The Portrait

I stopped for the hitchhiker on a high stretch of freeway just north of Tucson. It was a bad place to stop, but it was raining, the slow, persistent winter rain which can, in a good year, settle over the desert. Once Arizona was only a map, a place you had to drive through to get some place else. But now, having lived and worked in the desert, I felt at home with the expanse, the fading mountain ridges, and the thin vegetation: ocotillo, cholla, greasewood, paloverde. As I drove, I was lulled by the inclines and declines, noticeable more in the slight variations in the speed of my '53 Plymouth than in actual visual perceptionsas if my speedometer contained the shifting bubble of a surveyor's transit.

The hitchhiker ran up by my car and looked in. Thin, a little over five feet, he had a weathered face, protruding ears and a slight chin. Water dripped from short-cropped hair onto his forehead. He wore a grey jacket and jeans. His dark eyes searched mine for a moment, then he opened the door and got in.

"Thanks," he said.

"No good walking in the rain," I offered, switching open the heater vent.

"That's right."

"Where are you headed?"

"Yuma. You go to Yuma?"

"Yes."

"Good," he said, then, "My name is George. My Indian name is Bull Coming."

"Benjamin," I responded, smiling at the image of his name.

"Benjamin," he said, sounding my name.

We drove on. The hood of my car was a pale shiny blue, matching the distant mountains which disappeared into the cloud layer. The closer hills held a faint tinge of green. Along the highway and in the median scattered bright yellow bits of desert marigolds. A thin spring grass was just shooting up beside the blue asphalt.

"Live in Yuma?" I asked.

"I'm a sign painter. I'm going to Yuma to paint signs for a while. I have my brushes in my bag." He patted the canvas bag at his feet. "I paint for stores. I paint pictures, too."

George talked animatedly of his art, lifting his right hand and fingers and moving them in rapid strokes as he talked. Sitting back against the high, worn seat, he lined up his eyes behind his imaginary brush. "That's how I paint," he grinned.

At Picacho Peak we stopped for coffee. In the cafe the waitress filed her nails behind the register. Western paintings and artifacts were hung on the walls. We slipped into a booth by the window. The waitress brought us coffee. She avoided looking at George.

George looked at the artwork on the walls. "I sold a painting once to Governor Montoya," he said. "He came to a fair where I had my pictures. He has it in his house."

I stirred my coffee and relaxed. I felt in no hurry. The cafe was warm and dry and we could hear the trucks on the wet pavement outside. I got up and dropped a quarter in the juke box.

"I'm going to San Diego for a week," I said. "Then I'm coming back to go to the University in Tucson." As I said this, I felt the return of an uneasiness. I wasn't sure what I really wanted to do. I had been out of school for several years.

George said, "I went to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. But I didn't like it much. My sister said to me, 'Go to school. There is money for Indians who want to go to school.' So I went and I got a room. But I didn't like it. The teachers didn't care about what I liked. They said, paint this, paint that." He talked softly. "I got kicked out for going to class drunk. I couldn't help it. I would walk on that big campus and nobody would talk to me. Some Christian students got me to come to their group. They told me to pray to Jesus when I felt lonely. I would go to my room and pray to Jesus. Then I would drink."

I turned my eyes away from George and looked at the rain on the window, rivulets of water finding their way down the glass, blurring the desert beyond.

I paid and we got back in the car.

"Now it's better," he said. "Now I can walk out in this beautiful world and I don't feel so lonely. Sometimes I walk all the way between towns. I am a Navajo. I can paint." George again pretended he was making brush strokes.

We rode in quiet for a long while.

The rain stopped and the clouds lifted so you could see the distant mountains shifting their shoulders slowly as we moved. Checking my gauges, I caught sight of the tiny, gold, plastic emblem set in the horn-cap of my steering wheel: the Mayflower on its way to a new Plymouth.

At Gila Bend I stopped for gas. George went inside. I filled the tank and checked the water and oil. When I went in to pay, I watched George pay for a pint of Thunderbird and drop it inside his jacket.

After we had driven a few miles, George took the green bottle from his jacket. Then he slumped down on the seat until his head was below the level of the window. He held the bottle up and drank it in one pouring without taking swallows. Then he sat up again, capped the bottle and put it in his bag. He took out a sketch pad and pen.

"Now I will draw you a picture," he said.

He propped the sketch pad against his knees. His lines were dark and steady. When he finished, he signed his name, Bull Coming. Then he carefully tore the sheet from the pad and handed it to me. Glancing at it as I drove, I complimented him and thanked him. He sat back and closed his eyes.

I was lost in my thoughts when George started singing. It came up in his throat and head, almost inaudible, then increased until he was singing without constraint. The sounds were a flowing of high vowels.

"That is a Navajo song we sing at the camps. My father taught me. Should I sing another?"

"Sure."

As he sang, I drove without conscious effort, the car slowing in its long line on the immense land. I sensed in the sounds and in the cloud-subdued earth an unspoken familiarity. I felt I was approaching a point, not of return, but from which I could see openings in the forms of life, the spaces within. Looking into these spaces, I felt

acutely lonely. But I also sensed a refuge. I would recognize this feeling later in its absence, as I moved among men sophisticated and subtle, men who passed without shaking hands, who rarely looked you in the eye.

Then we were over the last rise and down into the irrigated valley of the Rio Colorado. We passed a runway and a strip of motels. Before we reached the river, George touched my arm lightly with his hand.

"Here is good," he said.

I stopped. The Navajo got out, closed the door softly, and with a slow composure walked down a side street.

Twenty-five years have passed. Today, going through my old notebooks, I found the drawing George Bull Coming made for me. It's a profile of a warrior: high cheek bones and forehead, sharply-lined eyes, strong nose, defiant chin. Long hair is tied in an ornamental band. Two feather tips fall forward on one side.

Now I can see what I couldn't see before, that it's a self-portrait. A self-portrait born of rain and wine.

In the vein of creative nonfiction, Ben Jacques has written essays and articles for numerous publications, including Americas, Flyfishing, Country Journal, The Christian Science Monitor and The Berkshire Eagle. Since 1990 Professor Jacques has taught in the English and Communications Department at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.