Storyteller

  From a Letter to James A. Wright

  Fall, 1978

  But sometimes what we call “memory” and what we call “imagination” are not so easily distinguished.

  I know Aunt Susuie and Aunt Alice would tell me stories they had told me before but with changes in details or descriptions. The story was the important thing and little changes here and there were really part of the story. There were even stories about the different versions of stories and how they imagined these differing versions came to be.

  I’ve heard tellers begin “The way I heard it was….” and then proceed with another story purportedly a version of a story just told but the story they would tell was a wholly separate story, a new story with an integrity of its own, an offspring, a part of the continuing which storytelling must be. Grandma Lillie was talking recently about years ago when she went out to milk my Great-grandpa Marmon’s cow and the mean old rooster attacked her so she took a big rock and hit it and killed it. I told her that I thought I remembered her saying that the rooster was only stunned, not dead. “No,” she said, “He jumped out of the dark with his claws right at me. Scared me so bad I picked up a big rock and hit him on the head and killed him. I was afraid to tell Grandpa Marmon, poor thing, he was such a nice old man.” The coyotes finally got Rooster too. They’d been prowling near the house for a long time—it must have taken four of them—one to lure away the old black hound and the pup, and the other three to grab the chickens. There was almost no trace that the two little white hens had ever been at the ranch. I had to search a long time before I found even one white feather. But Rooster had put up a terrible fight and four piles of his dark green and black feathers were in front of the house. Coyotes waste nothing. There were no traces of blood, no remains at all, just the feathers. Later that afternoon the wind blew dust and a few drops of rain. The feathers scattered down the hillside catching in weeds under the creosote bushes and palo verde trees. There was nothing to bury; it was as if Rooster had just disappeared.

  There have been other times when he disappeared and I searched everywhere for him—under the big jojoba bush he liked, on the screened porch and around by the windmill. One afternoon I even searched for him on horseback because I was certain he was nowhere near the house. Much later that day he simply reappeared. Last summer I was in the kitchen talking with Denny when suddenly I felt we were not alone—a strange feeling for the ranch which is miles from town. We checked the front door and the other rooms. Finally I went to the kitchen window. The rooster was standing motionless below the window screen listening to us. I saw by the fierceness of his little yellow eyes it was deliberate.

  It’s been weeks now, but this morning I went out and there was a single feather by the door. It is glossy and lies smooth; its colors are vivid—emerald green flecked with gold.

  Coyotes and the Stro’ro’ka Dancers

  Long ago

  near the Acoma mesa

  there was another mesa

  with very precipitous walls.

  A lone coyote appeared

  on the mesa top.

  Down below in the valley

  there was a group

  of ceremonial dancers

  the Stro’ro’ka Ka’tsinas

  who were holding a dance.

  And he was thrilled

  with the sight

  and he said

  “My! Look down below!

  Those dancers have beautiful costumes

  they have brought wonderful things

  to eat—

  melons and squashes!”

  Things that the Lagunas,

  the Keres people,

  have always had as food

  from way back traditional

  in the traditional state

  and

  “How could one get

  all that food?”

  So he said

  “I think I’ll call

  my clanspeople

  the Coyote Clan.”

  So he got to the very edge

  and he gave this cry,

  this signal:

  “Ama doo roo a roo!”

  Which in coyote language

  meant “to come”

  and one coyote appeared

  and he says

  to this one

  “Look down below

  and see the wonder!

  Look at all that food

  the Stro’ro’kas have brought

  to give away

  if one could only get at them.”

  So the first coyote

  was thrilled

  and he says

  “How can we get down there?

  The cliff is high and precipitous.”

  So he said

  “We’ll call some others.”

  So the first one

  again made a call:

  “Ama doo roo a roo!”

  and two more came.

  And he said

  to the two

  who had just arrived

  “Look down below!

  Look what a sight there is!

  All the food

  the Stro’ro’ka dancers

  have brought!

  And how can we get

  down there?”

  So he said

  “I believe I’ll call—

  give another call.”

  And so he did.

  He said

  “Ama doo roo a roo!”

  and a whole bunch of them

  came—of coyotes.

  The first one

  said to them

  “Look down below!

  Look what a beautiful sight!

  All the food

  the Stro’ro’kas

  and their ceremonial dance

  have brought.”

  and

  “How shall we get down there?

  So he said

  “I think I have an idea.

  We know that the cliff

  is high

  and there’s no other way

  to get down there,

  so I have

  an idea.”

  He says

  “I think

  if we just hang down

  some way—”

  He says

  “If we just bite

  one another’s tail

  and in that way

  we’ll go down

  in a long string.”

  So the first one said

  “All right

  if you’ll just bite my tail

  I’ll lead.”

  And so the second one

  bit the leader’s tail

  and he hung over the cliff.

  Do you see the picture?

  Yes, they hung over the cliff

  and so the third one

  bit the second one’s tail

  and the string got

  a little bit longer

  and it was over the cliff now

  and so on

  until there was

  a whole group

  of the coyotes now

  hung down the cliff

  until one—

  the middle one—

  the one in the middle said

  “Oh! I smell a bad odor

  from some source,”

  he said.

  And he opened his mouth

  and the rest said

  “So do I!”

  They let one another go

  and the whole bunch

  flopped down

  in a big heap

  in the valley below.

  And the Stro’ro’ka dancers

  down below

  stopped dancing

  and ran to the heap

  of dead coyotes

  glad because

  they wanted the skins

  of the coyotes

  to wear around their necks.

  And they all grabbed—

  the Stro’ro’ka dancers grabbed

  the dead coyotes

&nbs
p; and said

  “This one is going to be mine!”

  and “This is going to be

  my neck piece.”

  And they gathered

  the coyotes

  and took them.

  And tradition says that they—

  the Stro’ro’ka Dancers

  the mesita people

  are the only ones

  who dance that now

  they wear that costume—

  the coyote skin neckpiece—

  because of long ago.

  When the Indian Public Health Service

  laid sewer line in the village

  the outhouses started disappearing

  from the hill next to the church

  and from down below by the corrals.

  Everyone is happy to quit hauling water in buckets

  and everyone enjoys taking showers

  so no one discusses this openly.

  But I think people are beginning to realize now

  the advantages the old outdoor toilets had

  especially when pipes freeze in the winter

  or the sewer clogs up.

  With the outside toilets

  you could get away by yourself

  for an hour or so

  at night you could tell everyone

  you were going out to the toilet

  and have an hour or two that way.

  Many interesting things used to develop.

  There are only a few outhouses remaining now

  but last year at Laguna Feast

  a girl from Encinal was slightly injured.

  She had locked herself in one of the old wooden toilets

  down by Scotts’ pigpen

  and she was arguing through the door

  with five or six of her boyfriends.

  Finally they pushed the toilet down the hill

  with her still inside.

  The Laguna guys claim it was the Navajos

  and the Navajos claim it was the Lagunas who did it.

  The girl received a slight scalp wound

  as the toilet rolled over.

  “Well she should have held onto the hole!”

  Sandy said when she heard the story,

  “She should have held onto the edge of that hole real tight.”

  Toe’osh: A Laguna Coyote Story

  for Simon Ortiz, July 1973

  In the wintertime

  at night

  we tell coyote stories

  and drink Spañada by the stove.

  How coyote got his

  ratty old fur coat

  bits of old fur

  the sparrows stuck on him

  with dabs of pitch.

  That was after he lost his proud original one in a poker game.

  anyhow, things like that

  are always happening to him,

  that’s what he said, anyway.

  And it happened to him at Laguna

  and Chinle

  and Lukachukai too, because coyote got too smart for his own good.

  But the Navajos say he won a contest once.

  It was to see who could sleep out in a

  snowstorm the longest

  and coyote waited until chipmunk badger and skunk were all

  curled up under the snow

  and then he uncovered himself and slept all night

  inside

  and before morning he got up and went out again

  and waited until the others got up before he came

  in to take the prize.

  Some white men came to Acoma and Laguna a hundred years ago

  and they fought over Acoma land and Laguna women, and even now

  some of their descendants are howling in

  the hills southeast of Laguna.

  Charlie Coyote wanted to be governor

  and he said that when he got elected

  he would run the other men off

  the reservation

  and keep all the women for himself.

  One year

  the politicians got fancy

  at Laguna.

  They went door to door with hams and turkeys

  and they gave them to anyone who promised

  to vote for them.

  On election day all the people

  stayed home and ate turkey

  and laughed.

  The Trans-Western pipeline vice president came

  to discuss right-of-way.

  The Lagunas let him wait all day long

  because he is a busy and important man.

  And late in the afternoon they told him

  to come back again tomorrow.

  They were after the picnic food

  that the special dancers left

  down below the cliff.

  And Toe’osh and his cousins hung themselves

  down over the cliff

  holding each other’s tail in their mouth making a coyote chain

  until someone in the middle farted

  and the guy behind him opened his

  mouth to say “What stinks?” and they

  all went tumbling down, like that.

  Howling and roaring

  Toe’osh scattered white people

  out of bars all over Wisconsin.

  He bumped into them at the door

  until they said

  “Excuse me”

  And the way Simon meant it

  was for 300 or maybe 400 years.

  Around Laguna Fiesta time

  tribal police from everywhere show up: Isleta, Acoma, Zuni,

  Navajo Police and of course the Laguna Police invite the

  State Police and the B.I.A. Police.

  I even saw a few county sheriffs this year.

  Anyway, this accounts for all the sirens.

  It happened at the trashpile

  over by the wooden bridge across the river

  where you can’t be seen from the road.

  Some Navajo guys had planned it very carefully.

  They hid their liquor supply in the trash pile

  and then went up to the village

  for the dances and food stands and carnival.

  They would sneak back down to the trash pile for a drink

  whenever they wanted.

  They were having a wonderful time

  until someone noticed them going back and forth

  always coming back happier than they went down.

  Nobody comes to Laguna Feast

  without a six pack and a bottle

  but liquor here is still illegal.

  Nobody ever pays any attention to the law.

  You just pay attention to not getting caught.

  They don’t usually arrest you

  but they take the cold beer away from you

  and the worst part is

  you know they’ll drink it.

  So when the guys saw all these tribal police cars—

  it seemed like every tribe sent a police car—

  these guys knew Fiesta was coming to an end for them.

  But part of the fiesta spirit

  has always been

  if not for wine at the trash pile

  then for a fight with the cops.

  It was a shoving and pushing fight:

  the guys shoving the cops away from their liquor

  the cops pushing the guys into the paddy wagons.

  But carefully

  because the tribal police know what the people are saying:

  It is all these police

  that have ruined Laguna Feast—

  not the State Fair going on at the same time.

  It is because of these police

  the Navajos don’t show up anymore

  like they once did

  covering the foothills east and north of Laguna

  with their campfires.

  Skeleton Fixer

  What happened here?

  she asked

  Some kind of accident?

  Words like bone
s

  scattered all over the place….

  Old Man Badger traveled

  from place to place

  searching for skeleton bones.

  There was something

  only he could do with them.

  On the smooth sand

  Old Man Badger started laying out the bones.

  It was a great puzzle for him.

  He started with the toes

  He loved their curve

  like a new moon,

  like a white whisker hair.

  Without thinking

  he knew their direction,

  laying each toe bone

  to walk east.

  “I know,

  it must have been this way.

  Yes,”

  he talked to himself as he worked.

  He strung the spine bones

  as beautiful as any shell necklace.

  The leg bones were running

  so fast

  dust from the ankle joints

  surrounded the wind.

  “Oh poor dear one who left your bones here

  I wonder who you are?”

  Old Skeleton Fixer spoke to the bones

  Because things don’t die

  they fall to pieces maybe,

  get scattered or separate,

  but Old Badger Man can tell

  how they once fit together.

  Though he didn’t recognize the bones

  he could not stop;

  he loved them anyway.

  He took great care with the ribs

  marveling at the structure

  which had contained the lungs and heart.

  Skeleton Fixer had never heard of

  such things as souls.

  He was certain

  only of bones.

  But where a heart once beat

  there was only sand.

  “Oh I will find you one—

  somewhere around here!”

  And a yellow butterfly

  flew up from the grass at his feet.

  “Ah! I know how your breath left you—

  Like butterflies over an edge,

  not falling but fluttering

  their wings rainbow colors—

  Wherever they are

  your heart will be.”

  He worked all day

  He was so careful with this one—

  it felt like the most special of all.

  Old Man Badger didn’t stop