In the end, we are all relatives.”
Palmer’s throat felt tight. “You and your son should come to the meeting tomorrow and tell the delegates how you feel.”
The woman shook her head. “We should not speak of such sacred things to outsiders, but we prayed and learned that we should bring you here. That’s why I decided to show you this map and to tell the story.”
Then the woman started to chant, softly at first and then with more power. Duke stood and used the drum to reinforce the rhythm she set. She closed her eyes, and Palmer saw how the Paiute words she sang erased the lines of worry and smoothed her forehead. When she finished, she looked toward Duke and he helped her to rise, then went to the woodpile and stoked the stove. She studied Palmer with her sharp dark eyes. “We, my son and I, are peaceful people; we know that isn’t true of everyone who honors this place and its story. You be brave and be careful.”
Duke said, “Can I help you with anything, Mother, before we go?”
The woman shook her head and then turned again to Palmer. “Do your best to save this sacred place.”
Palmer shoved his hands in his pockets and followed Duke to the truck. The chalky wisp of a moon and an abundance of icy stars shown in the deep black sky. He heard the music of a coyote in the still, frigid air. Ma’ii, the wise trickster, challenging him to make sense of what he’d just experienced.
Palmer said, “Where did that beautiful map come from?”
“No one alive today can remember that far back. It’s a treasure, and my mother is the one who tends to it. That’s about what I know.”
“How does your tribe honor that holy spot?”
“We don’t talk about that outside of our own people.” He put the rifle back in the gun rack and started the truck. The heater fan blew cold air onto Palmer’s legs. “Some of our folks are angry as hell about the development those Navajo big shots are talking about. They blame you, sir, because they think your meetings give the project life.”
Palmer thought about defending himself, arguing the point as they headed away from the house into the darkness. Instead, he thought about the story, the map, and the message from Ma’ii.