Journal

Page 71

71

They came to a hogan, right at the canyon mouth. There must have been a road to the house from somewhere, because a vintage pickup sat beside it. An old man, bent over a cane, his gray hair in a Navajo knot, made a hobbling dash into the hogan when he saw them coming. Turk said they if they waited outside for a while he might come out and greet them. They waited maybe ten minutes. It was hard to say how long it was; neither one of them wore watches, and they were high, after all. Sage got a bad feeling. “I think we’re not welcome here.” “Don’t worry about it, Sage. Let’s go on.” But to get to the mouth of the canyon they had to go by his house, and she thought she saw the curtains on the back of the house move. The crows flew straight over them, cawing loudly, and Sage said, “What if it’s the harbinger of a bad change?” The crows followed them to the mouth of the canyon. “They’re guarding it,” she said. Turk gave her a dismissive look. She tried another tactic. “Let’s come back here when we can spend all day. We got a late start. It’s going to get dark soon, and we can’t explore the whole thing.” Fortunately, Turk went for this. The farther she got from the old man and the crows and the canyon, the better she felt, until she was running ahead of Turk, racing the sun back to their little hogan. Turk said the whole day meant they had great and glorious things to do together. The crows were proof. She tried to convince herself that he was right, but she still felt like Turk was missing things. The old man didn’t want them there, and neither did the crows. She had to work hard to enjoy sex that night. Turk didn’t seem to notice that, either. It turned out that the high desert got cold at night, even in the fall. And she had to admit she shivered in the back of pickup trucks; they had to hitch rides to buy groceries in a town two hours away. But she wasn’t going to complain. One thing that did bother her was having to get the fire


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