Snowman by Norman Bogner Page A

nightmarish experience. He had crept along at five miles an hour over the steep rocky trail, which was deeply rutted and a nesting ground for snakes, lizards, and hordes of flying insects which flew at the car in throbbing, maniacal formations as though unleashed like a biblical plague. The Cherokee was caked with mud and patched with dead insects.
    Ashby was directed to the Indian agent's house, a log cabin leaning over a high bluff. The agent was a lean, squinting man by the name of Dennis Crawford. He was obviously so pleased to learn that a civilization of sorts still existed that he smiled idiotically at Ashby.
    The amenities he offered were minimal: a drafty curtainless bathroom; a group showerhouse, where the water smelled strongly of sulfur; a dinner of greasy salt pork and beans; and enormous shots of raw whiskey in chipped mugs. Crawford also arranged for a group of Indian children to wash Ashby's car.
    Whenever Bradford's name was mentioned he fell into a moody reflective silence and drank more whiskey. It wasn't clear if he was playing a poker hand and trying to get paid for information or if Bradford held some power over him.
    "When do I get to see Mr. Bradford?" Ashby asked.
    "He's not back yet."
    "How do you know?"
    "The Indians never begin prayers without him," Crawford said obscurely. Then he lapsed into that faraway, dazed posture which shelters old drunks unaccustomed to company. "You'll see something damned peculiar soon as he comes . . ."
    At the end of the day the group of men working on the road took their reward in the stream just below the reservation. They peeled off the pickup truck like new recruits from boot camp. They picked up cans of beer from a case which had been left cooling under a large rock at the mouth of the icy stream. Their bodies were smeared with dust, muddied from sweat, and they plunged into the water. They babbled and sang like boys, scrubbed each other's backs with thick borax soap until their skin tingled. It was a fine time, the best part of the day for them. They discussed their progress, which was measured in feet. To build a road without heavy equipment was an accomplishment each man took pride in.
    They would spend perhaps half an hour in the water and behave as though they had not seen one another for months. It was impossible to talk in the sun. The effort was too great. Grunts, nods, the occasional question was the extent of their conversation. In the evening, the apparently stolid nature of the men gave way to free joyful expression. When they left the water they would lie on the straw-hard burnt scrub to dry off and drink some more beer. The road would not be mentioned; it was bad form.
    The men drove up to the reservation, refreshed and happy. In the last light the fields of vegetables and fruit were an eyesore, hard arid ground which provided bare sustenance to the people. Their diet relied heavily on beans and rice, and some of the children grew up with rickets. In a small compound a dismal attempt was made to raise chickens, but the scraggly birds squawking in the pebbled, muddy runs were undernourished, good only for boiling. Yet another fiasco, the men recognized, were the thirty head of cattle they had purchased from a bankrupt rancher. Agents from the Department of Agriculture had promised to send them feed, but none had arrived, and the cattle, subsisting on burnt grass and shrubs, bellowed hungrily in their stalls.
    On the field that ran along the cabins, small boys were playing football. Bits of rag and chamois pads had been sewn together by the women to outfit them with uniforms. A misshapen bloated object was flung through the air and bounced crazily on the ground, and both teams scrambled for it. The women watched for the men over their crude charcoal braziers. Beside them on wooden poles trout hung drying. Everywhere the eye traveled the landscape of poverty incarcerated the people.
    Yet when the men arrived the spell of deprivation was broken. An odd