the woman looked like one of those beautiful tumbleweed children.  the ones with the 
tangled mess of blond or brown hair clumped together in dreds on their head,  hemp jewelry 
twisted around their ankles, wrists & neck,  wrapped in shapeless, dull-earthy-army-drab 
colors, & always with an interesting hat or shoes on.  hippie children tumbling down the 
road towards the next mountain town to hug & chain themselves to another tree with that 
faint smell of cloves & other green smokable things.

so i slowed the car, i wasn't going that fast since i had just left cuba.  i passed by 
her a little so the spray of small gravel wouldn't hit her.  she reached down & grabbed her 
two bags & started running to the car, her dark blond hair swinging wildly.  i tossed all 
the junk on the front passenger seat in back & unlocked the door.  she opened the door & 
i smiled & said hi.  i thought i saw a look of panic cross her face.  she asked a little 
gruffly, "how far are you going? you going to bloomfield?"  i told her yes & she got in. 
she stuffed one of her bags under her feet & pressed the other onto her lap.  i waited 
till she put her seat belt on, then we took off.

i was drinking tea & munching sunflower seeds & i didn't want to be rude, so i asked if 
she wanted a soda & pop tarts.  she didn't want any.  i asked her if she was going home. 
she was.  i got the feeling she didn't want to talk, so i didn't push it & soon got lost 
in the big blue black clouds creeping over the pine tree covered mountains.  i guess i'm 
used to Navajo hitchhikers that talk your ear off & give you their current life story & 
their sheepdogs life story on the way to chinle or tuba city.

i could feel her glance at me.  my medicine bag (the little bag i carry my tylenol, 
sudafed, etc. in) was sliding off my lap, so i grabbed it & stuck it under my leg.  she seemed 
to take this as an insult.  i could feel her exhale hard.  when i adjusted the cruise 
control i could feel her tense.  then i hummed a little with madonna & she squirmed a 
little.  we were coming up to a hill & she said, "just pull over here & let me out.  i - i - i 
just want another ride."  so i pulled over.  she was fumbling with the door.  it's one of 
those high tech "ed-ju-ma-cated" cars that locks you in as soon as you put it in drive. 
she was looking a little panicky.  she bolted out the second she could, wrestled her bags 
from the car & ran to the road & stuck her arm & thumb straight out.

i pulled back onto the road, set the cruise control & turned up the radio.  i tried to 
sing loudly & badly, but my heart just wasn't into it.  what was it?  was it the obnoxious 
piglet pink of the acrylic sweater that my grandma gave me cause it had no pockets?  or 
the polyester pinstripe brown-ness of my $1 fleamarket pants?  maybe it was the little 
cowboy hat air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror?  perhaps if i had one of those 
little green pine trees hanging somewhere she would have stayed & talked with me all the 
way to bloomfield.  maybe it was that i offered her a coke & cherry pop tart & that my car 
was unnaturally clean?  maybe it was the music?  it was one of madonna's faster songs & 
not all that soothing, but i turned it down...  perhaps she would have stayed if i was 
playing that one song that goes, "how many roads must a man walk down, before you can call 
him a man..." 

maybe it was just the brown-ness of me.  maybe she wasn't really one of those lovely 
tumbling tumbleweed kids after-all.  she had the look, tried to talk the talk, but she 
definately wasn't one of them.  maybe she's one of those bordertown people that's afraid to 
come across the river.  thinking that sodom & gomorrah exists on the other side of the san 
juan.  eventually i turned off NM44, onto the rez by NAPI, turned up the radio & sang 
loudly & badly.

            WARNING: The contents of this site are the property of "chimEra" and copying or plagiarizing of the contents are prohibited