"Are you sure you're ready for this?" he asked.
    Outside the comfortable dome of the car, the sudden assemblage of buildings seemed simultaneously reminiscent of a ghost town and eastern city slums.
    "I think so," she said.
    Holbrook, Arizona mirrors a white person's concept of destitution. At least until they saw the reservation. Route 66 used to course through Holbrook's heart, parading hundreds of open-road-spendthrift Easterners by the shops full of moccasins and rabbit foot key-chains, "Made by REAL Indians!" The bulk of the population lived east of here, and everyone wanted to see the Grand Canyon, which lies west, so they made their way through Holbrook. Until the interstate. Now the pitch of their radials grows lower as they decelerate down the off-ramp, followed by the averting of their eyes as they turn onto Navajo Boulevard and pass Navajo and Hopi bag-ladies, toothless under the bandanas that failed some years ago to protect their minds from the broiling heat, waddling in such unmistakable pain that any podiatrist would whimper with sympathy. While they wait for their order at Burger Kingletting the kids run up the street to Taco Bellthey take turns using the restrooms, then zip back onto I-40 without ever seeing the rows of novelty motels, one of which is cabin-style, with all the rooms shaped like tipi's, except the air-conditioners plugged into the rectangular windows. Elsewhere above the painted earth, Fred Harvey's name adorns visitor centers and shuttle buses as if this had always been his land.
    Petrified wood. Petrified progress.
    There's a bar near the railway crossing, near that famous petrified wood store with the huge dinosaurs out front, where he has never seen less than two Hopi men seated on the sidewalk, defeated. Navajo or Hopi. But saying Hopi hurts less. Local newspapers loved to tell of the hostility between Navajos and Hopis back in 1992 when the white voters of Arizona were deciding how to once again apportion the land where others lived. They really talk up those ancient land feuds. But, looking through the tinted window of his Stratus Coupe, he doesn't feel a need to hate anyone. Air conditioning and a good sound system can absolve tremendous grudges. Still, if white people want to talk about land feuds...

*    *    *
    His father never had reason to go farther than Gallup, New Mexico, and never fabricated one, either. Beyond the four corners, the whole wide world was equivalent to static from outer space making the television reception snowy.  And his father never watched television. Sheep rancher. A man who enjoyed ranching sheep.
    But the boy resisted. Studied hard in the schools staffed by white teachers "doing their time" on the reservation, teaching how to adapt to the white world, as if that were what everyone should want to do. Those teachersmost of whom bolted for good as soon as they landed a better jobnever would understand why Indians, as people will always persist in calling them, would seem to succeed in high school, move to Holbrook or Winslow to attend Northland Pioneer Community College, and be back on the reservation with an Associate's degree in their pocket. No one really needed an Associate's degree on the reservation.

*    *    *
    A red Dodge Stratus Coupe. Impenetrable black tinting on all the windows. Not coated from the bottom up with red clay like every vehicle on the reservation.
    "That's where I used to work," Thomas said, lifting his right hand just above the steering wheel to indicate the Basha's supermarket. "Studied over at the junior college for two years and lived in a motel room with the money from the supermarket. My first job."
    Glancing at the intermittent pedestrians, all of them short and dark-skinned, Amber wondered how many Native Americans she had seen in her life. Just one, she had thought. The rest were Mexican, right?  But now she saw that she wasn't sure. No one from Des Moines thinks much about Native Americans, except the notion that they all live in the Southwest. Her skin was fair, even for a white girl. Natural blonde hair, curled inward slightly to frame her neck. Her name, too, was blonde: Amber. If only she had come from a more sophisticated city, like Chicago, or Pittsburgh.
    But beggars can't be choosers, especially Navajo beggars in Arizona bars.
    It is illegal for women to even glance at "Indian" men romantically. "Indian" men aren't there for the social scene: they're there to drink. Don't they know they could have saved some money by going to 7-11?
    But Amber had not been in Tempe long enough to be thoroughly educated. She had been hired as an accountant for an IT firm, which were sprouting all around, as Phoenix was tons cheaper than San Jose. Anyhow, maybe she was intrigued, or maybe she thought he was a Mexicanwomen are allowed to get tangled up with Mexicans, as long as they are at least second generation and have lost some fluency in Spanish. Either way, he never hunched over his beer in shame or self-pity, no matter how the Natives (of Tempe, that is) winced at the thought of having him in their lounge, so his eyes were scanning the room and happened upon hers. The reason she had wanted to come talk to him may even have been because she thought neither one of them belonged. She could hardly carry on a conversation with Tempe Natives, because she didn't know about the Sun Devils, didn't know about the Rio Salado Canal, didn't know about the vortex in Sedona or the granolas in Flagstaff. She didn't know that Begay and Yazzie were Navajo names as common as Smith or Jones in her own white pages back home. She expected Whitecloud or Manyhorses. All she really knew about Arizona was that by mid-April the sun could wither your skin like shrink-wrap. And so they met.

*    *    *
    Pulled up under the shade of the white concrete wall of the gas station after filling the tank, he said, "We're about an hour away now. I was thinking maybe we ought to get a room back at the Holiday Inn Express. We could drive out there tonight, come back to sleep, then go out in the morning again."
    He sounded quite unsure of his plan.
    "Whatever you think is best," she said.
    He seemed to be thinking for a moment, though she could tell he wasn't actually calculating distances.
    "Well, I guess we can just go on out there. If we have to, I'd bet there'll be an open room somewhere. There's like a thousand motel rooms in town."
    Eleven hundred and forty, she corrected him in her mind. She had looked up the Chamber of Commerce web site to preview their weekend getaway, as she mistakenly romanticized it. He had said it was to meet the family, and he had repeatedly beseeched her not to expect too much, but how could someone from Des Moines imagine what she would soon see? Hogans, for she didn't know what else to call them, made of mud and branches, atop rolling hills of the most uncultivable, inhospitable landscape (she couldn't even call it "land") imaginable. No, worse than imaginable. No one could imagine this until they had witnessed it.
    "Those aren't the houses," he explained about the hogans, catching her staring as he drove. "Those are mostly just for sheep herders to stay in when they're with their flocks."
    When they turned west from Dilkon, she felt some satisfaction that she had finally seen what passed for a reasonable settlement. Still, the homes and stores were all like military base homes, erected in neat patterns of cheap materials and simple designs.
    Soon they pulled into a driveway which seemed to service a small cluster of assorted trailers and a few mobile homes arranged around one permanent dwelling, slightly sturdier than the ones in Dilkon. The high tailgates of full-sized trucks boasted "Chevrolet" through their clay overcoats. Somehow this gave the impression of a herd of horses drinking from a central pool. It was not yet too late to pull the shifter back into "reverse" and chuckle, telling her it was all a joke. No one had yet emerged from the pull-behind trailer or pressed their face to the sagging screen of the house's front door to see who had pulled up.  Then, with a crisp peeling sensation, the hopeful air evacuated as the sedimentary air of "the Rez" rushed through her open door. Her right foot was already on the ground.
    Thomas had no choice but to turn off the ignition and arise from the car as she was standing in the space between car and open door, and he could see a large figure pausing just inside the screen door to assess who the visitors might be, then pull a red t-shirt over his head. Thomas stepped into the heat and dizzying sun, closed the door just as the door on the house sprung open and not one, but two men slightly larger than he sauntered out.
    "Ya'at'eeh, cousin!" the one in the red t-shirt called, thumbs in his belt loops, jerking his chin up and head back in salute, as men do.
    "Hey, cousin," Thomas said, reciprocating none of the long-time-no-see affection. "Speak English, huh?"
    "Me no speakum English," the same one said, deepening his voice to mimic the kind of Greek actors who masqueraded as "Injuns" in every Monument Valley western.
    "Well," the one behind him said, "I speak rather delightful English." He seemed to be aspiring toward a British accent, but arrived somewhere closer to a Frankenstein imitation.
    "Knock it off," Thomas said, leading her toward them. "This is Amber."
    "Hey," the first one said.
    "Hey," the other echoed.
    "Amber, this is my cousin, Charles"
    "Chuck," he corrected.
    "and my little brother, Lucas."
    "Nice to meet you. Thomas has told me a lot about you."
    Chuck guffawed. "Yeah?"
    "Is Mom home?" Thomas said, inviting himself out of the sun.
    "Yeah, she's sleeping," Lucas said, holding the door open.
    Inside the house Amber was faintly disappointed to find Art Barn prints hung over the Ethan Allen furniture and Pier 1 Imports accents. But it was cool, even without a fan, and they sat together facing the TV, which was tuned to a figure skating exhibition performance.
    "When'd you get the TV?" was the first thing Thomas asked.
    "Been in here for more'n a year," Lucas said. "Had it out in the trailer til Pop died. He didn't like so much noise," he added in Amber's direction.
    "Hey," Chuck said like a burp. "Whatchu doing tonight? Wanna come on inna Holbrook and watch the dances with us?"
    "What time are you heading in?" Thomas asked.
    "Leave here about five," he said.
    "What dances?" Amber asked, intending to be part of the conversation, even if left out of the decision.
    "Indian dances," Chuck said. "They have them outside the old courthouse all summer."
    Indian dances. Ironic that they would have to leave the reservation to see authentic Indian dances, Amber mused.
    "If we'd have known, we could have just waited down there for you. Could have saved us a trip," Thomas said. Could have saved me the embarrassment, he thought. He looked at his watch. "It's almost four, now."
    "We're gonna spend the night in town," Chuck said.
    Thomas knew what that meant: they were planning to drink a lot. It also most likely indicated that his mother would not be joining them, as she rarely slept away from her own bed.
    "I'm gonna go wake up Mom," Thomas said.

*    *    *
    The old woman's appearance entertained Amber's fancy of what Native Americans should look like: hair back in double braids, box dress, wise pebbles for eyes. She preceded Thomas's re-appearance through the narrow hallway, talking to him, though looking straight ahead until her eyes locked on Amber, at which point her head turned like a rudder, though the body drifted a few steps atop its own momentum before responding and turning toward the couch. She stood just beyond the arm of the couch, short and small-boned, looking somehow like she were the child seeking approval.
    "Amber, this is my mom. Mom, this is Amber," Thomas said, a few steps behind.
    Amber stood, wondered if she should extend her hand, but that was a man's greeting, so just said, "It's very nice to finally meet you."
    But the old woman blinked and turned her head toward the TV, moved to sit in a chair against the wall. "She's pretty, Thomas. So what's next?"
    "What?" Thomas said, standing over the back of the sofa, placing a hand on Amber's shoulder to comfort her, though she showed no signs of needing it. She, in fact, wished to re-seat herself, but remained standing to let her shoulder support Thomas.
    "Didn't you bring us anything else?" she said.
    "He got a new car," Chuck tattled.
    "Another new one?" The last time he had come back, he drove a Chevy Blazer with a leather interior and less than twenty thousand miles on it, and refused to let Chuck try out the four wheel drive. "Well, has he shown it to you yet?"
    "Nope," Chuck said, playing the accomplice to her impassivity, though a hint of mirth attended his voice.
    "Thomas," she said, "why haven't you shown off your new car yet?"
    "Ma..."
    "No, Thomas. We all know what you came here for. Now get to it."
    The three of them banished out the front door, Amber sat back down on the couch. Thomas's mother ignored her without effort.
    "Thomas talks about you often," Amber said with little hope of it breaking the ice. Even if she didn't know the particulars it didn't take a psychologist to observe the turbid family dynamics at play.
    The old woman snorted. "All about his wonderful family?"
    Amber tread cautiously, stopping to consider her answer. Honestly, he did not lavish compliments toward his mother, except as apologia for his other remarks. When the old woman heard no response forthcoming, she shot a quick glance in Amber's direction, snorted again, then resumed watching TV.

*    *    *
    "What's she talking about?" Thomas said.
    "Never mind. Just pop the hood, eh? What's she got? Six cylinder?"
    Thomas ducked inside the door to release the hood. "What? Yeah. Six cylinder. Two point five liter."
    "How fast does it go?" Lucas said.
    "Who cares? How many horse trailers can you pull uphill with it. That's important," Chuck taunted.
    "There's no trailer hitch," Thomas said, oblivious to the sarcasm in his cousin's voice. "What's she mean, you know what I came here for? I came here to visit. That's all."
    "And to introduce us to your new girlfriend," Chuck reminded.
    "Yeah, of course. I don't get it. Why's she mad at me?"
    Chuck sighed, enjoying Thomas's bewilderment act because Thomas probably had no idea that he was acting. "So, cousin, you gonna let me drive this to Holbrook?"

*    *    *
    Chuck drove Lucas in his Chevy, tailgating the Stratus for the merriment of watching Thomas monitor the rear-view mirror, and periodically tap the brake lights to make them ease off. Amber scanned the alien landscape out her window.
    "So, where do you want to stay...back in town?" Thomas asked.
    "Wherever. You know better than me."
    "I guess maybe we should go to the Holiday Inn, then," Thomas said, clearly requesting affirmation.
    "Anywhere's fine."
    Thomas had never been to the Holiday Inn Express. He had been to better hotels when he traveled for conventions over the past few years, but there was a mystique about the one particular hotel in the one town that he never stayed in. He didn't know anyone who had. Which is not to suggest that the hotel refused Navajo patrons, but maybe that Navajo patrons saw no need to stay there when there were cheaper motels along every street.
    "I don't know," Thomas said. "I mean, they'll probably get pretty drunk. Maybe we should go some place where they won't get themselves into any trouble."
    Hands at ten and two o'clock, Thomas considered several schemes in which he could drop Chuck and Lucas off at some dark motel and take Amber to a suite at the Inn. Not that he would mind paying for them to stay in the Inn, too, but the experience would not be the same with two drunk Navajos in tow. The core of the fantasy was not to defy the establishment.
    "I wish he'd quit that," Thomas snapped. Amber shifted her hips, looked around. Chuck swiped a "Hi" sign with the single hand near the crest of the steering wheel, easing the truck back as he did. She knew Chuck was just kidding around, but also knew better than to say it. Still, Thomas seemed to sense this.
    "He ought to be more careful," he said in his own defense. "More Indians die on these roads...Drunk drivers, mostly."
    "Well, he hasn't been drinking, yet," Amber said playfully, deciding both to join the argument he was intent on pursuing, and also trying to add some levity.
    "Still, these Indians just don't seem to know how to drive, sometimes," Thomas said.

*    *    *
    Safe on the cooling pavement of Holbrook, the four of them walked a few blocks from their parking places toward the courthouse, stopping at a gas station to buy bottled water and beer.
    "Don't worry, cousin," Chuck said as he caught Thomas staring at the six-pack he put on the counter. "We'll take it easy. Right, Lucas?"
    "Mmm," Lucas asserted.
    Amber had remained outside to browse the silver and turquoise jewelry in an adjacent window. Rejoining them, she and Thomas walked side-by-side behind the others, until they jaywalked across the street. Only through the way he held her hand, Thomas urged her to continue until the crosswalk.
    Chuck and Lucas grabbed a good spot with room in front of them for Thomas and Amber. The dances had already begun, but it was just some kids, getting practice before the not-yet capacity crowd. Here and there, near the parked cars or on the edge of the gathering, circulating crowd, Amber could see men in bright headdresses and beads, whose posture did not suggest that of a dancer. They were not stretching. But when the floodlights became necessary under the dimming sky and the adorned men took their positions, they stamped and spun, bowed and arced with an indefatigable pride which mocked the rehearsed care which stifles the most famed dancers. Later on, the announcer would invite the spectators to join in the dance, and a few dozen like-spirited souls would trample the ground in chaotic unison, all to the same drum and singer. When this time came, Chuck and Lucas eagerly sprung up from their haunches, danced alone, circled back to find each other, met women who they soon lost again in the massive swirl comprised of local eddies. But Thomas, for all Amber's pleas, resisted, finally pulling his hand from hers, leaving her to stand over him for a moment before turning to find Lucas, shadow him around the congregation. As the song neared its end, Thomas stood, brushed off his pants, and waited for Amber to come around like she was an open spot on a merry-go-round. Before she reached him, though, the song ended abruptly, the windmill made of human pinwheels sputtering to a stop.
    "Oh, I was just coming to join you," Thomas said.
    "Ah, bull!" Chuck said, coming up from behind him, brow beaded with sweat. "Thomas don't like to dance like a Injun."
    But Thomas wouldn't let himself be boxed in. "So, you guys ready for some dinner? I'm buying."
    "Of course you're buying," Chuck said, turning his head to watch a short-ish young woman in Wrangler jeans walk by.
    "So, what do you want?" Thomas said to Amber.
    "I don't know. What's good around here, Luke?" she said, trying on the abbreviated name, which the others excused.
    "Uh, the Taco Bell?" Lucas proposed.
    "No. No Taco Bell. She lives in Tempe. She can have Mexican beans any time. What she's up here for is a cultural exchange. Right, Thomas?" Chuck said. Then directing himself to Amber, "You ever try Navajo Tacos?"
    "Navajo Tacos?" Amber said.
    "Yeah. You'll love em. They got beans and lettuce and peppers on fry bread. Really good."
    "But we can go to that... what's the name of that place up there near the KOA? We can up to that steak house," Thomas said, adding "If you want" as an afterthought.
    "No. The Navajo Tacos sound good. I like to try new things," she said, canceling his protestations with the efficiency of hanging a bounced check in a gas station window.
    Chuck led them up Navajo Boulevard, turning off the street with no curb where a van was parked alongside the road, sliding door agape, an awning stretching from the van to cover the small set-up where a short woman with braids past her belt was selling drinks from an orange Gatorade cooler, and frying up Navajo Tacos on a gas-powered stove.
    Amber and Thomas sat on the tailgate, Chuck and Lucas above them on the sides of the truck bed, eating the tacos from flimsy paper plates across the tops of their thighs, watching the cars zip by, stars come out, Chuck said with an air of conclusion, "This is a Navajo evening."
    Thomas considered how true that might be. But where were the stumbling drunk natives?   Chuck and Lucas had held true to their word, and were only on their third beers in so many hours. Didn't all Indians drink all the time? Wasn't that how he remembered it? And when had he sat on a tailgate eating Navajo Tacos? More like a hillside, watching sheep while his father got some dinner. Still, the sky had not changed. The silent weeping of the stars, appearing one-by-one like luminescent tears dripping from above this azure dome, could never have been wiped away from memory.
    "Charming," Amber said. "I could get used to this."
    Thomas could count the illuminated windows in the Holiday Inn Express. What would they think? Three Navajo men, smelling of beer and dried sweat, escorting a single white female up to the desk?
    "Hey, didn't I see a Dairy Queen on the other side of the overpass," Amber asked.
    "Yeah," Lucas blurted, as if the first word following a vow of silence.
    "What do you guys want? My treat," she said. "Dilly Bars? Peanut Buster Parfait?"
    She took their orders and she and Lucas drove the coupe away from Thomas and Chuck still on the tailgate in the sandy gravel alongside the road. Thomas regretted letting them go alone, sensing a missed opportunity to swing through the Basha's parking lot to give her a closer look of his old stomping grounds. And why had they waited here for the others to bring the ice cream? Because people waited here, Chuck would tell him, and he would be right. People were always pulled off the road, vehicles forming a "V," talking or drinking.
    "If you ever get tired a that one, let me know," Chuck said. "I'll take er off your hands."
    "I just got er a few months ago. I don't think I'll be trading that one in for a few years," Thomas said.
    "Not the car."
    Thomas turned toward him without revealing his indignation. "What did you say?"
    "Amber. Now that everyone has seen her and knows that you got yourself a good white woman, I guess you can throw her away, huh?"
    "What are talking about? How drunk are you?"
    "I ain't drunk, Cousin. You still actin' like you don't know. Why your ma is mad at you. She's mad you broke up with Tina."
    "Tina? Mom hated Tina. You all hated her."
    "No, we didn't. Your ma thought she was real nice. You know, they had a good long talk without you that weekend. Yeah, your ma really took to her."
    "This is ridiculous. I remember. Everyone was so uncomfortable around her. That's why I broke up with her."
    While Chuck turned his head to spit over the wall of the truck bed, Thomas checked the road to see if the others were on their way back yet.
    "Why you always the only one don't know what yer doin'?" Chuck asked.
    "What? You're going to have to share your superior wisdom with me, man."
    "You broke up with Tina because we liked her. It was you making everyone uncomfortable. You didn't want us to like her. You go out and bring back your white world to the reservation and you think we should be disappointed. We're not. We're proud of you. You know, most of the people who say they never want to leave the reservation, they already tried. They got to say that now."
    Thomas smiled, looked up at the stars, shook his head slowly.  "Let me make sure I've got this right. You mean I don't want you to approve of me?"
    "Yeah. That's the third new car you've shown up with in five years, ain't it?"
    "So?"
    "So, take a look at yourself, Cousin. You brought Amber up here to show us how successful you are, and now you're going to break up with her to punish yourself for not being Navajo enough."
    "I know you're not drunk, so you must be nuts. Is there some quiz in the Navajo Times to see if you're an apple or not?  Is that it? Well, don't bother with the psycho-analysis. If I need help in that department"
    "You'll go to a white doctor. Yeah, I know."

*    *    *
    Amber's Blizzard had Reese Peanut Butter Cups and a banana chopped up and swirled together. She let each of them taste it, though they each shriveled their noses as if taking cough medicine before doing so, underwriting the prospect of not liking the combination. Lucas was the first to complain of an ice cream headache.
    Break up with Amber? If only he knew. They had come up to announce their engagement. Break up with her? She was incomparable. And as for giving a damn about what these people thought about him, well, Chuck had better think again about all that nonsense. He had broken up with Tina because... Oh, what difference does it make why he did it? It had just become necessary. They had reached a point where there was no more growing together to be done. That it coincided with taking her home to meet the family was meaningless. No, wait. He remembered why. Yeah, that's right, the way she started acting. She started acting like he was dirty. She saw his family, and she could never think of him as anything but some Navajo refugee from the rez after that. That's right. That's how it happened. The family didn't like her, and she didn't like them, and Thomas wasn't able to please either side, much less both. And, yeah, it just might happen again. Look at them, drinking beer in the back of a truck.  How could she like them?
    "This reminds me of being back in Iowa with my brothers," Amber said, as if to counter Thomas's reasoning.  "I have two older brothers. Danny and Kyle. We used to sit in Danny's Ford up on this hill above the river in the summers. Just drinking and talking, or sitting quietly. Maybe go down for a dip if some friends pulled in next to us."
    None of the men could imagine clearly what it would be like to have a plush river running nearby, but tried, nonetheless, enchanted by her desire to remember. She had a voice like a river, Thomas thought, but thought it might not be because rivers could be loud. He had seen a few rivers.
    Anyway, it was a voice you could close your eyes and listen to. Steady and uncomplaining. Gently adamant.
    "Got any more of them beers?" Amber asked to the guys behind her.
    "Nope. All out. Guess it's time to go to bed," Chuck said.
    "What? What time is it? It can't be past ten."
    "Ten-thirty, almost," Lucas said.
    "What, are you getting up early for church? You're not tired, too, are you, Thomas?"
    Thomas looked at his watch, though he knew he had just heard Lucas say what time it was. "Well, I guess it isn't that late. You wanna head over to Basha's and pick up a twelve pack?"
    Chuck perked his ears. "You talkin' to me?"
    "Yeah. A twelve pack. Or two six packs. Whatever. I want Bud Ice. What do you want?"
    "Bud Ice is fine. You feelin' all right, Cousin?"
    "Yeah, yeah. Hey, you guys ever stay in the Holiday Inn Express?" Thomas asked.
    "Oh, yeah, all the time."
    "Good. You guys go get the beer, and we'll go get a room before they're full. Meet you back here?"
    "That good with you, Amber?" Chuck asked, deferring to the guest.
    "Sure."
    "Hey, you know where'd be good?" Lucas said. "The flats out there by the Woodruff turn-off. That's quiet."
    "Yeah. That is real, real quiet."
    Room keys in the glove box, Thomas drove behind the Chevy the seven miles to the turn off. Better not drink more than a few. We can come back in the morning to get the pickup, if the boys get carried away. But someone needs to drive. Besides, what would the point be of going to the Inn if you pass out as soon as you get there. No, better just get a buzz on under the stars. Later, I can be the first Navajo I know to get drunk in the Holiday Inn Express. First one to wake up there with his hung-over family.

*~*~*~*~*

Copyright © 2001 Eric Prochaska. All rights reserved.