Crossroads

Back in the novel’s present, the Crossroads group is nearing the Navajo reservation where they will be staying. Suddenly, a truck begins hostilely invading their bus’s space on the road, eventually forcing them to pull over. Russ gets out and speaks to one of the young Navajo men in the truck, Clyde, who angrily asks him why he is there. When Russ answers that the group has come to be of service to the Navajo people, Clyde scornfully tells them to leave. Russ’s invocation of his relationship with Keith Durochie only makes Clyde angrier before he drives away.

Although one of the adult chaperones, Ted Jernigan, thinks the group should turn back, Russ decides to keep going, sending one group to Kitsillie, the site Keith warned him not to go to, and sending the other to a separate site. All of the Kitsillie group sleep in one large room of the building designated for their use, and when they return to it after a long day’s work the following evening, they find it has been ransacked. The whole group immediately assumes Clyde was behind the break-in. They take an inventory and find that only two guitars have been stolen. The group’s morale plummets, but Russ privately feels the teenagers are being overly dramatic, especially in light of how little Clyde has while the victims’ parents can easily replace their guitars.

The next day, Russ announces that he is going to find Clyde and try to reason with him to return the guitars. Frances agrees to go with him, but on the drive she is cranky and nervous. When they find Clyde’s home, the young man admits he stole the guitars. Russ tells Clyde he understands why Clyde did it, but even after Clyde resentfully returns the guitars, Russ refuses to leave. He insists that Clyde should come and speak to the group of teens, to explain why he stole the guitars and why he is angry. He admits, in response to Clyde’s protests, that to some extent this would just be giving the kids a “Navajo experience” about which they can feel enlightened despite putting forth little effort, but he still thinks it would be better than nothing. Clyde continues to refuse, and Russ finally realizes it is inappropriate to keep pressing.

Before he and Frances leave, however, Clyde explains why he hates Keith Durochie: Keith and the rest of the tribal council sold his family land and many other families’ lands to coal mining and power plant interests. Now Clyde’s family’s land has become inhospitable to crops, and the jobs provided by the plant pay practically nothing. Russ finds it hard to believe Keith would do such a thing, but when he stops to think about it, he realizes he does not know Keith particularly well, and that in all of their interactions Keith has never been particularly kind; he seems to tolerate Russ more than like him.

On the drive back to Kitsillie, Frances is enormously impressed with how Russ handled Clyde. At one point, she has to use a bathroom, but they are driving in a mostly unpopulated area. Russ knows Keith’s former house, now empty, is nearby, so he pulls over there. They both realize they are finally alone in a place far away from any possible interruptions and begin kissing. They have sex, but it does not seem very pleasurable for Frances. Afterward, Russ says he loves her—twice—but she responds merely by saying she “appreciates it” (478).

As they drive back onto the Kitsillie site, they see Ted Jernigan and Rick Ambrose waiting for them with stern looks on their faces, and Russ immediately guesses that Perry has done something.