Ceremony (19 page)

 

Tayo stood up and moved around the fire uneasily; the boy took some ribs and disappeared again behind the hogan. The old man put some wood on the fire. “You don’t have to be afraid of him. Some people act like witchery is responsible for everything that happens, when actually witchery only manipulates a small portion.” He pointed in the direction the boy had gone. “Accidents happen, and there’s little we can do. But don’t be so quick to call something good or bad. There are balances and harmonies always shifting, always necessary to maintain. It is very peaceful with the bears; the people say that’s the reason human beings seldom return. It is a matter of transitions, you see; the changing, the becoming must be cared for closely. You would do as much for the seedlings as they become plants in the field.”

NOTE ON BEAR PEOPLE AND WITCHES

Don’t confuse those who go to the bears with the witch people. Human beings who live with the bears do not wear bear skins. They are naked and not conscious of being different from their bear relatives. Witches crawl into skins of dead animals, but they can do nothing but play around with objects and bodies. Living animals are terrified of witches. They smell the death. That’s why witches can’t get close to them. That’s why people keep dogs around their hogans. Dogs howl with fear when witch animals come around.

 

 

 

The wind came up and fanned the fire. Tayo watched a red flame crawl out from under the white coals; he reached down for a piece of juniper and tossed it in. The fire caught. He rubbed pitch from the wood between his fingers and looked down at Gallup.

“I never told you about Emo,” he said, “I never told you what happened to Rocky.” He pointed at the lights below. “Something about the lights down there, something about the cars and the neon signs which reminds me of both of them.”

“Yes,” the old man said, “my grandmother would not leave this hill. She said the whole world could be seen from here.”

 

“Rocky wanted to get away from the reservation; he wanted to make something of himself. In a city somewhere.”

“They are down there. Ones like your brother. They are down there.”

“He didn’t make it though. I was supposed to help him, so he’d make it back. They were counting on him. They were proud of him. I owed them that much. After everything that happened. I owed it to them.” He looked at the old man, but he was staring at the lights down below, following the headlights from the west until they were taillights disappearing in the east. He didn’t seem to be listening.

“There are no limits to this thing,” Betonie said. “When it was set loose, it ranged everywhere, from the mountains and plains to the towns and cities; rivers and oceans never stopped it.” The wind was blowing steadily and the old man’s voice was almost lost in it.

“Emo plays with these teeth—human teeth—and he says the Indians have nothing compared to white people. He talks about their cities and all the machines and food they have. He says the land is no good, and we must go after what they have, and take it from them.” Tayo coughed and tried to clear the tightness from his throat. “Well, I don’t know how to say this but it seems that way. All you have to do is look around. And so I wonder,” he said, feeling the tightness in his throat squeeze out the tears, “I wonder what good Indian ceremonies can do against the sickness which comes from their wars, their bombs, their lies?”

The old man shook his head. “That is the trickery of the witchcraft,” he said. “They want us to believe all evil resides with white people. Then we will look no further to see what is really happening. They want us to separate ourselves from white people, to be ignorant and helpless as we watch our own destruction. But white people are only tools that the witchery manipulates; and I tell you, we can deal with white people, with their machines and their beliefs. We can because we invented white people; it was Indian witchery that made white people in the first place.

 

They left on horseback before dawn. The old man rode a skinny pinto mare with hip bones and ribs poking against the hide like springs of an old car seat. But she was strong and moved nimbly up the narrow rocky path north of Betonie’s hogan. The old man’s helper rode a black pony, hunching low over its neck with his face in the mane. Maybe he rode like that for warmth, because it was cold in those foothills before dawn; the night air of the high mountains was chilled by the light of the stars and the shadows of the moon. The brown gelding stumbled with Tayo; he reined it in and walked it more slowly. Behind them in the valley, the highway was a faint dark vein through the yellow sand and red rock. He smelled piñon and sage in the wind that blew across the stony backbone of the ridge. They left the red sandstone and the valley and rode into the lava-rock foothills and pine of the Chuska Mountains.

“We’ll have the second night here,” Betonie said, indicating a stone hogan set back from the edge of the rimrock.

Tayo stood near the horses, looking down the path over the way they had come. The plateaus and canyons spread out below him like clouds falling into each other past the horizon. The world below was distant and small; it was dwarfed by a sky so blue and vast the clouds were lost in it. Far into the south there were smoky blue ridges of the mountain haze at Zuni. He smoothed his hand over the top of his head and felt the sun. The mountain wind was cool; it smelled like springs hidden deep in mossy black stone. He could see no signs of what had been set loose upon the earth: the highways, the towns, even the fences were gone. This was the highest point on the earth: he could feel it. It had nothing to do with measurements or height. It was a special place. He was smiling. He felt strong. He had to touch his own hand to remember what year it was: thick welted scars from the shattered bottle glass.

 

He sat in the center of the white corn sand painting. The rainbows crossed were in the painting behind him. Betonie’s helper scraped the sand away and buried the bottoms of the hoops in little trenches so that they were standing up and spaced apart, with the hard oak closest to him and the wild rose hoop in front of the door. The old man painted a dark mountain range beside the farthest hoop, the next, closer, he painted blue, and moving toward him, he knelt and made the yellow mountains; and in front of him, Betonie painted the white mountain range.