You should have felt the adrenaline when we heard that car coming. Our hearts were beating in our ears and we had on these crazy smiles and wild eyes. This was going to be good. What we didn’t expect was for a drunken man at the wheel to come racing down the dirt road at high speed, hit the rock barricade with magnificent force, losing his front bumper and his muffler and come to a dusty metal-on-rock screeching stop. We didn’t even count on an irate drunk exploding out the front driver’s side door with a bat. We didn’t think that we’d have to run for our lives. But that’s exactly what happened.
When we saw that crazy man there was no question about it: we were out running like rabbits down a maze of deep arroyos with stagnant filthy smelling water at the bottom. And just like in the cartoons, we came to a fork in the arroyo; four boys went one way, and two ran the down the other way. I remember thinking and running, God please let that man go down the other arroyo and not after me and Joe. We ran like hell sloshing through that stinky mud. No way out unless you could climb straight up arroyo walls like Spiderman.
We ran forever before the walls gave way to narrower and smaller walls. Joe, who was eleven years old was whispering loudly and out of breath, “What are we gonna do when we run out of arroyo Delbert?” Crap, I didn’t know. But just when I was about to say I didn’t know I saw a small tree with some good cover growing out the side of the arroyo. Being thirteen years old at the time, I jumped up and crawled in and turned around and hoisted Joe up into our hiding place. And we waited.
After what seemed like forever under that tree, we started to whisper.
“When can we get out of here Delbert?”
“I don’t know… but I think we better just wait ‘til night time.”
“Oh man, my dad’s gonna kill me if I get home after dark.”
“That crazy man out there will really kill us if he catches us. We just gotta wait Joe. If you want I’ll talk to my older brother to talk to your dad and…”
And right about then Joe’s eyes got super huge and he couldn’t point except to shake all over and look scared. I stopped talking and saw a shadow draw up over Joe and the tree we were hiding in and I swear it felt like that was the last time I would ever be alive.
The crazy man was out side of our hiding spot and breathing heavy. He came after us. This time his footsteps sounded odd. There was a metallic clanging to his steps and I heard that noise before when my dad was carrying his rifle hunting rabbits out at the farm. Oh God! The crazy man had a gun and a bat! It’s funny now that I think about it seeing Joe trembling and wetting his pants. God that was hilarious, but back then I was on the verge of darting out from under that brush like I seen rabbits do when my dad was out hunting. But we sat there, still, quiet, our ears flattened against your skulls, trying to make ourselves smaller and invisible. The crazy man walked right by us and soon we could hear him in the distance in not so good English with a heavy Navajo accent, “You boys come back here! I ain’t gonna hurt you. Just put them rocks away where you found them!”
Something about his voice told me and Joe he was lying. There was no way in hell we were gonna hop out and say, “Sorry mister, we didn’t mean to rip your car all to pieces.” No way in hell.
So we hid out there and waited and waited. We watched the shadows of the tree’s branches crawl from the west to straight down, and then to the east. We waited forever before moving. But before moving, Joe and I started whispering about who was gonna take look out and see where that crazy man went to. I decided Joe was too little to dare this risky move. So, like a prairie dog with a hawk flying in circles way above, I slowly peeked out and around, ever ready to pop back down or make a run for another hiding place. Man, I was tense. I looked this way and that, frustrated by the tall rabbit brush blocking my view. Nothing. I looked back toward where the car was. Nothing. I dropped back down and saw that Joe was crying.
“I don’t see him Joe. He’s gone. Don’t be afraid,” I said trying to calm him down. Joe was my best friend. And then he started stuttering. So today, if you ask me where Joe started stuttering, I can tell you it was right there under that tree along the arroyo and after building that stupid barricade. That was when his S’s were one to many and his D’s got dragged out way too long.
We finally decided it was time to move. I told Joe to wait while I made my way along the bottom of the remaining lengths of the arroyo to the end where it gradually raised up to meet the surrounding landscape. I looked back and saw Joe sticking his head out from under the tree looking at me with eyes all big. I waived to him to come but to keep low; that day our war games we played was real, what with that lunatic out there hunting us down like rabbits.
After meeting up we discussed that the safest route out of that mess was to go to the trading post about a mile away and use Joe’s only quarter to call my brother Steve to come get us. We leapfrogged from one bush to the next, ducking and diving and looking and waiving to each other to come. Finally we made it to the road. After crossing the road one at a time we made it across Grandma Helen’s field and in the middle we stopped frozen, dead in our tracks. At the end of the field a man stood with his arms out waving wildly. We both squinted as best we could; squeezing rays of light into a thin beam that bounced off the back of our eye balls making the man come into sharper focus. It was Grandma Helen’s scarecrow.
Finally, after a day of hiding and running, we made it to the big cotton wood tree near the trading post and stopped dead tired. It was just a little further to go, not more than 20 yards to the pay phone. We started moving again and we heard a burst of laughter. The old gang was there already, all four safe and sound. It sure was good to see them laughing and waving us over to the cool shade of the trading post.
When we got there Anthony, Vernon, Greg and his little brother Ollie were sipping cold sodas. Anthony started laughing hard and said, “From here we could see you moving across the valley like real army guys!” His nick name was Ants.
“Ants, man, when did you guys get here?” I asked taking a cold drink of soda from Ollie’s bottle.
“We ran straight here man. We didn’t stop for nothing when we saw that crazy dude chasing you and Joe.”
“Was he really behind us?” I asked.
“Shoot, he was so close to grabbing Joe that I was sure you guys were getting the crap beat out of you when we lost you guys.”
“And you didn’t call Steve or the police or anything when you got here?”
I was sick and tired of Ants. This was why he wasn’t my best friend. He never thought of anyone else except himself and what made him laugh. He was really laughing now.
I looked down at Ollie and Greg’s feet. Their father was a white doctor at the Presbyterian clinic near the old school. They were wearing flat pieces of sand stone rocks on their feet, taped up with duct tape; somewhere during our escape Ollie and Greg lost their flip flops along with their nice $20 dollar fishing poles and tackle box. I swear they looked like cavemen with their crazy rock sandals.
I asked Ants about Ollie and Greg’s rock sandals and Ants said when they saw the crazy man chasing after me and Joe they knew they had time to stop and look for flat rocks to tape to their feet. I remember thinking it must’ve been nice for Ants, Vernon and Greg and Ollie to just stop running for their lives and stroll around looking for rocks to make sandals. Just great.
We started out for home after finishing up a call to my big brother Steve. Steve was in the 11th grade. Steve said we could go screw ourselves because he wasn’t going to leave his summer job, drive across town and pick us up, except he used the F word instead of screw. Steve was a big jerk sometimes.
We could hear the old car roaring along without its muffler minutes before we could see it coming. That noise sent us running again, this time into the hills behind the trading post. It was long past sundown when we finally got home and sure enough, there was Mr. Yazzie waiting for Joe. My big brother Steve hollering for me to come to dinner. When I got home Steve said I better get ready to tell mom what happened. Walking through the door I thought it would’ve been better for that crazy man to have caught a hold of me.
I looked down at Ollie and Greg’s feet. Their father was a white doctor at the Presbyterian clinic near the old school. They were wearing flat pieces of sand stone rocks on their feet, taped up with duct tape; somewhere during our escape Ollie and Greg lost their flip flops along with their nice $20 dollar fishing poles and tackle box. I swear they looked like cavemen with their crazy rock sandals.
I asked Ants about Ollie and Greg’s rock sandals and Ants said when they saw the crazy man chasing after me and Joe they knew they had time to stop and look for flat rocks to tape to their feet. I remember thinking it must’ve been nice for Ants, Vernon and Greg and Ollie to just stop running for their lives and stroll around looking for rocks to make sandals. Just great.
We started out for home after finishing up a call to my big brother Steve. Steve was in the 11th grade. Steve said we could go screw ourselves because he wasn’t going to leave his summer job, drive across town and pick us up, except he used the F word instead of screw. Steve was a big jerk sometimes.
We could hear the old car roaring along without its muffler minutes before we could see it coming. That noise sent us running again, this time into the hills behind the trading post. It was long past sundown when we finally got home and sure enough, there was Mr. Yazzie waiting for Joe. My big brother Steve hollering for me to come to dinner. When I got home Steve said I better get ready to tell mom what happened. Walking through the door I thought it would’ve been better for that crazy man to have caught a hold of me.
