Driving distracted her, pushing away the last few hours. Far to the east she spotted some dark clouds but they appeared distant and she couldn’t be sure where they were heading. The rental car was a black Toyota Camry; it still smelled new and there were only 550 miles on the odometer. Shiprock, the town, loomed up quickly; had she been driving a little too fast? Camilla bought gas at a Shell station and then reluctantly pulled into a McDonald’s. Most of the stores she’d encounter before reaching her destination would be convenience markets, selling an even worse variety of the junk food she was going to consume.
The burger tasted like ashes and the coffee was flat. Her mind returned to the excitement of the last few weeks. She’d lost contact with Dan for two or three months while she finished her studies in Toronto and took her qualifying exams. When Wendy had sent her word of the high school reunion, she’d sensed an opportunity. Camilla had texted Dan two times before he sent back word that he’d be attending. “Can’t wait, honey” he’d keyed to her. They’d both been too busy, but she’d never doubted his steadfast caring over the last year or so. Hadn’t he sent her that expensive perfume she’d craved that a Denver store carried? There’d been the Christmas check with his strict instructions to spend it on the laptop she needed.
The black clouds looked like they had strayed further west, nearing the broad summit of the Hogback when she got back on 491 heading south. They seemed faster moving than expected. Camilla thought herself an expert on Four Corners weather, but then the weather around the country had been screwy these last few years. And hadn’t everything she expected turned out so much different from what she planned on? The last few weeks she existed in a haze of excited expectation. She was going home, getting a decent job on the reservation. Classmates had been incredulous that she was rushing to take a job offering much less money than she could get off reservation, but then they didn’t understand the tug and pull of her homeland. Besides, any excitement she’d miss would be compensated by her visits from Dan. He had a solid plan to spend a certain amount of time in major league sports, and then retire with savings to coach kids at an area school. If he picked Albuquerque, well that was worth relocating. And not so far from home.
Camilla was grateful when she put on the turn signal to exit the highway. Those clouds seemed to be positively racing now. A funnel of dark rain drenched the Waterflow area. Could she make it over the pass before they arrived? Belatedly she remembered it was monsoon season. Storms from the Pacific Gulf looped up through the region and circled clockwise down through the Colorado Plateau. Except, come to think of it, this road was much smaller than the highway. She wondered if she might get stuck behind another car or a slow moving truck.
The sunshine held as she passed the Red Rock Trading Post and looped south of Red Valley on County Road 13. All the traffic seemed to be coming the other direction passing her as she accelerated slightly, looking for the break in the dense wall of mountains that towered over her. They cast a shade of their own even as she caught a glimpse of the rain funnel heading toward the Chuskas. Somehow the threatening rain seemed grimly appropriate after today’s events.
Camilla had felt almost giddy this morning leaving her parents’ home in Aneth. She’d flown in to Albuquerque the day before and driven the rental car straight to their house. Her father had butchered a sheep; a dozen or more relatives drifted in and out, eating, chatting, and teasing her about her new college degrees. She’d taken pains to dress well, choosing a navy sheath dress and matching pumps with kitten heels. She wanted Dan’s first look at her to be a good one. She’d brushed off her Aunt Glory’s comment, when she had reported she was meeting him at the reunion. Now it came back to her in all its flat caution. “Are you sure things are the same with you and that Ute of yours?” Although Navajos and Utes lived side by side in this portion of the Four Corners, an instinctive wariness filtered through their daily interactions.
She’d arrived at the reunion reception around 11 a.m. Wendy and several friends greeted her ecstatically. Some couples were dancing already, others clustered near the door to greet new arrivals. Camilla would have liked to stand near the door, but she didn’t want to look too anxious. The turnout was good, with nearly two hundred students in her graduating class of 2010, there appeared to be at least one hundred with others arriving regularly. Food lined the tables placed against one wall, but she found she was too nervous to eat. Her first moment with Dan would take place very publicly. When a particularly loud buzz sounded near the entrance to the hall, she gazed over and saw Dan’s head. At 6 foot, three inches, he towered over many of his classmates.
The rain hit just as she found the road split, with the right hand turnoff aimed at a cleft in the mountain wall. This was the Lukachukai Pass, still marked as Route 13. Camilla flicked on the Camry’s bright beams when all went dark around her. The car downshifted as the road ahead began to climb. The resultant hum raced as fast as her heart, she fancied, bent over the wheel peering ahead.
(continued next week…)
