A STORY OF THE NAVAJO

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

Late in the year of 2004 and while conducting research for one of my novels, I came across a wonderful little book titled “Turquoise Boy, A NAVAJO LEGEND” (www.trollcom). It was my introduction to the fascinating Navajo (Dine’) system of belief, one that centers on respect for the spirit in all things and protects the harmony of nature. In this complex cosmology, Turquoise Boy is one of twin sons of Sun Bearer, the most powerful Dine’ god and his wife Changing Woman, the mother of all people. Turquoise Boy and his brother are responsible for ridding the world of evil, and the book reprises one of Turquoise Boy’s considerable and fascinating efforts to make life easier for the Dine’ who work long and hard in the tribe’s fields and deserts.

Sadly, Turquoise Boy’s work is far from finished as the Navajo Nation is now one of the cruelest of Covid-19’s killing fields of the Western Hemisphere. This is emblematic of the history of the fate of America’s First People, and I can think of no greater stain on present-day American decency. My fondest hope is that this pandemic changes the identity of all of America’s marginalized communities for the better, and especially as it relates to Native Americans.

It is important to me to encourage the welfare of the beautiful indigenous people of my country. For this reason, I include Native American characters in my books when appropriate, facets of my stories that showcase their histories, their cultures, and their priceless and immeasurable contributions to American life. My latest novel titled A CHANCE AT THE MOON, features as one of its main characters a Navajo rancher named Sam Whitehorse whom I patterned after my father. Sam emerged as my favorite character in my novel. The following illustrates a bit of Sam’s appeal:

Excerpt of

A CHANCE AT THE MOON

…Dropping his keys in a pocket of his baggy and dustpowdered seen-better-days jeans, which were hiked up with his ancient Concho Belt that like his knees, was going slack of late, Sam Whitehorse ambled toward the squat building that housed the local VFW Post. He wiped the sweat from his weathered face with an enormous red kerchief he pulled from around his neck. There was no doubt of his Diné heritage, for he was undersized by typical American standards and almost Asian in his lithe wiry compactness. His skin, slicked nearly to hide over the years and burnished mahogany from the strong southwestern sun, spanned tight forearms, rugged hands, and bold cheekbones. His skin lost its high color in dark and deep hollows on either side of his shriveled mouth. Sparkling jet eyes, sloped and intense and full of mirth, were the only rivals of his superb Geronimo nose any Caesar would envy.

“Sam, you old snake!” a voice rang out as he entered the door. Sam diminished in size by several inches when he removed his tall Sugar-loaf sombrero to pass his kerchief over his damp white hair. Observing Western etiquette of permitting the wearing of hats indoors, he replaced the sombrero on his head. It was a tradition harkening to the early days of the Old West when a cowboy’s hat, along with his saddle and boots, was his most prized possession. A hat was useful in warding off everything from hailstones to low-lying branches, or to fan campfires, or to act as a vessel in which to haul water. Over the crowd’s cacophony and Vince Gill’s high-pitched tenor that blasted from the Jukebox, the voice shouted again, “Sam...Sam Whitehorse, over here!” and a gnarled brown hand, apparently attached to the voice, waved above the cowboy-hatted graying heads of a group of X-gens, Boomers, and their Greatest Generation elders, the whole of them congregated at the far end a massive bar. 

The voice belonged to Ted Yellowhammer, a ranch hand on a nearby spread. Ted was one of several pure-blood Navajo among the membership there. In many other parts of the world, Sam and Ted would have been novelties, but not at that VFW Post. They were among their own kind in that western Nevada location, a place replete with full-blood, half-blood, and mix-blood Native Americans, and other southwestern types. The lot of them had grown so brown from the sun and battered with time and hard work that they had become almost indistinguishable from one another. 

“I see you put on your good shirt again,” Ted teased, sticking a finger in a hole in Sam’s old and nearly colorless work shirt where it had worn away at the elbows. “No need to dress up for us old coots,” Ted bellowed. Laughter rippled down the bar as others joined in on the joke. 

 “Well, Hammer, I seen your pickup outside and thought I’d mosey on in and beat you at a game of Euchre,” Sam jibed in return, a sly grin spreading across his sunken cheeks. “Been a while since you beat me, ain’t it?”

Among a group of their cronies, Sam and Ted solicited two card-playing partners. The four of them shuffled to a corner table and a spirited competition commenced. Three hours passed swiftly, and at 10:30 P.M., and still undefeated, Sam pushed away from the table and said his goodbyes. Preoccupied with the ‘Mountain’ as he and Koa had tagged their project, it had been difficult for Sam to keep his mind on the card game. He was glad to be leaving.

Bess had been entertained highly out in the parking lot, visiting with her master’s friends as they had entered and exited the place, but she was growing weary and needing to go home. She had chores to attend to back at the ranch, after all—lambs to bed down for the night, and predators to keep at bay. Wagging her tail and barking her greeting at Sam’s approach, Bess jumped down from the bed of Sam’s pickup and joined her master at his side, slowing her pace to match his labored stride. “Darn knees!” Sam lamented. “Come on in, Bess-honey,” Sam said to his collie dog when finally they reached the driver’s side door of the truck. 

They drove to the music of gentle vocals and nature sounds of Diné meditation songs, harmonies that edified the bond between the inner and outer worlds of his people. It was the cassette tape he favored during his nocturnal journeys home from the VFW Post. Anticipating a hard night ahead of her at the ranch, Bess caught forty winks while they were driving, and snored without reservation, her head tucked in Sam’s lap during the entire trip.

At midnight, under a last quarter moon, Sam Whitehorse entered the sacred place he had set up in his yard, the construction comprising a ring of indigenous stones, including several from his Navajo homeland. Within the boundary of the ring was an ancient sun-bleached steer skull he had come across on a lonely and barren field in the backcountry of his ranch. Within the ring was also a petrified elbow of a tree branch passed down to him from his forefathers, and a femur bone from the first lamb born to his flock, now long dead, the victim at barely four-months-of-age, of snake bite. He had hunted down that snake, which was a rare albino rattler. Its skin now draped the top of his computer monitor that was housed in a corner of the living room of his ranch house. The snake’s dried-up head, replete with needle-sharp and treacherous fangs, which he had severed from its body at the kill, rested high on a shelf above his computer station. It was an artifact that was a daily reminder to him to bless the long life he had been granted despite his several close encounters with death. Residing within the ring of stones in his yard was also a bundle of eagle’s feathers he had gathered so reverently from his own land. Eagle feathers were sacrosanct among his people and illegal to own if discovered. Hanging from the central pole of his sacred site was a gourd he had harvested from the garden he had planted during the first growing season after taking possession of his ranch. The dried seeds of the gourd rattled against its hardened shell and were a perfect accompaniment to his spiritual incantations. 

Around the periphery of this sacred space Sam lit a fire and then danced the circle while chanting in the high-pitched and wailing tones characteristic of the Diné, while many miles upland, a shape-shifted Koa Kalua’i hissed at the bored and wilting security guard who was absorbed in a magazine article. Undetected, Koa slithered on his scaly belly, his forked tongue testing the air as he entered the first chamber of the man-made maze of tunnels that were cut deep into the heart of the ‘Mountain’…..©

#Las Vegas, #Nevada, #Hawaii, #Big Island, #Coffee Plantation, #Caesars Palace, #A CHANCE AT THE MOON, #Linda Lee Greene, #Multi-award-winning Author, #Multi-award-winning Artist

A CHANCE AT THE MOON purchase links:

https://www.amazon.com/CHANCE-AT-MOON-Betrayal-Murder-ebook/dp/B07Z44YN9X/  - EBOOK

https://www.amazon.com/CHANCE-AT-MOON-Betrayal-Murder/dp/169984402X/ - PAPERBACK

JAPAN ATTACKS CALIFORNIA COAST DURING WORLD WAR II

On my blog today, Muse shows up as a twenty-two year old American Indian female perched behind the wheel of a 1940s-era Woodie Station Wagon. She is traveling mountain roads along the Pacific coast of the United States. The mind-journey back to this imaginary young woman in late February, 1942 grants me with her unique perspective on a shocking, true event on California’s coast during World War II.

JAPAN ATTACKS CALIFORNIA COAST DURING WORLD WAR II

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

“Have you ever seen California’s coastal mountain ranges—the way they tumble right down to the threshold of the roaring Pacific Ocean and keep it from drowning the continent? I call your attention to the way their folded and faulted contours, mushroomed from volcanoes at the ocean’s bottom age upon age ago, support astonishing diversity in animal- and vegetable-life, as well as richness in mineral deposits and other raw materials. This topography encourages wild, freshwater rivers, lakes, and gentle streams that gather into crystal waterfalls and cascade into cold, blue, swirling pools. If you remember, these mountains were the source of the California Gold Rush of the mid-1800s, which reinvigorated a stalling U.S. economy. The population surge driven by the gold rush also catapulted California into statehood. These mountains are the home of the giant sequoias and coast redwoods: nature’s skyscrapers. And of course, consensus has it that human settlement in this hemisphere of the planet began in this west coast region. It is an impressive biography, one that never fails to strike in me a sense of awe.

“I have lived in these mountains all of my twenty-two years of life, as has my family. We are descendants of North America’s native Chumash people, and therefore are the natural inheritors of the multitude of blessings of these sacred mountains. Inland from coastal Santa Barbara, my family’s ranch is tucked between sandstone outcroppings of the Goleta Valley foothills, the craggy, scenic Santa Ynez Mountains as its backdrop. Our ranch is an idyllic place whose pastures are spread quietly white with our flocks of sheep, and ringing with the evensong of our shepherd’s guitars. My grandfather three times removed struck a rich vein of gold in one of the mountains north of us, and it is he to whom we owe our lives of freedom beyond the confines of reservation-life that is the plight of so many of our native kin. Twilight is my preferred time of day to roam among my favorite nooks and crannies sculpted along the rough byways of these peaks. They are rollercoaster lanes that dip into gentle basins and rise onto taxing slopes that my muscular Woodie Station Wagon outstrips so well. It is also the last chance each day to ferret out our sheep that have gone astray among the chaparral in earlier hours.

“Ordinarily my twin brother, Theo, would be alongside me in our vehicle on these treks, but he enlisted in the U.S. Navy last year. He is stationed at Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii. Great Spirit favored us by allowing my twin to escape unscathed from Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the action that plunged the United States into World War II. It is hard to believe the attack took place only about twelve weeks ago, because it seems an eternity. I had considered taking training as an Army nurse, but my father’s weakening health keeps me stateside and overseeing the day-to-day operations of our ranch. It is difficult going on my own at times, but my job is child’s play compared to my brother’s.

“Theo is a little over three minutes my junior. Mother delights in explaining our birth order as my being the pushy one between the two of us. Theo corrects her and says that he held back from the birth canal because with him ‘ladies always go first’. Mother complains about my hotheadedness and the fact that I fail to think about the consequences of my actions before I jump into situations. On the other hand, my brother is laid back and contemplative. As you can imagine, I am often in trouble, while my brother is perfect! With much affection I call him, ‘Mr. Goody Two-Shoes’.

“My brother foresaw that the U.S. would be propelled into the war eventually and felt honor-bound to join the military and prepare to fight our enemies. My awareness of his sacrifice keeps me stoking the home-fires for him. He told anybody who would listen that it was starkly apparent that America underestimated Japan’s fighting might. He understood that at its core was an array of racist stereotyping by U.S. military chiefs and government heads, prejudices that held fast to a belief in Japan’s people as inferior, both as a species and as a combatant. We American Indians are adept at recognizing blind and foolish prejudice, being the brunt of so much of it ourselves. Theo says that such biases on the part of U.S. leaders gave rise in a dismissal of Japan’s ability to reach, and much less to attack, Hawaii by air, and manifested in the disastrous decision to transfer the Pacific fleet to Pearl Harbor in the first place. The rationale behind the policy of amassing the fleet on Hawaii’s waterfront was that it was an effective deterrent to Japan’s steady expansion in the Pacific. Japan had been menacing China for a number of years, as well as some of its other neighboring territories, which included oil reserves in British and American holdings in the area.  

“Following the disaster of Pearl Harbor, it is no mystery that North America’s Pacific coast is also in Japan’s crosshairs. It has been reported that by the end of December alone, Japanese submarines had sunk two U.S. merchant ships and damaged six more along our shoreline. Consequently, we jittery Pacific coasters are ordered to observe the mandatory blackout. For this reason I have been careful to switch on only the parking lights of my vehicle during my evening drives on the mountain roads, a routine that got me into big-time trouble about two weeks ago.    

“It was coming onto 7:00 PM that Monday of February 23^rd of 1942, the day of my trouble. I was of two minds that evening. On the one hand I wanted to hurry back to the ranch to listen to President Roosevelt’s fireside chat on the radio. He had asked citizens to have a map of the world on hand, which would enable us to follow along with him as he gave us details of the progress of the war. He had chosen that particular date because it was the 210^th anniversary of the birthday of President George Washington. Needless to say, my family and I are not particularly enamored with the country’s first president, but we have enormous stakes in the war, right alongside of all other Americans. But rather than turning back toward the ranch after having coming up empty in my search for a lost lamb, I did as I had done nearly every evening since my early teen years. I pulled my Woodie onto a flat space of a pinnacle, a highpoint along my route that affords the best view of the ocean. I allowed myself a few minutes to sit spellbound by its immensity, and to send my thoughts out to my brother. From that height, you can see up and down the coast for what seems like all the way to China. The setting sun filled the area with a flood of last light—it sparkled on the wet sand of the beach below like a field of diamonds, and it flashed electric in hypnotic frequency on the whitecaps of the ocean’s restless waves.

“The languid sun splashed across the metal roof of a small structure located in the Goleta Oil Field stretched along the channel below. The site was dense with lemon groves during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Buried beneath the agricultural fields were rich oil and natural gas reserves, land that was developed in the 1920s to an oil refinery. While profuse with storage tanks, piers, and pump houses, the harbor below was quiet on that evening of February 23, 1942. At that late hour, the oil field’s workmen had gone home. I surmised that only a skeleton crew was still in attendance.

“It is not unusual at this time of year for giant blue whales to appear out to sea, but close enough to be within sight from my vantage point. For a few minutes, I was convinced that the dark object in the water was a whale, the largest one I had ever seen. It didn’t occur to me how unusual it was that it sat motionless on the water rather than diving to the depths as whales are habituated to do, its tail flared and flapping like the wings of a prehistoric bird. All of a sudden, the dark object glinted as if the sun was captured in one of its rapidly blinking eyes, and then a series of booms shattered the night. I was slow to come to the awareness that it was not a giant blue whale at all, but was a submarine, a surfaced, long-range, Japanese submarine, and it was bombarding the oil field. My heart in my mouth, I hunkered down behind the steering wheel of my Woodie and watched unbelieving as a derrick and pump house exploded and portions of the catwalk were splintered by cannon-fire. The fireworks continued for a good fifteen minutes, maybe longer. I searched the sky for defending warplanes, but none appeared. Abruptly, the dark hulk in the water fell silent and turned west toward Japan.

“While I had been safely beyond the shelling, for the first time I had an inkling of what my brother and his comrades had suffered at Pearl Harbor. I understood that this attack would cause panic among the citizens of America’s Pacific Coast far greater than already existed, panic based on a fear of an impending, full-scale assault. I worried that it would set off a stampede to inland areas. My frail parents at the top of my mind, I gunned the engine of my Woodie and dashed back to the ranch.

“My parents were huddled around the radio set in the parlor of our ranch-house. Mother gave me what-for when I admitted that I had stayed and watched the entire strike. Moments later, sharp rapping on the front door announced the arrival of a cadre of uniformed young men, and my parents and I stared down the barrel of a nasty-looking gun. Our arms bound behind our backs, we were hustled into a military vehicle and taken to naval intelligence headquarters.

“Included in more than one of the reports to authorities by citizen-observers of the attack were statements of their having seen ‘signal lights’ emitting from the Goleta foothills that were assumed to direct the actions of the submarine. Since the bombing of Pearl Harbor, ‘Japanese war societies,’ suspected of conducting espionage against the United States, were under surveillance. The so-called ‘signal lights’ were alleged to have emitted from one such cell of Japanese spies. My parents and I were questioned by intelligence officers and after two exhausting hours, they concluded that the source of the ‘signal lights’ was the parking lights of my Woodie, and that we were not spies for Imperial Japan, after all. We were released from custody and taken back to our home. Apparently, as my vehicle had slowly traveled the dips and turns of the mountainside roads, the sporadic nature of the lights was taken as signals.

“The good news was that the damage done by the attack was minimal and produced no human casualties. On the other hand, the regretful part of it for me lay in the fact that I failed to observe the blackout in its entirety and used my Woodie’s parking lights. There is no getting around it that to some degree, my irresponsibility contributed to the administration’s recent decision to isolate over one-hundred-thousand Japanese-Americans for the duration of the war in remote internment camps across the United States. The lesson I learned is that even small wrongdoings can have great big consequences. I am mortified by my own behavior and sick to heart over the terrible fate of the Japanese-Americans among us who are innocent and loyal citizens of our country.”©

Note – While the bombardment of the Goleta Oil complex by the Japanese submarine, I-17, did take place on February 23, 1942, the above essay in relation to it is the product of its author’s imagination.



Images – A World War II-era Japanese long-range submarine and a map of California.

Multi-award-winning author, Linda Lee Greene’s paperbacks and eBooks are available for purchase worldwide through Amazon. An overview of her latest novel, A CHANCE AT THE MOON is below:

Amid the seductions of Las Vegas, Nevada and an idyllic coffee plantation on Hawai’i’s Big Island, a sextet of opposites converge within a shared fate: a glamorous movie-star courting distractions from her troubled past; her shell-shocked bodyguards clutching handholds out of their hardscrabble lives; a dropout Hawaiian nuclear physicist gambling his way back home; a Navajo rancher seeking cleansing for harming Mother Earth; and from its lofty perch, the Hawaiian’s guardian spirit conjured as his pet raven, conducting this symphony of soul odysseys.

Was it chance or destiny’s hand behind the movie-star and gambler’s curious encounter at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas? The cards fold, their hearts open, and a match strikes, flames that sizzle their hearts and souls. Can they have the moon and the stars, too? Or is she too dangerous? Is he? Can their love withstand betrayal? Can it endure murder?

While the cards at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas fail to distract them from their troubled pasts, on the side, the actress and the gambler play a game of ‘will they won’t they’ romance. Meanwhile, an otherworldly hand also has a big stake in the game. Unexpected secrets unfold brimming with dangerous consequences, and finally, a strange brand of salvation.

#Las Vegas, #Nevada, #Hawaii, #Big Island, #Coffee Plantation, #Caesars Palace, #A CHANCE AT THE MOON, #Linda Lee Greene, #Multi-award-winning Author, #Multi-award-winning Artist

Amazon Buy Links:

https://www.amazon.com/CHANCE-AT-MOON-Betrayal-Murder-ebook/dp/B07Z44YN9X/  - EBOOK

https://www.amazon.com/CHANCE-AT-MOON-Betrayal-Murder/dp/169984402X/ - PAPERBACK