Like drunkards we are, we staggered along in the rain-soaked clay. The rain continued steadily on, mocking our slow progress toward our goal: the teacher’s housing project in the distance. Alcohol and rain haze made it difficult to judge space and time.
We slipped simultaneously and fell side-by-side in the mud; this was the fifth or sixth time. We struggled to our feet, our glasses smeared with clay, our hair matted with mud and my white shirt the color of Kayenta gray. Slightly stupid, we half dragged each other across another 100 yards. Occasional salt brush and snake weed challenged us. Aged beer cans and wine bottles peeked up through the mud—another tale; another time far past.
My friend Scott and I started out midday drinking a few beers with Mike, our good buddy. We didn’t expect rain. It is late afternoon now; I think … the rain distorts time. Deciding not to drive on the highway, we took the back way home. The old road that ran past the dump and winds whenever their arroyos didn’t, sneaking out toward the trailer court where we each had a lot with rent. Halfway through our plan, we stopped. He parked his Subaru about 100 feet ahead of my truck.
We sat in the back of my pickup truck inside the camper with the tailgate down. We drank beer and traded thoughts. We talked about love, lust and our own discoveries. We sang a few songs, mostly Dylan and Merle, a few Willie and some gospel. We sat back there for over an hour. It got late; we decided it was time to move on. We realized it had been raining all along. We didn’t expect rain.
He drove off ahead of me. I followed and quickly found out that the road had muddied up so bad and I began slipping. In some areas, the ruts became little arroyos, deep and narrow. In such an arroyo, I slid this wet afternoon. After several futile attempts at getting out, I just got stuck deeper. Scott came back and we surveyed the situation and decided help was what we needed. Back at the trailer court, we tried unsuccessfully to recruit muscle vehicles. We finally returned to my truck, negotiating ditches and mud traps, only to slide into the same deep rut about 20 feet behind my truck.
After another can of beer each, we chose to walk to the teachers’ housing. That was much closer than where we lived. The muted, dark slash of buildings in the distance was our hope. Scott slips again taking me with him. We came up laughing, faces caked with mud. His pale skin and light hair, my bronze Navajo skin and dark hair were indistinguishable. We were equal in the mud.
Progress is slow and tedious—unsteadiness by the slippery clay and a few packs of watered down Utah beer. We were moving steadily when we came upon the first of several deep and wide arroyos. We slid down into the muddy brown water below. We scrambled up the other side, sliding back into the water a few times. I kicked off an old diaper and other debris that was clinging from the muddy water.
We could see the housing clear now. It was deceivingly close. We had a ways to go and were tired. The sheet that held a few cans of beer was now a lump of clay in my arm. We felt and looked like rough clay sculptures lurching across this broken landscape.
The second arroyo had us lying in the mud for a few minutes catching our breaths. We didn’t expect rain. We didn’t expect to be stuck in the mud and we certainly didn’t expect to be lying here like mud clowns of ceremonies. Despite the constant drizzle and frequent contacts with the earth, it was warm. I tossed away the muddied beer in a sheet. Perhaps one day it will peer out and taunt another wayward adventurer.
We finally made it to the clearing where slabs of concrete lie in readiness for more housing. We stomped our feet and tried to remove as much mud as we could off ourselves—we had to look presentable when we imposed on our friends. Massive earthmoving machines were parked nearby, invincible and bold in the rain. We talked of using it to pull their vehicles out. Scott was serious but we had to move on. We crawled through a hole in the hurricane fence and staggered onto the pavement of the Kayenta Unified School District teacher housing. Feeling like alien intruders about the corrupt and nice neighborhood, we stood there on the wet asphalt. What a contrast: out of the wilderness and strife into geometry and convenience.
We cleaned up some more, which wasn’t much. My once white shirt was now the same color as my jeans. This was not a day for white shirts. The rain had stopped and the mud clinging onto us was beginning to dry. I felt my face cracking with smears of dried mud. I smiled and thought, my whole face is going to fall off. Shafts of late afternoon light peeked through the overcast sky. I felt it only rain on us and our paths. Fortunately for us, there was no lightning.
We moved on up the sidewalk. Clean cubes of housing with lawns lined the street. We felt like intruders, germs in a sterile space. A young man in a T-shirt and trunks stood there on the sidewalk. We exchanged pleasantries. He is new to the community and this is one of his first impressions. We left him amused and a little scared, I believe.
Scott and I stumbled into the backyard of our good friends, Tim and Priscilla, both teachers. We collapsed into lawn chairs. Tim invited us in, muddied and all, but we declined. We like to think we have some degree of pride and principles. We sat out back and talked with our friends, giving them the details of our adventure that afternoon.
We looked out toward the east, out past the concrete slabs and arroyos. Our vehicles glinted in the evening sun, parked innocently out in the distance like they would move any minute. Curse the luck; curse the rain and the mud. We laughed and bumped bellies.
Another friend helped us out of the mud later that night. It turned out that I was never in four-wheel-drive and that I could’ve crawled out that afternoon and saved us all this hardship. We wouldn’t have had a story then. I pulled out Scott’s Subaru the next morning. In the process, he burned out his transmission and some other vital parts. His car never did run again after that. My friend Scott is still abiding in Ogden, Utah.
