Grandfather in the desert

Grandfather was sorta crazy, he wandered the deserts of the southwest, showing up every few years to a random birthday party or family event with his old mule. When he was young, if he ever really was young, they say he was chased into the desert with the other far thinkers because no one could believe that the world might change, that the grass wouldn’t grow anymore and the rains would seldom visit the children of the sky. There he stayed, living among the empty houses of his vanished relatives who escaped the growing sands.

Somewhere along the way, he learned the language of god. In grandfathers youth, his great-grandfathers still spoke to god but they were all gone now. They had long Surrendered themselves to time. God waited alone on the mountains for someone to talk to, but no one remembered how to say the words anymore. The language of god was forgotten, for it was a language of the color of rocks and in the circles inside trees, it was in the tracks of ancient animals who writhed in the mud at the beginning of time, it was in the singing birds and dancing people. From a dusty book? or from his grandfathers who remembered it and spoke the language in their sleep. This language let him hear the great things the earth had to say and he would sit on the edges of great canyons or on the shores of dry rivers, scribbling in his book, always writing something for the future about the past.

In some deserts, he stared at lines of rocks uncovered by desert sands, that ran for miles, sometimes curling into the shapes of the ancient beasts he saw painted on rock walls. He followed broken concrete ditches that led him to the bones of ancient cities, where he wandered, looking to see what the ancestors had to say. He read their words on the walls of giant concrete in the desert, he sat in the seats of the giant iron machines that his ancestors use to destroy the heart of the earth and drain the life waters away. Alone at night, sometimes he aimed his radio at the satellites passing in space and heard their crackled ancient voices as they searched for each other in the dark sky said to be above the angry dust. When the last of the forests burned, he would walk the burnt sands, his feet wrapped in rags against the heat, looking for answers that were hidden for the next generations. The people thought him crazy and anointed him rumors of who they thought he should be and left him alone to wander.

He returned from the deserts, he carried with him, the pictures of birds and green plants made into blankets by his ancestors. He drew the images of corn and the creatures of the ancient world and hid them in rock crevices in the desert. He had stacks of books in the corners of his old house that he read under the orange sky under what used to be a black night sky…

Up at night..

She woke up alone in the dark.

Millions of life times, eons of birth, death and rebirth, taught her to listen first and not to panic. She slowly opened her eyes wide for distant stars.

Fox sat in a chair in the middle of the room and spoke, his soft night voice catching her before she fell into the sky.

Im here…

I was thinking of the last life I found you.

We were already old when we found each other….

Do you remember during the first world, we bounced off each other and into space, you rode away on a falling star. We were lost for a thousand years…

You found me once at the bottom of a dark hole,

later i saw you dancing by a distant fire on the horizon,

I…

often dreamt that I would find your tracks on a beach and I would follow them to the edges of the earth…

Were we even ever young? What face will we have next time?

I get worried we wont find each other again.

Sometimes…. it keeps me up at night..

Lines

Somehow, she knew to take the first off ramp once she hit the rez line. Maybe it was some habit she picked up in her time here? Or maybe it was just that damned bump that the BIA wouldnt fix?

She was not of this dry country, but had learned to love it.

In their years together, he was never able to afford to take her anywhere. The big cities she was from, wore him out, and he had been in most of them and limped away with a few more of the scars that he never wanted to talk about. When he was in those places that never slept, he constantly looked homeward. Every step with her, was another half step towards home.

Once he crossed that imaginary line on the freeway, he turned into a different person.

She didnt know why she had pulled over, she didnt know what to expect, but she felt something there.

As her Subaru rolled to a stop in the gravel, she saw a familiar spotted horse on the side of the road, breathing steam into the cold morning air, she even recognized the old saddle blanket because he never stopped talking about how his grandmother made it 30 years before…

Funny, I sorta thought you might be here. She spoke to the rough shod figure standing by the horse. Blue Birds sat in the pinon trees talking the morning rez gossip.

Well, sometimes I just stand here by the road, he replied.

The blue birds that were chatting and watching grew silent and looked at each other. Even the spotted horse rolled his eyes.

Its a native thing, you know, sometimes, the force just calls us places, and there’s nothing you can do but go there. The force called me to all sorts of places when I was younger, but now a days, well, I don’t think it calls you much when when a man turns grey…

He pulled his heavy coat close and glanced at her over the top of his glasses.

The birds looked at each other, then at the horse, then they all looked him as he looked away…

They stood in the morning sun on opposite sides of the frost covered highway fence, he looked to the big rigs going to the setting sun in LA and she looked to the big rigs coming east from the rising sun in Albuquerque, they were all comets on their eternal orbits flying through space, sometimes they fly in the same direction for a while, but eventually fly in separate ways..

He kept his hands in his pockets so she couldnt see the tremble that had grown and was eating his right arm since the last time he saw her.

Oh some horse, in some place kicked me one time, he used to say.

After a while, he handed it to her.

I didn’t actually get this for you, I wish I did, but my aunt bought it when I was broke and couldn’t afford anything, I just aint seen you in a while.

You still broke…she said, looking for an honest reaction

He looked at his reflection in the eyes of his old paint horse, then kicked some dirt..

Yeah, but not because I don’t have money, I still got this horse….

Yellowshirt Dreams

His dreams,

His dreams were this brothers dreams, he would often wake in the middle of the night and feel their distant panic and anguish…

His dreams were his fathers dreams…  to grow into a tall healthy man, and do the things he could never do, and go the places he never could…

His dreams were this grandfathers dreams, to ride into the far future so unknown and fantastic, and change the world for the better….

Yellowshirt, was already awake , staring up into the night sky…looking and listening for his old horse, now gone 20 years…

The clicking on his radio, slowly turned into a voice, and he listened as people talked back and forth across a burning mountain…jokes and chatter from the dark…The distant sound of falling trees, and torching trees was the sound of a young boy falling asleep by the campfire…

Yellowshirt closed his eyes and drifted off to into his brothers dreams..

The Yellow Shirt

His grandmother was the first to call him Yellowshirt Boy

It was actually because of a mistake, he was supposed to get 2 pairs of shirts: white, and blue, and 2 pairs of blue jeans, 2 pairs of socks and pair of boots from the tribal clothes program, but for some reason, they had sent a yellow shirt instead of a white one.

The kids at school made fun of him the first time his grandmother sent him to school with it and he never wore to school again. He came home angry and threw it into the trash on the bus ride home.  The young boy walked the long dusty road home from the bus stop shirtless and said nothing as he stormed inside and found another shirt to wear. 

That night, the bus driver came over to speak with his sister.  He and Yellowshirts grandmother talked and laughed about growing up in the 40s as the young man followed his grandfather to the corral to let the sheep in for the night.  It was a long walk to the corral and the boy pass the  time by leaping from track to track trying to match his grandfathers long steps. 

Then the boy and his grandfather returned, the bus driver was gone, and his grandmother sat in the room folding the yellow shirt.  The boy didn’t look at her and he sat at the table, not really knowing what to do.  He was never spanked, or hit, by his grandparents, but a good talking too, always put him in his place.  If a stern talking too was what he feared, he was on a good track in life…

His grandmother put the shirt on the table, and spoke to him of times of nothingness, of hunger, and fear.  Times of nothinginess were hard to comprehend as a spoiled rez boy.  The boy had never experienced hunger, loneliness.  He was to young to remember the last time he was even over the horizon, from an endless city on the shores of the great ocean where his grandmother said he was actually from. 

The boy sat there staring at the yellowshirt, finally, his grandmother told him that he should wear it so he would be easier to see as he was out riding his horse looking for sheep.  The boy liked that, his grandmother would bring peanut butter, grape jam, and tortilla bread to him for lunch.  Driving up in their old ford truck when he was out following sheep. 

After that, he still never wore the Yellowshirt to school, but would wear it everytime he would saddle his horse and ride out to find where the goats ran off to, or just out chasing dust devils away with his old Pinto horse.

As a man, he wore a yellow shirt long after his grandparents were gone.  Occasionally, riding up to the old collapsing house with broken windows. He sat on the porch watching the sunset listening, hoping a voice would echo from the dark.  He and his old horse would be young again, and he would know all the wrong turns he had taken, and make the right ones instead. 

His horse just watched him from under a tree with no leaves..

Exmas

Fox took his foot off the gas pedal and let his truck roll to a stop.

During the summers, it took about 20 seconds to roll to a stop on the dry dirt. In the snow…he counted only 5 seconds before his old truck sat motionless growling away in the darkness, his old dash lights growing slightly brighter and then darker, in harmony with the purr of the engine.

Wiping the dust from the rear view mirror, he saw the falling snow covering his tire tracks until only two faint furrows remained, an unplanted field from his past life.

Looking ahead, he stared out the windshield looking for the standing yellow grass that marked the edge of the road in the white world outside. He chuckled to himself and let himself smile when he thought of the time he brought his love out here, and he had her drive as he walked out in front leading them through a whiteout to get them home. In hindsight, he regret her fear but knew they would have been ok…

Turn up the stereo until you can’t hear yourself think, then you won’t be afraid my dear, Fox smiled from outside the frosty window to her….
Fox rested his head on the steering wheel. Listening to the rhythm of the windshield wipers, he wished he had said better words and thought of the words he should have said.

Throwing his truck back into drive, he idled slowly up the road, listening to his grandfather coach him on how to drive from 30 years ago…
…..
As Fox pulled up to his old house, he saw through the swirling snow that the lights in his house were on. They seemed to glimmer as dancing snow intensified then fell calm.  As he parked, he saw that his old mustang sat parked out front under a thick white blanket.  Shutting off his engine, wild yelling reached his ears between the shrieking of the wind. This could not be good.
Standing outside his door, he took a deep breath and held his breath as he slowly pushed the door ajar. Immediately was hit by a blast of heat and smell of alcohol.  The snow that followed him inside, quickly melted to nothing and the white wave that he came in with disappeared.

At the old table, Coyote was dancing a jig, knocking over chairs as he acted out a story he was telling. He, Santa Claus, and a horned demon were in the midst of a shapeshifting contest. Everyone in the room roared with laughter. No one paid any mind as Fox respectfully stacked the wet fire wood he carried.  The floor was an obstacle course of sleeping drunken reindeer who snore loudly around a roaring fireplace.

As Fox sat down annoyed, a  red bottle appeared in front of him, he thought about it for a second before pushing it on to a sullen reindeer who was having problems sitting up right.  It was Santas turn to shape shift, and he changed into a rock art man that took a slug from the red bottle.  The crowd roared, and  as the yelling grew louder, even the storm outside tried to get a word, to no avail. ..

Fox thought of a tattered book he got from the bin at the Chaper house when he was young, and remembered a Poe story about people who locked themselves in a castle and partied while a plague ravaged the world outside….

 

the places

It was his grandparents, people of another age, who showed him the great beauty of creation when he was young. His grandparents sang it in songs, his grandfathers painted it in sand, and his grandmothers wove it in rugs, he learned from them how to listen to the creator.  He learned the language of rocks, of colors, of grasses singing in the winds.

One day his father arrived from the distance city and brought him a handsome painted pony that danced and walked with high steps.  Fox and his horse flew across the desert, jumping over canyons, and swimming across rivers, as they raced from sacred mountain to sacred mountain, stopping at the secret holy places between, places only a painted pony would ever know.

As Fox grew older, he saw progress creeping closer and closer over the horizon day by day.  The prairie of his youth, his grandmothers country was disappearing as houses and fences appeared.  Distant towers blinked endlessly at night.  The static sound of singing wires drowned out the songs of grass in the wind.

Fox and his painted pony would ride further and further into the desert where the rocks and plants still sang the songs of the earth.

His brother Coyote was waiting for him one night.

After Fox put his red and white cows in the corral for the night, his horse snorted and looked east.. Fox saw the lanky outline of his brother against the dark sky.  Coyote sat on a bony worn out mule and sang old Johnny Cash songs between belts of whiskey as he rode to his brother.

Come on, Fox spoke to his horse who was uneasy about the dark outline riding towards them.

When they met at the front of their grandparents house, Foxs painted pony shrieked and  lashed out with his hooves.  The skeletal mule stank of the dead places that Coyote would visit.  Each blow landed with a thud, and the mule only looked towards him with dull eyes and continued chewing on imaginary feed.  Coyote laughed and yelled out as he whipped the poor mule into the dark.

They ran west, and Fox followed warily as his brother took him to the fraying ends of the earth.  The places where great concrete dams that trapped great rivers, the life blood of the earth. The places where men dug  into the heart of the earth.  They rode through the dead lands where the sands glowed hotter than the sun.  They passed lifeless lakes where the waters burned and stank.

They rode through decayed empty cities and Coyote would wave his hand in a shower of sparks and set the poison skies aflame just because he could.   The echo of hooves rang out as they made their way through dry irrigation ditches that ran to the parched country.  The rode to the edges of the great cities of endless light where people lived as the lost children of gods, never able to find their way home and condemned to lived frustrated and angry because of their lost past and inability to see stars or understand the language of the earth.

Foxs head swam when he saw these things, Coyote cackled and threw him the bottle of whiskey that was never empty.

Coyote laughed at his brothers discomfort and said that he gave humans every chance to make the right choices but they never did. Coyote smiled and counted stacks of $100 bills he took from the people, he rifled through his saddle bags and held handfuls of gold coins and precious rocks. As they rode on, he cackled and carelessly threw them off into the winds…

Somewhere by Las Vegas,  his horse towards home, and all night night mysterious distant mountains and hills rose and fell away on the horizon.  For a long time, Fox would dream of those places his brother took him.  Clutching the pillow over his ears, he listened for songs of his grandparents…

Act XXXV

The shack didn’t burn for some reason.

 

It stood as a brooding dark shadow, backlit by the moon with its features contorted and illuminated by dancing flame.

Fox rummaged blindly inside, knocking over saddles and buckets of heavy clay in the dark.  The earthy smell of saddle leather, tools, and old hay was a welcome relief from the chemical smell from burning lumber.  It took a minute for the green aura to fade from his eyes, everywhere he looked, green flames danced in the darkness.  He could still see the black skeleton of his house standing defiantly among flame.  No matter how hard he shut his eyes, it was right there in front of him, seared into his memory ahead of him, and happening behind him in real life.

Embers rose high into the silver sky as Fox returned with some old saddle blankets.

Museum pieces made in another time by his grandmother’s hands. Museums were never her intention when she gave them to him when he was young, they were never met to grow old untouched, unloved behind barriers of glass. Instead he used them as she meant, as beautiful colorful saddle blankets for his horse. At the end of a dusty day, he would shake them out and the world would stop to admire the colors that held the old blankets together.
Under the moon, he unrolled the old blankets and covered his love and himself, as they sat watching what was left of his house burn. They sat silently for hours as the bright stars slowly arced through the sky. The wooden roof beams crackled, and Fox imagined the static sounds from the dancing grass before lightning storms.
They sat, their warm breath hung above them as they watched the mass of coals glimmer like the great cities by the sea.
Before sunrise, Fox looked at her and finally spoke.
There is no love left in this land.
His crops had failed, his cattle were skinny, and the earth cried for rain.
I’m sorry I brought you here.

His love reached out to hold his hands and healed the sooted and swollen fists that he clenched. She touched his chest and healed his heart.
You could come with me.

Fox only stared watery eyed to the smoking ashes.
She got up and covered him with the remaining blankets and walked away.
The shrill of a cold Subaru starter hurt his ears and he kept his head covered as the head lights from her car paused on him and he saw his shadow on the hill side, then it was gone.
He sat as the last heat from his house warmed his cheek and thought about following her, he could catch up to her at the Rez line if he left now.  In his mind, he saw himself tearing down the dirt road to the highway in a cloud of dust in the morning light.  Even in his mind, in his imagination, he stopped to say good bye to his horse standing by the road.  He couldn’t go any further. He imagined himself standing with his horse watching the cloud of dust from his loves Subaru disappear on the horizon.
Back in reality, he didn’t budge, he knew his old Mustang wouldn’t start on a cold morning like this.
The sun began to rise and he watched his shadow appear, tall across the ash and grass, then short…

blue

Act I
Pinto stared at himself in the mirror. Every time he looked at his reflection, he struggled to remember the last time he saw himself, because he only saw the younger version of himself, the trouble maker, the dusty bronc rider, dressed in a baggy shirt, dirty pants and beat up hat pulled low over this face because even then he was afraid to look in a mirror. Even at his own reflection, he would look away or stare unfocused off to the horizon beyond.
It definitely made combing his hair difficult..
Act II
Everything was out of focused and out of tune. Pinto loosened his tie and collar and counted his breath as he listened to his heart, an off beat drum, his breath a violin in the hands of some random person at music store that decided to pick one up and run a bow across it. Every bright light was a chord off an old electric guitar at the back of a big empty room.
Pinto stepped out, and in his mind, he was a spindly awkward man on stilts, trying to move his feet to the odd rhythm he was hearing.
All the faces blurred together, all the voices made no sense, he could only move his feet because he could hear the clop of his boots on the floor. Otherwise, there was only the sensation of being stationary and the entire world moving before him.
Finally at the podium, he was able to ground himself, his scarred hands gripped the wooden edges and seemed to slow the world down a little, and he starred out at his colleagues..
Act III
No one noticed her in the back of the room stringing a violin with strands of Pintos formerly long black hair that she had saved. she would sort them by length, picking out the numerous gray ones, before tightening and testing the sounds..
Act IV
He spoke. As he often speaks, repeating the stories that the sherds would whisper in his ear while he sat among the grasses in his country. He interpreted stories into English, that were told to him by crumbled rock walls in their language. the vibration of the earth and sky were spoken in his unwavering voice that boomed off the walls and ceiling, and Pinto was confident that the rocks, and trees and flaked stone were satisfied in their places on the earth, that their stories were told.
Act V
Well, it was blue. We found it under a rock.
A different blue, not the sky, not the ocean, not on any color chart.
The kind of blue you find when you are in some deep canyon and find a secret spring of blue water welling up from deep places, you can only see it when you have been thirsty a long time. Ive seen it before. Not a paint, not even something that can be imagined. Maybe if you are far under the ocean and rise to the surface underneath a glacier and are able to see through it a little bit, that kind of blue. There is a little band of it you can see on the horizon just before the idea of the rising sun comes to mind when you are looking east on a cold morning. I’ve seen a lot of sky, in a lot of places in this world, and can never find it when i am looking for it.
Im embarrassed to say but it has a name, i cant say. its a she, that blue. Its a she, thats far away, and if you are lucky, she will look into you with those eyes, and you might see that blue. I guess there is no place on a Munsell chart to describe it. Thats the blue we saw. I don’t think we would ever see it again. I would quit archaeology and become an artist if i tried to find it again.
The crowd was silent. The students who were taking notes stopped scribbling his madness and were intent on this color, this idea of Blue.
Pinto refocused his eyes and he tumbled back into himself. It was a long walk from the podium back to the edge of the room, already he could see the silhouette of himself walking shakily that others could not..

Self Image

When i think about my self image, this is what i envision.

A man alone in his grandmothers country.

 

I often sit out here alone in the place i love, and think about things while listening to the wind and watching the grass ripple like waves.

 

In the past my old Black and White horse would come out of the night and visit. We would talk for hours in the darkness. He is gone only a year now but i still sometimes wait for his outline against the sky, half his ear bitten off in a brawl when we were younger. His old battle scarred face, over my shoulder looking for my long hair so he can play his game and untie my braids with what vision his dim eyes had left.

 

The rez is lonely, it is hot and windswept, its the wind takes every thing away, eventually, emotions, sadness, anger, love, the few people I’ve brought out here into my life, eventually they leave with the wind too. I watch the rippling yellow grass cover their tracks remembering when i would sit day dreaming on a distant beach and the waves would rise and erase love letters which i had written on the sandy beach. The wind scours everything away, everything but the love for this place.

Living among beauty, a man wants to possess it, to keep it, and hide it for himself and guard it jealously. One morning, you wake up and realize the wild horse you caught, keeps looking off to the west where it came from. Soon both of you are staring off to the west, and before you know it, you open the gate. The wild horse may come back, or it may not, at least its happy where ever it went.

 

I sometimes wonder how the people know my deepest secrets, the people who have seen me tremble at my most vulnerable and rage at my angriest, I wonder how they are doing. The people who have seen  my worst gnarled scars. I wonder how those people who know my greatest fears are thinking about me. People I love, or random strangers that we held each other in a moment of fear as if the world was ending and we were all we had left.

 

When i was really young, i would look out to the distant road, for a cloud of dust that would be my parents coming pick me from this place,and take me to the land of TV, fast food, paved roads, running water. I can’t remember when i stopped looking for someone to take me away. When i finally stopped waiting, I would play, chase rabbits, and help my grandparents with the sheep and cattle. Now, I’m like an old horse looking out to the main road, and just watching the cars go by hoping they keep going , hoping they wont ever take me away.

 

Out in the nonnative world, I’m just another brown guy that white people walk away from when I’m getting gas at the pump, or walking into the store, as if a professional worker doesn’t get dirty or worn out after a day on the range. I’m an old abandoned building that people don’t look at because its an uncomfortable reminder that the things humans possess and build, will have the same fate. Or perhaps, I remind them they want to be Native. but not the kind of native i am.

 

In the native world, I’m someone who my generation criticizes for not being traditional enough because i work off the reservation. I’m a sell out because i can’t find a job at home. My clothes, my voice, are reasons i should give up and move away and never come back. No one bothers to converse to me in my language, it is assumed i don’t speak it. No one bothers to ask me about the story of this land because it is assumed i haven’t lived it.

 

I know enough that i can talk to the creator and tell him all the things I’ve done wrong, and the things i’ll do right in the next world. I know enough that i would stand there and speak for those who don’t know the creators language and beg their forgiveness. I know enough that if the creator doesn’t speak my language, i wont worry and i will go looking for the creator that does.

 

 

Out here on the rez in my grandmothers country, I’m someone because i get up in the morning and tend to our cattle. I’m someone that that my horse and donkey look for on Friday evenings when I’m coming back from work or when ive been gone to long chasing fires or going to conferences. I’m someone that knows these lands and knows her secrets. I’m someone that the earth waits for.

This is where I’ve always been

I wake up a lot during the night, because i realize i am already awake, staring in the darkness, at something that exists far back in time. I’m staring at possibilities far into the future. I’m listening for the guidance from the creator, that seems only to come to me in a code, in the scratching of mice, or shuffle of hooves from cattle outside my window…

Somedays i reach for my guitar without thinking… and i forget part of my hand is still numb. I stare at the scar with anger, then pity, then i start counting scars up my arms, then on my leg, and before i know it im staring at myself in the mirror, remembering all the times i was bitten, kicked, dragged, burned and broken. I wonder who put me back together, and i keep counting in the mirror…

Sometimes I cant sleep,

I lie awake and think of apologies to people I‘ve wrong in my life.

People I’ve insulted and demeaned when I was another person,

People I let down when I should have been giving them everything…

At the end of a long sleepless night, watching the sunrise, I imagine the faces of those who would come and deserve justice and peace, and I imagine the excuses I might say..

I wonder of my own peace, listening to ran fall on the ground, putting my ear to the earth to hear the thunder of running horses, dark skies and falling stars…