There were not a lot of dining choices in Window Rock, Arizona after nine o’clock at night, so Josh David went with his old reliable, the McDonald’s off the Loop Road, open 24 hours.
Sandwich wrappers blew in the strong west wind, adorning the surrounding sagebrush bushes like Christmas tree ornaments, and several drunk men and women were passed out in the grass along the edges of a parking lot full of battered, dusty pickup trucks.
Josh joined the line at the carryout window, reviewing the events of the evening while he pondered his next move. Should he drive back to his home in Page or just camp out on the Rez? He still had a lot of unfinished business in Window Rock, and the idea of driving across the empty Rez, dodging drunks, rabbits, and nighthawks, was not inviting. Plus, he had a story to write.
The drive-through line moved quickly. Just as he finished paying for his order for a double cheeseburger, fries, and a large Coke, his cell phone rang.
The gravelly, cigarette voice on the other end was Josh’s editor, Tom Hall, in far-off Phoenix. An old-school journalist, Tom rarely slept, thought everyone was lying, and lived and breathed the news. He had just gotten wind that there had been big trouble out at Window Rock and he wanted to know what Josh knew about it. In between bites, Josh reported what happened, emphasizing the violent riot, but leaving out the part about the ominous stranger.
Tom couldn’t stop laughing. “Hippies beating up armed Russian thugs, man, now that’s what I call a goddamn news story. And then you throw in the crazy Navajos, and you could sell tickets.”
Josh was too busy eating his dinner to respond with anything more than a grunt.
Tom was off to the races. “Okay, Josh, this is great news. We can scoop all the other papers. There wasn’t anyone there from the other dailies other than you, right?”
“Just the Navajo Times,” replied Josh as he took a swig of Coke.
“Perfect,” exclaimed Tom happily. “I will make room for your story in tomorrow’s afternoon edition. So, I will need you to get me the copy—let’s say, no more than 1,000 words—so I can edit it. Can you do that?”
“That’s my plan, Tom,” Josh replied as if it actually was. He would be spending the next few hours in McDonald’s pulling together the story. Tonight, he definitely wouldn’t be driving home.
Tom spelled out the game plan. “Look, Josh, this story has legs. And there are multiple angles. But we need to eat the elephant one bite at a time. Right now, I need your first installment as quickly as you can get it to me. I see this ultimately becoming a series of stories, so you don’t need to cover all the bases or tie up all the loose ends. Your next bite needs to be that slippery shit Jimmy Greyeyes. I have known that guy for years. We did some stories a few years back about how he was skimming money off the tribe’s natural gas leases, but nothing stuck. But that guy is always hiding something—probably a lot of things. Got it?”
“I got it, Boss,” answered Josh, pumping himself up for the assignment. This was his chance. He was now playing on the big stage, and this could be the ticket to his dream job as a full-time reporter for a major metro paper. He needed to get this right.
“My gut tells me this thing’s going to take us down some very interesting roads. Don’t fail me,” Tom said.
The editor hung up, and Josh dropped his greasy phone on the passenger seat of his truck.
As if on cue, the Hopi archaeologist Bradford Numkena headed into McDonald’s. What the hell would he be doing in Window Rock at this time of night? Hopi was almost two hours away.
Josh had worked with Bradford on a few stories about pothunting and resource rights over the last two years, so he knew him pretty well. And he liked and respected the man, though as with most Hopi, getting him to talk was usually like pulling teeth.
Josh got out of his car, almost tripping over an empty Mickey’s Big Mouth bottle. “Good thing liquor’s illegal on the Rez,” he said to himself.
Josh walked into the restaurant, and when he smelled those golden fries he realized he was still hungry, so he got in line behind Numkena.
“Fancy meeting you here,” said Josh to the back of the Hopi archaeologist’s head.
Bradford turned, and when he realized it was the newspaper reporter, he flinched.
Josh flashed a grin. “I didn’t see you at the Council meeting tonight, but it was so crowded I could have easily missed you. That’s why you’re here, right?”
Bradford was saved by the young Navajo girl waiting at the counter. “Next,” she said with a friendly smile.
The teen took the Hopi’s order, and as the harried staff put together his meal, he said nothing. When his order was laid out on the brown plastic tray, he turned and walked past the reporter. “Off the record,” he muttered and walked over to a table in the rear of the restaurant.
Once Josh had his order—a repeat of the first—he ambled over to Bradford’s table. “Mind if I join you?”
Bradford gestured for him to have a seat. He was apprehensive. His right foot was going a mile a minute, and he closed his eyes before speaking. “I need to stipulate that our conversation is strictly off the record. You can’t quote me or use anything I say tonight because officially, I am not even here.”
Josh chuckled as he unwrapped his second double cheeseburger. “Relax, Bradford. I have way more than enough already for my story. I mean, you saw that circus. There were a lot of balls in the air tonight. I’m going to have a hard time catching them all. But I am a bit curious why the Hopi archaeologist was attending a Navajo Council meeting about a resort that’s nowhere near Hopi.”
Bradford nodded as he took a big gulp of his Diet Coke and looked down at his unopened food. “The Hopi have very strong ties to the Little Colorado River.”
He took a few french fries from their red cardboard sleeve and popped them into his mouth. As he chewed the hot delight, he looked at Josh with hard eyes. “You will need some background history to understand the Hopi connection. It goes back for ages and heads off in a lot of different directions. So, let’s start at the beginning.”
Josh nodded, again eating avidly.
“We Hopi believe this is the fourth world where we have lived. The third one was underground. When we emerged through the Sipapu on the Little Colorado River, we were greeted by Masaw. He is the God of Fire and Death, and he lived up here above ground and had the whole place to himself, other than the animals and plants. He was their guardian. And there were no humans. The Hopi instantly loved this new world and asked if they could live here too. Masaw agreed to swap his home for their former underground home from which they had just fled. But on his way back down below, he instructed the Hopi to follow the true path, or heads would roll. Literally. And he warned us that he would always be watching.”
The reporter forgot about his meal as he listened to the sacred Hopi origin story from a real Hopi. “I’ve heard a little about Masaw, but not his connection to the Little Colorado. He’s a badass, right?”
Bradford, still hungry, took a bite from his Big Mac midstory. After he chewed and swallowed, he said “It’s not that simple, my friend. Nothing is when it comes to Hopi cosmology. Masaw is a shape shifter. To women, he can look like the most handsome man they have ever seen. To children, he is usually a scary ogre. To men, he can appear as almost anything. He is called the Skeleton Kachina and he is the only one of our deities who doesn’t go home after Niman, our Going Home Dance in a few weeks. His Fourth World home—the place where he lives when he visits us—is called Skeleton House, and it’s located at the bottom of the Little Colorado River, right about where the gondola terminal would be located.”
Josh listened, fascinated, as the plot thickened.
“Masaw is with us all the time,” Bradford continued. He is also called the Death Kachina, and because he lives in a world of opposites he often walks or climbs a ladder backward. He can walk through fire. And his word is the ultimate law.”
Josh picked through his fries and marveled at the creative imagination of humans. “Well, I can see why the Hopi are so interested in what happens to the Little Colorado. It’s obviously a place of great power for your people.”
Bradford finished his sandwich and closed the square packaging box. “Yes, and there’s a lot more.”
Josh settled in, remembering in place of taking notes. “Go on.”
“The sacred Hopi Salt Mines are also located near the confluence of the Little Colorado and Colorado rivers. Clan leaders make yearly pilgrimages there to gather salt for our ceremonies and dances. And at the end of the Wuwutsim ceremony, the initiation for males into adulthood, young men walk all the way from the Hopi Mesas to the Salt Mines and back—over a hundred miles each way—as part of their rite of passage. If the Salt Mines were damaged, my people would no longer be able to perform our religious rites.”
“Two hundred miles is a long walk,” said Josh.
Bradford took a sip from his drink. “And let’s not forget the Two Hearts.”
“The what?” asked Josh.
Bradford’s voice dropped to a whisper. “The Two Hearts were the ones who poisoned the Third World with their evil deeds. Some of them came up with the people to this world and have caused untold evil ever since. Legend says the Two Hearts, the Hopi version of the Walking Dead, gather at the Sipapu down in the Little Colorado for a big ceremony each year.”
“Zombies?!”
Bradford looked terrified even talking about the Two Hearts. “They kill others—family members—so that they may live forever, like prehistoric vampires. And they only can be controlled by Masaw.”
As the story finished, Josh tried to process the impact of all that the Hopi archaeologist had just shared with him. There was a lot to absorb and a spiritual dynamic far bigger than he had ever imagined. As he walked out to his car to get his laptop, a deep sense of unease came over him like an ill wind.
to be continued …