The Winding Sheet

With deepest regard toward the great Navajo and Hopi and Tewa people, and all Native Americans everywhere, I humbly pray that you may forgive a stupid white boy's prayer for rain, and may The Great Spirit accept my straight words...




It was autumn of 83, very early autumn, and it was good to get out of Jerome.  Damn that place and it's damned ghosts and government secrets...had that old red Javelin running like a top...strangely...for 50 bucks, that's what you pay for a car with no pink slip and a whole bunch of trouble...but I wasn't asking...I was going...and all the ghosts of old Jerome, were going "good riddance kid, get the fuck gone!" Man, that suited me to a tee. 

I remember, I had my red on, red car, red hoodless parka, red running shoes...don't know why I was 'red man'...just was. I drove on down the old dirt road, kind of a gently rolling road, past picnic tables along the river...snuck up on one guy, I was going so fast, and so quietly, neither one of us realized the other was there...he just saw red...and I just saw him flogg'n it for all it was worth, naked on the table top. By the time he was grabbing at his shorts, I was clean outa there. Passed through Cottonwood and into Oak Creek Canyon and famous Sedona of the red fucking rocks, where you're welcome...if you're rich, and damned if you're not. I got into their pants plenty of times too, and they didn't like it neither. Another place with secrets, money secrets, white secrets...you could  smell it in the slick red rocks, and you could feel it coming from vibrations in the ground...goodbye Sedona...assholes.

Next stop...Flagstaff, Arizona, home to the San Francisco Peaks, sacred to the Navajo and Hopi people...more white guys...goodbye Flagstaff...assholes. I was heading due east into the darkness now and the v-8 under the hood kept a constant purr humming like a big kitty cat. Winslow, Arizona...home of the big meteor crater, a lot of dying drunk native Americans, my people, and not many white people...except me...Hi Winslow! I stopped for dinner and gas, danced with myself and drove on into the night and stars of the high desert.

I know that I got out somewhere there, way  up on the res (reservation) that's where the white government shitcans all the indians and all the indians shit can the white man cause, sure as shit they are 'off the grid', as is said, way out there, living like they always did, in hogans and round houses and isolated by miles and miles...identified to each other as 'the people by the red Ford rusting' or 'the goat people of the blue corral hogan', or 'the river bend people with two dogs humping'...I made a solemn prayer...to the Great Spirit, and in my youthful arrogance I prayed for something to help the native American people on the whole reservation...RAIN...fuck oh dear...

So, I slept some where, woke up, grit in my eyes, hand down my pants, stiff and sore, pun intended...oh god I do love mattresses and do so dislike sleeping under the steering wheel of a car. I lit up a cig, a non filtered Pall Mall or Camel brand, symbolic significance to camels that nobody but me probably gets...pursuit of the shekinah...and smoked deeply on that cool high desert morning...nothing flies in the sky on the res without elegance of spirit...and I watched for that elegance...It might have been Tuba city, deep in the western  edge of the res, that I stopped at next, having breakfast...nobody bothered...felt free...forgiven...driven toward a mystery...I split and my Javelin horse carried me...farther east, always east...Canyon de Chelley, there about mid day, parked up beside the canyon rim overlooking Spider Rock that stood needle tall, like a great sandstone dick of nature, and at its base, a kiva(house carved from living rock)ancient Anasazi, 'the enemy', yet, no one knows why...

I stood there...I stayed there, most of the day and prayed my silly prayer, my silly prayer, that would be answered in a most amazing way. By late afternoon, I had driven on...east, always  east, near the New Mexico border, perhaps beyond...one loses their self out there...sky and earth become one...borders evaporate into one and there, the sky, a brilliant blue and deepening, of late afternoon, a little lake, along the highway, a little lake I shall not name, just now, and too a tiny chapel, named, oddly 'Something of The Something Lake'...I knew I was home, at least for this time.

And there, to the lakes south end, around a sort of bend a roadside park...in which I parked...and began to gather firewood to start in a fire pit. Night came on, stars came up, like stage lights to God's own theater...I had rice and honey and fried trout in a fry pan, a sacred meal on a sacred night, and took my fill, and let the ambient flame cast shadows on the car...I rolled my sleeping bag atop the hood, still warm, from the day, and lay back...all well with the world...

I felt that first drop...then drops and stir of breeze, then wind, then furious activity surrounding me, all lights and klaxon horns and bells and colors flying round and round and in between and up the trees and rain and lash, pursuing me...I ran, with bag in hand and dived into the back seat of the Javelin...it rocked it rocked like baby in a cradle, tree top broken, rattled me and sang to sleep...by the playful manitou of Navajo land...I knew not...morning came...langurous, deliciously alive'ly wakened, ready for anything...I thought...I got out, walked about the park...clear morn, nothing to define some storm the night. No limb, no trashcan overturned, no frying pan, no pine cone or needles on the ground, as if, twas swept by some clean broom...hunger sent me on.

A trading post somewhere there along that borderland, south now, I traveled, in a great circle. The Javelin guttered some, a backward growl of pipes, whose timeing off, were still gentle...opened the door, stepped out, somewhat overshadowed, I gazed up, and there, the winding sheet of God, and for the first time...I was scared, in awe of some awesome power...stretched above me there...It was a cloud, I guess, all bruised in reds and dark blues and purples...and old yellow...it crackled...as I tiptoed to the trading post...there stood a tall stately Navajo woman, wearing jeans and Turquoise and silver..."gonna rain maybe" I said in a small voice..."I hope so" she uttered..."I don't think so" I said, under my breath..."Take care"...I left.

A quick and penitent run to the car...dove in, engine up, purrr. the first lightening strike...hit the hood...then more, and more and fiercest rain and lashing wind...let off the brake, began a roll, more lightning strikes, all red...get that...all red upon the Javelin's hood, and on I went...25 miles an hour...towing this monster ship of storm...from the sky above, like a great sand worm of Dune, only this of sky and cloud and rain...and rain and rain...it did so rain...I never ever saw it rain so...and hail, that all the cattle lowed, there beside the road and the standing water stood above the axle, yet we rolled, my horse and I.

An old indian man in an old pickup rolled ahead of me...he rolled and he was my little company, for 30 miles, or 50, or a hundred...I don't know...I prayed to God we wouldn't be incinerated. A bend ahead, a gentle turning, a fork, I took the right. he took the left, and towed that damn thing out of there..."Oh...God forgive", I cried..."Thank you", and watched it drift away, a mile wide, five miles long, that rung out rag of prayer, I should have never prayed.

They had the Grader's and Bulldozer's out in Kayenta...all the indian cities got rain, and all the little towns...buckets, brigades...deluges of the stuff...to answer one little man...and teach me a great lesson there...for there are still places, in this world where prayer...heart felt... is still answered...but be careful...what you pray for...

Written by Bruce James Clyde 2015

A tale of my exuberant youth

Art: Ray Roberts Navajo Land-Loom Painting