A Rainbow in Paradise (9 page)

"Ooh." Eden winced, fully caught up in the
tale. "I can imagine how those troops felt, marching into
this."

"Apparently they started with a great deal of
confidence," Logan continued. "They had a Zuni guide who showed
them a path that led down from the battlements up there..." He
pointed. "...to the valley floor, somewhere over there." He
indicated a slight break in the wall. "They came in from the top,
hoping to break up the People and scatter them in both
directions."

"And did it work?" Eden asked.

"They planned to reach the canyon floor early
in the afternoon, and then sweep all the way to Chinle before
nightfall, but it took the soldiers so long to negotiate the
hazardous footpath down the canyon side, that they had to set up
camp in a cornfield here at the bottom almost as soon as they got
here."

He grinned, his eyes twinkling. "It's said
that as they were setting up camp, they watched a Navajo signal
fire begin to burn on the escarpments above them, then another, and
another. By the time it was dark, the cliffs were alive with
hundreds of signal fires. The next morning, the troops were up at
first light, packing up the whole camp and hightailing it back to
Forth Defiance as fast as they could go."

Eden was enthralled by both the story and
Logan's knowledge in telling it. But she knew the ultimate end of
the tale had not been happy for Logan's people. "How long did the
wars go on?"

"Pretty much forever," he said casually,
then, to show her he wasn't being flippant, he added, "As the Dineh
tell it, they'd been at war first with the Spanish, then with New
Mexican irregulars and slave traders for a good two hundred or two
hundred fifty years before the American military got involved."

Eden felt overwhelmed by such numbers. "Two
hundred fifty years?"

"Um-hm."

"That's a long time to fight."

“For the People, it soon ceased to be a war
and became a way of life. Many generations lived and died without
ever knowing a period of more than a few short years one could call
peace." He spoke for a while longer about the tragic events.

Eden had never heard any of these facts in
her basic history classes. "I had no idea."

"Most people don't." Logan seemed ready to
drop the subject.

Eden wasn't quite ready to drop it yet.
"Logan, you spoke about raids against the rancherias. Are you
referring to places like this one?"

They had climbed out of the riverbed and were
looking up now at a small outpost silhouetted against the dun rock
wall a half-mile beyond. It was a simple place with an eight-sided
hogan of logs and earth at its center, a couple of corrals made of
stacked and wired branches, and an outbuilding that probably served
as an animal shelter or corn crib. Eden shuddered to think of how a
family might withstand the assault of armed cavalry, with nothing
more than this to protect them.

Logan stopped the truck. "Much like this," he
said, "though in the earlier days, there were ricos, or rich
men—like Manuelito or Ganado Mucho—who had much pastureland and
great herds."

"Ganado Mucho. Doesn't that mean Many Cattle
in Spanish?''

"You speak Spanish?" He seemed surprised—and
pleased.

She smiled. “
Asi-asi
,'' she answered,
tipping her hand back and forth in the expression that means
"so-so."

"Well, you got his name right, anyway," Logan
responded. "It does mean Many Cattle. Many of the early Navajos had
Spanish names because of their long dealings with the Spanish, and
as I said, many of them were quite wealthy, including most of the
head men—"

"Is that like a chief?"

"Somewhat," he answered, "although the Dineh
followed those whom they trusted, depending on the situation, and
most didn't do much following at all. In fact, that's the point I
was just making. The People tended to live scattered abroad in
small family groups, with little contact with others except during
ceremonial times. Their traditional way of life contributed toward
making them easy targets of the slave raiders." He shrugged. "Then
again, it made it tougher for an outside power to conquer them," he
said, gesturing at the canyon around them. "When's the last time
you saw a Navajo city?"

Eden considered. "Chinle?" she asked
tentatively. If this was a trick question, she hoped her answer was
at least close.

"Nope. That city, like most of those on the
rez, was created by the European men who came later as a way of
organizing governmental activities and trading areas."

"Okay, I'll bite. Which Navajo cities are
traditional?"

He smiled knowingly. "There aren't any.
Unlike the Kisani," he said, using the Navajo word for their Pueblo
neighbors, "the People didn't enjoy living close to their
neighbors. It was our style to live in separate family units, each
in its own hogan surrounded by acres, sometimes miles, of
cornfields and pastures. We never grouped together as others did,
except for ceremonies. It made us easier targets for small raids,
but—"

"—but safer against large military
conquests," Eden finished, recognizing how difficult it would be
for an army to round up thousands of people, one small family at a
time.

"Exactly," he answered, apparently proud of
his pupil. "Between the scattered nature of their dwellings and the
natural fortress of this canyon maze, our Old Ones held out for a
very long time."

Eden read the sadness in his voice,
recognized the sorrow in Logan's quiet acceptance of his ancestors'
eventual defeat, even while she heard his pride in their
achievement. "I'm sorry," she said, commiserating.

Something shifted in the mood between them.
She felt it instantly, even before Logan's eyes snapped up, pinning
her with their gaze. Eden wriggled under his stare, like an insect
pinned to a cork board. "Why are you sorry?" he asked.

She stammered. "For th-the conquest, the
loss."

"What was your role in it, Eden? Did you
wield a rifle? Send your husband out to buy you new slaves for your
kitchen? Send your young men out to slaughter our stock where they
grazed in the fields, hoping we'd all starve to death over the
winter?''

Eden stammered, not knowing whether to feel
hurt or angry. "I—Of course not," she choked.

"Then don't apologize!"

Eden felt her spine stiffen. "I... I wasn't.
It was meant to be... sympathy."

"Sympathy? What makes you think I need your
sympathy?"

Eden bristled. She didn't know what she'd
done to start this, but she didn't like it one bit. She stiffened
her backbone and fixed him with a stare as icy as his own. "I
didn't say you needed my sympathy," she answered, her voice as
sharp as his. "I offered it out of friendship, Logan." She tempered
her next words. "Listen, I've obviously touched a nerve here. I
didn't mean to. Maybe we should start back now."

Logan's face darkened, and then paled. He
stared at her and choked out a rough apology. "I... I'm sorry,
Eden. I guess I've had my fill of bleeding hearts who want to take
personal responsibility for everything that ever happened to my
ancestors, then use that as an excuse to make me into some kind of
project—or the object of their pity. It was wrong of me to assume—"
He stopped, tongue-tied. "Sorry," he said again, finishing
lamely.

His sincerity cooled Eden's own pique. "I can
understand that," she said quietly. She'd often felt like more of a
project than a daughter to her father—at least since her mother's
death. Before that, she’d meant nothing to her father. "Pity can be
a terrible burden to bear."

When have you ever experienced pity
?
he thought, barely able to keep himself from speaking it aloud.
You, the beautiful woman who has had her way paved through life.
When have you ever been told to smile and be thankful for the
trucks full of other people's hand-me-downs with broken zippers and
holes in the knees? When have you and your buddies been herded like
sheep into a tent full of people with clipboards, jeans bagging
around your ankles while some white-suited physician spent two
minutes poking and prodding, then handed you over to another white
suit who'd hit you with five different needles before she walked
away? When have you eaten week-old bread and moldy cheese under the
smug gaze of overfed government workers
? He thought all those
things, but what came out was, "You seem to know something of
pity."

Eden, prepared for a sharp response, was
uncertain how to respond. "I suppose it comes in all forms," she
said, planning to let the subject drop. Then she realized he
expected her to share as he had, and she prepared to tell him a
little of her life.

Chapter Five

"My mother died when I was
in high school," she began, still not sure how much she wanted to
say. "My father was never very... very warm or involved in our
lives. My high school counselor referred me to a social worker when
I took Robbie—he's my little brother—to class with me one day. He'd
had chicken pox, but the scabs were healing, and I'd already missed
all the school I thought I could afford to miss, staying home with
him, so I took him with me."

"Where was your father?" Logan asked.

"That was what the counselor wanted to know."
Eden took a deep breath and blew it out in a sigh. "The truth was,
I didn't know. We hadn't seen him in a couple of weeks."

Logan swallowed, feeling her pain. He thought
of the child she'd been. Perhaps Eden did know something of pity.
Maybe she had even deserved some. "What happened?"

"The social worker was in the process of
setting us up in a foster home when Dad showed up and threw a
tantrum, demanding they give us back."

"And did they?"

She nodded. "My father could always talk his
way out of whatever trouble he got into—with my mother, or later,
with the authorities."

Logan nodded, this time with some sympathy of
his own. "You weren't close to your father."

"I hardly knew him." She sighed. "I still
hardly know him."

Logan continued nodding, but his next words
seemed more for himself than for her. "It can be difficult to feel
such distance from one's own blood," he said. Eden started to ask
what he meant, but he shook himself, as though driving painful
thoughts away. "Where is your father now?"

"Southern California. He remarried recently,
and moved out there with his new wife."

"Leaving dear little Eden to clean up after
him," Logan said, referring to the house he had been painting when
they'd been together last.

"Yes, in a way you can say that, but it turns
out the house was my mother's only, not in joint possession with my
dad, and she left it to Robbie and me. I'm really doing my own work
when I'm busy getting the house ready for sale."

"I think you're cleaning up after a lazy
father who never cut you much slack," Logan said. "I suspect you've
spent much of your life since your early teens cleaning up his
messes in one way or another—''

"Not really, Logan. He just—"

"And making excuses for him in the process,"
he added, starting the truck's engine. "Come on," he said. "It's
time to get some lunch."

Still frustrated over Logan's too-perceptive
observations about her relationship with her father, Eden spoke
little as they drove away.

They continued driving for a time, commenting
to each other on small things they noticed. Eden was amazed at the
way the canyon changed. Sometimes the two walls seemed fairly close
together. Other times the canyon widened until one wall seemed
distant and the other almost out of sight. Sometimes there were
several homesteads across the width of the canyon; other times a
single
rancheria
seemed to fill the canyon completely, and
other times there were no hogans or mobile homes or tarpaper
houses, no sign of people at all. After a while Logan turned in at
the dooryard of one small hogan and waited for the homeowner to
come out to greet them, then negotiated in Navajo for several ears
of native corn that had been roasted in the husk. That settled, he
bargained with the Navajo householder—a slim, middle-aged man in
jeans and red plaid flannel, his legs bowed from long years in the
saddle—for a half-dozen fresh peaches.

Though the bargaining seemed fierce, Eden
noticed that they reached an agreement quickly. Then, when the
farmer brought his peaches out for inspection before money changed
hands, he turned them over to her, silently acknowledging her as
Logan's companion. It was a heady feeling, almost as if Logan's
people—personified in this one man—had opened their arms to take
her in. She wondered if Logan had noticed, and whether he'd say
anything. Warming under the man's gaze, Eden thanked him profusely
as she accepted the proffered fruit.

"These peaches are beautiful," she said to
Logan as they drove away. "I've never seen anything like them."

"You're probably used to the peaches in the
grocery store," Logan answered. "They're always picked a little
green so they won't spoil on the way to the store. These ripen on
the tree. The family picks them at the peak of their flavor." He
nodded toward the fruit she held. "This is a late-ripening variety,
so the peaches we bought just now were probably picked late
yesterday, or even this morning. They should be some of the best
you've ever eaten."

"They're certainly among the biggest I've
ever seen," Eden said, as she turned a softball-sized fruit in her
hand. "And the reddest! I didn't even realize there were fruit
trees up here—let alone trees that grew fruit like this."

"You didn't think we had fruit trees?"

Logan's voice held an unusual hint of
something. Eden couldn't tell whether the underlying tone was humor
or offense. "I guess I just didn't think about it," she answered
quickly. "Everything I've ever seen of reservation lands always
seemed so barren and dry. I know there's never enough water
anywhere in northeastern Arizona, so I guess I just assumed there
wouldn't be enough water to grow fruit orchards up here,
either."