Sing Down the Moon

I said to my husband, "I think of our canyon. I see it before I go to sleep, sometimes in my dreams, and always when I wake up. I see the high stone cliffs and the trees standing against the sky. I see my sheep wandering about with no one to tend them."

  "They are not wandering now," he said. "The wolves have killed them and there are none left. You had better think of something else besides sheep."

  His words made me angry, though I did not show it. "Some are still alive," I said. "That is why I see them."

  He looked at me as if I had turned into a witch. "If some are alive, why is it that I do not see them?" he said. "Do you have a true eye or something that I lack?"

  "I suppose I see them because I want to," I said. "And you do not see them because you do not want to."

  "I never had any sheep to see," Tall Boy said. "A few goats but no sheep."

  "But you can see the canyon if you look," I said. "You were born there and lived there as a boy and grew to be a man. It was your home and it still is."

  His long hair was braided into two ropes that lay forward on his chest. He tossed both of them back. "I do not want to think of the canyon," he said.

  "My father does not want to think of the canyon either," I said.

  "This is not the time to think about the canyon," he said and shouted to the horse.

  We climbed the riverbank and set off toward our hut. The white soldiers were still marching around the fort.

  I said nothing more that day about the canyon or the sheep. But I made up my mind as we went back through the village, past the rows of brush huts where people shivered and were dying. Within the rising and waning of five moons my baby would be born.

  "It will not be born here, in the shadow of the gray fort," I said to myself, "not here."

  21

  THERE WAS NO WOOL to be found anywhere in the village and when I asked one of the Long Knives if there was wool at the fort he did not answer. I thought that he did not understand Navaho so I made the sign of a blanket and weaving. He sat on a horse, beside the wagon that was bringing us flour. He looked away and said nothing.

  Soon afterward I traded my turquoise bracelet for three old blankets of a fine black and white design. By taking one of them apart I was able to save enough thread to repair the other two. The family used them at night, but I took good care of them for they would go with us the day Tall Boy and I left Bosque Redondo.

  I was a long time saving food. Every morning when I made the gruel for the family I put two pinches of the flour into a gourd and hid it away in the lean-to. At breakfast I ate two pinches less than the others so things would be even. It took me all the mornings between two moons to fill the gourd, which was enough for a journey of three days.

  The next time the wagon came the white soldiers gave us less flour than before and I did not try to save any of it. Still, there was enough for the two of us if we could find some other food along the way. I told Tall Boy about the blankets and the food I had hidden in the lean-to.

  "It is a foolish idea that has hold of you," he said. "Before we cross the river they will find our tracks in the snow."

  "We can go when the snow melts," I said. "We can go at night in fair weather and leave no tracks for them to find."

  He shook his head and looked at me gently, as if he felt pity for me.

  "We will talk about it more sometime," be said, turning away.

  I knew that he would never think of it again, unless I did. He was like someone who was under a spell. He was like my father, like all the Navaho men, as if he had been forsaken by the gods. But I did not give up my plans for us to flee from Bosque Redondo.

  A few days later we borrowed the speckled horse and went down to the river to cut firewood. It was also growing scarce and we had to search to find a tree worth cutting.

  We wandered through the river thickets all morning, but had only half a load to show for our work. At noon we went back to where the old horse was tethered. My black dog growled before we got there, and I saw an Apache standing beside the horse.

  Tall Boy spoke a greeting. The Indian did not answer. Instead he pointed to the wood on the horse's, back.

  "Mine," he said. "This wood belong to Apache."

  Tall Boy untied the horse, humming a little song to himself, which was a sign that he was angry.

  "You get wood on Apache land," said the young Indian. "No good. No like."

  He stepped in front of the horse, as if he meant to keep it from moving away. As the horse started to walk around him, he reached out and gave it a blow on the muzzle. The horse had been given many blows in his life from the way he looked and he just stopped and waited. But Tall Boy walked over and took a length of wood down from the horse's back. He gripped it hard in his one good hand.

  The Apache had a square chest and spindly legs. He squinted his eyes, which were black as a lizard's, and glanced at the length of wood Tall Boy held in his hand. Then he took a step toward my husband, raising a fist.

  Tall Boy struck quickly, as a snake strikes. The blow landed on the Apache's outthrust arm. He dropped the stone he held in his fist. A second blow knocked him off his feet and he fell in the snow and lay there stunned.

  We took the horse and went home. I looked back and saw the Apache get to his feet and stagger off. That night while we were eating supper, two soldiers came. They walked into the hut without saying a word and took Tall Boy away. I could not sleep that night thinking about him.

  My father went to the fort the next morning and I went with him. There was a big gate in the wall. It was closed and we stood outside in the snow waiting for it to open but no one came all day.

  The next morning we went back to the gate. We waited until noon and then it opened and a soldier took us into a courtyard. We waited there until the sun went down. Then a soldier came out and told us to leave but to come back in the morning, which we did.

  All morning we walked up and down in the courtyard, trying to keep warm. About noon a Long Knife led us into a room where two men sat. One of them was a soldier and the other a Ute Indian, who told us what the officer said and told him what we answered.

  The white officer had blue eyes and a red beard. He worse a hat with a gold cord around it and asked me what my name was.

  "Bright Morning," I told him. I did not give him my secret name and he did not ask for it.

  "Bright Morning," he said, "tell me what happened when you were gathering wood."

  It was bad manners for him to say my name when I was standing there in front of him. But perhaps he did not know this, so I told him everything that happened by the river, as I remembered it.

  I said, "Tall Boy is my husband and he is needed at home."

  "Magnus the Apache has a home, too, and is needed," the soldier said, "but he has a broken arm and cannot work."

  Neither the riverbank nor the wood that grows there belongs to him," I said. "The arm is his fault."

  The officer looked at me sharply with his blue eyes. "Whose fault it is," he said, "is for me to decide, not you."

  He began to look at the papers on his desk. The soldier took us to the gate and let us out and we walked home through snow that was beginning to fall.

  "What are the Long Knives going to do with him?" I asked my father.

  "He has done no wrong," my father answered. "It is not wrong to shield yourself from a man with a stone. They will send him home soon."

  22

  THE SNOWS MELTED and warm winds blew over Bosque Redondo and green grass began to show along the banks of the river. The big gate at the fort opened every day, the Long Knives marched out, the drums beat, and horns sounded, then the soldiers went back in and the gate closed. I waited every day, but my husband did not come.

  With spring settled on the land, the wagons brought more food for us and I was able to save an other gourd of flour. We now had enough food to last us on a journey of six days.

  Besides the two good blankets, we had a knife, which was like those the soldiers used on the ends of
their rifles. I found it on one of the mornings when I went up to the fort. It was wrapped in a cloth and hidden in the grass. I sharpened it on a stone and put it away in the lean-to. The cloth, which was an arm's length of red velvet, would make a girl's small dress or a jacket for a boy.

  It was a warm night with many stars and the sound of the river running far away. We had just eaten our supper when Tall Boy came. He walked in so quietly that my black dog did not hear him. He sat down at the fire and ate everything that was left in the pot, hurriedly as if he had never eaten before. He looked gaunt and fearful.

  My father said, "Did the Long Knives open the gate for you?"

  "They did not open the gate," Tall Boy replied.

  "The gate was not open?"

  "No."

  "But you are here."

  "I am here because of a hole in the wall," Tall Boy said, "which I have known about for many weeks."

  "Where is this hole you have known about?"

  "It is in the place where they cook the food."

  "Is it a round hole or one that is square?"

  "Neither one nor the other," said Tall Boy. "It is a hole where they shove all the garbage."

  "Yes, I have heard of this hole," my father said. "The garbage goes through and falls on the ground outside the wall and the people go there and pick it up."

  "That is the hole," Tall Boy said.

  "Of a size right for crawling."

  "When no one looks. When everyone has left the place where they cook the food."

  "And the people have come and carried away all the garbage."

  "That is the time," Tall Boy said.

  "When will the Long Knives know that you have crawled through the hole?"

  "In the morning when they come to cook breakfast."

  "Not sooner nor later?"

  "Then," my husband said.

  He sat staring into the empty pot. I brought him a bowl of corn mush, which he ate in a hurry, and then he fell silent, sitting on his haunches with one arm dangling and the other on his thigh. I thought that he would get up at any moment, that the two of us would flee the camp, but he sat there beside the fire, looking as if he might fall asleep.

  "The Long Knives will come in the morning," I said. "You will wake up behind the walls of the fort again."

  He glanced at me, blinking his eyes, and I suddenly knew that he had gone as far as he wished to go. He was back with his family. He had eaten our food. He would sleep beside our fire. What happened to him tomorrow did not matter.

  He was still blinking at me, halfway between waking and sleeping.

  "Are you an old woman?" I asked him.

  He stopped blinking.

  "An old woman," I went on, my voice rising, "a woman who eats a lot and dozes beside the fire?"

  My mother said, "He is worse than an old woman. He is like the old men of the Navahos. All of them."

  Tall Boy got to his feet and unhitched his belt, making room for the big supper he had eaten.

  My mother looked at him, at his feet. She would have liked to look him in the face, as she did with me when she was angry. But it was against our tribal law for a mother-in-law to look at her son-in-law this way. She looked at his feet for a long time.

  "He will soon have to change his name again," she said. "What do you think it should be? Boy-Who Sits-at-the-Fire? Boy-Who-Sleeps-Standing-Up? Or something else, like Crawling-Through-a-Hole?"

  "I will need to think hard," I said.

  "We shall both think hard," my mother said.

  Tall Boy looked at my mother's feet and then at me. He walked slowly around the fire and went outside. I heard him take a deep breath. I stood there and felt like crying. I had not cried since the day we left our home. After a while I sat down beside the fire and cried.

  I cried for a long time and nobody tried to stop me. Then Tall Boy came to the doorway and spoke my name and beckoned me to follow him.

  When I went outside the first thing I saw was the old speckled horse that belonged to my father-in-law.

  "We go now," Tall Boy said.

  He made a saddle of the two blankets and tied down the gourds that were filled with flour. The sharp knife he put in his belt.

  We did not say good-bye to our family. They knew that we would take their thoughts with us and leave our thoughts for them. Tall Boy got on the horse and we set off through the warm darkness. I had to run to keep pace with him, but when we got to the river he let me climb up behind him.

  I untied the two gourds and hung them around my neck to keep them out of the water. My black dog I held in my lap. The river ran swift and cold. As the horse plunged into the water the current swept us out and then back to shore.

  On the third try we kept going toward the far shore. We would have drowned except for the old horse. He must have been across the river many times in his life, for he knew how to float with the current and swim if he needed to. There was no moon but all the stars were out, shining on the water.

  When we reached the shore, I jumped off the horse and we went along the trail we had used once before. Someday I hoped to have a horse of my own and then I would ride beside my husband. Perhaps he would not own a horse by this time, then it would be he who would have to walk. Across the river the evening fires of Bosque Redondo glowed softly.

  We left them far behind, moving along the trail until dawn. Then we made a fire and cooked some mush beside a small lake.

  My husband said, "This is the time the Long Knives will find that I have gone. We have the night between us but they will come fast."

  "They will not follow us," I said to calm him and myself. "There are thousands of Indians at Bosque Redondo. Will the Long Knives bother to look for one? And if they do, which way will they go? If they do anything, it will be to search the village. Our friends will tell them nothing."

  We slept until the sun was high and awakened to the barking of my black dog. There were soldiers on the trail. By putting our ears to the earth we could hear the steps of their horses. But they came from the west. From our hiding place we watched them pass, driving a small band of Navahos toward Bosque Redondo.

  Tall Boy pulled the knife from his belt and I think that he would have rushed out and attacked the soldiers alone if I had not pleaded with him. As it was, we made so much noise that one of the Long Knives stopped his horse and looked in our direction before he rode on.

  We left the small lake and rode to the northwest, but we had not gone far when my husband said, "There are places closer than Canyon de Chelly where we can hide. These places are safer also. The Long Knives do not watch them like they watch the canyon."

  "But the canyon is our home," I said. "We have lived there. We know where wood is and water and food. The sheep. What of the sheep?"

  I was walking beside him and he glanced down at me in scorn. "Sheep? They are eaten by the wolves, as I have told you," he said. "If not, if there are some left, what do we do with them? Where can we graze them that they will not be seen by the Long Knives?"

  "We will be careful where we graze them," I said. "There are hidden places that I know."

  He shrugged his shoulders, which he did when he did not want to talk about something, and fell silent.

  We went on for six suns, ate the last of our flour and then snared rabbits and squirrels. I was certain that my husband had decided to go to Canyon de Chelly, after all.

  But on the seventh day Tall Boy left the trail and we went northward over a ridge into wooded, rolling country. He had hunted there once and called it Elk-Running Valley.

  A stream ran down from the high mountains and wandered through a meadow until it came to a dam beavers had made from brush and trees. There the stream backed up and formed a small pond with grassy banks. We built a hut beside the pond and lived in it through the summer. It was here that my son was born.

  After that, Tall Boy brought down poles from the high country, dragging them behind the speckled horse. He made the hut larger and strengthened the roof for winter sno
w. He fashioned a throwing stick and killed two young deer. He was busy all the time hunting or making something. He still could not use his injured arm, but he had become quick and skillful with the other one. He no longer seemed to think about his injury.

  I was busy, too. I worked the deer hides with a bone scraper and softened them in my mouth and made a pair of leggings for my son. I also made him a jacket out of the velvet I had saved and a heavy coat from a beaver pelt. Yet not a day went by that summer or when the snows came that I did not think of my sheep.

  23

  ONE MORNING early in the spring, while we were eating breakfast, soldiers appeared on the ridge. Our lean-to was hidden among the pine trees and could not be seen from where they stood. Nor could they see the speckled horse, which was tethered beyond the lean-to. We felt uneasy, nonetheless.

  The Long Knives came down from the ridge, riding fast. We were ready to flee but they turned away from us and headed into the south.

  "The Long Knives will travel for one day, no longer," Tall Boy said. "I have been in the canyon where they are going and they cannot get through. They will have to turn back. We can look for them tomorrow."

  We finished eating our breakfast. The spring sun was warm. Beaver were working on their dam, cutting brush on the banks and swimming across the pond with it. Tall Boy sat with his son in his lap and watched them for a long time going back and forth.

  Then we loaded the old horse with our clothes and some dried deer meat and left Elk-Running Valley before the sun was high. We kept off the trail the soldiers had used.

  At the top of the ridge we went north and west. It was in the direction of our canyon, but I was afraid to ask my husband whether we were going there or not. If we were, then it would be better not to ask him. Sometimes, if he was asked too many questions, he would change his mind and do something else.

  I was not certain that we were going home until on the evening of the fifth day I saw high ramparts against the northern sky. They were crimson in the setting sun, even the tall trees along their edges were crimson. I felt like shouting and dancing, like running around in circles, as I always did when I was very happy. But I walked quietly through the spring grass as if I saw nothing there in the sky.