The Darkness Rolling
Read The Darkness Rolling Online
Authors: Win Blevins
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Dedicated to the rolling light that lives in every one of our grandchildren.
Ruth, Aletha,
Caleb, Sienna,
Bailey, Blaire, Liam,
Chloe, Henry, and Peter.
This one’s for you.
Hozho, or beauty and harmony, weaves the pattern of the lives of those we love. The people we take care of, and the people who take care of us. It is the great balancing act of living a peaceful life.
We would like to thank Barry Simpson and Steve Simpson of Twin Rocks Trading Post for firing our imaginations. Also, of course, as invaluable sources of story, joy, and friendship.
Thank you, Jen Mouton, for a place to write and dream, bonne terre cottage. We are ever grateful for your love and support.
Bob Diforio, agent extraordinaire, is our champion and more. Kristin Sevick Brown, our editor, thank you for your energy, enthusiasm, and brains. And to Bess Cozby, ever good-natured, for making certain we are on track.
Finally, we thank our bighearted community—a strange and wonderful brew of Anglos and Navajos, always on the edge, always opinionated, irascible, loving, kind, loyal, and smart. We are two of the luckiest people alive to count ourselves as among the 300 Bluffoons.
Win Blevins
Meredith Blevins
Bluff, Utah 2015
Saad T’
áá
l
á
’
í
Diyin N
í
lch’i
Holy Wind comes from the place life began, it is said.
Sh
í
, Diyin N
í
lch’i, nishl
í
a
á
d
óó
iina sil
íí
, jin
í
.
Wind is the same within us all,
N
í
lchi
á
t’
é
t’
áá
nihii,
But there is an evil wind-part called Darkness Rolling.
J
ó éí
d
íí
nicho
ó
ei chahalheel yimasii woly
é
.
It runs the large, bad thoughts within us.
Ii’h
á
hejeeh
é
e, baah
á
gii nits
é
keestsoh.
If it happens that a person dies, it is said,
É
hoon
í
ilgo din
é á
din,
There was one moment when their heart stopped listening,
Jin
í
Nihij
éí
y
é
e niiltli’,
And they let the Darkness Rolling come inside.
Á
ko kod
óó
Din
é
tah dine sodiszin, y
é
ilti’.
We listen to this earth from where life first began.
A
á
d
óó
iina sil
íí
,
Good and Evil, Sun and Darkness Rolling,
A
á
d
óó
iina sil
íí
,
We remember—Holy Wind made them all.
Ya’at’eeh nch
ó
’
í
ako doo y
á
’
á
sh
ó
o da.
Holy Wind comes from the place life began, it is said.
Sh
í
, Diyin N
í
lch’i, nishl
í
a
á
d
óó
iina sil
íí
, jin
í
.
Traditional Navajo prayer
translated by Meredith Blevins
I was itchy. Tingling. My skin felt like foaming surf breaking on sand, and my brain was buzz-busy, just like the soldiers who had decided to stay in San Diego after the war. Possibilities. Worlds of them. I felt them, too.
Women who’d traded their love for gasoline and stockings walked the singing sidewalks. High heels clicked, and the sun raised their red lipstick to a promise. Happy to have their young men back home. High times.
I stood on one foot, then the other. Yes, itchy. The radio operator tried again, and this time I heard her voice. After the official shortwave palaver, he said, “Mrs. Nizhoni Goldman?”
“Yes.”
“I have Seaman Yazzie Goldman here for you.”
I leapt in, probably too loud.
“Hello, Mom.” I hadn’t said that in six years. Hard for me to get in touch while in the service, and no phones at home on the rez.
“Yazzie!” Her voice was a cry, the kind that’s elation and tears at once.
“Mom, this has to be quick. It’s against regulations, and the last thing I want to do right now is get tossed in the brig.”
No words, but I could hear her, so far away, out in the red rock desert where silence has the muted voice of a monsoon. I got the feeling she couldn’t speak, so I kept on.
“I’m mustering out on Tuesday, Mom. I’ve got my railroad ticket, and I’ll be in Flagstaff at 7:14 Wednesday morning. Can someone pick me up?”
I heard a sound in the background, something between a bear growl and a coyote yowl.
“That was Grandpa, saying the biggest
yes,
in his way. Jake Charlie will be in Flag for you.”
“Hi, Grandpa!” I hollered into thin air to the man who was my compass. “Then it’s home Wednesday night, Mom. Gotta get off now, before I get caught.”
“Wednesday night!”
“You bet.”
The radioman broke the connection. He looked up at me, grinned. In an imp tone, he said, “You paid back now, Yazzie?”
“We’re square,” I said. I ran out the door, raised my arms, and whooped. Then I whooped some more.
Two women, wearing polka-dot dresses that blew in the breeze, walked arm in arm chattering with each other. They turned their bright faces to me, shiny as a cloudless sky.
I bounded off. No particular direction, just my feet wanting to take my heart and body for a dance. The war was over—so many terrible stories I knew—but my home was still standing firm. Still welcoming. Waiting for me. How lucky I was.
* * *
“How you gonna get to town?” the guard said.
Zopilote said, “Steal a car.”
The fool guard grinned and put his hand to his forehead to protect his face from the sun, as if that was possible. “Don’t steal a new one. The first just been made since the war started, and they’re conspicuous. Lots of metal.”
Zopilote, the “buzzard man,” didn’t bother to fake a grin. He took his packet of ragged belongings, wrapped in newspaper and tied up with string. He turned away. March 1, 1946, he saw on the front page. He would remember that. May as well have been a different century.
On the side of the highway he felt a warm wind on his neck, and it shivered along his skin. His insides prickled with hatred. His mind was blood-soaked. Finally, trudging through the dust alongside the highway, he was free. Free to act out his treasure-lust of dreams, the ones he’d been hoarding for twenty-five years.
He’d be damned if he’d look back at the Arizona State Prison. So much time lost. Years eaten. Plenty of reason to hate and to get even.
The yearning for revenge had grown until it filled every corner of his soul, assuming he still had one. He intended to kill those who had betrayed him—his own family!—and who had locked him away in prison.
An early-season dust devil whipped his feet, rising from the ditch beside the highway. That was all right. Let the dust devil lick him—maybe it had come spinning in from his home to greet him. No paved highways on the Navajo rez, but plenty of dust devils. He felt sort of like a whirlwind himself, a being that roiled with primal chaos. Home would be good. Plenty of red-orange dust and plenty of buzzards.
It was behind bars that he’d given himself the name Zopilote, the Mexican word for the black bird with the red head. Scorched Buzzard, that’s how he liked to think of himself now. That’s who he was.
A Mexican, a guy he talked to a lot, this Mexican said to him, “You’re like the
zopilote.
”
“What?”
“The
zopilote.
The buzzard.” The Mexican had pointed to the piercing sky, where several of the big birds circled.
“That huge vulture with the bald head, like it had been burned—that thing?”
“Yeah. The
zopilote,
he’s like no other living creature. People kill, all creatures kill, and then they eat. The
zopilote,
no, he eats only things that he finds already dead.” The Mexican looked at him and smiled. “So he eats death to create life, his own life.”
Then the Mexican guy shrugged, waited for some words from the Navajo. Didn’t get any. “You, you’re one crazy Navajo. You keep yourself alive by feeding on the death of these people you hate, whoever they are. Not their real death, but your thoughts about it.”
You never have true friends in jail.
But he took that story back to his cell with him. He liked it. The next morning he told the other prisoners to call him Zopilote. Forced them with his fists when necessary. He’d learned a few things in prison. To speak English and read it. To pick a lock and break into any building. To fight really mean. To kill with bare hands when he wanted to.
