Sitting beside the pool one evening, I noticed Rose looking at the BBQ. It was too dark to see the gleam in her eye, but I didn't need to see it.

Now that we know we have a BBQ, We ought to have a picnic. Invite the Indians. Have a swimming party with hamburgers and stuff.

I was just about to shout no when my child caught up with my immediate fear of anything new. "I've never done anythint like this gefore. But yeah, we ought to. What do we need for it?"

"Everything. Hamburger, tomatoes, lettuce, buns, plates, cups, maybe a bottle of propane, matches. Everything. And several Indians. We'll try it out first, just for ourselves."

"I'll help," I laughed. "You know there's one thing more don't you?"

"What's that?"

"We'll have to wear clothes. Maybe not for the trial run, but when the Indians come. You remember clothing, don't you?"

"Of course. I had clothes on just the other day. Yes, of course we'll wear clothes. Wouldn't want to offend the Native people by going native." She laughed too. Then, in a minute or two, "Claire?"

"What?"

"Uh, do you have a swim suit?"

"Uh, no, now that I think about it, I don't. Never needed one. Do you?"

"Uh, no. I guess we have to get some, for the picnic I mean."

"Uh, yeah, I guess we do." Our tiny village does not support anythng as unlikely as a swimming suit, so we ordered a few on line. We tried them on, but didn't try them out. I wondered what other little traps we had set for ourselves.

I mailed an invitation to the Toadlenas on a Monday for the Friday of the following week. I described it as a barbecue, and mentioned the swiming pool, not knowing how the Toadlenas would react to a swimming party. Then I changed it to emphasize the swiming pool so they wouldn't be surprised and not dressed to swim.

I have exactly zero experience inviting anyone to my home, having never had one. Rose helped the effort immensely by painting a small picture of the pool area with it's palm trees and umbrellas and the pool and the magnificent outdoor stone kitchen. It really is true that a picture is worth a thousand words. We included it in the invitation and mailed it to the only address we knew, the Toadlenas at a post office box on the reservation.

On Thursday, I got an email from the school. It was from Edward. I didn't know kids could do that. Edward asked if he could bring a friend? Can the friend be an Indian? I replied to the email with "Yes, of course!" I hadn't thought of that, having no experience with sixth graders. Edward wouldn't want to spend all afternoon and evening with grown-ups. I assumed from the email that the invitation had been accepted and received a postcard to that effect the next day.

They arrived in the afternoon with a large pot of beans and a sixth-grader named Walter, who said "Hi" over his shoulder as the two boys headed for the pool. Nothing like mixing a couple of sixth graders and a swimming pool it for breaking the ice. Mother Margaret pulled a chair to the edge of the pool and sat down facing the pool. I caught on and moved an umbrella and another chair and sat next to her.

"Wouldn't you like to get in yourself? I have swimming suits if you need one."

"I can't swim, but thanks anyway. Edward can, a little bit. His uncle Joe taught him, but I don't think he's ever been in a swimming pool before. I don't know about Walter."

Her voice was serious. I caught on. She wasn't going to let those boys out of her sight as long as they were in the pool. And she would have gone in after them in an instant, swimmer or not, if she had seen any danger. So we sat there, talking and watching.

Rose entertained the other two, grandmother and Uncle Joe. After about an hour of this, Margaret called the boys and we set the tables for dinner. The beans the Indians brought were delicious and the BBQ performed majestically with Rose as maestro. She did from time to time look like she was conducting the chorus of hamburger patties. Every time I see the thing out from under its wraps I get this feeling that I ought to be kneeling before it worshipfully mumbling words of praise in Latin.

Rose acted like she had seen it all before and just cooked hamburgers on it with complete confidence. I was reminded that I was a potter and she was a chef, or at least a cook.

After dinner, I asked if the Toadlena's would like to see the inside of the castle. They would. We toured the downstairs and walked upstairs but didn't go into any of the upstairs rooms. The Toadlenas were impressed, but I wouldn't say pleased, and they didn't want to stay in the house any longer than it took to see into the rooms.

I didn't either, most of it anyway. We went back to the pool, in the now gathering dusk, if that's the way to say it. The boys requested to go back to the castle to play games on their phones. They had already figured out that there was internet in the castle, but not at the pool, and who wants to be around a lot of grown-ups all the time anyway?

I looked at Margaret with the question in my eyes. She said, "If it's OK with you, it's fine by me. Boys, don't go upstairs. Stay in the kitchen or the," she paused and looked once more at me, "the parlor, if that's what it's called."

"I don't know what to call it. I sometimes call it the great hall. I can't bear to call it the living room. I can't imagine anyone living in it. I don't know what the owner calls it, or the real estate agent."

The boys promptly disappeared into the front door and I watched to see that they got the lights on, then turned back to the Toadlenas. I spoke seriously.

"The seed pod Edward gave me gave me an idea. I had never seen anything like it and I made a few myself. This one is for you." I handed the seed pod to Grand Mother. "Rose painted it. There's a flash drive inside it. That's a memory chip for a computer. On the flash drive is a video of Mr. Franklin Morris, the man who tried to cheat you out of your farm. The video shows him doing something you don't want to talk about in front of the children, and something that if you are Mr. Franklin Morris you don't ever want your wife to find out about."

"Will you tell me what it is, or do I have to guess?" Uncle Joe asked the question, but I suspect all of them wanted to know.

"I'll tell you exactly what it is. It's a video of Mr. Morris having sex with a prostitute in a hotel room in Las Vegas. He is clearly identified and the date and time can also be determined from the video."

"Thank you for making that plain. I did not like the thoughts I was having, or the guessing I was doing."

I went on. "The video probably explains the abrupt turnaround in his behavior, the money in the envelope and his sudden disappearance from your lives.

There's one more little kink in the story. His wife has seen the video. I showed it to her. I am not a blackmailer. She has apparently confronted him with it, or rather with knowledge of it. She has told me that if the video becomes public she will divorce him. She will have to because of her church, she says. And since she has all the money he spends trying to make himself rich, this is a valid threat.

"So who else has this flash drive, as you call it?" Grandmother asked.

"Rose and I have a pod, Franklin Morris' wife has a pod and the tribal lawyer has a pod. And you do, of course. There is absolutely nothing on the video or on the flash drive that mentions you or any of the events of this affair. No Indians. No extortion attempt. You are not involved even if it does go public."

"It's a very pretty thing," Grandmother smiled. "It will look good in our living room. "I almost hope we have to use it, so I can see the video." She smiled even more. "There are some things I have always been curious about that I have never been able to see. Professional sex is one of them. How did you make the video?"

"I don't really know. I didn't make it. I know alcohol was involved, and the full cooperation of the sex worker, who can not be identified. His face is in the video, her's isn't. Clever editing took care of that."

"So will she, the sex worker I mean, blackmail him?"

"No. She is a professional."

Silence. Long silence. Eventually a coyote rescued the conversation. Then another and another howling from the darkness.

"That is coyote. We are speaking of bad things," Grandmother said.

"Would you like to see the workshop?" I asked brightly, to change the subject.

"Yes." She smiled and got up.

Grandmother made her way slowly across the gravel to the workshop, followed politely by the rest of the Toadlenas and me. When we got there I turned on the lights.

She took it all in for a moment, then walked around the wheel to the shelf, looked at all the pots and carefully took one from the shelf, examined it very closely, and said, "This is very good clay." She stopped, looked at me, and apparently decided that she would say no more.

"It's commercial. I buy it by the hundred pound bag. I don't know where it comes from."

"We make pots from our own clay. We gather it ourselves, usually from a secret place. An important part of making a pot is finding the right clay, from the secret place. I know someone who makes pots that way."

"I do not know where to find clay, or how to look for it. So I must buy it. I'm not a Navajo."

"It is very good clay, anyway. And you make very good pots with it."

"Rose paints them. Sometimes I sell them on the internet. But I never claim to make Navajo pots. I do not sell them as Indian made or old or anything like that. I sell them under my own name, designed by me, made by me, decorated by Rose, with all new materials. Everything is advertised as contemporary and produced by myself and Rose, not by native Americans."

"Thank you for that. I see all kinds of Indian junk from China sold by by fake Navajos at powwows. The Chinese Navajos are making more pots and more money than we are!" She laughed at her joke. We returned to poolside.

"You work nude?"

"Yes, why not? We live in total isolation out here. We don't get visitors. The postal person comes but they don't come inside the gate and can't see us from the mailbox."

"But why do you want to do it?" What's wrong with clothes?" She was smiling in a very suspicious way. I felt I was being led on. I took the bait and continued innocently, waiting for the kicker. I liked her, she could take advantage of me if she wanted to.

"Convenience, or at least it started out that way. We get mud and paint on ourselves. We clean up in the outdoor shower next to the pool. When we clean up we don't have to do laundry. Besides, it's hot in the workshop, especially in the afternoon."

"So, are you nudists?"

"I suppose we are, but we don't want to be anything. Nude is what we do, not what we are. I don't think I have any spiritual or emotional connection with being naked, it's just a convenience that I can get away with because of where I live, the isolation, the weather, and my work. It's just what we do, not who we are.

"I wear clothes every week when I go to town. Rose does when she goes shopping for food. Sometimes we have to throw on a house robe when a package is delivered. And oh yes, we always dress for the swimming pool attendant. I don't really want it getting around that we are weirdos out here. We keep that part pretty private. We don't want busy tongues or curious visitors from the local community. We don't want to make a statement of any sort. We do it a lot more than we think about it, you could say."