Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Where the lambs were born

The wind whistled through a torn window screen and a half open window into the one-bedroom house. The sounds of it rising and falling like Navajo ceremonial songs in the winter. In the house a middle aged Navajo man named Freddy sat at a table looking through binoculars out across the land into the hills dotted by rabbit brush, high desert grass and yucca to where his mother Sally was herding sheep. Through the looking glass Freddy watched his mother walk a few steps and stop. He saw the three sheep dogs darting here and there looking for rabbits. The sheep moved like small clouds, never stopping long enough in one place, undulating in form and speed.

Earlier in the day before the sun rose over the mesas, Sally took the sheep in the direction of the water tank and windmill several miles to the north. Now, Freddy was watching her limp a few steps at a time, stop and raise her arm to shake an old coffee can filled with pebbles and tied together with bailing wire. The rattling sound made the sheep hasten their pace and Sally would start walking again with the wind blowing against her flowing blue traditional dress.

That afternoon Freddy came to visit his mother but found the house door padlocked. His mother was out herding sheep and he stood on the small porch made of cinder blocks closely placed together with ply-board placed on top and looked around with his hands making shade for his eyes. He could not see the telltale movement of the sheep’s white wool among the brown hills, and he could not see the sheep dogs running from one bush to another looking for rabbits. He did not see his mother standing under a small juniper tree for shade. Not seeing these things, he bent down and turned over a small flat sandstone rock and picked up the extra padlock key and let himself in.

The small house was tidy with an old cast iron stove in the center of the room and two beds against the wall on the west and south sides. On the north wall sat a small table and three chairs, an old cabinet and a radio sat on the windowsill with its wire coat hanger antenna. He looked around the room stopping at the pictures on the wall. There in military uniform was Freddy’s late father Ray before he was sent to war. Young. Smiling. Next to this picture was a younger Sally with her new husband Ray, both smiling and shy. In this picture, she was dipping her fingers into a traditional Navajo wedding basket with cornmeal to feed her husband. This was a long time ago when the future was filled with hope and prayers. Now, Freddy looked at this Navajo wedding picture and fought back tears. Things changed. Standing there, looking at this picture of the happy couple, Freddy hated what he had to tell his mother that could not be said with tears or any feelings that would bring tears. He looked away from the picture and sat down at the table.

Three days before, on Tuesday, Freddy called a livestock buyer and talked to the white manager about selling his mother’s sheep, specifically about how much money he could get for 98 head of sheep, and two rams. The white manager told him to hold on and Freddy holding the phone hard against his ear could hear the sound of a calculator being tapped and the sound of the calculator printing and the sound of paper tearing. Back on the phone, the manager told Freddy he’d give him just under five thousand dollars. After questioning the price, Freddy agreed to have the semi-truck come out to Sally’s place in four days with a check for $5,500.

Now, sitting there in his mother’s house, Freddy thought about what he was going to tell his mother about the sale of her sheep tomorrow morning. He hated to tell her but she was almost 87 years old and walking was getting harder for her and her mind was starting to fade. He thought about the first time he noticed her mind playing with her. It was right after dinner a year ago that she said her husband would be coming home soon and she needed to keep the stew on the cast iron wood stove. When she said this, Freddy stopped sweeping and asked what she said and she laughed at the absurdity of what she said. Sally’s husband had died 30 years before. Now, it became so that Freddy worried about his mother when he was at work. He worried she would lose sheep or worst yet, get lost among the hills and valleys where she walked. But today was the day that he hated the most and wished his mother did not become old.

The sound of the wind against the window screen and these thoughts made Freddy sad. And now, nearly three hours after he arrived at Sally’s house, he watched his mother bring the sheep in. Nearing the corral the sheep ran from her into the corral and straight to the salt blocks he put out last weekend. The sheep dogs kept walking around the coral to the small shed made of shipping pallets attached to the coral that kept the hay from cows and horses. This was their home. He watched his mother tie the corral gate with bailing wire and lean on the corral to watch the sheep settle down before she slowly made her way to the house. Satisfied, she started for home.

Almost home she stopped and looked up at Freddy’s truck and at her house and started walking again. At the door she stopped, looked in and smiled. It was always a pleasure to see her children. She raised them alone and now they were taking care of her. She walked in and greeted her son in the traditional way and turned to the butane stove and turned on the gas and lit a match so fire would catch at the burner. Next she partially filled a blue enameled coffee pot with water and swirled the water around and then walked to the front door to throw out the water and left over coffee grounds and then she filled the pot with water and fresh coffee and put this on the stove to boil. Next, she went to the cupboard for canned meat and some crackers for them to eat. All the while the wind danced against the screen making noise so that Freddy had to turn on the tribal AM radio station. Soon country music partially filled the air.

After opening the can of potted meat and carefully spreading it across crackers and eating and drinking boiled coffee and making small talk about who visited, whether she saw coyotes, and if the sheep that was sick was doing better, Freddy asked about how she was doing, how her knees were and if she still felt confused. This was a hard conversation because it was also very personal for a Navajo son to talk to his mother about her body and her mind. This would be usually left for daughter, but they didn’t ever come to visit here and only usually sent cards from the city at Christmas time or in May when Sally had her birthday. Once they came and complained that their mother was never home when they visited. So, this was Freddy’s responsibility to ask how she was doing. Sally looked out the window to the west and the setting sun and said she was getting older and that her legs were hurting more, but that she also felt good to take out the sheep, it made her feel like she had a purpose to her days, but she was feeling ya’ah’teeh, she was feeling well.

After a few sips of coffee, Freddy finally started in the most direct way he knew.

“There will be a man here with a truck to take the sheep tomorrow morning,” he said.

Not understanding, Sally asked in Navajo, where? Freddy responded by saying, “To sell.” Looking at his mother’s bewilderment, he quickly said, “You are getting too old to herd sheep, shi-ma.” Using the Navajo word for mother in a way that was emphatic in both a pleading way and a way that said his voice was going to get louder if she didn’t understand, which was also a way that meant he wasn’t going to argue about this. She looked at her son, her confused look diminishing and being replaced with a sad look. She pursed her lips and said in Navajo, “No!” This wasn’t the no as you understand it. This was an active verb. With that, Freddy finished his coffee and said that it was too late. The truck is coming tomorrow morning. Freddy got up and walked out the door of the house to his truck. He started his truck and drove back to his home.

Sally sat there alone with the wind dancing against the screen, the pictures on the wall, the radio station playing Willy Nelson, and the sound of her son’s truck racing off into the early evening. She looked at the table and thought about what would happened tomorrow. What she would do to stop the sale of her sheep. Throughout the night she fought back tears as she remembered the years she spent out on the land, the changes in the many seasons and observations about how the land and animals changed with the coming of cold and warm weather, the scent of the earth after a gentle rain, and the sun rising and setting at different points against the mesa throughout the year. After midnight, with the wind whistling against the house Sally finally fell asleep.

At dawn, she opened her eyes and momentarily forgot about the great sadness she went to sleep with. Suddenly, it came upon her like a great wind. Her thoughts whirled with fear. She lay there wondering what would happen today. Then she heard a vehicle coming up the driveway. Her son had arrived. And soon, another larger truck followed parking near the corral. Sally sat up, put her canvas sneakers on and made for the door. Just as she got there her son stopped her and said that she couldn’t go down there, blocking the door with his body, arms against the doorframe. And like that, the wind in her lungs left her and she slumped forward a little. She stood there looking at the floor and at her son’s shadow from the morning sun and she cried. Finally she returned to bed, sobbing for her sheep. In the past tense reserved for taking about the dead, she said in Navajo, “Shi Dibeh Yee’,” my sheep that were. Soon the larger truck started and drove off into the distance and Freddy, standing by the door all the time while her sheep were rounded up walked in and said to his mother, “It is done, now you don’t have to worry about herding sheep anymore.” Sally didn’t move. She had no more tears and her throat was dry, and she through about nothing. She was empty but for the great sadness she felt. Freddy stood by the door, looking in, and before he could think of something to say, he turned and walked back to his truck, got in and drove off. Freddy fought back sadness and reminded himself, “This is the way it had to be done!”

The next day Freddie visited his mother to check on her and to tell her that she was going to be moving to a nursing home soon. He parked near the house and walked up to the porch and knocked on the screen door. She was not home and he could not find her. He looked around to the surrounding land with his binoculars. He saw rabbit brush, the cedar trees, and the sage. He looked and didn’t see Sally or the sheep. The wind blew. He looked at the corral. He saw the sheep dogs sitting in the shade of the corral with their heads hanging low looking at him. The night before he closed the gate to the corral and now he could see that it was open. Freddy put down the looking glass and started out the door in the direction of the corral. At the corral now he saw that it was empty and he heard silence. He looked here and there and finally stopped and looked at the lambing pens. There, in the corner, a gate made out of a wooden pallet was on the ground and beyond this he saw his mother laying there against the fence, where the lambs were born, crying and shaking her head no and Freddy looked away.

Not long after Sally was found in the lambing pen, Freddy and his sisters decided to move her to a nursing home in a reservation border town 75 miles away. She quickly drowned in sadness. Her spoken Navajo words were never more than, “Doo-Dah Shi Yazhi, Doo-Dah.” “No my child, no!” In another year she passed. After they moved her body to the funeral home and within four days, Freddy cleared her belongings from nursing home room 314, putting her clothes in a black plastic trash bag, going through her desk and placing old holiday cards and get well soon cards from him and his sisters, a few from her grandchildren, never more than five cards for the two years she spent looking out the large front window of the nursing home on the outskirts of town toward the open land and rolling hills of her home. Freddy opened a drawer in a nightstand next to her bed. In this drawer was a folded piece of paper. Freddy opened the folded paper and saw that his mother had drawn sheep, hills, and an outline of a woman. In a simple way she drew a smile where the mouth of this lady should be and at the bottom of this drawing was the word, in shaky handwriting, “Happy.”