I wrote this short story in the fall of 1984, while I was a student at UC Berkeley, studying the American West and Native American history.  I sent it to AIM Magazine, and they published it in their Spring, 1985 edition.  It was my first published work, and as I recall I got $35 for it and perhaps as many as six copies of the issue, which I gave to family and friends.

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Quiche by candlelight, alone.  Buttered sourdough bread, cold and tasteless.  Monthly bleeding, the moon is hear the last quarter.  And silence.

“My Grandmothers, your Grandmothers, the Navajo, have a story.  Of the eternal prankster, trickster, teacher: Coyote.”

Outside the cars rush by in the night, sudden flashes of cold electric light racing across the empty apartment.  But the single candle flame is yellow, warm, and alive, as it was so far away ago.

“Once, in the beginning of time, there was only sun enough to last for half the time, and so in half a day the sun must walk across the sky.  And in those first days, when the sun each evening lay down and died beyond the western hills and waters, the sky above stood dark and empty.”

Her words whisper to me, out of a dim, foggy, lost corner of my mind.  But corners are not mine–they come from outside, from others. My mind will be, is, was a circle, and all parts are equidistant.  but since I stand in the middle place, I can not see all parts at once, and must turn, turn, turn to watch them unfold again.  And as I turn, as teh earth turns, as teh sky turns, as the seasons turn, slowly, as a sacred wheel, her voice comes to me, whispering, like a stream, rushing over a water wheel, babbling with a thousand voices of sullen surprise.

“And the People said, “We cannot find our way along the paths.  We are Afraid.”

I arrived in the City alone, for my family would not, could not come and I could not, would not stay.  The Greyhound station was grey, covered with exhaust emissions, dying gasps of dinosaur remains.  The sun was disappearing when I arrived, and it grew dark and cold.  But a thousand lights were coming on, talking silently to the City.

OPEN LIQUOR STORE STROHS FLINTS BBQ AND BEER NOW PLAYING CHARADES THE SOUND OF MUSIC NORTH BY NORTHWEST THE DIRTY DOZEN COORS WONGS GOLDEN PALACE CHINESE AND AMERICAN FOOD EL CID CONDOR EXPRESSO ALLIOTOS BART MARKET MONTGOMERY MISSION

Strange language, strange voices, modern sign language, talking in silence without end.  I slept in the park that night, near a statue of Don Quixote.

“So the Creator called a great council–a council of all the animals–to help them.  And to the creatures he said: “Go to the river and gather up the tiny sparkling stones.”

They said I must have paper money, to buy food, to buy a place to live.  That I must get a good job.  That I must tame my long hair, the symbol of my family, so that I would be acceptable to the City people.  It is an old story, the story of my grandmothers, of my great grandmothers,  They never learned it.  But I knew it well.  And a woman can find work anywhere on earth, for a woman has a special gift that men will pay for.

“The Creator took one tiny rock himself and placed it in the sky, saying: “This stone will be called a ‘star’–a campfire–that will never move.  Look for it if you are lost, it will help you find your way.  All the other stars will revolve around it.”  Then he said to the animals: “Now each of you take some sparkling rocks–as many as you can carry–and draw a picture of yourself in the sky.  And each of the creatures set to work.”

I made much money, more than I ever had, and I bought food, learning to cook the rich food of the City.  And I bought fine clothes, and makeup, so that I could dress in the manner of the City people.  And I found a way to afford an apartment with a view of the City lights, the silent language which I had become fluent in.  With these lights I could journey the streets at night.  I had more money than I could count, for I am a very good worker, young and clever.  Very clever, like the Trickster.

“But most of the animals were too small to carry stones enough to complete their pictures in the sky, so the Creator gave Coyote a large bag of stones so that Coyote could help the smaller creatures.”

Mother needed money to pay the rent.  Old brother Jackson Garcia Two Bears needed money for braces.  Sun Ann needed money for new shoes, and a dress for school.  Uncle Jefferson Moon Rises Davis needed money for weekly medicine.  Cousin Cary Lame Pheasant needed a place to nest in the City while vision questing–and money to be fed.

“But Coyote grew impatient with the small animals, and instead of listening carefully to them and faithfully arranging their pictures in the sky, he took the stones and flung them upwards.  And that is why some of the stars don’t form clear patterns.”

Mother needs no more, for six feet of resting earth is everyone’s deathright.  Older brother Jackson lost his teeth, smiling at a married woman in the Roundup Tavern.  Sue Ann’s dresses no longer fit, but will again in six more weeks, but then she will need two sets of clothes.  Uncle Jefferson Garcia Two Bears grafted his Ford Pinto onto a Joshua tree on Highway 36 while driving under the influence of his medicine.  And Cousin Cary Lame Pheasant fed too many visions from a plastic bag of magic, dreamed that the pheasant was healed, and flew off the Golden Gateway.

“It was only then that Coyote realized that he had forgotten his own picture–and now there were no sparkling rocks left.  So Coyote howls at the sky because his picture is not there.”

The candlelight flickers, sputters, and like the dancing flames that lit my mother’s face when she told me of Coyote under the starry skies so far away ago.  But the picture fades into forgotten mists and there are no rocks left.  The water wheel voice recedes to a dark corner of my mind, and the circle, having spun once, at last, vanishes in indefinite haze.  The candle burns itself out, a car races by the window again, and the cold electric lights draw me back.

On the patio, overlooking the silent talking sign language, my bones are hollow.  The air is cold and I cannot see the stars; the home star is gone, lost in the haze and glare of the City.

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[Note: After WWII and through the 1960s, the Federal government relocated Native Americans from reservations, sending them to major cities such as Chicago, Denver, and San Francisco, and after a very short indoctrination, generally left them to fend for themselves, in an environment far removed in time and space from the world of the reservation.]

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