samaritans

It's my vacation.  I was driving along Indian Route 8 this morning, headed for Walpi.  It was an unpaved and rough road, but firmly packed and usable.  That is, until I hit a patch of soft desert sand.

Down sinks my rental car, until the underbody of the car is resting flat on the sand.  I'm out of cell phone range, it's hot, and I haven't passed a car in forty miles.

I get out and start sweeping the sand from under my car - but if I excavate enough to have a chance of driving out, the car will more likely just sink further unless, by chance, there's only a few inches of sand, then something firm beneath.  I feel down and that seems to be so, but who knows?  And can I sweep this much away with my hands?

I keep going, I'll figure something out if I have to, but someone will have to come.  I'm in the middle of nowhere.  I had put two gallons of water in my trunk the day before and I think about that.  At least the sand is easy to manipulate.

After a while - twenty minutes or so - a pickup truck passes me, swerving to avoid the sand and me, and stops ten yards further along, at the far crest of the little dip I'm in.  Four Hopi men, two riding in the bed of the pickup truck, a driver and a passenger in the cab, all stocky, sun creased, and reassuring.  They pile out and head my way.

Says the driver to the others: "Come on - he got in the soft blow sand."  He means, I suppose, that this is blowing sand that collects in this dip of the landscape.  That makes sense, and explains why it is so loose and fine. 

Without saying anything to me first, or even making eye contact, he and then they get down with me and start sweeping sand out from around the car, all of us with our bare forearms.

"We'll have to get some brush and stuff it under to give traction."  That makes sense to me, and there's a mound of tumbleweed collected in the same dip as I'm stuck in, so that won't be hard.  I'm reassured.

Then: "Here comes my brother."  What does he mean - I hear nothing.  But a minute later, even I can make out the sound of another approaching truck.  What a sense of hearing!

Now there are eight of them, plus one of me.  They don't talk to each other, just work.  The brother asks me, "Where are you going?"  I say "Walpi" and he says "That's our town; you're about there - this is the only bad spot on the road."

The work is done in less than an hour.  When one guy slows his digging a bit, the driver says to him, neither soft nor loud, just plain: "Use muscle."  And the guy does.

Sand cleared, brush stuffed behind the tires and everywhere else. "You have to steer." says the driver, and I do.  It's the first thing he's said to me directly.  I do steer, and it works on the second big push they all give me.

So now I'm up on the next little rise from all of them.  Safe.  I stuff a hundred dollars, all I have, in my pocket to hand to them. 

But as I get out of my car, ready to walk back over to them and thank them, they break into great, open smiles, all of them, then begin to climb back into their trucks.  Suddenly, to give them money feels wrong, even insulting.  So instead I give a big wave, one with my whole arm like I don't generally give, trying to say "thank you" with my wave.  They wave back, still smiling big, and go wherever they were headed before stopping for me.

As I drive away I think back and try hard to fix the memory in my mind.  I think how they had made no small talk, no jokes, said nothing the entire time but what was needed.

I finish the drive to their town - a dreary looking place.  I don't get out.  I drive on.  This is their home, not really for tourists, even if it is in the Rough Guide to the Southwest.  I'm only a tourist if I get out.  But if I stay in my car, I can be the fellow human they helped, and I want to be that.  Anyhow, that's how it felt to me, and why I drove on.

I think of them, the Good Samaritans, these Hopi men, the salt of the earth.  And I would feel embarrassed about the incident if I didn't, instead, feel so elated, somehow blessed.