AJ was so silent and still after we entered what I call "red rock" country that I finally looked over to see if he'd fallen asleep.
But he had this boyish smile on his face. Eyes missing nothing as we sped along, me behind the wheel of that Jeep and him just taking in the desert grandeur on the passenger side.
Even so, I was surprised when he asked, "Can we turn off the music, maybe?"
I was used to people freaking out when it started to get hard to find any music once we got out that far. They seemed to need music to keep in touch with the familiar world we were leaving behind as we sped past the blazing red mesas and bright turquoise sky on the long, empty two-lanes.
So, I was relieved when AJ leaned into the silence and serenity. Because Net, cell and cable service would be sporadic at best where we were headed.
"So, they're Native?" he asked me.
"Yep. Yoli's grandfather was Hopi, anyway."
"What tribe is her husband from?"
"They're Crees. Canadian. His grandfather's kinda famous, actually. Back in the day, if you saw any movies about Native people, he was probably in it. In fact, the whole fam had a lock on those roles—you know the old 'colored people quota.' Same few people get the call all the time."
"Yeah, I ran into that, too. Doesn't matter how famous you are outside of the U.S., when you start trying to take meetings in LA, it's like, 'We've already made our Asian movie for this year.'"
"Do you want to act?"
"I did two dramas that worked out well. But they were fan service, you know? Cutesy."
He took his eyes off the view to look at me, finally. "And you met in college? You and the wife?"
"Yoli Poli. Yep."
"That's not her real name, right?"
"Yolanda Poleala. Yoli Poli."
He said, "cute" in Korean then. It almost sounded like "cute." Or I heard something like, "Kee-oh."
"Hubby's name's Ronnie Bird, Jr."
"Is he an actor, too?"
I squinted a little, looking for the totally unmarked road I had to turn down soon. "He looks like a movie Indian—stereotypical type they like with the long hair and all. But he's an artist."
"Ah."
"Well known one. And also...well, you know those t-shirts you see at swaps and in the convenience stores and truck stops out here? With the big eagles and wolves and dream catchers and things on them?"
"He does those?"
"Started a little side hustle in college that blew up because Yoli had the connects through her grandfather."
"More show business?"
I laughed and said, "Totally different story. If you ever watch Antiques Roadshow, you'll see pieces of his jewelry sometimes. And each piece is always worth, like, thousands of dollars—the appraisers always freak out over them. But he lived in this little trailer on the rez his whole life. The dealers and shop owners made pilgrimages to him, instead of him going to them. So, she inherited all that money."
"Hit the life lottery, these two."
"Yeah, they left the rez because they started to feel like they were turning into the family's private 24-hour ATM machines. People stopping by to tell them about this and that thing they just needed a little money for."
"Friends and family started to hit my mom up for money and favors like that."
"But you didn't get paid that much at first, right?"
"They saw all the nice little presents and things I got her. Saw her all dolled up at the awards shows and things with me, too. So..."
I snorted and shook my head as I made the turn down the dirt road that would take us way up into the mountains where the scenery changed from desert browns to alpine forest greens.
"God, this is amazing," he said. And he would keep saying it so often that I was afraid he was going to ask them if he could stay.
It really was magnificent, though. Disney movie meadows full of tall grass and wildflowers and thick stands of bushy junipers, tall piñon pines and white barked aspens with a creek running through them—you could drink from that thing, it was so pristine.
As we got closer to our final destination, he lit up again and said, "Drums..."
"Pow wow."
His eyes almost doubled in size. "For real?"
"Little bitty one. Same few families every year. But they get some pretty famous dancers and drum groups, though. They come to sing and dance for love instead of money—they get some expensive gifts, though. Room and board's on the house all weekend, too."
"And you cook?"
"I do whatever I'm asked to do. Mostly cook shack stuff, though. I taught her to make fry bread. And bannock."
"I know fry bread but what's bannock?"
"It's this really simple bread you can mix up and bake in a skillet in, like, just a few minutes. I learned to make it because our family was owned by Scots back in the slavery days—it's from over there. All the women in our family learned to make it. And Ronnie's people love it like all the tribes down here love fry bread. But Yoli didn't know how to make either one."
He was about to say something about that when he just...froze and pointed.
"Tipis, right? I mean, like...real ones..."
I laughed and said, "You scared?"
It was just the opposite. He grinned from ear to ear. "Do we get one?"
"Wow."
"Do we?"
"Hate to disappoint you but your girl needs indoor plumbing and all the amenities, son. So, we'll be in the little bitty cabin I like."
Even so, dude leapt out of the Jeep when we got to the main house, like we really were at Disneyland or something. Just stood there with his arms crossed over the top of his head watching all the Natives walking around in full regalia.
And you know what I noticed? He looked like them. In fact, the more tanned he got, out chopping wood and whatnot later on, the more like them he looked.
Because...okay, you know already, right? Some tribes came over that land bridge and others sailed to South America in boats—that's a chapter that was left out of the whole Moana thing.
But however they got here, it was Asia they came here from—or what we call Asia now. So these were, in a sense, his people. Freaked me out when that dawned on me.
Freaked them out that he was so fucking fine. Yoli shot me a look after we'd hugged the stuffing out of each other and said, "This is going to be fun..." Meaning it was going to be just the opposite, actually.
Cause...well...Native women will say some shit. Seems like it to me, anyway--especially the older ones. I mean, I thought my aunts were bad, but the ones at the pow wow got snarky with it immediately. Talking about, "Man needs a real woman. Instead o' that skinny little stick-legged thing over there."
I'll spare you the really smutty stuff but suffice it to say they "sized" him up right quick, too. And I was almost kinda sorry he passed that test because it got around.
In fact, as I was introducing him to everyone, Ronnie strolled up, stuck out a hand and said, "What up, Big?"
And all the people in the arbor got a good laugh out of that.
The arbor, BTW, is the spectator shelter that surrounds the arena where all the dancing and drumming takes place. It's usually built of wood with leafy branches on top for shade.
The families of the drum groups sit right behind the drums, usually. And the families that had been attending for years sat in the same places all the time. But they didn't shoo away guests who broke the protocols. Over time, newbies generally picked up on all that and moved back.
As always, I didn't get to sit much at all. I was up to my elbows in some kind of dough for the duration. Kneading with and being teased by those crazy women.
They put AJ to work, too. Didn't know who he was and wouldn't have cared if they had known. Ronnie's fam would bring famous friends sometimes and they were put to work, too. There had to be free food for the guests all day long, especially the dancers and drummers and their families.
So, AJ was out with the men chopping and hauling wood for the cook shack and evening fires. He'd drop a big armload at my feet all proud and the women would "glare" at me...
Especially one I hadn't seen before. She was apparently from Tahiti—half Japanese, they kept telling me, even though I kept telling them AJ was Korean. Whatever she was, the bitch had thick hair down to her butt and a body I also couldn't compete with—none of us could.
I was just the only one she seemed to be trying to compete with in a weird, passive-aggressive sort of way. Started out helping me scoop up flour from the huge Bluebird bags and then started "teasing" me about needing to be helped.
"You trained that man to help you all the time, huh?" was the first shot over the bow. Shook back all that hair and gave me this little "Kidding/not kidding" smile as she went strutting away, back field in serious motion...
Yoli eased over my way and said, "Came with the MC."
"Charlie brought her?"
Charlie Horse (yeah, corniest stage name, ever) was one of the most popular "hosts" in the Native world. Quick with the quips; kept the crowd guffawing and also well informed from start to finish. Always wore a top hat with a big old eagle feather in it as if to say, "Yeah, I'm only taking this assimilation stuff so far, yo."
Charlie's name in the ads guaranteed a good turnout—made your event legit. And he always showed up for this one.
"He's that age now. Where they wanna find some hot young thang to see if that'll make it stand up again."
"Yeah, but he works the circuit, though. He's gotta represent hard at these things."
"The ladies'll laugh him back to his right mind. Come in the house for a bit. Let's do some catching up."
I loved their house. It was this huge sort of Victorian looking thing or the closest they could come to back in the day when they built it and the cabins the owners used to rent out mostly to hunters and sports fishermen. The local stone kept it cool in the summer and warm enough in the winter that the big hearths were all they needed most of the time.
Which was perfect because they had weird utility issues up there, too. When the lights flickered, Ronnie would smirk and say, "Hamster fell off the wheel again," and head out to fire up one of the generators.
We sat in the "Arizona room" in back. Where I could stare at the towering aspens shivering in the wind like they do.
"I Googled him," she told me. "He's different from the other little mannish boys. Had that throwback kinda vibe—I playlisted some songs, even."
"He was at the cookouts and stuff. Even over in Cali, before they moved back to Korea. So, they didn't have to teach him that shit."
I got the "Let's get serious" stare then. "He's in the biz, though, Eboni."
"Saw that comin'."
"Well, you went through a lot of crap out in Cali. I will never forget the time you caught that fool at a party you were working. With...whoever that was..."
"I'm surprised it only happened once. I mean, he worked those parties, too. Just...in a different way."
She smirked and rolled her long lashed, doe eyes. "I'm surprised you let it slide for so long. I mean, you'd seen lots of guys like Blaine at those parties. And you knew they had a short shelf life out there, too. He already had a pretty bad rep when you met, didn't he?"
"We were both down for the count when we met. Recognized the desperation in each other's eyes..."
She just watched me for a bit. Waiting for the rest of the story...
So, I finally said, "I cannot tell you how hard it was to be bossed around by some hoe who was only livin' in that big old house because she could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch."
Took her a few minutes to stop laughing at that one. And then she said, "This AJ guy's got a nice-sized...hitch..."
"Y'all need to stop."
"I said that to see if you'd tried that hitch trick on him yet."
"I'm...takin' it kinda slow with this one."
"Is that wise? Given how many potential hitch suckers he meets every day?"
I was about to talk about the "spring fling thing" when her eyes wandered. And just as she said, "Speaking of which," I saw where her eyes had wandered to.
It was that Tahitian woman, hula shaking those hips left...and right...left...and right...to the down beat of those drums.
About three feet in front of Ronnie and AJ, in the arbor.
Which seemed a little bit too shameless even for her...