THE AMERICAN STORYBAG Page 2

  -- but I can't.

  Goliath's mouthing my leg, rubber mouthed monster, taking me in whole.

  I can't see but one thing through the cloud of mire: the mammoth fish’s globular eye.

  The eye looks worried.

  Has it bitten off more than it can chew?

  No matter, it's hungry enough to keep lipping and gulping me.

  Suddenly, as I jerk my leg—pook—Goliath swallows my fin—minus my foot.

  I’m out!

  The rusty dust storm of the deep starts to clear.

  Goliath burps up a part of my swim fin. Then it turns casually aside, as if heading for an appointment, and glides away from the rosy billows of the deck, and in another second, it's gone.

  I’m gone, too. Blackness. Numbness. Stillness.

  Then I see tiny points of light.

  Dad’s got his arm around me. We're up top, in the air, in the light.

  And I’m alive.

  The rest is, as they say, history.

  I’ve got my ragged wet suit and some raspberry-bites all along my right calf. When the doctor treats my wounds, he says, “Can you imagine, son, if a Goliath grouper had teeth like a barracuda?”

  Dad replies, “I don’t think it would’ve mattered, Doc. You should’ve seen him fighting off that monster. He saved my life.”

  Back home, Dad tells me, "Now you know that being brave doesn’t mean taking chances. It means chances taken -- to save someone else.”

  "I didn't hesitate, did I, Dad?"

  "In that amount of time, a split second, a man can die. No, you didn't wait son, you acted fast, and that's what saved me. I was about dead, you know."

  "So was I . . . I guess."

  "Good thing your name's David."

  "How come?"

  "Cause you were up against a real-life Goliath."

  The Horse of the Navajo

  This story has been published many times and in various books. Namely The Sun Horse and The Gift of the Gila Monster. The story is also mentioned briefly in Turtle Island Alphabet and The Coyote Bead. A children's version appears in the picture book anthology How Chipmunk Got Tiny Feet. All good versions, but this one I think is the best, as far as showing the character of Jay, the teaching of his father and the Navajo love of the horse.

  It all started when my old friend Jay DeGroat was at the post office. A Navajo horseman, Jay was a keeper of myths told to him by his father, a medicine man, and his grandfather who was hired by the U.S. Cavalry to chase after Geronimo around the middle of the 20th century. Well, Jay was at the post office and an old friend told him, half in jest, "You're no longer mobile, my friend." Meaning that he was no longer a horseman but just a driver of cars, a rider of conveyances.

  Jay had had plenty to do with horses in his life. His friend had pricked him where he lived. For, tribally speaking, ancestrally speaking, a Navajo is always, symbolically, on horseback.

  Jay explained to me one time how horses got to run fast. He said the reason a horse leaves a butterfly imprint in the sand was because of Caterpillar. When Horse was being fashioned in the first days of life, Caterpillar knew where the flints of power were kept in the mountain. He moved too slowly, though, and so he changed himself into Butterfly, and flew swiftly to the flints. Then he brought the flints and gave them to Horse, who, ever after, could run fast. And that is why a horse print looks like a butterfly's wings, Jay told me.

  I have always loved that story; I have always loved all of Jay's stories. Over a thirty year time span, he told me a lot of them. But none are better, I think, than this one I am about to tell you now.

  Jay told me he rode his horse to Rainy Butte and went the rest of the way on foot. The climb was much harder than he remembered as a child. Then there were twelve men, a young girl and a boy. Jay was the boy who carried the black water jar. The girl whose name he didn't reveal carried a basket of cornmeal.

  Corn Boy

  Corn Girl

  So goes the ancient myth.

  A prayer, a song, a blessing of the earth, a wish for water. The twelve men were the twelve Yei or Holy People. There was a pinetree and sprucetree house up top and from there Jay could see the four sacred mountains -- Mount Taylor to the South; Mount Hesperus to the North; Mount Blanco to the east; San Francisco Peaks to the West. These were the borders of the ancient, sacramental Navajo cedar lands.

  Jay told me this as if it had happened only days ago, but in fact it had happened when he was very young.

  He described the lead singer chanting the songs of rain and how the house made of dawn was constructed so that the roots reached up to the heavens.

  For quite a while, Jay did not speak. He savored the memory of this; he let me savor it too.

  At last he said --

  I went back to Rainy Butte once.

  My father said to me, Don't be afraid of what you see up there.

  I didn't know what he meant, starting out, but after a while I felt it, more than thought it.

  The horse came out of the sun.

  A golden horse with a mane of sun rays.

  With feet of flint butterflies.

  The horse came out of the sun and thundered on the clouds, and then I remembered again what my father had said.

  There was a circle of pollen glowing around the horse's head.

  The horse had a wildflower hanging from one corner of his mouth.

  He galloped right at me. I could feel him coming. The force of his body moving through the morning.

  I wondered what he would do to me if he kept coming on.

  I took a deep breath, released it, let go of that fear.

  The big horse kept coming.

  I closed my eyes and the sun horse passed right through me. I opened my eyes and the horse was going down the steep trail to the foot of Rainy Butte.

  I saw the golden white of his tail.

  I saw a cloud of dust and pollen rising in his passing.

  And I felt a gentle rain fall after the horse passed by me.

  After that, I was always a horseman.

  Always mobile, always just what I was.

  And what I am to this day.

  Navajo.

  Listener

  What if everything that is happening in the world is traceable to our inability to understand what is happening in the world. If there is such a thing as original sin, it's the human capacity to get everything wrong, right from the beginning and all the way up to now, and that's what the old storytellers have been telling us, including the Creek Indians who told this story along with every other tribe on earth. This story was published in my narrative history of the North American Indian, Tunkashila.

  In the beginning the Great Maker made the earth a perfect place to live, but Coyote, the mischief maker, came along and spoiled it. First he stole the stars and spilled them across the skies and then he took Water Monster's children out of her cave, the wellspring of the world. This, they say, caused the Great Flood. Tree Frog saw it coming and sang about it to warn the people, but only one of them would listen.

  It happened that there were two chiefs in the village by the wellspring of the world. One was named Listener and the other was called Honors Himself. They met before a fire on the edge of the great swamp. Water Monster herself lived not far from there. Already she had sent the water people--snakes and fish and frogs--to scatter the seeds of the coming flood. Singing and dancing of the storm to come, they called upon the cloud people to bring down a terrible rain. But Tree Frog did not join the rest. Though the others sang of death, he sang of life.

  The two chiefs sat close to the fire, for the night was wet and cold. "I don't like frogs," Honors Himself said to Listener, and he put his hands over his ears to end the song of Tree Frog.

  But Listener liked the song, even though it grated a little on his ears. "I'm going to see why he sings the way he does," Listener remarked. Then he went into the wet woods, found Tree Frog clinging to a branch, and brought him back to the council fire.

  "L
ittle one," he asked politely, "Why do you raise your voice above the rest?"

  "I sing the prophecy," Tree Frog said.

  Honors Himself took Tree Frog and threw him into the fire.

  "That was a bad thing," Listener lamented as he fetched the frog out of the flames. Unhurt, Tree Frog seated himself on Listener's lap. Yet, once again, Honors Himself seized the frog and threw him into the flames. Four times this happened and each time Listener pulled him from the fire, the frog said, "A great flood will come and cover the land. Prepare, prepare."

  Honors Himself sneered at this, returned to the village and thought no more of it. Nor did he warn any of the people. Listener, however, asked Tree Frog how he should prepare, and the frog answered, "In the time to come, the water will cover the land. Build a raft and tie it with a hickory rope to the tallest water oak in the forest. When the flood comes, you will float into the sky, but the rope will keep you from floating away into the Forever."

  Listener did what Tree Frog said. He built the raft and braided the rope. One day Watching Woman, who lived in the village, came to him and asked what he was doing. "I am preparing for the flood," he said. She did not laugh. Nor did she say anything. She just watched. But he saw that her eyes were full of the things he did and there was no judgment in them. He liked this Watching Woman, who just watched.

  But when he looked up from his work, she was gone as quietly as she had come. Later Tree Frog came to Listener. He told Listener to put bunches of grass between the cracks of the raft, so the beavers would not nibble away the bark. Listener did this and he tied his raft to the tallest water oak in the forest. Soon the rain came. Then the swamp swelled, the rivers filled, the water rose midway to the trees.

  In the village the people grew worried, but Honors Himself told them, "This is nothing, it will soon go away." Yet the water continued to rise and soon the people were clinging to their roofs. Only Listener was safe, riding out the flood on his sturdy raft.

  When the floodwater covered even the tallest oak, the people were swept away. But Listener bobbed on the foamy tide and the raft rose to the dome of the sky. There it rested, the hickory rope holding, fast and firm.

  Far below, fish flew like birds through the silent, sunken trees. Alligators with giant tails toppled the people's chickee huts, and their drowned corn was visited by salamanders and water serpents. Over cribs stocked with golden ears of corn, the shadow of the slow-moving manatee came and went, passing through the green veils of gloom.

  Now the bird people, who had nothing to hang on to, hooked their claws into the bright skin of the sky, and their tails dipped into the floodwater. Hawk's tail was striped with muddy water and the tip of Turkey's tail was flecked with foam, and they have remained that way ever since.

  After four days the water started to go down. Tree Frog appeared on Listener's raft. "I have come to tell you what to do after the flood is gone," he said. "You will be all alone in the mud of the new world, but do not fear."

  Listener felt lonely already, for he believed himself to be the only two-legged person left on earth. "What shall I do?" Listener asked.

  "Remember your name," Tree Frog answered before he hopped off the raft and swam away.

  When the water was gone, Listener looked at the mud-glazed land. The sky was grey and dark and the earth was covered with scars. He heard, then, a whining noise. High-pitched, it seemed to come from everywhere--and nowhere--at the same time. Listener was nearly sick with loneliness, yet he consoled himself by making a small fire from the tinder he carried in a pouch around his neck. Then, with his knife, he shaved pieces of wood off his raft and burned them. The fire was the only bright thing in the surrounding dark.

  That night Tree Frog came once again. "How are you, my friend?" he asked. "The world is not the place I once knew," Listener replied. He looked off into the endless night. Stars glittered in the still pools of the desolate land. Otherwise everything looked dead.

  "Do not fear," Tree Frog said, "you shall not be by yourself much longer." Then, just as before, he disappeared into the lake of stars, and left only a ripple behind.

  Listener heard the whining sound again. It drilled peevishly at his ear. Annoyed, he cried, "Who is there?" and a thin voice wheedled back, "Oh, my husband."

  "Where are you?" Listener called to the night wind.

  "Here," the voice whined.

  Then Listener felt something alight on his arm. It was a person with a long nose, skinny bowlegs, and great gauzy wings.

  "Why do you say, Oh, my husband?" Listener asked.

  The long-nosed person explained, "Before the great flood, I was a two-legged like yourself. I lived in the village and I dreamed that one day I would marry a chief by the name of Listener."

  "That is my name," Listener said.

  "And it was you I dreamed about," she answered. "But, now, as you can see, I am changed into Mosquito Woman, and all I want to do is drink your blood."

  "What happened to the people?" Listener asked.

  "They were turned into starving mosquitoes just like me," she sang.

  Listener did not really desire a mosquito wife. He believed that mosquitoes were bad-mannered little people. However, he was terribly lonely. Perhaps, he thought, a mosquito wife is better than no wife at all.

  So he told her, "You may stay with me if you wish."

  This made Mosquito Woman dance in the air with pleasure, but that night Listener could hardly sleep with the sound of her insistent singing. In the morning when he bathed in the sunlit lake, he was afraid of his reflection; for he was covered with red bites.

  "Wife, can this really be me?" he cried.

  "It is you, husband," Mosquito Woman said.

  The next morning, when he saw his face in the lake, he hardly knew himself. For he looked thin and pale, as if the blood had all run out of him. "Wife," he said, trembling, "there is something wrong with me."

  "Are you not well, husband?"

  "I feel tired," Listener yawned wearily.

  Mosquito Woman said, "Husband, I know what is wrong. Each night before I crawl into your ear to sleep, I drink some of your blood. So I am always well fed, but you, poor husband, you have had nothing to eat at all."

  "I am very hungry," Listener told her, "but now I am too weak to catch any food."

  "I will get something for you, husband," Mosquito Woman said. Then she dipped her long, hooked nose into the lake and in no time, a fish took hold of it. She danced upwards, whirring her wings, and flipped the fish onto the earth.

  "Here, husband. Now you shall eat."

  After eating the fish, Listener felt better. But in the morning, he was weak again. "Wife," he said, "you must have drunk too much of my blood--I am so tired."

  "Very well. I shall feed you," she replied. Once more Mosquito Woman dipped her long curved nose into the lake, but this time an enormous fish crashed into the air, and swallowed her whole.

  Dragging himself to the lake's edge, Listener looked into the water and saw the fish that had just eaten his wife. Furious, he grabbed it by the tail and jerked it into the air. "Fish," he said angrily, "you have killed my wife and now I shall kill you."

  "No," said a voice. It was Tree Frog. "Do not kill the woman who has waited and watched over you for you so long."

  "What woman?" Listener asked in surprise.

  Then the fish gasped, "Husband, do you not see?"

  Listener heard Mosquito Woman's voice--but where was it coming from?

  Tree Frog said, "Look not on what is, but on what is to be."

  Again, Listener stared at the great silver fish, shining in the morning sun. And, as he watched it, the gleaming scales turned into a glimmering woman. "Husband," the woman asked, "do you like me better now?"

  Listener was overcome by the woman's beauty. "I do," he said, "but I loved you before, too. When you went to sleep in my ear, I was no longer alone."

  Then Tree Frog said, "She was the one called Watching Woman, who saw you build your raft. Afterwards, she wat
ched over you as only mosquito people do--very closely."

  Listener, seeing that it was so, said, "I believe we were meant to be together, Watching Woman."

  "From the first day that I watched you, I wanted to go on watching you."

  "Why was that?" Listener asked.

  "Because you do with your ears what I do with my eyes."

  Listener nodded and smiled.

  "You are two of a kind," Tree Frog said. "If only the others had listened and watched as you did, and have always done, and will always do."

  And so the two of them lived together and had many children, the first ones born into the new world after the great flood. The earth was as good to them as they were good to the earth. And their children were listeners like their father and watchers like their mother, and all of them remember the prophecy of Tree Frog, even to this very day.

  Ishbish

  Ishbish first appeared in The North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis. I have here my own version from The Image Taker: The Selected Stories and Photographs of Edward S. Curtis. Readers have said that the story is similar in some ways to the Grimm tale of "Snow White". In the Crow story though the little men are moles and the heroine Cornsilk is no less lovely than Snow White and just as trusting of the natural world.

  In the long, long ago, a chief had a beautiful daughter by the name of Cornsilk, who thought herself too good to marry the men of her tribe. Her face was as beautiful as her name, which came from the way that her hair shone, like cornsilk glowing in the sun. Now the chief's daughter had many admirers, all of them young and handsome. Every evening they came and sat under the wild plum trees in front of her tepee. Some played the cedar flute while others brought gifts of sweet-sage and braided horsehair. However, Cornsilk paid little attention to the love notes of the flute and she refused the gifts because, secretly, she wished to marry a man whom everyone thought to be a monster.