Leslie Silko - The Almanac of the Dead

IN THE BACKSEAT OF A CHRYSLER

“CALABAZAS DIDN’T LIKE either one of you,” Lecha said, laughing. “He got right on the phone to complain to me!” Seese and Sterling had just carried the blue peacock chair into her bedroom. Lecha was sitting up in her bed with the paper bag in her lap. Sterling hurried out of the bedroom. Bedrooms of women not related to him had always thrown him into a panic. He had always preferred motel rooms or the backseat of a big car. While he had been living in Winslow at the railroad section-gang compound, an amazing thing had happened. A white woman passing through Winslow on Route 66 had had car trouble. The only mechanic in Winslow told the woman it would cost hundreds of dollars because the car was one of those huge ’59 Chrysler Imperials. Later, the mechanic told how he had advised her to sell it for scrap and to catch the Greyhound to California, which was where she had been headed. But the woman would not hear of it. The mechanic was nervous about a down payment for all the parts he’d have to order from Phoenix or Los Angeles. So she had opened up the huge trunk of the black Imperial and had started unloading suitcases. The mechanic said later he thought she might have been a little crazy or something. They all knew the mechanic because the rail-lifter machine they used for laying new track had never worked right, and one of them, usually Sterling or one of the Mexicans, had to take the mechanic a message from the foreman to come fix it. So they knew the mechanic, they knew he wasn’t exaggerating or lying later on when he told them what had been inside those suitcases: mink coats, fox stoles, and leather jackets. And shoes — every color and kind of high-heel shoe — even those platform shoes with clear plastic heels so you could see the plastic goldfish swimming inside them. When she started to open the fifth or sixth suitcase, the mechanic said he had waved his hands at the pile of furs and shoes and told her that was enough down payment.

Sterling had not gone to her while she was in the room at the Painted Desert Motel. But he had heard stories from the Mexican guys who had. They said she was expensive, but that she knew things they had never ever heard of, let alone had a chance to try. Then, right before Sterling got up enough courage to stroll by the Painted Desert Motel, Room 23, a very strange and exciting thing had happened. Right at quitting time at the big Sante Fe Railroad maintenance yard, and on payday too, the big black Imperial had come gliding up to the gate. Sterling had been a little shocked at how many of the married men who had families living with them in Winslow also seemed to know Janey. She was smiling and laughing more to herself than with them as she showed off the car. “This is my baby,” she said over and over. “Now I have to get my beautiful wardrobe out of hock.” She swung open the door and Sterling thought he had never seen such a huge backseat. Later he realized the car had been a special model, something less than a limousine, but “big as a bedroom,” someone joked. Of course they all started making jokes, laughing and pushing one another toward the luxurious black leather seats. Then they had grabbed Sterling. All of them — Mexicans and Indians and even the white foreman — thought Sterling spent too much time reading. He told them he had a weak stomach and any more than three beers made him sick. But they had not quite forgiven him for not drinking and carousing with them anyway. They had shoved Sterling into the backseat to get even with him for all the nights he had eaten alone at the section-gang cafeteria then gone to his room to read magazines. “Give him the deluxe!” they yelled to Janey as she drove away.

Sterling could feel the grime on his hands. The odor of the motor oil on his coveralls competed with the wonderful smell of Janey’s perfume. This was about the worst thing that had ever happened to Sterling. Janey had pulled onto Route 66 and they were zooming in the direction of Holbrook until she took a turn onto a dirt road. The road wound through small outcroppings of yellow sandstone and up into the juniper forest. When she stopped and turned off the engine, Sterling thought he had never heard such silence in all his life. He must have looked scared because Janey started laughing when she opened the back door.

The backseat of the black Chrysler was so big that they could do the entire “deluxe” with the doors closed. But Janey put all the electric windows down, for the gorgeous clean air, she said, and Sterling had thought the juniper and sage in the breeze did smell good. Open windows also prevented the smell of motor oil and a day’s worth of sweat from spoiling things.

Janey stayed around Winslow for two more weeks performing “the deluxe” in the backseat of the Imperial. The mechanic said later she had been able to pay the repair bill the day he had finished with the car; so the extra two weeks in Winslow must have been Janey’s insurance policy. All of them were a little amazed that Janey had made enough in five days to pay for eight Chrysler valves and a camshaft.

After that, when the section-gang guys wanted to go carousing, Sterling told them he would settle for nothing less than “the deluxe.” So many nights he had lain awake remembering how Janey had undressed him and how she had told him to close his eyes and leave everything to her. For Sterling that would always be “the deluxe”: to lie naked on soft, plush cushions with his eyes closed so he could simply feel her hands and mouth moving over his skin. He had decided years earlier that the trouble of getting ready to have sex spoiled the sex once you ever got to it. With the deluxe it all happened like a dream — feeling the sensation spreading from his balls and cock outward, and then that last sudden squeeze that brought all the sensations rushing back to the tip of his cock, leaving his fingers and toes numb.

Sterling tried the deluxe three more times after the first go. The guys badgered him to tell them about it, but he told them he had his eyes closed. That had really horrified the Mexicans and the Hopis. They were incredulous. What had been deluxe for them had been Janey’s powder-blue eyes and her white-blond hair, and the way her breasts almost pointed up — some of them swore the nipples curved up. And the pink — bright pink. You didn’t get any of that with the Winslow whores even as teenagers. Well, how could a Navajo or Mexican or Negro, even as a teenager, ever give you that bright shade of pink? All dark meat to begin with.

“Oh,” Sterling had said. Because he had never thought about colors with sex before, but that could be blamed on going to high school at an Indian boarding school where any sort of sexual act had to be performed in the dark of the basement or a handy broom closet. They had talked so much about the part of Janey that was so pink and how much they had enjoyed pulling it all open to look, finally the foreman got mad. All morning they had only pulled and reset two rails. After the foreman left them and they were yelling at each other to haul ass, a big Hopi from Third Mesa said bitterly, “Easy enough for that bahana to scold us. He’s been sucking little pink titties all his life.”

Sterling tried a couple of times to get a “deluxe” in Barstow, but the women working there weren’t a whole lot different from the whores in Winslow, who not only wanted to take your money first, they wanted you to get the motel room, and worst of all, they expected you to tell them what to do. You had to tell them everything. Take off your shoes, get on the bed, take hold of this — no, not like that — it was so much trouble Sterling decided it wasn’t worth it.