Third Eye Roll

THIRD EYE ROLL

The stolen naloxone vials burned against Taala's thigh as she crouched behind Rez Clinic's dumpster. The smell of roasted piñon nuts from Old Man Yazzie's stand mixed with antiseptic. Six vials left—three for Kelsey, three for the next kid who'd OD behind the chapter house.

A memory flashed: Taala at eight, grinding blue corn with Mom while the BIA notice flapped on their trailer. "Tsé nináháádzá," Mom muttered, shoving ch'íłchin into her hand. "Take the sour with the sweet."

"Miss Brown." BIA Agent Wilcox's fake turquoise bolo tie swung. "Stealing federal property again?"

Taala stood slowly. "Let me guess—you 'lost' our petitions again?"

Wilcox's smile showed teeth. "Your sister got housing fast after marrying that pipeline guy. Smart girl."

Behind them, Kelsey stumbled out in paper scrubs, her runway legs buckling. "T? They're kicking me out."

The Sadhu's voice cut through: "Tsk. White men in suits. Worst incarnation."

He lounged on the roof tossing Cheetos to the one-eyed rez dog. Orange dust snowed onto Wilcox's perfect part.

"Sir, this is private—"

"Private what?" The Sadhu lobbed a Cheeto at Wilcox's forehead. It stuck like a third eye. "Land? Funny joke."

Taala darted past, catching Kelsey as she collapsed. Up close, the track marks looked like spiderwebs.

Kelsey's fingers trembled around Taala's sleeve. "They said I was perfect," she whispered. "The scouts in Santa Fe. My cheekbones, my walk—'exotic but approachable.'" A wet laugh hitched in her throat. "Then they saw my last name. 'Oh. We don't do Native campaigns.' Like I'd tricked them."

Taala's ribs clenched like a fist around her lungs. She knew this feeling—the hollow thud when hope gave up the ghost. She blinked hard, the clinic's fluorescent lights smearing into halos. No tears.

She squeezed Kelsey's wrist—not gentle, but solid. "Yeah. They'll always want your face but hate your blood." Flicked a Cheeto crumb off Kelsey's shoulder. "Good news? Now you're free to be ugly as fuck."

Kelsey's breath caught. Then she snorted, swiping at her face. "Bitch."

"Yep," Taala agreed. "But your bitch."

The Sadhu pressed a hand to Kelsey's brow. "In Paris, they called you muse." His fingers came away glittering. "This life's bad casting." Then his other hand touched Taala's forehead—

The world exploded. Taala's stomach lurched like she'd missed a step in the dark.

—She's Wilcox signing termination papers, his pen scratching "for their own good"—

"Oh hell no," she tried to say, but her mouth was every mouth that ever lied to her people.

—Kelsey scrubbing her skin raw at Carlisle, the lye soap burning—

"This isn’t what I signed up for when I saw your sorry ass begging by the gas station—"

—Mom burning the eviction notice, flames reflecting in Taala's six-year-old tears—

Then worst of all: the Sadhu weeping as he burned his own sacred texts to keep kids warm.

"Fuck. Fuck!" Her voice came back in a gasp as she realized: this wasn't a vision. It was a recall.

Taala came to vomiting behind the clinic. The Sadhu held her braids, chuckling.

"First time's always ugly."

She spat bile. "You knew this would feel like getting kicked in the ribs by the universe."

"Yep." He offered her a half-eaten Cheeto. "Still wanna quit?"

At the pipeline protest, Taala handed out wax-paper packets of ch'íłchin strips. "Colonialism survival kits." The tart sumac leather stuck to protest signs like old grudges.

"Áłtsé hastiin over there looks hungry," Little Jake said, nodding to a riot cop.

Taala tossed a packet. The cop's face flickered—for a second, he was her Navajo uncle in army fatigues, Afghanistan sand still in his boots.

The Sadhu appeared, sniffing the ch'íłchin. "In my 32nd life, this grew on the sacred mountains. Now? Stolen from a commodity truck." He grinned. "Progress!"

"Shut up," Taala muttered, watching the cop share her water with a crying teen.

Little Jake tugged her sleeve. "The dogs say the oil's gonna spill anyway."

Taala shrugged. "Then we'll be seagulls next time. Shit on their yachts."

Jake's first vision hit during bingo night. One second he was complaining about the AC, the next his pupils swallowed his eyes whole.

"Sister!" he barked in the Sadhu's cadence. "The Portuguese ships are—" A sneeze wrecked it. "Whoa. I was a pirate?"

Auntie Mae didn't look up from her cards. "Great. Another one."

The Sadhu, currently a water stain shaped like Dolly Parton on the ceiling, dripped approvingly.

On his last day, the Sadhu gifted Taala:

Half-eaten Flamin' Hots ("For the road")

A Blockbuster card ("You'll understand in 2043")

A wink that lasted too long

As he dissolved into fireflies (or rez meth fumes), his voice whispered: "Look after Jake. He's you next time."

Five years later, Jake taught kids to forage ch'íłchin where bushes still grew. Kelsey ran a food program, her hands steady as she rolled blue cornmeal. Taala tossed seeds to rez dogs. One sprouted next spring.

On the gas station roof, she threw a Cheeto skyward. It vanished midair. Somewhere, a familiar voice complained about the flavor.

Somewhere, the cosmic joke continued.

The rez dogs had formed a band. Their howls echoed through the canyon at night, a mix of traditional songs and punk rock covers. Taala swore she heard the Sadhu’s laugh in the harmonies.

Kelsey’s hands no longer shook when she taught the kids to bead. She’d hold up a half-finished bracelet and say, “See? The pattern’s messed up here. That’s where the universe winked at us.” The kids would roll their eyes, but they kept coming back.

Jake’s “Past Life Therapy” business boomed. He’d sit cross-legged on the rez’s only picnic table (the one missing two slats), Xbox controller in hand, telling Mrs. Yellowtail she’d been a Viking queen. “That’s why you’re so good at bingo. Battle instincts.” She’d cackle and throw frybread at him.

Taala found the Sadhu’s Blockbuster card tucked in her old jacket. When she scraped off the orange dust, it read: “Balance due: $42.50” in faded ink. She buried it under the gas station’s lone healthy sage plant. The next morning, a Cheeto bag hung from the branches like an offering.

The oil did spill eventually. Not dramatically—just a slow seep that made the river smell like regret. The white news vans came, then left when the rez dogs ate their satellite cables.

Taala watched from the water tower as the cleanup crew tripped over their own equipment. “That one’s definitely me next time,” she muttered, pointing at the intern who kept dropping his clipboard.

Kelsey started painting murals on the abandoned trailers. One showed the Sadhu as a convenience store angel, his wings made of expired lottery tickets. The kids added devil horns in Sharpie.

Jake claimed he could now see future lives. “You’re gonna be a firefly,” he told Taala. “The annoying kind that gets in beer.”

At dawn, Taala found the one-eyed rez dog gnawing on something metallic. A BIA badge. She kicked it into the arroyo and tossed the dog a ch’íłchin strip. “Trade you.”

The stars that night pulsed like a heartbeat. Or maybe it was just the rez’s flickering streetlights. Either way, Taala saluted them with a warm soda. Somewhere, someone saluted back.

The summer drought turned the ch'íłchin bushes brittle. Taala showed the kids how to harvest the berries without damaging the plants. "They'll come back next year," she said, though no one remembered them ever growing this far south before.

One night, the rez dogs' band played a new song - all yips and static, like a radio tuning between stations. Auntie Mae claimed she heard words in the noise: "Remember the treaty..." before the bass line drowned it out.

Kelsey's latest mural showed a spaceship shaped like a sweat lodge, its steam trail forming the constellations. Someone had scratched "WELCOME TO EARTH, IDIOTS" across the hull in red paint.

Jake started leaving his Xbox sessions with faraway eyes. "I keep seeing the same McDonald's in every life," he confessed to Taala. "The ice cream machine's always broken."

The one-eyed dog began following the new BIA agent everywhere, peeing on his briefcase with military precision. Taala left extra ch'íłchin strips by its favorite sleeping spot.

When the pipeline company sent "community liaisons," the rez dogs ate their PowerPoint clickers. The suits retreated to their rental cars, only to find all the door handles coated in honey.

Kelsey started a guerrilla cooking show: "Rez Microwave Gourmet." Episode one featured three ways to prepare commodity cheese. The Sadhu's ghost appeared as a distorted reflection in the toaster.

Jake's visions grew sharper. "Next life, I'm your Uber driver," he told Taala. "You vomit in my car and pay me in loose change."

The ch'íłchin plant by the clinic bore fruit for the first time. The berries tasted like electricity and stolen birthday cake. Taala saved the seeds in an empty nicotine pouch.

One evening, the streetlights pulsed in time with the rez dogs' howling. The pattern matched the EKG readout from Kelsey's last overdose. Taala laughed until her ribs ached.

Auntie Mae won bingo with a card that had been blank at game start. When she held it up to the light, the dots formed the Sadhu's face.

The year the river froze solid, Taala taught the kids to skate on the oil-slick parts. "It's more fun when you might die," she explained. Their laughter echoed off the pipeline.

Kelsey's rehab program started a rooftop garden. The ch'íłchin grew sideways, reaching for the cell tower's blinking lights. Patients swore the berries made their dreams quieter.

Jake finally got his vision of the future clear enough to describe: "It's just this. But the wifi's better."

On the summer solstice, all the rez dogs vanished at midnight. They returned at dawn with their fur smelling of ozone and reservation gasoline. The one-eyed dog dropped a Blockbuster card at Taala's feet - now reading "PAID IN FULL."

Taala climbed the water tower as the sun rose. The "MAYA WAS HERE" graffiti below her feet had sprouted tiny blue flowers in the cracks. She tossed a single ch'íłchin berry into the air.

It didn't come down.

Somewhere, a voice that might have been the Sadhu's, or maybe just the wind through the pipeline valves, whispered: "Encore."

Somewhere, the joke was still funny.