My Seoul Man

Chapter 37

The sky was dark blue above the fiery rays of the rising sun.

And when the golden glow hit AJ's face and the wind blew back his long black hair, I sank to the cold red rock and just...stared.

We all stared. He was soooo ready for his closeup. Just supernaturally fine. Born to be a star.

But he was totally oblivious. Standing on this tilted rock just a little bit above us all with a technicolor canyon in front of him and those golden rays hitting him like a follow spot.

I was still kind of spaced out from waking up next to all that only an hour or so ago. Opening my eyes to that morning smile that makes me feel like one of those rare gems they were selling over at the fairgrounds.

We'd had to get up in the wee hours to meet the Lamars, who drove us out to see what Lulu called their "secret sunrise ceremony."

I had to chuckle a little when I looked back and saw everybody else watching AJ instead of the sunrise, though.

And Yolanda gave me a little eye roll as if to say, "Yeah, just shut up. I know." But then she chuckled, too.

"I wish I had some sage or sweetgrass or something," Ronnie said.

"I have tobacco," Lyle said, slipping a pouch out of his fishing vest pocket. "It's just the regular kind, but..."

Ronnie gave him a little bow as he took the tobacco and the pipe. And after he'd sprinkled a little tobacco on the ground, he filled and lit the pipe, blowing puffs of smoke in each of the four directions before emptying it gently and giving it back to Lyle.

"Been a long time since I went home," he admitted. "But I remember my uncles used to do somethin' like that when we went up in the Black Hills sometimes."

"They'll understand, the ones gone on," Yoli said, giving him a little back rub. "Little sincere things count more than people showin' off all loud and perfect like some people do out in the plazas when there's a whole lot of people watching."

Lulu caught hold of AJ's hand and said, "Now we go down."

And us tenderfeet looked down into that big gash in the ground...grasped the very dangerous situation we'd put ourselves in...and looked over at Lyle.

Who just smiled and said, "Path's been here for, like, a thousand or more years."

That didn't exactly help. I mean, if it was that old...was it still safe?

"They think it was part of this huge migration local tribes talk about making 'way, 'way back," Star told us. "Hopis come through sometimes. They say their people stopped here on their way up to the mesas where they live now."

"Yoli's Hopi," I told them.

"My Uncle Bertrand will tell me the whole story when I tell him where we were," Yoli said. "He's one of the people who keeps all those stories for us. Oral history."

As we prepared to follow the Lamars down that path, AJ looked back, reached back and took my hand, too. But we had to go down single file on this really narrow path they'd worn or cut into the cliff face somehow.

And even though it wasn't all that far, I was not a happy camper, y'all. My heart was beating so hard I could almost hear it, the whole way down.

My feet kept slipping on these little pebbles that worked sort of like ball bearings under our feet, so we had to be hella careful. And it zigzagged like one of those switchback roads you see in the mountains out our way, instead of just going straight down.