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:
