The Grey Pilgrim by J.M. Hayes Page A

J.D. tried to disengage himself and turn the kid’s attention back to the steaks. The fire looked ready to spread to a pair of nearby elms.

We, the People
    Supper was over, but J.D. couldn’t have told you exactly what he’d eaten. He could tell you what color Mary’s eyes were though, and had nearly determined just what shade of mahogany most closely matched her hair.
    The meal had been accompanied by small talk, most of which involved J.D. trying to avoid Larry’s none too subtle probing about Spain. But with dessert finished, and Larry briefly away from the table freshening drinks, J.D. prodded himself out of his sudden return to adolescence and asked her to tell him about the Papago. It wasn’t the conversation Larry wanted to rejoin, but he listened quietly while J.D. tried to concentrate on what she was saying and not how she looked, or how strongly he was drawn to her.
    “Their culture was outwardly simple, even at the time of Spanish contact and it’s not so very different today, for all their forced coexistence with a civilized world. If there’s been any significant acculturation, most of it occurred among the river people, not their desert kin.”
    He’d heard that eyes could glow with excitement, but this was the first time he’d witnessed it. The topic was obviously one she was enthusiastic about and her wide eyes seemed to catch and reflect light from every available source. A man could get lost in those eyes.
    “Actually, the Pima and Papago are a single people, split by limited opportunities to exploit river valley environments. In the Southern Arizona and Upper Sonoran Desert there are only so many places where there could be river people. Excess population had no choice.
    “Both branches of the tribe call themselves
O’odham
which means ‘the people.’ You may have noticed that primitive peoples almost always call themselves by words that translate that way, but remember our own Constitution begins with the phrase, ‘We, the people….’ Each of us may further categorize ourselves, as in the American People or the Mexican People, but in the end, ‘the people’ is all any of us ever are.”
    She had these great dimples when she smiled. J.D. had never seen dimples that were quite so cute.
    “The Pima called themselves the
A’akimel O’odham
or ‘River People’ and the Papago were the
Tohono O’odham
or ‘Desert People.’ We named the Pima because of their habit of answering questions put to them in a language they didn’t understand with the natural reply, ‘I don’t know’ which is
pimatc
. We couldn’t reproduce the click of the ‘tc’ sound at the end of the word, so we just called them Pima.”
    And perfect teeth that gleamed as she demonstrated the alien syllable.
    “Papago is about as close as we could come to saying
Papavi O’odham
, or ‘Bean People,’ which is kind of an insult since it hints that someone on such a diet might fart a lot.”
    J.D. wasn’t really hearing most of what she was saying. He was wondering if Larry might have some mysterious and fatal disease to which he would shortly succumb. He was wondering what her lips would taste like. He was wondering if he shouldn’t excuse himself and go home and take a cold shower.
    Emotions and logic mix about as well as fire and water and about the only way J.D. would have gotten into a cold shower just then was if Mary accompanied him. He was caught in the magic of her spell, unintentionally cast or not. For a timeless while, she talked and he listened, but her words were only part of what he heard.
    It was well past midnight before Larry’s rattling of ice cubes and jaw-stretching yawns finally caught his attention and J.D. guiltily said his goodbyes, got in the Ford, and aimed it homeward. His conscience was starting to nag him and he knew he should make himself see as little of Mary as possible. He also knew he wasn’t going to do that. Benny Goodman was playing “Somebody Stole My Gal” on the car