The Darkness Rolling Read online

  We’d gotten along great right from the start. They’d egg me on, and I’d launch into my mimic routines, stolen straight from radio broadcasts. First I tried my Groucho imitation on the camera crew. “The world would not be in such a snarl, had Marx been Groucho instead of Karl.”

  They loved it—the absurdity of the little guy’s New York voice coming out of a tree-tall Navajo. Then I’d roll out some other lines. It was good times.

  All this shtick came from the radio, not Grandpa. He didn’t talk one bit like a Borscht Belt guy. But those Hollywood people were mostly New York Jews. I looked at them and their glamorous lifestyle, and I thought, Maybe these are my real people. My real tribe.

  Regardless, I got a bunch of good buddies right quick. When Mr. John discovered that I could translate Navajo and Spanish into English without blinking an eye, he kept me close by for the whole shoot.

  I would have worked for Ford forever, but the filming ended, and the cast and crew went back to the magical place where they lived, Hollywood. Someplace mystic near the shining sea where Changing Woman wrapped her dusky arms around her husband, the Sun-Bearer, every evening. That’s what I imagined.

  Now, looking at the movie people … we had all changed. The war snuffed out a lot of people’s happy fantasies, and it near killed Mr. John at Normandy. I’d read that while I was doing nothing big or important in San Diego, he got to chase right into battle with his camera and got wounded and decorated.

  “Good to see you hale and hearty, Mr. John,” I said, offering my right hand the white-man way.

  “Yazzie. Good to see you.” He’d long since learned to shake Navajo-style, a touch like moth wings.

  We had some time to talk while they set up for the next shot. I had to decipher his mumble through the linen handkerchiefs he chewed every minute of a shoot, don’t ask me why.

  He said, “Damn glad you’re back.” He took off his sunglasses. “Still want a job?”

  He fixed me with that one blue eye, the way white people look right into you, probing. You had to watch out for Mr. John. According to his mood, that look made him a friend of heartfelt understanding or a Jehovah about to send you straight to hell for your sins, ones that only he knew about.

  “Damn straight,” I said. “Raring to go.” I’d started cussing from being around swabbies who peppered and salted their talk with profanity.

  “People say you got cop experience.”

  “Shore patrol.” My unheroic war.

  “I can use you for security. Ready to start now?”

  “Yeah.” I was screaming inside not to get excited so big that Mr. John would see the thump of my heart. He was Hollywood, and might offer me less money.

  “I got an actress ready to come out here. Big star, bigger ego. Linda Darnell.” I kept my face straight. Who didn’t know her name? Most beautiful woman in show business, the movie mags called her. “She needs”—he shrugged—“escorting.”

  I looked at him, waiting for more. I wasn’t about to push Mr. John, just kept standing there, studying the sky.

  He did a double sigh. “She has a way of getting involved with men,” he said, “who think her attentions mean more than they do.”

  “Got it.”

  “Problem is that she also has a way of getting involved with men who have money and power, and they don’t like getting dumped.”

  “They’re used to being on the leaving end, and money gives a person plenty of ways to cause trouble,” I said.

  Mr. John patted me on the shoulder and looked at that same patch of blue sky. “Exactly. What I need from you is to make sure trouble and Miss Darnell are strangers, at least while she is working on this movie.”

  A job that was a natural fit. I could try out some of my cop instincts in a bigger way, and I was strong enough to take care of trouble. Not only did I speak the languages needed in my wild piece of country, I had read the classics and knew which fork to use. In other words, socially presentable. A lady of the silver screen crossing a desert full of Navajos, Hopis, and Mexican guys, some of them outcasts and others fresh out of the service, would be a lot safer with me than any Anglo.

  “She coming in from Flagstaff?”

  “No, Winslow.”

  “So,” I said, “she’s riding the Super Chief, and she wants to spend a night at La Posada.”

  “What else? The Train of the Stars, the hotel of the stars.” Ford hated actors who paraded around like big somebodies.

  But whoa! The Super Chief, the Santa Fe Railroad’s ultra-luxurious passenger train from Los Angeles to Chicago. I’d read all about it, forward to backward and then all over again. Forty-one hours and forty-five minutes for the one-way trip at speeds up to a hundred miles an hour, only occasional stops, and every amenity—Pullman sleeping compartments, plus posh dining cars run by the Fred Harvey Company serving fancy foods, all the way up to oysters, champagne, and caviar.

  The whole thing was one of my pictures of heaven—blasting across deserts and mountains at top speed while being served fine food on white tablecloths. When the Super Chief started running in 1936, and until I went off into the navy, I spent every possible minute during the trips Grandpa and I made to Flagstaff standing at the train station. Watching the trains roll in, and then trembling to my soles as the Chief flew by. Those diesel locomotives powered my dreams.

  The Super Chief didn’t make many stops, and the Santa Fe chose Winslow instead of Flagstaff. Fred Harvey built a luxurious hotel there called La Posada, designed around Southwestern Indian motifs and art. The rich people thought it was just too exotic to pass up.

  “The lap of luxury,” Ford said sarcastically. “She wouldn’t have it any other way. And neither would the studio.” Mr. John was a down-to-earth kind of guy. I knew he liked life in our wide and lonesome desert better than being around telephones, traffic, and movie moguls.

  “I’ll give you a car and driver.” He named a figure for a week’s work that was more profit than our trading post made in a month of Sundays.

  “I’m good for it, Mr. John. Listen, could you fix things for me to get on the train at Seligman?” That was the last stop before Winslow, 140–150 miles west, roaring nonstop through Flagstaff on the way.

  “What for? Miss Darnell will just be getting up, eating lunch, that sort of thing.”

  “Check her back trail, that’d be a good idea.”

  Not exactly honest. The truth was, I wanted to ride the Super Chief.

  “All right. The studio will get you on board at Seligman. Julius will drive you there and follow with the car to Winslow.”

  “When?”

  “How far from here to Seligman?

  “About two hundred sixty to seventy miles.”

  “Two days?”

  “One and a quarter. Second part is paved.”

  “Ollie!” he called.

  An assistant director trotted up, got instructions to check on the Super Chief’s arrival times in Seligman and in Winslow the day after the next day, no room for mistakes. Miss Darnell was valuable property. When Ollie brought back the times—one o’clock in Seligman and about four at Winslow—Ford said to me, “Make damn sure you’re at the train platform on time.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ouch. My stomach went south for a minute or so. The prospect thrilled me, and it stung. It meant that after more than six years, I’d get only one night at home with Mom and Grandpa before running off again. But, I told myself, we needed the money bad.

  “And, again, keep your eyes open,” said Mr. John. “She’s a hot commodity in many ways, and her marriage doesn’t slow her down.” Here, another sigh so long that it almost hit the ground. “Plus, that damned Zanuck is feeling fussy.”

  I’d heard plenty of griping about Darryl Zanuck, head of Fox. Mr. John spat out a handkerchief, which was pulped. “The security we’ve got around here? Sadly lacking in experience and in guts.”

  He turned to face me again with his look that could melt metal. “I’m counting on you.” />
  “Good with me.” I’d carry my sidearm. Second nature, and no one had to know.

  “Ollie!” More trotting. “Introduce Seaman Goldman here to Julius.” He focused his good eye on me again. “You two get it set. Deliver my actress like a baby in a cradle.”

  Julius spared me one blip of his attention. He acted bored, probably pissed off that a Navajo was made Linda Darnell’s bodyguard. I noticed that he was packing, which meant he wasn’t just a driver, he was part of location security. I hoped he hadn’t heard Mr. John’s remark that included the words “no guts.” No one wants to hear that. I’d do the best I could to get along with Julius, but it didn’t seem like it was going to be easy. He wore a gray cloud around himself.

  We agreed that he would pick me up tomorrow at sunrise. As he talked, an unlit cigar as thick as my thumb jutted out, probably as permanent in his mouth as his teeth.

  Now I had to face up to a knotty problem, a personal obligation. Jake Charlie had made just enough words to let me know what rough shape the trading post was in and how much work Mom had planned out for me. I needed to come up with a way to get that done for her.

  Not impossible. A score of Navajo men were hanging around the movie location, holding their horses, watching the shoot and hoping for work as extras. Mr. John paid eighteen dollars a day, which would buy a lot of coffee, beans, bullets, and flour.

  I had some dough. During the war years, ’42 through ’45, I hadn’t gotten the thirty days of annual leave I was due. I could have taken those last four months at the end of my second enlistment, like some guys did, to get home early. And I would have done just that, except I got a letter right then saying Grandpa was gone to the hospital in Santa Fe and would be there for weeks or months. Mom was with him, and the trading post was closed up for a while.

  I wanted to see Mom and Grandpa. But I am Navajo—I don’t go into hospitals unless I get dragged there. And so there were more reasons we’d need money. Medical bills. I worked right to the end, and left the navy with mustering-out money plus four months wages. I carried it in cash, naturally. The nearest bank was all the way to Flagstaff.

  I scanned the faces of the waiting hopefuls for my clansmen. Spotted two standing right together, Katso and Oltai Neez, brothers. I’d known them all my life.

  “Ya’at’eeh, Katso, Oltai.”

  “Ya’at’eeh, Yazzie.” No wasted words.

  “I got some work if you want it. Fixing corrals, repairing roofs, whatever else Mom needs doing.”

  I didn’t need to say anything about Grandpa. They knew. They waited patiently.

  “Five dollars a day, probably ten days of work.”

  I waited.

  “Haghwhoochii,” which means in Navajo, ‘Okay,’ or ‘It’s a deal.’

  No haggling. We all knew I could have gotten them to work for less. They realized I was practicing generosity, a basic Navajo virtue.

  “Early tomorrow. Mom will tell you want she wants done.”

  “Haghwhoochii.”

  Glory be. Done in a flash. Home duties taken care of, hired for a good job, and money pouring into my pocket.

  What danced through my mind now was beyond belief as my reality. Riding the Super Chief. A movie actress on my elbow. Getting paid for living the high life. Definitely the luckiest guy in the world.

  I got into the truck with Jake Charlie, who hadn’t moved from the steering wheel, and I started to say “home.” There was a pang, and the word got caught in my heart. I felt like a traitor. I wanted to see my family, to hold them. My attention went out especially to my grandfather because of his … what had happened to him.

  But my mind was running off the track. For years I’d been hot to ride that train to Los Angeles and see the movie stars. Six years in San Diego, I never had the bucks for the Chief and hadn’t seen a single movie star. This is the kind of time when you think, Life is one crazy ride.

  Sure, there was plenty to like about Southern California. The balmy weather was only half as hot and half as cold as the Navajo rez. And I loved—no way to put this delicately—I loved how amorous the white women were. Lonely ladies. A guy who is six feet six inches tall, red-skinned, spruced up in a white uniform, good-looking, and a twenty-four-year old man instead of an eighteen-year-old boy like the other sailors. It made for some fireworks.

  My body was headed home, and my heart was opening to receive Grandpa and Mom. But my mind was riding in a studio car, no doubt a doozy, and flirting with Hollywood’s most beautiful woman.

  So who the hell are you, Yazzie Goldman?

  * * *

  Scorched Buzzard staked his stolen horse and watched from the top of a rise. A dozen Navajo men sat halfway down the hill, observing. He studied them, making sure none was old enough to remember him. Bit by bit, watching and listening, he came to understand what he was seeing. Some people from out in Hollywood were making a movie. They had put up a fake town, the fronts of their buildings running along a newly bulldozed road. That machine with men gathered close to it was the camera, and the actors were playacting in front of those lights.

  He remembered well the one movie he’d seen as a young man, a bunch of fighting between white men and fake red men. Silly, but it explained why the Navajos were waiting. They wanted work, in front of the camera or not, any work that paid.

  He thought of going up to the trading post that overlooked everything, the one called Goulding’s. It hadn’t been here a quarter century ago. It was fancy, a big, rambling building for trading and living plus three cabins built of sandstone. Maybe the movie people built those cabins, or maybe the traders had put them up for tourists. A funny idea, tourists in this far, far end of the rez, a place with grass and water enough only for a few sheep and many fewer people. Zopilote wondered which bilagaanas, white people, owned this post, and how they made enough money to run such a big business in this remote piece of Dinetah. He had gotten squat from his native land.

  Before he rode on—before he found her—he wanted only one answer. He was curious about the young Navajo standing near the camera, outfitted in the dress whites of the navy. What could a Navajo sailor have to do with this movie foolishness?

  He led his horse over to a couple of the young Navajos who were waiting. “Ya’at’eeh,” he said.

  “Ya’at’eeh,” came back.

  All three of them watched in silence. The young men were polite enough to wait for their elder to say what he wanted.

  “That Navajo sailor,” Zopilote finally said, “the one in uniform.” Pause. “Who is he?”

  “Yazzie Goldman,” came the answer.

  “Goldman,” Zopilote said casually. “Some relation to the old Jew at Oljato?”

  “His grandson.”

  Grandson. Grandson. Yazzie Goldman?

  As if struggling to remember, Zopilote said, “I know that family. That sailor is the child of Nizhoni?”

  The young men looked at him closely. He shouldn’t say much more.

  At last one of them said, “Only child.”

  Zopilote nodded.

  Only! And from his looks he was in his mid-twenties.

  Zopilote had to get away. He shrugged, like it was nothing to him.

  He stood slowly and duck-footed up the slope. Her only child. Yazzie Goldman. My son. MY son.

  He mounted and walked his horse slowly along the road. Beyond the first hill he would gallop. He had to get to Oljato Trading Post right now. It was only an hour’s ride away. She was there. He would watch her. And the old man. And sooner or later he would see his son.

  Buzzard soared to the thought of what he would do to that family.

  Three

  My mother, Nizhoni Goldman, sat on the post’s wide stone gallery, watching. Nizhoni means beautiful in Navajo, and at forty-two Mom had not only beauty but style. She showed off her love of flamboyant colors in velveteen blouses and full skirts. Her magnificent squash-blossom jewelry was a declaration. That was Mom all the way—“if you’ve got it, flaunt it.” Her regal bear
ing and family turquoise marked her eminence as the queen of her realm, Oljato and the surrounding mesas. And it wasn’t all show. Mom knew that her regal bearing brought in business, red and white, and served as a cornerstone for negotiations.

  She didn’t need to tell me that even through recent lean times, she never gave an inch in her appearance or demeanor. At just five feet, she commanded far more respect around Oljato than me. She was generous with neighbors and hard-boiled to outsiders. She advanced local people supplies even though she knew we’d never get paid in full, but she drove a hard bargain with tourists. She had spoiled me rotten. All this without setting down her scepter.

  After six long years I ran to her, picked her up, whirled her around, and gave her the world’s biggest smooch. She smelled like melting honey on hot fry bread. A smell that sang, “You are home.”

  “Stop that!” she said, feet flying out behind. I spun her all the way around again. At that moment a dust devil fussed up and blew a handful of dry cottonwood leaves in my face.

  “See,” she said, “unruly boys get their faces slapped.”

  I set her down, and she looked at me with the depth of feeling only a mother has. I don’t know if there’s any words for that.

  I looked over the top of her head at Jake Charlie. He wasn’t used to displays of affection.

  “Jake Charlie got all the trading stuff you asked for,” I told her. “We better unload.” Most of what we sold was delivered in a big truck by an outfit named Babbitt, but it was cheaper in Flagstaff. We always needed the supplies of everyday life, like coffee, sugar, and beans, for ourselves and for the folks that came in wanting to swap a basket or tell stories.

  “Unloading can wait,” Mom said. “Sun’s almost down.”

  She called, “Jake, go to the sheep now. Get YouKnowWho on her way back down here while there’s still light.”

  Who on earth could YouKnowWho be? Since when did Mom hire a woman to watch the sheep?

  “No questions,” Mom said. She could always read my face.

  Jake Charlie soft-footed it back to the truck, a loyal shadow.