FINDING RACHAEL YELLOWHORSE
The first road to Toadlena Trading Post is easy to miss off of old 666, now known as Route 491. It’s halfway from Gallup to Shiprock. The old post had never been good at advertising. They just figured if you didn’t know where to turn you would find out or you weren’t that interested.
Today the sign—the size of an apple-crate—was almost completely hidden by a large chamisa plant that still had its yellow, now-dead flower heads attached. The sign simply had an arrow with the words Toadlena written in faded-red hand lettering. The first language of the person who had painted the letters could not have been English, as some of the letters were capitalized while others were not. The sign was a great piece of folk art and spoke volumes about what the post must be like and what Bloom could expect from its inhabitants.
Bloom slammed on his brakes as he passed that sign that pointed at the dirt road turnoff at the same exact time you needed to turn left. The great obelisk mountain of Shiprock just peaked over the horizon due north of the turn-off.
The old road to Toadlena was desperately in need of a grading. Its washboard jolts became increasingly uncomfortable as Bloom’s old Mercedes with worn shocks lurched along. Just as he was having second thoughts about the whole idea and thinking the road must be some kind of short cut, not the main drive, and he should go farther up Route 491 to find the real road, he came across a teenager herding a group of chocolate-brown sheep.
“Excuse me. Is this the road that goes to the Toadlena Trading Post?”
Looking as if a Martian had just asked him a question, the boy replied, “Well yeah, didn’t you see the sign?”
“Um yes, I did see it, but it was so small and the road is so rough I just wasn’t sure. You don’t happen to know if Rachael Yellowhorse lives nearby?”
Thinking about the question for some time, the boy looked him square in the eye and replied, “She’s my aunt. Who are you, and why you want to talk to her? You from the government or something?”
Apparently a white guy that travels in a Mercedes down dirt roads on the reservation is not an everyday sight. Bloom didn’t look like a tourist. He was asking for particular people, and the kid had never seen this bilagaana before. His aunt must have warned the boy about white men and how they can kill you if you spend too much time with one.
“I used to be friends with her brother Willard. I was his first art dealer from Santa Fe, and I was in the area and just wanted to say hi. That’s all. I’m not from the government,” Bloom explained.
“I see. Well I’m Willard’s son, Preston, and you must be Bloom. My grandfather told me about you. He said you were smart to recognize my father’s talent, but the big city killed him. If you want, I will take you to see Aunt Rachael. I just have to put up my grandmother’s sheep. You can pull up to the next road and take a right to the end. I’ll meet you there.”
Bloom was dumbfounded. The first person he stopped to talk to turns out to be Willard’s son! Was this luck or maybe some unknown force guiding him? He had no idea Willard ever had a child. Nothing was ever mentioned by Willard and even his biography on all the websites for famous painters said nothing. Was it possible? Or maybe the term father meant something different to the Navajo. “OK, Preston, I’ll take the car up and wait for you,” Bloom agreed.
Slowly working with his herding staff, the young man pushed the group of 20 or so sheep through the snakeweed and chamisa toward the corral. The weather was 18 degrees, but for Bloom it seemed warm and refreshing, out of the gloom and doom of winter in Santa Fe.
At the waiting spot, Preston Yellowhorse jumped into Bloom’s Mercedes, his feet covered in frozen mud, and told Charles to go back to the main dirt road and head west toward the post. As the two bumped along its tortuous path, no words were spoken. Charles, because he was still in shock, and Preston, because it was the Navajo way. Nothing fast, it was rude to rush things. Let it happen.
Finally Charles got his nerve up: “So Willard was your father? It must make you and your mother proud to have had such a famous artist for your dad.”
“No, not really. He ain’t famous out here and my mom’s dead. She died right after I was born.”
The next 10 minutes were void of any conversation. The only radio station, 660 AM, filled in the silence with general reservation news, mostly in Navajo, though something about a scremo band that didn’t quite translate in Diné was mentioned. Preston then said the only two words he spoke till they got to his house, “Cool band.” His head beat to the music in his head.
Rachael Yellowhorse’s house was a small hogan made out of aluminum siding and prefab windows with a typical Navajo octagonal shape. Its orientation was traditional, with the front and only door facing east to greet the morning sun of Father Sky. The original hogan was made for Changing Woman, the deity where all subsequent Navajos originated. Most of the old hogans around Toadlena are both rock and wood, with the cracks filled with mud. Rachael grew up with her brother Willard in a traditional hogan, but after his death her family moved out and into a modern prefab hogan. Most of her neighbors had moved out of the dirt-floor hogans and into trailer homes. Rachael could not imagine giving up her heritage that was handed down for generations. She kept to the eight-sided building minus the rocks and juniper logs.
Rachael had moved from her childhood home in keeping with tradition. The Navajos believe if someone dies in a hogan they should be buried in the hogan’s dirt floor and the entrance sealed up or the north wall of the building opened up for removal of the body and the hogan burned. Though Willard had not died at home, his visit just a few weeks before the bizarre suicide and the fact that his body was buried away from tribal lands had made living in the hogan feel wrong and thus it was abandoned. Rachael’s mother and father, both deceased now, had moved to her maternal grandparents’ place: Harold and Ethel Sherman. Her grandfather was just known as Hastiin Sherman, a very powerful medicine man. Hastiin Sherman now lived near his boyhood home not far from Canyon de Chelly. Rachael had chosen to build a new hogan that was much closer to her work at Newcomb High School, located between mile markers 58/59 off Route 491. Her grandfather was two hours away, but Rachael usually kept her late grandmother’s sheep near her place. The grazing was better and secretly her late grandmother Ethel hoped that their presence would sway Rachael to start weaving again. Rachael was gifted at the loom but had not seriously woven anything since she was 16.
Rachael’s small front yard, filled with odd and wonderful sculptures made out of local car parts, set the house apart from all its surrounding neighbors. Preston Yellowhorse bolted from Charles’ car, slamming the door as if it was some old pickup truck, not a gently used Mercedes. Bloom cringed at the squeak of the door’s frame being ever so slightly bent for eternity.
“Aunt Rachael, Aunt Rachael. That art guy from Santa Fe, the one you said was cute, is here.”
Charles Bloom was stunned to hear that he had been called cute by Rachael Yellowhorse. It had seemed to him at their last meeting that she had considered him a nuisance, a bad reminder, not someone to be noticed. Bloom exited his car, gently closing his door as he still smarted from his passenger’s less then gracious exit.
Walking past Rachael’s sculptures, Charles was reminded of Willard’s paintings that had similar figures but in two dimensions. The three-dimensional quality of Rachael’s sculptures brought Willard’s paintings to life in retrospect, even though it was all Rachael. For Charles, these were also the first exciting artworks he had seen in two days. As an art dealer you become acutely aware of your physical surroundings, especially in Santa Fe where every corner has some over-life-size bear or modern sculpture peering at you. It is the norm to be engulfed by art in Santa Fe, and the distinct lack becomes apparent in rural settings. These complex sculptures of Rachael’s immediately made him feel at ease.
Rachael Yellowhorse pushed open the slightly bent door screen, another apparent victim of young Preston’s excess testosterone level. Rachael extruded half her body out the door jam. Her beauty had accelerated since the last time Charles had seen her eight years ago. No longer the face of a young girl, but a full-fledged woman, her burgundy lips even larger and her full breasts impressive as they peeked outside the old frame door. Her hair was shiny, black, and completely straight, its full length reaching the mid-portion of her back. As Bloom approached, Rachael quickly brushed some strands out of her chocolate-brown eyes, leaving a trail of flour over the edge of her forehead. She had been making biscuits and had forgotten to clean her hands as she hurried to see what Preston was yelling about.
Upon seeing Bloom for the first time in more than a half-dozen years, a smile crept onto her face. She recognized him immediately. He too had developed nicely. Trim, with jeans that fit perfectly over his muscular lower body. She found herself staring at his butt that seemed to be perfectly shaped. Rachael was surprised by her immediate attraction to the bilagaana art dealer.
“Hi Rachael. Sorry to come unannounced.” Bloom’s breath seemed to freeze upon each syllable he uttered. “I needed a break from the dismal Santa Fe art scene this winter. And I wanted to visit you and see how you were progressing as an artist.”
Rachael’s smooth brown skin turned an immediate shade of crimson on hearing Bloom had tracked her down and come a long way just to see her. As she thought of the implications, it crossed her mind that maybe Charles Bloom just needed another Yellowhorse in his stable of artists and her face’s skin color in chameleon-like fashion returned to its natural brown hues. “Hmm, Mr. Bloom, I don’t know what to say.”
Charles decided to take another approach, one that was more honest. “Please call me Charles and you don’t have to say anything. I just needed to see you and talk. It was important to me. I kept thinking that I had to come. Besides, I’ve always wanted to see the rez,” he sputtered on. Saying “the rez” sounded like maybe he was trying to be hip in some sort of Indian way.
Rachael seemed to understand, though. “Well Charles, that happens in life, when you are pulled in some direction and you don’t know why. It sounds like you need a good sweat lodge to help you with whatever has driven you here.”
“I’m up for anything that’s warm right now.” His teeth started to chatter in the near-zero late afternoon air.
“Excuse me for my rudeness. It’s cold, please come in. I’m just making some biscuits for dinner. Would you like to join me and Preston, whom you just met?”
“Rachael, I actually would like that a great deal.”
Rachael signaled for Charles to come in and opened the door slightly to let him in while keeping as much of the wood stove’s precious heat from escaping as she could. Rachael’s full body was for the first time in complete view: a short black cotton skirt clung to her thighs revealing great muscular legs, a small waist, and a terrific ass. As Charles Bloom scooted by her, his arm accidentally grazed the white tee shirt that said Rez Power, causing Rachael’s breast to perk up. Seeing her full figure and erect nipples made Charles Bloom blush, her sexuality pulling at him. But how would she react when he started questioning her about her brother?