December 1 - December 24, 1998

CHAPTER XVII

BEYOND WALPI

Positioned just past Walpi, at the promontory's extreme end, Julia as Dewey could see Juanita. Juanita was wearing a vermilion dress that made her seem as much as a part of the terrain as the chopped-from-rock homes around them. Her dress was covered by a long, white muslin apron. To her left was the small bonfire where she had been firing pottery. Four of the pots were cooling on a narrow ledge jutting from a rock formation. The air between them wavered in the profound October heat.

Within the spot in Dewey's soul that had opened and where Julia was now nestled, the first thing Julia encountered was Dewey's extraordinary love for and commitment to Juanita. Through his countless memories of her, memories as far back as when they were children together, Julia knew Juanita as Dewey knew her, and recognized that the depth of Dewey's love for Juanita was the same kind Julia had felt for Paco. She also recognized the searing pain Dewey was suffering now, now that his relationship with Juanita approached some obvious point of crisis, as the identical pain she herself had felt when death took Paco.

With Dewey's eyes, Julia now observed the young Salvatore's slow approach. He was wearing a white oxford shirt with the sleeves turned up, ill-fitting, and too-new blue jeans rolled at the cuffs. When Juanita saw him, she felt for her dog. The dog was a breath away, the side of his face grazing her aproned-thigh. She placed her hand lightly atop his head: Not to quiet his anxious, though almost inaudible whimper, Julia guessed, but to soothe what was clanging and jangling within Juanita herself.

When Salvatore arrived, the three young people confronted one another. Hushed moments bled past while they remained poised as though they were about to begin some eccentric, musicless dance. Julia could feel the beat of Dewey's heart, the beating in his head, the acid slosh in his abdomen, and the quake in every part of his body. She could feel the searing heat from the sun on the back of Dewey's neck, and she could taste the warm, chalk-powder dust swirling across and up from the worn and footstep-polished rock roadway where they stood.

As Dewey, Julia intuited there were people, just out of sight, but watching behind the irregular shaped and capriciously placed windows from the rocky walls within their homes.

"Tell him," she heard herself command Juanita, but in Dewey's voice, and in the Hopi tongue.

Through Dewey's dazzled eyes, she saw the brown puppy move aside a bit as Juanita turned ever so slightly to address Salvatore, whose face was filled with an amount of sadness and pain nearly commensurate with what Julia had seen there at the last stage of Paco's illness and after Paco's death.

When Juanita spoke to Salvatore it was in a low but clear voice that belied the agitation Julia was sure the young woman was feeling. "Dewey had a dream some nights ago," Juanita intoned. "In the dream I came to the home of his mother as his bride . . . not to marry him, but because but I could think of no other way to be close to you."

Sal's knees nearly buckled. He slowly removed his heavy black glasses and put them in his shirt pocket. Julia felt Dewey's body grow rigid.

"Go on," Dewey as Julia said.

"When Dewey came to me today and asked me if this was true, " Juanita continued, "I had to admit that it is."

Julia saw all at once the pride, the defiance and the shame in Juanita's eyes as they refocused on Dewey. Julia could also see the pain and humiliation in Sal's eyes, too, yet there was also a measure of relief, as well a gleam of primal triumph. In this archetypal and timeless three-way clash, Sal was clearly the victor.

Within Dewey's being, Julia felt the impulse to demolish Sal and Juanita both, who remained where they were, apparently paralyzed by the effect on Dewey of what they had done to him.

Juanita turned toward the rock ledge and one by one picked up her four cooling pots, then enfolded them in the hammock she fashioned with the skirt of her long apron. In the instant Julia felt Dewey's body take a faltering step forward. Juanita's dog came to his feet, the first one cognizant that Dewey had, in that moment, surrendered to his rage.

Julia felt Dewey's body stagger toward Juanita. Growling low and deep, the animal placed himself between Juanita and Dewey. As Dewey continued to edge toward Juanita, who was carefully cradling her pottery in the apron, the dog barred its teeth and growled. With an apparent sudden awareness that his good and close friend was now an enemy, maybe a dangerous one, Salvatore stepped forward. From behind, he placed his hands on Juanita's shoulders.

"You must go. Both of you must leave First Mesa," Dewey quietly said.

As Dewey, Julia saw Sal pale under his tan. Sal tried to turn Juanita toward him, but her eyes were trying to tear off as much as they could of the world she cherished as he twisted her away from whatever part of it she thought she could hold onto.

As Dewey, Julia stood with her fists clenched and was witness as Sal hastily shepherded, nearly frog-marched, Juanita along the rock road back to Sichomovi. The dog, still quietly growling, remained where he was, a frozen and threatening obstacle. Inside Dewey's body Julia felt Dewey's brain remind his heart to beat, his lungs to breathe.

The display dissolved, but out of it came a consequent one.

Still within Dewey, Julia pounded after Sal's old truck, which was bumping fast, faster than it should, through Sichomovi, then on through Hano.

Sal was behind the wheel, with Juanita in the passenger seat and Juanita's dog in the truck bed. As the truck sped onward toward the tight and twisting access road to Polacca and off First Mesa, startled villagers dodged the stones thrown up by the truck wheels and gaped with astonishment at all of it, but especially at Dewey who stumbled after the truck, lobbing rocks he scooped from the ground, which found their mark and thunked hard against the truck's tailgate, the rear bumper and the right rear quarter panel.

Still wrapped in Dewey's skin, Julia watched as Juanita turned to look back through the rear window at all she was leaving, at all she had lost--at the sum and total of the world she knew. There was consternation and open grief on her face. Julia saw Juanita's tears through Dewey's. Then, as Sal swung onto the prong of road, the young dog leapt from the truck bed and landed on rocky outcropping covered with pinon pine. Juanita howled. And as Dewey, Julia understood that relinquishing her pup, put her beyond the frontier of what she could bear to lose. In a cloud of red dust, Sal slammed on the brakes. The engine quit. Juanita pushed the door open and got out.

The stone Dewey had that instant flung struck Juanita high on the cheekbone. Its stinging bite startled her and she let go of her apron hammocking the pots. The pots tumbled out onto the road while blood, wet and real, brimmed from the gash on her cheek. Only three of the pots survived.

Ignoring the injury to her cheek, maybe unaware of it, unconcerned about her pots, Juanita called for her pup. But no amount of coaxing would woo him back to the truck. After gazing at her for an attenuated moment the young dog bounded away and disappeared over the outcropping. The onlookers gaped in the silence, through the subsiding dust, as the dog raced down the cliff to the meadow below.

Sal, who had left the truck and was now at Juanita's side, bent and picked up the three pots that didn't break in the fall. He left the terra-cotta-colored shards of the broken one lying as they were. Julia wondered if within the pattern of the shards Sal marked some portent of his future with Juanita, because as he straightened up, Julia as Dewey beheld an ancillary wretchedness on Sal's face that hadn't been apparent in his expression before.

Juanita picked up the skirt of her apron and Sal carefully folded in the pots. He put an arm around her shoulders and piloted her back to the passenger side of the truck, then onto the seat. He resolutely closed the door, then strolled quickly around to the other side.

As Dewey, Julia heard the truck engine falter a moment later, falter again, then catch. Sal roared away.

The scene faded out, then in again.

In Dewey's body, Julia stumbled across rough and stony meadows, up and down steep and ragged cliffs, through dust that choked and brambles that slashed the flesh of their jointly held arms and legs and face. They were following the truck, keeping in sight, as it receded for as long as they could. Then they lost their footing on a sharp and shaley rise, fell sideways, then plunged down, skidding and slipping without once reaching out to try and grab purchase from jutting rocks and roots to break their fall.

They landed on Dewey's knees in the ravine at the bottom of the rise. An instant later Juanita's pup, who had joined them at some point without their knowing and had been galloping behind, collided with them and knocked them forward.

In Dewey's body, laying cheek down with a mouth full of glittering terra cotta shale, watching the dog's sides heave from a few feet away, Julia felt Dewey's diseased satisfaction as he thought of how the rock he had lobbed had cut Juanita's cheek. Julia then experienced Dewey's nausea because the streak of blood had not made Juanita's profile any less implacable, or any more his, as Sal removed her from the mesa, and from Dewey's life. With Dewey's hand, Julia reached out to stroke the still-heaving side of Juanita's pup.

(to be continued)

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