Storyteller Page 9

  Then the giant said,

  “What else do you have

  to give me?”

  And Kochininako said,

  “All I have left

  are my bow and arrows

  and my hadti,”

  which was her flint knife

  and the Estrucuyu said,

  “Well you better give them to me,”

  and so she handed over

  her arrows and bows and her flint knife.

  And about this time

  Kochininako started to get scared

  because whenever she gave the giant anything

  he just took it

  and he still didn’t go away

  he just asked for more.

  “What else do you have to give me,”

  he said.

  “All I have left are my clothes.”

  “Well give them to me,”

  he said.

  Kochininako saw this sand rock cave nearby—

  it was only one of those shallow caves—

  but she saw it was her only chance

  so she said,

  “All right, you can have my clothes

  but first I must go inside that cave over there

  while I take them off.”

  The Estrucuyu wasn’t very smart

  and he didn’t see right away

  that his big head

  would not fit through

  the cave opening.

  So he let her go

  and Kochininako ran into the cave

  and she got back as far as she could

  in the cave

  and she started taking off her clothes.

  First she took off

  her buckskin leggings

  and threw them out of the cave

  then she took off her moccasins

  and threw them out the entrance to the cave.

  She untied her belt

  and threw it out to the giant.

  Finally

  all she had left

  was her manta dress

  and a short cotton smock underneath.

  She took off her manta

  and threw it out

  to the Estrucuyu

  and she told him

  she didn’t have anything more.

  That was when

  the Estrucuyu

  started after her

  poking his giant hand

  into the cave

  trying to grab hold of her

  Kochininako moved fast

  and kept getting away

  but she knew

  sooner or later

  that old Estrucuyu would reach her.

  So she started calling

  for the Twin Brothers,

  the Hero brothers,

  Ma’see’wi and Ou’yu’ye’wi

  who were always out

  helping people who were in danger.

  The Twin brothers

  were fast runners

  and she called them

  and in no time

  they were there.

  Ma’see’wi and Ou’yu’ye’wi carry bows and arrows

  and they each carry a flint knife

  a “hadti”

  like the one Kochininako carried for hunting.

  When they got there

  the Estrucuyu was scratching around

  the entrance to the cave

  trying to get Kochininako.

  So the Twin brothers

  each threw their hadti

  their flint knives,

  at the old Estrucuyu

  and cut off his head—

  that’s how they killed him—

  and they split open his stomach

  and pulled out his heart

  and they threw it

  as far as they could throw—

  they threw Estrucuyu’s heart

  clear across—

  those things could happen

  in those days—

  and it landed right over here

  near the river

  between Laguna and Paguate

  where the road turns to go

  by the railroad tracks

  right around

  from John Paisano’s place—

  that big rock there

  looks just like a heart,

  and so his heart rested there

  and that’s why

  it is called

  Yash’ka

  which means “heart.”

  Grandpa Stagner had a wagon and team and water drilling rig.

  He traveled all over New Mexico drilling wells and putting up

  or fixing windmills. In Los Lunas he had married

  my great-grandmother, a granddaughter of the Romero family.

  We called her Grandma Helen but even as a very young child

  I sensed she did not like children much and so I remember her

  from a distance, a tiny woman dressed in black, rolling her own

  cigarettes in brown wheat papers. Grandma Lillie tells me

  she spoke English but I remember Grandma Helen

  speaking only Spanish when I was around her.

  It was old Juana who had been like a mother to them.

  It was old Juana who raised Grandma Lillie and her sisters

  and brothers while Grandma Helen was in bed

  either recovering from a birth or preparing for another one

  in the genteel tradition of the Romero family.

  Juana was already old when she came to work for them

  and she lived with them until she died.

  But when she had been just a little girl

  Juana had been kidnapped by slavehunters

  who attacked her family as they were traveling near Cubero.

  Slavery of Navajo people went on in territorial New Mexico

  until 1900.

  The details are sketchy but by the time the territorial governor

  made one of his half-hearted crackdowns on Indian slavery

  Juana was an adult.

  She spoke only Spanish

  and no trace of her family remained.

  So she continued with the work she knew

  and years later Grandpa Stagner hired her

  to help with the children.

  On Memorial Day when I was a girl

  Grandma Lillie and I always took flowers

  to Juana’s grave in the old graveyard behind the village.

  The markers in the old graveyard are small flat sandstones

  and many of them have been broken or covered with sand

  and Grandma Lillie was never quite sure if we had found her grave

  but we left the jar of roses and lilacs we had cut anyway.

  His wife had caught them together before

  and probably she had been hearing rumors again

  the way people talk.

  It was early August

  after the corn was tall

  and it was so hot in the afternoon

  everyone just rested after lunch

  or took naps

  waiting for evening when it cools off

  and you can go back to weeding

  and working in the fields again.

  That’s what they were counting on—

  this man and that woman—

  they were going to wait

  until everybody else went

  back up to the village for lunch

  then they were going to get together

  down there in the corn fields.

  That other woman was married too

  but her husband was working in California.

  This man’s wife was always

  watching him real close at night

  so afternoon was

  the only chance they had.

  So anyway

  they got together there

  on the sandy ground between the rows of corn

  where it’s shady and cool

  and the wind rattles the big corn stalks.

  The
y were deep into those places where people go

  when this man’s wife showed up.

  She suspected she would find them together

  so she brought her two sisters along.

  The two of them jumped up

  and started putting their clothes back on

  while his wife and his sisters-in-law

  were standing there

  saying all kinds of things

  the way they do

  how everyone in the village knows

  and that’s the worst thing.

  So that other woman left

  and it was just this poor man alone

  with his wife and his sisters-in-law

  and his wife would cry a little

  and her sisters would say

  “Don’t cry, sister, don’t cry,”

  and then they would start talking again

  about how good their family had treated him

  and how lucky he was.

  He couldn’t look at them

  so he looked at the sky

  and then over at the hills behind the village.

  They were talking now

  what a fool he was

  because that woman had a younger boyfriend

  and it was only afternoons that she had any use

  for an old man.

  So pretty soon he started hoeing weeds again

  because they were ignoring him

  like he didn’t matter anyway

  now that

  that woman was gone.

  Then there was the night

  old man George was going

  down the hill to the toilet

  and he heard strange sounds

  coming from one of the old barns

  below.

  So he thought he better

  check on things

  just in case some poor animal

  was trapped inside—

  maybe somebody’s cat.

  So he shined his flashlight inside

  and there was Frank—

  so respectable and hard-working

  and hardly ever drunk—

  well there he was

  naked with that Garcia girl—

  you know,

  the big fat one.

  And here it was

  the middle of winter

  without their clothes on!

  Poor old man George

  he didn’t know what to say

  so he just closed the door again

  and walked back home—

  he even forgot where he was going

  in the first place.

  Grandma A’mooh had a worn-out little book that had lost its cover.

  She used to read the book to me and my sisters

  and later on I found out she’d read it to my uncles and my father.

  We all remember Brownie the Bear

  and she read the book to us again and again

  and still we wanted to hear it.

  Maybe it was because

  she always read the story with such animation and expression

  changing her tone of voice and inflection

  each time one of the bears spoke—

  the way a storyteller would have told it.

  Storytelling

  You should understand

  the way it was

  back then,

  because it is the same

  even now.

  Long ago it happened

  that her husband left

  to hunt deer

  before dawn

  And then she got up

  and went to get water.

  Early in the morning

  she walked to the river

  when the sun came over

  the long red mesa.

  He was waiting for her

  that morning

  in the tamarack and willow

  beside the river.

  Buffalo Man

  in buffalo leggings.

  “Are you here already?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  He was smiling.

  “Because I came for you.”

  She looked into the

  shallow clear water.

  “But where shall I put my water jar?”

  “Upside down, right here,” he told her,

  “on the river bank.”

  “You better have a damn good story,”

  her husband said,

  “about where you been for the past

  ten months and how you explain these

  twin baby boys.”

  “No! That gossip isn’t true.

  She didn’t elope

  She was kidnapped by

  that Mexican

  at Seama feast.

  You know

  my daughter

  isn’t

  that kind of girl.”

  It was

  in the summer

  of 1967.

  T.V. news reported

  a kidnapping.

  Four Laguna women

  and three Navajo men

  headed north along

  the Rio Puerco river

  in a red ’56 Ford

  and the F.B.I. and

  state police were

  hot on their trail

  of wine bottles and

  size 42 panties

  hanging in bushes and trees

  all along the road.

  “We couldn’t escape them,” he told police later.

  “We tried, but there were four of them and

  only three of us.”

  Seems like

  it’s always happening to me.

  Outside the dance hall door

  late Friday night

  in the summertime,

  and those

  brown-eyed men from Cubero,

  smiling.

  They usually ask me

  “Have you seen the way stars shine

  up there in the sand hills?”

  And I usually say “No. Will you show me?”

  It was

  that Navajo

  from Alamo,

  you know,

  the tall

  good-looking

  one.

  He told me

  he’d kill me

  if I didn’t

  go with him

  And then it

  rained so much

  and the roads

  got muddy.

  That’s why

  it took me

  so long

  to get back home.

  My husband

  left

  after he heard the story

  and moved back in with his mother.

  It was my fault and

  I don’t blame him either.

  I could have told

  the story

  better than I did.

  In Laguna Village looking south toward the Chersposy house.

  The Two Sisters

  Ahsti-ey and Hait-ti-eh were two girls,

  pueblo girls who lived in Hani-a.

  Hani-a was supposed to be

  traditionally, Cienega,

  you know where Cienega is

  the place between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

  They called it “Hania”

  that means, interpreted,

  “the East Country.”

  It is east from here.

  It means the “East Country,” yes.

  The two sisters

  they were Hait-ti-eh

  and Ahsti-ey—

  those were their names.

  They were interested in a young man

  by the name of Estoy-eh-muut.

  “Muut” means “youth.”

  “Estoyeh” means that he was a great hunter.

  And they were both interested in this young man

  and they were trying to see

  who would finally win him over

  on her side.

  Ahsti-ey was beautiful.

  So was Hait-ti-eh.

  Hai
t-ti-eh had beautiful hair,

  beautiful hair, the sister did.

  And Estoy-eh-muut would come to visit them.

  As he came

  he would bring venison.

  You know that is the original food, venison is.

  The pueblo people have always depended upon it

  depended on the deer for food.

  So Estoy-eh-muut came quite often

  and he would bring meat

  from the deer he hunted.

  Finally Ahsti-ey suspected something—

  that Estoy-eh-muut thought more of her sister, Hait-ti-eh,

  the one who had beautiful long hair.

  So there was jealousy right away

  it developed in Ahsti-ey

  and she was just wondering how

  she could ward off

  Estoy-eh-muut’s devotion to her sister, Hait-ti-eh

  which was much more than he gave to her.

  So now anything can take place

  in the story.….

  So one evening

  the girls went to bed

  and she thought of trickery

  that she would play on Hait-ti-eh,

  the one who had beautiful hair.

  So Ahsti-ey called mice in

  that evening

  and had the mice eat

  all of Hait-ti-eh’s hair

  and that spoiled her looks,

  of course.

  And so when Estoy-eh-muut, the young hunter, came,

  he saw that Hait-ti-eh’s beautiful hair was gone,

  but still

  that didn’t deter him

  from thinking much of her, Hait-ti-eh.

  So he kept coming.

  The story is told in a song.

  Many of these stories

  sometimes end up in songs.

  This story is found in one of the grinding songs.

  The grinding song belonged

  to the Ka-shalee clan,

  and so the story is related in this song

  and it tells that something tragic

  took place in those far-off days.

  The tragedy was

  that Hait-ti-eh’s hair was all gone.

  The end of the song goes like this:

  Long ago

  in the East Country

  called Tse’dihania

  this took place

  something tragic took place.

  So the people migrated from there.

  The people of Ahsti-ey and Hait-ti-eh

  came to Laguna

  and settled here

  because something tragic took place.

  Out of the Works No Good Comes From

  Possession

  It will come to you

  late one night

  distinctly

  while your wife

  waits in bed.

  You will reach into pockets

  for something you feel is missing