by Peter Anderson
Road weary after the drive up from Page, I stop in Kayenta, near a handmade espresso sign on a sheet of plywood, and I follow the arrows – coffee this way – through an opening into a courtyard and into the Blue Shepard Coffee Shop. Try a cool, refreshing Nava-Joe, says another sign and I let it reel me in toward the young man behind the counter. “Does that Nava-Joe pack a pretty strong buzz?” I ask.
“Four shots,” he tells me. That should get me through the rez. As he’s fixing my drink, he asks me where I’m from and I say Colorado … San Luis Valley. And he asks me where I’ve been and I tell him I’ve been driving a big circle – Colorado into canyon country and now home again. I notice a Bible on the counter opened to Psalms. “You been reading some scripture?”
“Yeah,” he says, “that’s why I call this place the Blue Shepard … The Shepard refers to my faith and also to the sheep herders, you know, around here.” I ask him how his faith blends with the beliefs of his tradition, remembering a circuit-riding Navajo preacher friend, an evangelical who also traveled the “red road.” “I don’t worship all the different deities I grew up with,” he says. “I go to the one who created all of that … See, I prayed to him and now my mother and father aren’t drunks anymore. He did that. Happens all the time at my church,” he says.
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I could tell him I’m Quaker and that we too sometimes feel a Presence in our meetings for worship as he does at his Pentecostal church, though our response is more subdued – no speaking in tongues, no seizures, no rolling down the aisle. Just silence and maybe a few Spirit-led words. “You think people feel the same Spirit in different ways?” I ask him instead. He nods. Then we are silent for a while.
I ask him if more people are coming through now that winter is waning. “Yes, mostly Europeans. French, Italians, Germans … No Japanese though … they’re tea drinkers.” And for the first time in our conversation, he cracks a smile. And then he says “I’m Ron,” and we shake hands and he says, “stop by if you’re back through again.” I say I will and I head back out on the road.
On the far side of Kayenta, a dustdevil carrying red sand whirls up alongside the road and then crosses as I drive by. I loosen my grip on the wheel and let it nudge me, for a few moments, across the yellow line. And then I turn the wheel into the wind and edge back into the center of my lane.
Peter Anderson is fat and happy and living in the piñons along the Sangre de Cristos.
