...forward this to you all.   He forgot to copyright it, but I know you'll
treat him fairly.

Sign me,  Still Waiting for Deb Bledsoe and, hey Mary Krugman, who was the
developer who named it Villa Charlotte Bronte?

                         Dead Dogs in Tuba City
                            Peter Gray

                                                There are dead dogs in Tuba
City. That's what I learned in Arizona. There's a lot of khaki-colored dust
that scuffs up your shoes, too. But there are dead dogs in Tuba City. Their
flesh is gone--only fur bags of bones. The snouts are turned skyward,
suspended in endless bristling growls. The ones who are still alive live
because they've got a friend, maybe a little Indian kid who steals a bit off
the kitchen table, maybe a store owner who leaves out the scraps, the
thrown-away twinkie halves, or the forgotten microwave burrito. They live
also because they know how cars work. They know to wait for an empty road.
They know to keep away from people they don't know, to be cautious. Dogs are
not as much companions, but extra mouths to feed.
    When we drove south from the reservation, the hills on the right looked
like Africa, the sun falling into them like a sword in its sheath. The houses
ran low like crouched, scared animals. At the gas station in Tuba City, a
dirty Indian came up to the side of our car and asked for eighty-three cents.
His chin was bleeding. His hair was matted. My mom got nervous; "I don't want
to give him money," she said. So we drove off. He gave us the peace sign,
standing alone next to the pumps.
    We were driving back to Phoenix to fly home. I talked with my sister for
a while, playing footsie, throwing pillows at each other. I told her about
Dad's fall. "He was clinging to that rock, the one rock that hadn't moved,"
my heart quickening as I remembered it again. When I could see, I watched the
tall cactuses, stately and solemn, and the far off mountains, and the red
rock that made me want to stay, and pray perhaps. I stuck my hand in the
wind, letting it rise and fall like a dolphin over the waves. I saw the horse
by the road, its side opened up, the organs inflated like veiny helium
balloons. When the sun fell, when I couldn't see, I tried to think of lists I
could make. I listed cities I had visited, and walked through all of them,
thinking of as many of the streets and parks as I could remember. I
remembered St. Steven's Park in Dublin, and the little chain guard rails that
went up to your ankles. The walk circled a lake, willows dipping into the
water, little escape ladders. Ducks squabbled with pigeons over crusts.
    Italy was dirty in some places and clean in others. The piazzas were
fine. We could use some piazzas to slow us down a bit, to drink  slowly,
watching walkers part the pigeons like  Moses. The fountains didn't feel so
good. Too many people, too much dropped gum and flicked cigarettes. But then
there were those cypresses in Umbria, dark green soldiers in rows, and the
sunflowers that lifted your spirit and looked like the kind of shower head
Van Gogh would have wanted. Deer in the sloping pine forests gently knocking
pine cones down the embankment. The fruit stand in the little town, the fruit
man proud with his melons and squashes and beets.
    I kept falling out of sleep. I was trying, since car sleep is such
luxurious sleep. It's the kind of sleep that leaves you feeling utterly
unrested and more tired than before. But there's something enjoyable in that.
I wanted to yawn and stretch loudly at the airport in Phoenix, attracting
stares as my shirttails rose above the waist of my pants, showing my hairless
stomach. I was in that half-sleep where memories and images are more vivid,
and you end up not knowing if you slept at all.
    So in that half-sleep I kept remembering. When cities dwindled, I thought
back to the reservation. We had stayed with the Navajo for a week. At night
you could hear the pups whimpering in their shelter. I'd stumble to the
outhouse, tripping over the low brush, looking up at the shadowy mesas
outlined by stars. No wonder they thought they were gods. I'd go, missing the
hole, hitting the seat and the plywood support. Then I'd step out, fearing
rattlesnakes. And as I walked back I'd hear the pups in their wood shelter, a
tepee made of logs with some hotel carpeting for a bed. In the balmy light of
stars, I saw them moving, moving like those glowing plankton under the docks
at Martha's Vineyard, lighting up and then fading as the current swelled by.
    We rode in the mornings sometimes, circling endless mesas, the horses
skittish on the loose gravel and plodding through patches of deep orange
sand. We skirted little brooks, watching  the slide from the horses' steps as
it sank into the clear boils of the water. The guide was teaching us Navajo
words. One of them sounded like the word "cherry" but I couldn't remember
what it meant. When we came to steep slopes, the horses would slip and glide
down the dunes, distrustful and vigilant; my father almost fell over the
front of his horse, but managed to right himself.
    We came to a little shady spot in between two rock faces, where white
streaks came down like tears. There was a faded 7-Up can half-buried in the
cool sand. I got off and lay in it, blowing little holes, the sand shooting
up off the lip of my hole. I made a little trench with a dead stick. It was
like being four again, pretending little armies were fighting on the blades
of grass, swinging from one to another, drowning in sand. I turned over onto
my back, looking up at the big rocks falling down on me. The drifting clouds
made them look that way at least.
    We roamed freely in our rides. There are fences along all the roads in
the reservation. They are not to define property boundaries. They are to
define the Navajo from anyone else. There is Navajo land, and the roads that
will make you to leave.
    We tried throwing sticks for the dogs at night, back at camp. They didn't
get it. They spent too much time looking for food, I guess. We got only
blank, inquisitive stares from them. Our guide came into our hogan as we were
getting ready for bed. "I give you big coal piece. This will keep you warm
whole night. You maybe too warm, hee-hee." He continued to giggle as he went
out.
    And then I got to the trip up into the mesas. The morning was brisk and
sweet. We drove the pickup up the dried stream bed until we got to a huge
gate made of assorted pieces of metal and rope netting. We crawled under it.
"Old man and his goats up here," our guide said. "He and his wife live on top
of mesa. They go down to Tuba City, three time, four time a year."
    Big hollow domes were around us, sometimes a trickle of water dropping
over their tops like a shower just before it starts. The terrain steeper and
steeper, footing tougher and tougher to find. There was a turn. A great dome
rose above us, rising to the top of the mesa. We were in the loose rubble. I
walked behind our guide. On the right, stone, and on the left, air with the
canyon below.
    A thunder-like sound. That noise grows more distant with time, like
taillights driving off down a country road. I saw my father--I knew it was
him--sliding--legs up--down with the
rubble--shooting off the edge--with that dreamy, pained look in his eyes--I
saw him lying face down in a pool at the canyon bottom--looking limp and
loose--his hat floating beside him. I ran back around the bend in the face.
He was clinging to the one rock that had stayed put in the slide, only his
hat showing above the slab.
    The guides were helping him up.
    "This is not safe. This is crazy," my mother said. The Indians looked
bewildered.
    "Is fine. We go more."
    "No. No, that's enough." There was something between us then. The Indians
looked at us with a confused look. We returned it in kind. They lived much
closer to death. An avoided accident--time to move on. I felt so strange, so
foreign, trying to see me in the Indians, but finding nothing. They were born
with something that I didn't possess, and never would. Guts to the point
where it's not guts anymore, but merely an ability to walk away, to continue.
We sat out on the ledge, eating cold Navajo bread moist with oil, looking at
the specks of houses, the dots of cattle.
    You learn, first and foremost, that there are dead dogs in Tuba City when
you head out to the empty reservations of Arizona. You get to know that dust
too, but its the dogs that you remember. The dogs haunt you. We stopped at
the last stop light in Tuba City. A drunk Indian, his spittle soaking up the
dirt around his mouth, his eyelids fluttering, was slowly turning in the dust
next to the road making a moaning sound. He coughed once, and we'd passed him
by on the road back to Phoenix.

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