We refueled at the crossroads where the county line seeps into Navajo country, and that's where we picked up Harry, $2 stuck from his hand like a hitchhiker's thumb.
He was leaning easily on a wooden cane at the gas station exit, waiting for a ride. As the gravel dust settled around him, I got out of the front seat because Eric had the wheel. Our hitchhiker, an old man dressed in the ubiquitous Navajo uniform of jeans, flannel shirt and cowboy hat, bent himself inside. I plunked onto the back seat of our station wagon, crushing some scattered bags of clothes and food.
After he settled himself, he told us his name: Harry Kinkaid. Pronounced with a bridgeless lisp.
We asked him where he wanted to go, although there was only one town up the highway, and that was Chinle.
"Bashus, please."
We didn't understand but said okay, hoping to figure it out as we drove. Either way, we were with a local and were curious about him.
Eric floored it, then slowed modestly.
"Don't worry, no cops here," Harry said. He followed it with a little choppy laugh. "Where you from?"
Eric gave a simple answer, California, though he had been there for only a few weeks when I met him in L.A. He had bused it from upstate New York after he broke from his girl, and now we were crossing back, to Florida, because it was the end of summer and we had nothing else to do.
"I worked in California - the railroads," Harry said.
"Were you born here, on the reservation?" I asked. I forgot to say "nation," but it was obvious Harry didn't mind.
"Yup. I was born in 1934." He said it like he was a little amazed by the fact himself.
Not only was he a native but an old-timer, too. I was waiting for him to spill the beans about his life on the rails. All I'd have to do was write it down for an easy story.
But then he asked: "You got any beer?"
Eric looked at me in the rear-view mirror, wanting me to answer.
"Nope." My feet were resting on a case we had picked up in Boulder City.
"No beer? Huh."
"Sorry," one of us said.
Eric attempted to move things along.
"You said you worked in the railroads?"
"Yup. In California. Long time ago."
"You retired now?"
"I work on many farms."
Eric wasn't positive of what he said, but I have a lush's ear and thought I had understood.
"You work on a lot of farms? You're a farmer?"
"Yeah, I work on a farm."
A man in his 70s with a cane, still laboring for a living. I didn't know whether to be quite impressed or slightly saddened.
Harry tried a different tactic. He acted like he had never even asked about the beer.
"You got any wine?"
"Sorry, Harry," I said.
My foot felt a couple bottles underneath the front seat. It was a long way to the East Coast, after all. Not that we weren't willing to share - that's what it was there for - except that he was a little too eager to get at it, and he was playing into the hands of every lousy stereotype we knew. It didn't help when he casually leaned forward and produced from one of his cowboy boots a half-pint of purple Mexican wine. It was a brand so obviously rotgut and "high proof" that it wouldn't have been sold in the most squalid American inner city.
A water cooler gurgle came from the bottle, and in a moment the wine was gone.
"Here, let me take that from you, Harry." I wanted to throw it out the window, naively worried about open container evidence, but then I saw it as a morbid souvenir and stuck it in a bag.
We didn't expect to hear any more about the railroad after that.
With a satisfied sigh he asked us, "Where you going?"
"Chinle, then Canyon de Chelly," Eric said. Chinle is the gateway to the Canyon de Chelly, and the name is an anglicized version of the Navajo word that refers to the mouth of the canyon. We had planned to hike down the canyon to visit the cliff dwellings.
"Ahh, the Canyon de Chelly," Harry said with pride. "Good. I have to go to Bashus, to get my benefits."
We checked the map again for Bashus but found nothing. A sign came and went, pointing to a westward turnoff for "Many Farms." I learned later that it was a community on a mere 8 square miles of land.
The signs on stores and buildings switched from English to Navajo, a script unlike any I had seen. I soon asked Harry if he could say something to us in his native language.
"Okay," he said, "Buenos dias!"
We all laughed, and Harry sat very pleased with himself.
"C'mon, Harry, tell us something," Eric said.
He spoke a sentence or two in Navajo, and it was as strange and beautiful as we had hoped. We didn't ask him to translate.
As the engine throttled on, we sat silently, traveling up the two-lane highway past a scattering of dust-shorn concrete houses. Weather-beaten pickups were corralled outside of each.
I noted only two new buildings along the route: the Chinle Juvenile Detention Center and the Chinle Dialysis Center. Eric shook his head as we passed each. Like the pueblos we later visited, it seemed the whole town was impoverished in the name of cultural authenticity. Only the industries that provided punishment and therapy thrived.
"Take a left here," Harry finally said.
We came to another intersection, in the center of Chinle. We could see the signs pointing east toward Canyon de Chelly. Eric pulled into the fire lane in front of a large building with signs in English and Navajo that read "Bashus." It was a grocery store.
We got out of the car to say goodbye to Harry. He shook our hands to thank us, laughing once more. There was a pause before he turned to go; it was a petition for money. We stood and smiled and made like we didn't understand.
In a mea culpa he whispered, "I'm a little drunk."
We watched him walk through the automatic doors, and then we drove across the street to a Burger King. I ran in as Eric waited in the car. When I opened the door, I saw a plaque at the entrance. It read, "Please help our community: Don't give to the poor."
A boy approached as I waited in line.
"Would you like to buy a necklace?"
He showed me a shallow box with "authentic" arrowheads and beads strung lifelessly through its black velvet lining. I shook my head and watched the Navajos quietly eat their meals. The solitary old men, the families and their children sat in vanquished silence. In that horrible quiet, I saw myself clearly. I was a trespasser in a nation separate yet forever unequal from my own.
- Brian Christian is a freelance writer who lives in California.
