Moonlight Water by Win Blevins Page A

air was being sucked out of him.
    â€œIt’s a nice one, Leaning Bird,” she said.
    She could see that her words jolted him. He inhaled deeply and let his breath out. It sounded like years of breath and secrets withheld.
    She went on impersonally, “Leaning Bird. Single family, dating from about eleven hundred A.D. , lots of potsherds and corncobs still in it because it’s on the Navajo side and it’s hard to land there. If you take the time…”
    He struggled not to get sucked into the magnetism that sang to him from Leaning Bird. He grabbed Zahnie’s words as a lifeline to the present and held on.
    â€œI mentioned time. You’ve heard about Navajo time?”
    â€œKind of, yes.”
    â€œIt’s similar to what Anglos call mañana land—it’ll get done when it gets done. Maybe. Makes them very impatient. Navajos, we think it’s what whites don’t know, what they don’t hear. Leaning Bird reminds people of that rhythm. That things happen when they happen, no rush, give everything the attention it needs, get to the next thing whenever you get there. Which will piss off an employer who is expecting you at nine o’clock.”
    He paid attention to the ebb and flow of her words.
    She said, “This is amazing country, ruins and rivers and red-rock walls. You want the short, white-man version of where you are?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œThese rock walls date to more than two hundred million years ago, when dinosaurs were roaming around. Further downriver, the walls rise higher. The whole area was pushed up by a collision between oceanic and continental plates. When they collided, the rock layers were folded up, just like when you push on a rug. The river has since cut its way down the crevices into the fold.
    â€œThis place is a map of time on the earth, geologic time. The river cuts a giant slice and lays it bare so you can see it, where the ocean once was, where all the layers were formed, fossils from sea creatures. A million years here, a million there. You understand time passing, shaping the earth, how things changed and how they keep changing, going on forever. You don’t feel it with head knowledge. It’s bone knowledge.”
    â€œAnd there were people here.”
    â€œLots of them, Desert Archaic, then Basket Makers, then Anasazi. The rock art is their message, what they wrote down, not for us, but for themselves and their children, to describe their world. We’re part of that chain going back in time, forward in time, one link as important as another.”
    â€œI saw rock art yesterday. It vibrated.”
    He saw her look at him strangely, and felt a little embarrassed. “I’m not sure what the Anasazi story is,” she went on, “the real story, beyond the facts. New Agers imagine them as an ideal society, farmers who lived in tune with the earth.
    â€œSome archeological evidence says the Anasazi had the same troubles we have, including war.
    â€œWhatever we can know of the truth, it’s in the rocks. Rock is what lasts, so that’s where the story is told, the rock of the cliffs and the rock of the ruins.”
    Red gazed down into the water as it rolled by. I’m doing it, Winsonfred, he thought. I’m listening to the stories.
    He grinned to himself.
    â€œWhat are you thinking?”
    â€œIt’s smart-ass.”
    â€œJust like you. What are you thinking?”
    â€œAbout that old Bill Haley and the Comets song, ‘Rock Around the Clock.’” He sang out the first line smart and sassy.
    â€œI give you all that great stuff, hand you mysteries, and you’re reeling old rock and roll through your head!”
    He shrugged. “It’s a funny head.”
    *   *   *
    First he heard it. A blast of sound loud as a Tchaikovsky symphony with all 120 instruments blaring full bore, except that this sound was chaos—slams, sucks, swooshes, gushes,