Crossroads

On the Friday afternoon before Palm Sunday, aware of the emotional bonding that occurred on long bus rides, he stationed himself between the two interstate buses in the First Reformed parking lot and waited to see which of them would be preferred by the kids with whom he needed to bond, so that he could board it. But the normally visible forces of teenaged social physics were scrambled in the parking lot. Parents stood chattering among haphazard piles of luggage, preteen siblings ran on and off the buses, latecomers arrived with tooting car horns, and everyone kept pestering Russ with logistical questions. He was loading five-gallon drums of paint into a bus’s luggage bay when, behind his back, the hidden social forces resolved into a mob of long-haired kids outside the other bus, which Ambrose had chosen.

Too late, he saw that he and Ambrose should have discussed their bus assignments—that he should have insisted on having a chance to repair his rapport with Laura Dobrinsky’s clique. Riding west into the night, in the unpreferred bus, he felt exiled. Even when he succeeded, the next morning, in trading places with Ambrose, the scene on the other bus was unsatisfactory. The kids had been awake all night, laughing and singing, and now they only wanted to sleep. Tanner Evans kindly sat down with him, but soon Tanner, too, was sleeping. By the time they reached the reservation, Russ had become afraid to look over his shoulder at the kids behind him. It was a relief to know that most of them were going on with Ambrose to the demonstration school at Kitsillie, up high on the mesa.

Waiting in the settlement of Rough Rock was Russ’s Navajo friend Keith Durochie. The back of Keith’s Ford pickup was heaped with new and scavenged plumbing supplies. He informed Russ that he and the other elders were expecting him to install a septic line and put a sink and toilet in the school. When Russ replied that Ambrose, not he, was leading the Kitsillie contingent, Keith didn’t hide his displeasure. He’d seen, the year before, the kind of skills Ambrose had.

Russ waved Ambrose over and explained the situation. “How would you feel about doing some plumbing work up there?”

“I would need help,” Ambrose said.

“This is the job at Kitsillie,” Keith said to Russ. “This is what we have for you this year.”

“Shoot,” Russ said.

“I kept the equipment safe all winter.”

“I’m willing to give it a try,” Ambrose said. “Between Keith and Clem, we’ll probably be okay.”

Keith threw Russ a look—Clem was seventeen—and turned to Ambrose. “You stay here,” he said firmly. “Let Russ go to Kitsillie.”

“That’s fine.”

“Rick,” Russ said. He didn’t want to be the white guy arguing with a Navajo, but the kids going to Kitsillie had counted on being with Ambrose. “I think we should talk about this.”

“I’m no kind of plumber,” Ambrose said. “If that’s the job, I’d be more comfortable trading places with you.”

Keith walked away, satisfied that the matter was settled, and Ambrose hurried off to the kids with whom he was unexpectedly spending a week in Rough Rock. Russ could have pursued him and made him speak to the Kitsillie group, made him explain why he’d chosen not to join it, but instead he placed his trust in God. He thought that God’s will might be at work in Keith, guiding the course of events, offering Russ a providential chance to forge better relationships with the popular kids. Submitting to His will, he shouldered his duffel bag and boarded the Kitsillie bus; and there it was instantly clear that God had harsher plans for him.

The week on the mesa was torture. Everyone, even his own son, thought he was lying about why he’d replaced Ambrose, and to tell them the full truth—that Keith Durochie had a low opinion of Ambrose—would have been unfair to Keith and unkind to Ambrose. Russ was still stupid about Ambrose, still considered him a friend worth protecting. But he wasn’t stupid otherwise. He saw how acidly the group resented him for being there. He saw the lengths to which Laura Dobrinsky and her friends went to avoid working with him, he felt their hatred at every nightly candle talk, and he knew he had a pastoral responsibility to raise the issue. He tried repeatedly to have a private word with Sally Perkins, who not long ago had trusted him enough to confide in him, but she kept eluding him. Afraid that terrible things might be said to his face in a group confrontation, he chose to endure his misery in silence until Ambrose could confirm the reason he’d stayed behind in Rough Rock.

By the time the two groups reunited, Russ was too low to beg Ambrose to make a clarifying statement. He waited for Ambrose to do it voluntarily, but Ambrose had had an amazing week in Rough Rock—had wowed the half of the group that still related to Russ; had gained ground on Russ’s own turf—and he seemed oblivious to Russ’s misery. Witnessing the pointedly joyous hugs with which the Kitsillie group greeted Ambrose, Russ lamented his heart’s generosity. He rued that he hadn’t heeded Marion’s warnings. Only now could he see that he and his young associate had been engaged, from the beginning, in a competition of which only one of them had been aware.