I wore my magic plaid rallying cap. Clevenger pushed hard into Arizona. I asked him where the big Navaho reservation was and he said we were well south of it, which was fine with me. We ate lunch in a powder blue saloon and I went into the men's room and looked in the mirror. My hair, uncut since New York, had thickened considerably and I liked the way it was massed behind and below the hat, which I wore low over my forehead and cocked just a shade to one side. I hadn't shaved in two days but it looked all right. In fact I had been told several times in the past that blond stubble is rather attractive. I checked for dandruff. The next day we began the last leg to Phoenix.
"You have to keep them down," Clevenger said.
"Who?"
"Whoever's closing in on you."
We passed a young man on the road but he wasn't carrying a guitar and in any case it would have been impossible for Kyrie to have walked this far in so short a time. Beyond the windshield all the earth was pale green lymph as if something had gone wrong with the sun, leaving this invalid civilization submerged in aqua-light. Good wombs and bad wombs. The earth curved. I visualized my apartment then, empty and dark and quiet, furniture from John Widdicomb, suits from F. R. Tripler and J. Press, art books from Rizzoli, rugs from W amp;J Sloane, fireplace accessories from Wm. H. Jackson, cutlery from Bonniers, crystal by Steuben, shoes by Banister, gin by House of Lords, shirts by Gant and Hathaway, component stereo system by Garrard, Stanton and Fisher, ties by Countess Mara, towels by Fieldcrest, an odd and end from Takashimaya. We had lunch in a huge glass cafeteria that stood just off the highway; about a dozen trailer trucks were parked outside. After we ate I called my home number, collect, and listened to the phone ringing in the empty rooms. It was a sad and lovely experience and I was able to see dust settling on the tables and books and windowsills. Everything was still and I could walk through the rooms, touching the edge of the mantelpiece, turning the pages of a book left open on the coffee table. With my index finger I rubbed a thick line through the dust on the radio. I blew at the shower curtain and looked into the mirror above the wash basin and I listened to the phone ringing. I had been reading that book not too many weeks ago and it seemed possible that some small odd ether still clung to it, making an eternal moment of what had been a wet finger turning a page. Then the rooms were empty again, even in my mind. I was not there and nothing moved. There was only the sound of the telephone.
The truck drivers sat over their cups of coffee in a sort of contained delirium, men who had done a thousand times what had to be done, understanding it too well. We got going again. Clevenger, at the wheel, pointed to a group of ten or twelve small dwellings located in a shallow valley about three hundred yards off the road. They appeared to be huts of wood and clay. He slowed the car and pulled over.
"That's where they are," he said. "A year ago they were maybe three or four. Now I hear it's up to twenty."
"Who are they?"
"Bunch of kids. Younger than you. Living down there with the Indians. Hell, I don't know what they're up to. I hear they claim some kind of agrarian squatter's rights. That's government land they're on, so it's only a matter of time."
"I think I'd like to take a look. Do you mind?"
"It's a free country, boy."
"Maybe I should take my stuff. I've been enough trouble."
"Tell you what," he said. "You go on down and have your look. I'll run into Phoenix and pick you up soon as I can. Have two Jewboys to out-hustle. Take me no more than a couple of hours. Then we'll be on our way."
"I've been enough trouble, Mr. Clevenger."
"Get your ass on down there, son. And get used to calling me cap'n. That's what the boys at the track call me."
I slid down the embankment and walked across a field of flat stones and sagebrush. The huts were arranged in no discernible pattern and there did not seem to be any village square or center. A few people sat on the ground-two young men, a white girl holding an Indian baby. I sat next to one of the men. He wore no shoes or shirt and his pants were tan chinos cut off above the knees.
"Dave Bell," I said. "Just having a look around."
"I'm Cliff. This is Hogue. That's Verna and the baby's name is Tommy. Or is that Jeff?"
"That's Jeff," the other man said.
"So you're living with the Indians. What's it like?"
"It's the total thing," Cliff said. "It outruns all the other scenes by miles. We all live like persons. There's a lot of love here, although it gets monotonous at times."
"Are these Navahos or what?"
"These are Apache. Exiles from an Apache tribe about a hundred miles east of here. Misfits more or less. They refused to become ranchers like the rest of their people. There's only eleven of them here but we expect more to come. There's eighteen of us. We'd like to have more of them than us. It's an emotional factor."
"I don't want to sound like a critic at the very outset because you've probably had plenty of those coming around but I don't think I understand what you expect to accomplish."
"We don't expect to accomplish anything. We just don't want to be part of the festival of death out there."
"Here comes Jill," Hogue said.
She was very thin and seemed to be coming at us sideways in small skips and bounces. She couldn't have been more than seventeen years old. Her hair was reddish brown and there were several dozen muted freckles swarming about her nose. After introductions and further commentary, she offered to give me a tour of the village. I liked the way her gums showed when she smiled.
"I'm from Trenton, New Jersey," she said.
"I'm from New York."
"Neighbors!"
She wore a man's white shirt, tails tied around her middle, and blue jeans cut off above the knees. We went into one of the huts. It had a dirt floor with a carpet on it. There were several straw mats, a sleeping bag, some rolled-up blankets, a Matisse print propped against a wall, and that was it. A man with blue hair was asleep on one of the mats. It was hot and dark. We sat on the ground.
"Are you happy?" I said.
"We're all happy. This is the happiest place in the world. I mean that really seriously."
"Are the Indians happy?"
"It's hard to tell. They don't say much. But they must be happier than they used to be or else they'd go back to ranching."
"You're pretty young to be living like this, not that I'm criticizing. Did you run away from home?"
"My dad and I both ran away. Mom was driving us batty. It was psychorama twenty-four hours a day. I guess I love her and all but it got pretty bad. All she did was drink and smoke and yell things over the telephone to my father at his office. So then he stopped coming home from work. So then after that he came and got me at school and we sneaked my things out of the house when she was shopping and we got into the car and ran away. My dad's in Tempe now trying to start a dry-cleaning place. He comes out here on weekends to see me."
"Don't you get bored?"