Just in Case They Run You Down
"Sit down," Allison flicks her Camel Red across the greasy formica counter in a subtle command, "You'd better take ten out for this one Janie." Three days earlier Allie would have served me this cheap iceberg salad with ranch and bacon bits I'm now paused over, she would have slipped my bill past the register and closed Devil Peak's Five-and-Diner as soon as Dave cashed out at four. If we were swift we would've caught Pedro before his shift on the twenty one, the only bus out of the canyon, and ridden through the Navajo Rez on into Chinle, Arizona. If it was a harvest day, I'd have brought a nug or two and we would've gotten Pedro to park the three of us on the rim while we lolled in the charcoal of a smoky desert sunset. Strange now, to resurrect the sweet, dark, rusted inside of that bus and how its molted slats-for-seats so recently gave us leverage where we otherwise felt powerless. Up in the angled light slanting down our cliff by degrees neon ochre on red on bright lava over burnt sienna- we'd acutely and fiercely plan the routes we'd take to keep Justin stashed in the States. "Yet those days stretch away like long cacti shadows, elusive shades over hourglass sand filtered past when Allie lost her job last Thursday, a reality whose sharp quill pricks the present. Her whole persona is now tweaked into a nervous sketch of her former self; she has just lately taken up chain smoking, fidgets with every receipt, and bites her nails even while she speaks. The same Allie who wore wranglers like a glove, cut her own split ends, yeah the same sister of mine who dreamt in color and always stood up straight now resembles the awkward stance of a crumpled joshua tree in draught. I mean, for a self proclaimed anti-pharmicist popping three Aspirin and one Tylenol every four hours instead of sipping herbal tinctures, Allie either has one hell of a headache or desperately needs to fill me in on something. "My calves are sticking to this grimy booth and I can't bear to watch my older sister run her eyes over the menu she already knows verbatim any longer, "So, I'm here now. I've been here, what is it you want to tell me, Allie?" With a tense esophagus, she rigidly pronounces, "Pedro's boss found an unaddressed letter from Justin during Greyhound's last routine inspection. So far, Pedro hasn't laid any tracks on me, so there's still time to run before the cops earmark me for questioning." As Allie pinches the skin between her eyes, she always does that on sleep deprivation, I stress the pros of a catch twenty-two kind of situation, "Look at the obvious, because the letter was unaddressed you can still say you were ignorant of Justin's intentions and stay here. Tell them you were framed." Yet she knocks my simple idea, "Right Janie, and then they'll just throw all this in some dusty file like they do with all leads to potential assassins. Come on, a coyote'll die at a snake's hole waiting for a rabbit. Whatever chance I have at ambiguous ties to Justin is not my answer, it's my tunnel out. What I really need . . . God, how can I put this to you . . ." Allie seems like she's seeping her melted insides from the corners of her eyes, she wipes back her worry and braves my anticipation, "Tomorrow you don't know me, at least for a good five years or so. I'm going to Canada, possibly somewhere in the Mid West where I can lose my identity and still earn a cupula bucks." "The goddam jukebox keeps skipping smack in the middle of the goddam sixth time someone requested this goddam ABBA track and I sort of yell, "STOP Allie!" Then, in a kind of non-linear language I whisper all at once, "Blame it on me. Say I'm with Justin. Pretend I support the insurgency and want to see my husband take out Executive Bredol. Allie, you'd only be lying about my sexual liaison." With both palms flat on the table, green eyes aflame Allie vehemently snaps back, "I will not sacrifice you. I will not slash out your future for mine. You know damn well if you get tied up in this your pending loan, your credit history, all your tidy boyfriends - even your heartbeat- will be wrenched from you for a prison block. Please Janie, let me cover my own back." I have to suck in a lot of oxygen to keep my pulse down, as well as my salad. My sister gone? Possibly dead for a crime her husband barely committed? What went wrong, only months ago Allie appeared so in love . . . "Tricolor exterior house paint is more expensive than most others because of its airtight seal, the salesman with the corny toupee at Joe's hardware usually demonstrates its density, "you'll find absolutely no bubbles per stroke to leave holes where rain might seep through." As I helped Justin and Allie slather their first house in slick yellow last July I remember thinking about the weather and how unpredictable it is in Arizona. Humh, come to think of it, we had to protect our progress with plastic that very day because of a flash thunderstorm. Black Mesa River washed out the road that runs the floor of the canyon toward town and the tiny house's inside soon turned obsidian pitch because none of us had called the electrician to start an account. We spent the night under hushed candles on makeshift split log chairs with peanut butter-banana- honey sandwiches stuck to our mouths, dared by nature into a new manifest destiny. When our conversation dropped a few decibels Allie used Justin's other name, "Shadow why do you lapse into so many silences lately?" More covert phrases began to slice the air. Cued by my sister's glance, I moved into the tacky populuxe kitchen to refill our glasses that were still three-fourths full of tequila and tampico. "From the pantry I could still hear Justin's voice, "It, it's just something the other miners and I are working on. See we've got this idea . . . if everything clicks I can finally get my leg looked at. The Hopis and Navajos will be reunited and you and I can build our own house." Then, my skeptical sister, "Your logic eludes me, but I'm sure you have a method to this madness?" "Well," Justin let out a pent in breath, "Ideally I want what you do- to see some profit in the tribunal and get the rez divided up peacefully. Nothing is dependable right now, but I'll send word through Pedro later." A waft of tobacco smoke (she must have secretly picked up the habit from Mom), revealed my sister's nervous edge,"What do you mean send? Why don't you tell me personally?" If I leaned to the left I could see Justin's callused hands snag fibers off his worn flannel cuffs, "I need to take some time to organize the others. Allie -the Navajos- at least we have a legal treaty to the joint use territory. You know how federal miners turn tribes against each other and reap the lionshare of land we both own. Trust me, if I can just connect the tribes outside of . . ." Right then the night was cut short by a closed door. I slept upstairs, but only in a superficial dreamstate broken by unintelligible sentences fragmented by the thin floorboards I laid on. "But July has since faded, the crickets have gone underground and Allie won't quit twisting and untwisting the ketchup lid in the center of our table. My hands are stained with ink from working the post office all day and my lips move mechanically, "Allie stay in Devil's Peak-what about the baby? In two months you'll be full term, you'll need rest and someone to take care of you. For chrissakes Allie! Take that goddamn cigarette out of your mouth!" Suffocatingly clear tears stretch down my cheeks like cellophane and I plead, "Your pregnant! You've never smoked so much before and at this rate you'll kill the baby! You'll kill yourself!" But my words fall transparent. Allie only carefully scrunches her smoke into dying embers until little ashes rise up around the corners of her thumbnail, flecks that will make her skin smell for days, "Calm down Janie, you have to understand I don't have any options here. I'm already involved. Jail is no life for a mother who doesn't want an orphan. Even if I got off and they only gave Justin, say, five or ten years, staying here would put us in the same shanties Peabody Coal stuffs all the rig guys in a few years down the line. I won't let my husband suffer because some expansionist investor 'forgot' to include him in the company benefit plan, and I won't have my son blinded by exploitation either." The jukebox finally quit ranting, but now two elderly men across the aisle are eyeing our booth, a little too provocatively. My first instinct is to run into the pale September heat and shout profanities to random passerby in hopes I might realign myself with the sane. Is it possible to inject advice, support, maybe a parable or two into a conversation with nothing left to say? I decide to shut up. Allie fills my vacancy, "C'mon Janie, don't tell me you hang out in Pedro's bus just for the view. Tell me you believe in this, in Justin, in me." But I'm afraid I don't believe any of it anymore because I saw Allie's Bowie knife next to an Amtrak ticket to Justin's hideout in Louisiana, it was laced with venom. And because I know we are Hopi, not Navajo. We run on shrunken Hopi land under Navajo dealers trapped in big moonshine mines. Somehow they will run us both down; remember to run just in case they run you down. |