The Sleeping Ute
By:Pete
After nine years of marriage, Mary knew that the holidays were not a good time to ask her husband for a favor. Ben Slow Bear, ensconced by the first hints of early December Saturday sunlight over the shale knob that bordered their Mancos property, snored loudly enough and measured enough to live up to his name. And Mary, despite the effect of his nasal growl on the migraine that had awakened her pre-dawn, found him amusing, even desirable. His dual-braided gray-laced hair pointed different directions like TV antennae; his supine body offered a slow rise and fall, fueling his drunkard’s thunder. The smile forming on her lips competed with the wrinkle of her headache, leaving her seventy-year old face as lined as the topographical erosion down the western Colorado mountainsides. He had always been judgmentally pointed, though usually inconclusive; she imagined his response: “The gluttony of the white man’s holiday…” he’d shake his head sadly, trailing to a nothingness that might last hours, if not days. Still, the thought of driving herself to Cortez with a migraine left her at least tempted to make the request. “Ben Six Beers,” she joked, “get yer Ute butt outta bed,” the line delivered in her best B-western-sheriff, a Saturday morning salutation as old as their marriage.
Ben, near but twenty years her junior, pulled himself swiftly into sitting position as always he did upon her beckoning, a reflex she considered - something innate and leftover from the time his ancestors needed to awaken at the snapping of a twig, survivalist hard-wiring. “Morning,” he offered through a yawn. Without another word, he was shuffling toward the shower naked as a newborn, his squat and increasingly flubbity body wiggling in his wake. Mary located her bedside mocs and eased her swollen feet into them, releasing a long sigh before pushing off their pine wood bed.
Though her back was to him - she was cooking at the griddle - he asked, “Migraine?” “Yup,” she confessed, turning with the flicker of a smile. “Hangover?” “No worse than usual, thanks. Pancakes?” “Yup. Syrup?” “Please.” Such was their existence. His insightfulness into her condition provided the clue she needed: she would ask.
Ben Slow Bear was born in the late Fifties on the tribal lands, Weeminuche Ute, in the foothills (actually, folded-arm hills) of the Sleeping Ute Mountains. His ancestry included several semi-famous tribal members: most notably his great uncle who had traded Ute land abutting Mesa Verde in order to extend the tribal land north to the McElmo Creek, an act lauded for gaining his tribe greater seclusion; and more recently his father who - when Ben was twenty-nine - gleefully plowed into a federal marshal with his 1960’s Ford pickup while driving in a drunken stupor, an act that would have landed his father in jail had he not slit his throat while sitting in the cab of the truck at the scene of the crime. Ben, bearing the shame of his father’s actions, abandoned the tribal lands the morning after his father had returned to them. Intent on bettering the default of selling self-made jewelry to tourists in a decrepit shack beside the Four Corners marker - an occupation he had entertained more than any other over the years - Ben rented a one bedroom clapboard house in Mancos and scheduled himself to take the government employment test in Durango at the soonest opportunity. His aptitude, coupled with his unmistakable native-American-ness, allowed him to trade the temporary work he found as gas jerk for the stiff hat and starched, olive uniform of a park ranger.
By day, Ben Slow Bear offered insight into Native American ways to the white man tourists at Mesa Verde; by night he drank three beers - six on Friday - at Mancos’ only bar, the Millwood Junction, before returning to his small home alone - where he’d fall asleep, always, listening to Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited on a record player that had stealthily liberated from the tribe’s common room before departing. This bedtime ritual was a recently (and inexplicably) reincarnated habit from his youth when on the first day at the Montezuma Valley public high school a hippie had taken to his bear-tooth necklace and offered the album in a clean trade. Ben felt obligated to accept the offer, despite the fact that he had no idea what an album might do, and he certainly had no idea who Bob Dylan might be. He had spent years listening to the vinyl disc in hopes of understanding the white man; to be clear - not Bob Dylan, but all white men. When Mary learned this she chuckled that he could not have chosen a less approachable method. Ben Slow Bear solemnly pointed out that the method had chosen him. She nodded silent agreement the way a lover is wont.
Mary Cullen-Hutchkiss had traveled from the east to Mancos with her late husband every second year for a week’s worth of horseback riding at a nearby ranch. The passion for riding horses had been his; Mary, despite her own desire to sip frilly drinks on Caribbean beaches, endured the trips in the name of love. Until she discovered - thanks to a lawsuit splashed all over the Philadelphia Inquirer - her husband also held a penchant for riding members of the secretarial staff at his six hundred employee consulting firm. As her social circle contracted from embarrassment and her husband’s firm sputtered to nothingness, Mary found comfort in two things: 1) her husband’s cowardice - as evidenced by the gunshot he fired into his own head inside their pool house; and 2) the insurance money and untouchable pension assets that enabled her to move from her Main Line manse to the only place in the world where she felt she could safely disappear, namely Mancos, Colorado.
Mary had traversed over two thousand miles to disappear, Ben had trekked twenty; they both met equal success. In a town of one thousand, everyone knew everyone, but nobody knew squat about anyone; unless it was offered freely. Ben was the merely guy who imbibed three beers every night, six on Fridays. Mary was the woman who bought a ranch in the middle of nowhere even though she seemingly despised horses. Six months into Mary’s relocation, just at the point she realized how scared she was to be alone and how cold the winter nights could be, she approached Ben on a six-beer night at the Millwood, but just as he started his third.
“You’re Ben Slow Bear.”
“You’re Mary No Horse.”
“No, actually, my name is uh…” She saw the glint in his eye, the quiver of his upper lip and realized she was being played - a joke revealing what the town folk really thought about the horseless rancher from the east. “Yes,” she smiled, “I am.”
“Please to meet you, Mary No Horse.”
“Likewise, Ben Slow Bear.” He drew from his beer. “The thing is, Ben, every Friday night I come here to dine. And I see you, the man everyone knows will down exactly six beers before walking home.” He said nothing. “Tonight I was wondering if - when you finish that beer, the one in your hand - you would like to return to my place, strip bare with me, and climb into my bed so as to keep me warm.” Mary straightened her back, pushed out her chest, tilted her head inquiringly, and waited. And waited.
Just as she raised her arm, to ward off the invisible blow of rejection (under the guise of running her hand through her short-cropped silver hair), Ben spoke. “You mean this beer?”
“That was the proposition, yes,” Mary smirked.
Each was waiting for the other to laugh. “Okay, then,” he replied.
All of this history swirled as distant, as meaningless, as the roadside dust clouds visible in Ben Slow Bear’s rear view mirror as he drove his Tacoma toward Cortez. In the empty space - beyond Mesa Verde but before Cortez - Ben felt the hair rising on his neck, something amiss. His involvement in the white man’s holiday, he was certain, drove this unsettled feeling. Yet Mary’s request had been so sincere, timid - as if she understood just how much she was asking of him. “I promised Ella I would send her turquoise for her granddaughters like I do every Christmas. They seem to like it so much. And they way my head throbs…” Not even the trace of a smile, merely a slow nod and arched eyebrows bore his begrudging response: he would travel to Cortez. Two hundred dollars for jewelry I could make for twenty-five, he announced to the blue sky alone. He should have said no. His stomach knotted at the thought of having to hand over cash to the natives who were offered counter space just inside the doors at the mega-retailer - an operation unrelated to the retailer, but a lame appeasement offered in exchange for monopolizing the region’s broader retail needs. Next year, he imagined, he would make his own turquoise; restart it as a hobby, give it all to Mary. Never again endure the guantlet the white man called Christmas shopping.
Ben Slow Bear was forced to circle the lot three time before earning a spot almost at the highway. As he cut the engine, Ben allowed himself a quick glance at The Sleeping Ute. Adorned in his white winter blanket, the warrior stared skyward with his usual patience. Waiting. Ben averted his eyes and walked toward the mega-store. As he fought the winter air, he considered the legend he had recounted for throngs atop Mesa Verde, from which a spectacular view of the giant was afforded. He would point out the great one’s resting silhouette, beginning with the headdress and moving down to his feet. The great warrior while fending off a mighty foe, he would explain, was felled in battle. As he settled on the earth, arms folded over his chest, the giant resigned himself to defeat -but with a promise to some day rise anew, rise and free his people. The white man’s ignorance never ceased to amaze him: Who are his people? The Utes. Who was the enemy? Well, the earth below is Montezuma Valley. And? The city at the foot of the mountains is called ‘Cortez.’ But who was the enemy? A great warrior. His last answer a pained replacement for that which he wanted to tell them, that which surely would get him fired: the white man, you idiot.
When he eyed the indigenous merchants, Ben relived years of unspoken insults directed toward him when he worked the Four Corner’s shacks (insults made more ironic by the fact the tourists came to see the point where four states intersected perfectly and rarely recognized that they were not technically in the United States as they had their photos snapped). Ben veered away from the counter, heading into the monstrous store, uncertain if he could satisfy Mary’s request. He aimlessly paced the store seeking an alternative reason to be therein, thinking maybe if he had a paid package in his hand he might have license to purchase the jewelry on his departure, an emotional pacifier. In the cooler he found it: a six-pack of Coors Light, Colorado’s finest, a friend indeed.
Ben Slow Bear hugged his package tightly as he walked from the checkout counter, not so much as hesitating as he passed the local jewelers.
By his third beer, it all began to make sense; everything except the white man. He abandoned any thought of returning to the store. Ben’s first beer nursed the hope that a couple of bottles would inspire him to return for the trinkets - let him do good by Mary. By two beers, he pitied the giant and his own people; realized, to his dismay, that the slope of the retailer’s parking lot offered a better vantage point for studying - for understanding - The Sleeping Ute than the down-looking view afforded by the Mesa. Half though beverage number four - 10:37 am per the green lighting on his dashboard - Ben made two important realizations: 1) it was damn cold (he started the engine to summon the heat; 2) Mary meant the world to him - that he had agreed to this distasteful task served as testimonial. Ben was certain Mary would understand his failure, maybe call him to bed, stroke his cheek gently as a form of apology. Ben felt a hot streak burn a pathway down the same cheek and wanted nothing more than to be with Mary. He convinced himself he would leave as soon as his current bottle was empty. But the Ute held other plans. Ben Slow Horse cracked number five.
Whether the deputies from the Cortez Sheriff’s department would have been less suspicious of a beer-swilling white man Ben would never know. What was certain was that the deputies had been observing Ben Slow Horse swilling beer in is idling car for the past fifteen minutes and they decided the time was right to check in on this particular visitor to their town. Though a search of his tags reported nothing troubling, they exhibited all the precaution expected in the line of duty. One approached from the rear on each side of the truck, with the deputy at the passenger’s door rapping gently on the glass to gain his attention. “Sir?” he shouted through the glass, “Sir, we are going to need you to place your hands on the steering wheel, sir.” Ben stared at the mountain range. “Can you do that, sir?” Ben nodded a yes, but made no other movement. He was certain he saw the Sleeping Ute stir. The second officer made himself known with a slightly harder rapping on the driver’s side window. The Ute jerked his head, genuinely surprised by the second officer. The image of the agent his father had run down - a black and white photo from the news - flashed through his mind. Ben communed with the fallen warrior; he suddenly understood how wrong he had been - he should have lionized his father and rejected his great uncle. He should long ago have called the foe by his name. He never should have said yes to Mary.
His first movements were slow, as if appeasing. Suddenly, Ben Slow Bear shoved hard into the driver’s door, pinning the nearest officer hard into the adjacent car. Ben heard the initiating officer’s forceful cries of Whoa, whoa, whoa as Ben pounced upon the stunned deputy. A voice whispered in the distance - now is my time. Ben reached for the fallen white man’s service revolver. The flash and burn in his shoulder dropped Ben hard to the concrete. Still the whisper. Ben stood and pulled his hunting knife from it’s sheath. Now is my time. Ben Slow Horse took a light-headed step toward the fallen deputy. Blam, blam, blam, blam. Ben dropped on his back, resigned; summoning the last of his energy to cross his arms over his chest.
