Buffalo Pass
by Sarah Black


Chris walked across the mesa from his grandmother’s hogan to the Conoco station in Ganado. He dropped his backpack and nodded to the other men leaning back against the wall. One old man was squatting, tossing a pair of dice over and over between his feet. A couple of dogs lifted their heads and looked at him, then closed their eyes and went back to sleep.
    It was early, not even nine, but the heat was already shimmering off the black asphalt. Rose pulled her Jeep up to a pump and climbed out, waving when she saw him. Her son William climbed out of the passenger seat and ran across the parking lot.
    “Hey, Chris! Mom said to throw your gear in the back. You get to sit up front, me and Felix get the back. Where is he?”
    “Inside, in the air-conditioning.”
    “I’ll get him,” William said, pushing open the glass doors.
    Chris could feel the other men staring at him now. The man throwing the dice gave a little hiss through his front teeth, then turned his head and spat. Chris ignored him and walked over to Rose. She already had some boxes of food, a tent, and a couple of sleeping bags stowed in the back of the Jeep. He shoved his backpack in between the sleeping bags.
    When he was twelve a horse had kicked him into a barbed wire fence. Some of the other boys at his dorm pulled him out of the fence and carried him to the clinic. His boarding school had a new nurse. They dumped him on a bed and Rose shooed everyone out, then sat on the bed next to him and put her arms around him.
    “This is really going to hurt,” she said, stroking his back. He nodded into her shoulder. An hour later, when she had finished suturing and bandaging, she put her finger to her lips and put the kiss on one of the bandages. “You better stay here with me for awhile,” she said, covering him with a soft yellow blanket and pulling a chair up next to the bed. His blood was smeared on her jeans.
    Rose smiled at him. “Hey, Chris! It’s good to see you. Have you been busy since graduation?”
    He grunted, took the washer and started cleaning the front windows of the Jeep. Rose was pumping the gas.
    “Is your grandmother still here? I have her medicine.”
    He shook his head. “Stella’s working inside. She can take it after her shift.”
    “I’ll go give it to her. The boys in the store?”
    He nodded, and she walked into the Mini-Mart. Her jeans and tee shirt were dark blue and modest, as was appropriate for a white woman on the Reservation, but she still drew sideways glances and muttered comments in Navajo from the men outside the store. Chris leaned against the back of her Jeep and gave them his best tough-guy stare.
    Rose came out of the Mini-Mart ushering two boys. Her son William had red hair and freckles, and Chris’ brother Felix had black hair that was falling over his ears and into his eyes. They looked remarkably alike, black jeans and identical black T-shirts from West Coast Choppers, both clutching Game-Boys and Archie comics, both talking at once.
    Rosie ignored them both, just herded them toward the Jeep like a shepherd with two stubborn little lambs.
    “But Mom!” William said, climbing into the back. “Me and Felix are both twelve now! How come we only get fifty dollars for two days work? Chris’s getting lots more than that.”
    “I’ll tell you why,” Rose said. She adjusted the mirror until she could see them in the back seat. “Are you two buckled up? You’ve already hit me up for a new comic each. I’m going to be feeding you, and I know how much you two eat. Plus you guys don’t work all that hard at any job. I’ve been your boss before, remember.”
    She held up her hand at the storm of protest. “Finally,” she said, “if you do work hard, I’m taking you to Flagstaff on the way home to spend your fifty bucks.”
    The back seat settled at this news and started gearing up, ear buds inserted, a linking cable attached from Game-Boy to Game-Boy, Mario-64 selected from a case between the seats.
    Rose looked over at Chris. “You don’t mind the side trip to Flag?”
     “No, it’s cool,” he said. “Maybe I can look at that music shop downtown. Last time I was in there I saw this guitar made to go in a backpack.”
    “I’ve seen those,” Rose said. “Are you going to take the guitar to boot camp?”
    “Maybe,” Chris said. “I don’t know if they’ll let me.”
    “When do you leave?”
    “Two weeks.” He hesitated. “I want to leave some money with my grandmother, but I don’t know. She might give it away. Or somebody might take it away from her.”
    He looked over at Rose. Her curly hair was back in a ponytail, a few wisps coming loose in the heat. One long strand lay against her neck.
    “If you want you can leave some with me and I’ll hold it for her.” Her voice was carefully neutral.
    He looked out the window. “Maybe. So what are we doing this weekend?”
    “I want to dig out the footings and foundation. It’s for a little hogan I want to build on my land down in New Mexico. If we get it dug out, then we can mix the concrete and pour. I figure if you and I work together, we can get that done in two days.”
    He nodded. “Where’s the land?”
    “It’s just on the Continental Divide, outside of Pie Town . Maybe three hours south of here. My piece is about twenty acres of foothills, but that’s all I need. All I could afford, too. It’s called Buffalo Pass.”
    Chris nodded. He didn’t know anyone who owned their land. Navajos didn’t own their land, the tribe owned everything together. That didn’t stop them from fighting about land all the time, though. “You have a house here, right?”
    “I do. But it’s not really mine.” She looked over at him, a trace of sadness in her face. In the bright sunshine he could see the fine lines around her eyes and mouth. “I’ll never really be at home here.” She gestured through the windshield toward the long line of the mesa and the rusty sandstone cliffs. “I’m only a visitor, no matter how long I stay. I just wanted a home of my own for me and William.”
    He nodded again, looked out the window west towards Keams Canyon, Second Mesa to the Hopi, then around at the traffic coming in and out of the intersection. Old pick-up trucks with bales of alfalfa hay were pulling horse trailers splattered with red mud. The man throwing dice hadn’t moved. An old grandmother in head scarf and skirt walked out of the Mini-Mart with a plastic bag of Spam and coffee. Three black and white dogs were investigating the dumpster. A cowboy wearing a good Stetson and carrying a duffel bag, probably full of bootleg, was hitchhiking on the road to Chinle.
    Looked like home. When he was in boot camp and he thought about home, he’d think about this. This was his place. His blood was the color of Reservation mud. In a few weeks he would get on the bus in Flagstaff and head west until nothing around him looked familiar. He couldn’t even picture where he was going on a map. Maybe that’s how he’d feel when he got out into the world, always a visitor, never at home.
    He leaned back and closed his eyes, thought instead about the guitar. He’d wanted a guitar for as long as he could remember. He could almost feel the curves under his hands, feel his fingers moving across the strings. Maybe in that music shop he could get a book or something to show him how to play.
    They stopped in Springerville for lunch, and she pointed out the Madonna of the Trail standing on Main Street . It was a statue of a woman dressed like a pioneer, clutching a child. “They have these all over,” she told them. “This one is dedicated to the women who survived the aggression of the Apache and the other warrior tribes.”
    Chris looked around at the mountains surrounding the town. “Are we close to Apache Pass?”
    She shook her head. “It’s a couple of hours south. There’s a natural spring up there in the mountains. I guess that’s why the Apache settled there and why everyone else wanted it. After Cochise was arrested and the wars started, it gave the Army an excuse to bring their big guns in. Howitzers at Apache Pass. Supposed to be for fighting the Confederates, but the Apache were right there.”
    Chris could hear the pain in her voice. She was picturing the kids, probably, trying to run through the deep mountain snow, trying to get away from the Army with horses and guns.
    For the first time Chris realized that the Army he was about to join was that army. He was about to put on that uniform, the one men wore when they chased down the Apache. The same uniform the men wore who herded his ancestors down to Bosque Redondo on the Long March. It was the same army.
    Rose looked at him as she pulled the Jeep out onto Highway 60 and headed east. “What?”
     “What did they call them? Scouts or something? The Natives who helped the Army.”
     “I’m not sure, Chris. Remember things are different now. The military, that’s your chance. That’s your education and your future.”
    He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. Rosie could sound very mom-like sometimes.
    An hour later she reached over and patted his arm. “We’re nearly there.” He looked around, stretching in his seat. They were close to the mountains now, juniper and pinon forests covering the foothills.
     “These mountains are part of the Rockies,” she said, pointing out the window. “See how old they look?” They did look old, edges soft and worn, gray-green in the distance. “Apache National Forest is just east of here.”
    She adjusted her mirror to look in the back seat. William and Felix were sprawled out, asleep.
     “Chris, I wanted to tell you something about this land before we got there. It was all open range once, and the family that owned it died out except for some relatives in Chicago . So the Chicago relatives decided to develop it, to put in some roads and sell it in pieces. They had never been out here.” He could see pink creeping into her cheeks. “So they thought up these Indian sounding names for the roads, hoping to attract buyers from back east wanting a little bit of the Southwest cheap.”
    She glanced over at him. “I almost didn’t bring you out here because I was embarrassed by those names. I thought they would make you feel bad.”
     “Like what?”
     “Tomahawk Trail. Firewater Circle. Squaw Pass.”
    Chris felt a weight in his stomach. He thought about something he had seen on TV, a man dressed up like a circus Indian, big feathers and Sioux braids. He was at some football game, doing a half-time war dance. Like it was funny, but it wasn’t really funny.
    “Warpath Trail.”
    “What’s your road?” he asked, looking out the window.
    “Kemo-Sabe Pass.”
    He started to laugh, and laughed until he could feel the tears on his face. Rose kept darting worried looks at him. He rubbed a fist over his face and kept his eyes to the window.
    “So why did you buy it?”
    She didn’t answer for a moment. “I liked the land. It’s never been developed. No one has lived here for a long time. It’s clean and empty and I could afford it. I mean, it’s the same land it was before somebody stuck those signs all over.” She sighed. “I just wanted to tell you about it. The first time I saw the names it made me feel a little sick.”
     “It’s fine,” he said. Some insults went straight to your heart, but others just sat in your stomach for awhile. “Time to wake up the Lone Ranger and Tonto in the back seat?”
    Rose turned off the highway onto a dirt road leading up into the mountains. The sign to the property had a big buffalo in front of a mountain, with the legends: No Trespassing. No Hunting. Owners and Guests Only.
    They passed dirt roads marked with big yellow signs. Kokopelli Circle . Firedance Way. She turned on the road marked Kemo-Sabe Pass. The Jeep bounced over a trail back up to a bluff where she had her little camper parked.
    Felix and William ran off into the woods to check out the tree with the tire swing.
     “Firewood!” Rose shouted after them. Chris helped her unload the boxes of food and stow them away in the camper. She opened the windows to pull in some fresh air, then they walked up the bluff to the site she had picked for her little hogan.
    She was right, once you got away from the road, the land was good. The trees were alive with birds, and he could see a big white jack rabbit, black on the tips of his ears, watching them from the roots of an old juniper tree. Elk, pronghorn, coyote, jackrabbit had all left their footprints. From her home site you could look south and see the Rockies.
    They dug the foundation for the next few hours. She had a good pick-axe and shovel, and the ground was warm and soft. Chris made a pile of the black volcanic rocks as they dug them up. He watched her as she bent over with the shovel, the long, curving line of her hips and thighs different from the girls he knew, more like a woman’s body.
    He remembered when he was younger asking her if she missed being with a man. He must have been sixteen, newly saturated with the bliss of sex. He’d smoked some weed out behind the gym with this girl. He got his first blow job, then fell asleep in biology class. The teacher sent him to the clinic, said he probably had a fever.
    Rose put him to bed, pulled a blanket up to his chin. His dick was throbbing happily, briefly at peace after nearly two weeks of painful straining against a tight pair of Levis.
    The older men, the ones her age, called her Rosie. In his private thoughts he always thought of her that way.
     “Don’t you miss it, Rosie? I mean, a man’s arms. Having a man’s arms around you. You’ve been alone a long time.”
    She looked down at him, smiling a little. “A man’s arms holding me? Holding me back? Holding me down?”
    His brain stumbled over this, and he felt foolish suddenly, like a little kid again. She reached over and brushed the hair back from his face with a gentle hand, and his love for her welled up in his chest.
    “Sex can be very complicated, Chris. I have responsibilities. I have to take care of William first. Besides, a person can live without sex, just not without love. Not a sixteen-year old person,” she corrected herself, “but a woman my age. Listen, just make sure when you’re holding a woman, you aren’t holding her down.”
    He didn’t know what she was talking about. He felt himself drifting off, warm and safe, and wondered if she would sit next to him while he slept. She leaned over the bed. “Why do you smell like reefer? I ought to kick your butt.”
    William and Felix walked up the bluff with some soda, and they took a break, leaning back in the shade under a tree. Rose rubbed her shoulder, smearing dirt and sweat over her pale skin.
    “Another few years I’ll be too old for this.”
    Chris looked at her arm, so pale still despite the sun, with a few scattered freckles. The muscles were soft and curvy. When she raised her arm the outline of her breast was visible against her t-shirt.
     “We’ll dig for awhile, Mom,” William offered. “If you want to do something else.”
    “We got plenty of firewood,” Felix said.
    She looked at the two of them. “And?”
    “Well,” William said, “I was just thinking it was about time to start the fire for supper.”
    “You two are hungry?”
    They nodded.
    “Burgers or chili?”
    They looked at each other, then spoke as one. “Burgers!”
    “Very well,” she said, sitting up. “But you guys have to help Chris, no running off. I’m going to hop in the shower, then start cooking. Did you get the tent set up?”
    “Yes, Mom.”
    She walked back to the campsite, then reappeared a few minutes later with three bottles of water and a bag of oatmeal cookies.
    “This is just to hold you off until supper is ready.”
    Chris ate a couple of cookies and went back to the foundation. He set Felix and William to work gathering the black rocks together into a pile.
     “Those are good fire rocks,” he told them. “Good for a sweatlodge.” They finished making the pile, then went off exploring, trying to find a good site to build a sweat.
    Chris was happy to be working alone. It made him a little nervous watching Rosie dig. She was at least thirty-five, and hadn’t spent much time handling a pick-axe. He had watched her nearly sink it into her leg about twelve times before he took it away from her. Besides, he wasn’t sexist or anything, but it didn’t seem right, somehow, her up here digging out rocks. Better for her to be down starting a fire, cooking supper. Not that it was any of his business.
    He wished suddenly that he wasn’t leaving for boot camp in another two weeks. What he was doing right now seemed like good work for a man to do. Building a hogan, gathering rocks for a sweat, watching little brothers, while a woman started a fire and cooked his supper- this seemed right. He could see himself doing this every day, working hard on good land, making a home, taking care of a family.
    He didn’t like leaving this job undone, leaving it for her to finish. But it wasn’t his job. This wasn’t his land and this wasn’t his family. He could feel it, that it wasn’t his time yet.
    He looked south toward the mountains. This was Apache country, and before that it had been the home of the Old Ones, with their cliff dwellings. And now it was home to one nice woman and her kid. Just for a moment he could see the long, sad line of his ancestors, marched over this land into captivity, see the soldiers in blue coats setting up their guns.
    He sat on the edge of the foundation and put his hand on the sandy warm earth. He had heard that the land was supposed to keep memories alive, but this land felt good, peaceful and quiet.
    After a supper of the best burgers he had ever eaten, cooked over a juniper-wood fire, Chris leaned back in a lawn chair and watched William and Felix set marshmallows ablaze. They were eating the blackened nuggets and talking about building their sweatlodge.
     “Are you scared to be going into the Army? What if they send you to the war, Chris?” William looked worried, stabbing at the fire with his marshmallow stick.
     “That’s what I’m talking about,” Chris explained. “You can be scared, but you still have to do the right thing. That means you two take your sweat, then you stand up. You take care of the women. You help them and protect them.” They all three looked over at Rose. She was collecting ground lichen for his grandmother to use dying wool.
    William looked over at Felix. “Hey, we got something to do.” They started riffling through the tool box. Felix stuck a hammer into his pocket and William took a crow bar. They saluted and ran off toward the woods.
     “Don’t be gone too long!” Rose yelled at them as they sped by her. “It’ll be dark soon. What are they up to?”
    Chris shrugged. “Boy stuff.”
    She walked back to the campsite and tucked the plastic bag of lichen under the front seat of the Jeep.
    “Chris, there’s water in that solar shower if you want to rinse off.”
    He stood up and took the towel and bar of soap she handed him. The soap smelled like her, lemony and green. She had the solar shower set up behind some tarps for privacy. A pinon had a convenient branch for his clothes. He got his backpack and undressed.
    The wind blowing down out of the mountains was cool against his skin, and the water was warm, and the soap lathered up rich and smelled like her. He moved a brown, soapy hand up and down his penis, thinking about that soft, white-rose curve to her upper arm and breast. His erection was strong and good, full of promise, then some mountain air blew over him with the smell of distant lands. He cupped his hand over the tip of his penis as the orgasm washed over him, his toes curling on the rocks. He let the warm water wash her soap and his rich fluid down over the black rocks, watched it sink deep into the earth.
    Rose looked tired by the next evening when she pulled back in to the Conoco station. Chris climbed out and started pumping her gas and she walked into the store to pay. William and Felix climbed out of the backseat.
     “Chris, look.” William opened his backpack, pulled out a street sign that had been pried loose from its post. Warpath Trail.
    The boys looked at him as he took it and held it up.
    “It’s for you, because you’re starting your warrior’s path,” Felix explained.
     “And Mom hates those signs,” William added.
    “Cool,” Chris said, and shoved the sign into his backpack.
    William and Felix grinned at him, then ran for the Mini-Mart.
    “William!”
    When he turned back Chris pulled him close. “Take care of your mom, William.”
    William nodded. “I will, Chris. Don’t get hurt in the war.”
    The man throwing dice between his feet hadn’t moved from the front of the store. Chris pulled his new guitar out of the Jeep and picked up his backpack, then let Rosie hug him good-bye. He slid the backpack over his shoulder and spit between his teeth at the old man and his dice. He let Felix carry the guitar as they headed across the mesa toward home.



About the author:
Sarah Black is a retired Naval Officer currently living and working on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona.


© 2009 Sarah Black