In the matrilineal society of Laguna Pueblo, young boys are traditionally taught proper conduct, and corrected when they fall short of it, by their mother’s brothers. In the following story, a young, mischievous boy learns some important lessons from his uncle about respect for animals, responsibility, love, and the interconnectedness of all life.
Best-selling author, poet, and essayist, Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna) was born in 1948 and grew up at Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico. Of herself she writes, “I am of mixed-blood ancestry, but what I know is Laguna.” Though Silko is perhaps best known for her widely acclaimed novel, Ceremony, she is also the author of Laguna Woman, a collection of poems, and Storyteller, a collection of fiction and poetry. She received a MacArthur Foundation award in 1981. Her most recent novel is Almanac of the Dead.
WE HAD A HARD TIME FINDING THE RIGHT KIND OF STRING TO USE. We knew we needed gut to string our bows the way the men did, but we were little kids and we didn’t know how to get any. So Kenny went to his house and brought back a ball of white cotton string that his mother used to string red chili with. It was thick and soft and it didn’t make very good bowstring. As soon as we got the bows made we sat down again on the sand bank above the stream and started skinning willow twigs for arrows. It was past noon, and the tall willows behind us made cool shade. There were lots of little minnows that day, flashing in the shallow water, swimming back and forth wildly like they weren’t sure if they really wanted to go up or down the stream; it was a day for minnows that we were always hoping for—we could have filled our rusty coffee cans and old pickle jars full. But this was the first time for making bows and arrows, and the minnows weren’t much different from the sand or the rocks now. The secret is the arrows. The ones we made were crooked, and when we shot them they didn’t go straight—they flew around in arcs and curves; so we crawled through the leaves and branches, deep into the willow groves, looking for the best, the straightest willow branches. But even after we skinned the sticky wet bark from them and whittled the knobs off, they still weren’t straight. Finally we went ahead and made notches at the end of each arrow to hook in the bowstring, and we started practicing, thinking maybe we could learn to shoot the crooked arrows straight.
We left the river, each of us with a handful of damp, yellow arrows and our fresh-skinned willow bows. We walked slowly and shot arrows at bushes, big rocks, and the juniper tree that grows by Pino’s sheep pen. They were working better just like we had figured; they still didn’t fly straight, but now we could compensate for that by the way we aimed them. We were going up to the church to shoot at the cats old Sister Julian kept outside the cloister. We didn’t want to hurt anything, just to have new kinds of things to shoot at.
But before we got to the church we went past the grassy hill where my uncle Tony’s goats were grazing. A few of them were lying down chewing their cud peacefully, and they didn’t seem to notice us. The billy goat was lying down, but he was watching us closely like he already knew about little kids. He yellow goat eyes didn’t blink, and he stared with a wide, hostile look. The grazing goats made good deer for our bows. We shot all our arrows at the nanny goats and their kids; they skipped away from the careening arrows and never lost the rhythm of their greedy chewing as they continued to nibble the weeds and grass on the hillside. The billy goat was lying there watching us and taking us into his memory. As we ran down the road toward the church and Sister Julian’s cats, I looked back, and my uncle Tony’s billy goat was still watching me.
My uncle and my father were sitting on the bench outside the house when we walked by. It was September now, and the farming was almost over, except for bringing home the melons and a few pumpkins. They were mending ropes and bridles and feeling the afternoon sun. We held our bows and arrows out in front of us so they could see them. My father smiled and kept braiding the strips of leather in his hands, but my uncle Tony put down the bridle and pieces of scrap leather he was working on and looked at each of us kids slowly. He was old, getting some white hair—he was my mother’s oldest brother, the one that scolded us when we told lies or broke things.
“You’d better not be shooting at things,” he said, “only at rocks or trees. Something will get hurt. Maybe even one of you.”
We all nodded in agreement and tried to hold the bows and arrows less conspicuously down at our sides; when he turned back to his work we hurried away before he took the bows away from us like he did the time we made the slingshot. He caught us shooting rocks at an old wrecked car; its windows were all busted out anyway, but he took the slingshot away. I always wondered what he did with it and with the knives we made ourselves out of tin cans. When I was much older I asked my mother, “What did he ever do with those knives and slingshots he took away from us?” She was kneading bread on the kitchen table at the time and was probably busy thinking about the fire in the oven outside. “I don’t know,” she said; “you ought to ask him yourself.” But I never did. I thought about it lots of times, but I never did. It would have been like getting caught all over again.
The goats were valuable. We got milk and meat from them. My uncle was careful to see that all the goats were treated properly; the worst scolding my older sister ever got was when my mother caught her and some of her friends chasing the newborn kids. My mother kept saying over and over again, “It’s a good thing I saw you; what if your uncle had seen you?” and even though we kids were very young then, we understood very well what she meant.
The billy goat never forgot the bows and arrows, even after the bows had cracked and split and the crooked, whittled arrows were all lost. This goat was big and black and important to my uncle Tony because he’d paid a lot to get him and because he wasn’t an ordinary goat. Uncle Tony had bought him from a white man, and then he’d hauled him in the back of the pickup all the way from Quemado. And my uncle was the only person who could touch this goat. If a stranger or one of us kids got too near him, the mane on the billy goat’s neck would stand on end and the goat would rear up on his hind legs and dance forward trying to reach the person with his long, spiral horns. This billy goat smelled bad, and none of us cared if we couldn’t pet him. But my uncle took good care of this goat. The goat would let Uncle Tony brush him with the horse brush and scratch him around the base of his horns. Uncle Tony talked to the billy goat—in the morning when he unpenned the goats and in the evening when he gave them their hay and closed the gate for the night. I never paid too much attention to what he said to the billy goat; usually it was something like “Get up, big goat! You’ve slept long enough,” or “Move over, big goat, and let the others have something to eat.” And I think Uncle Tony was proud of the way the billy goat mounted the nannies, powerful and erect with the great black testicles swinging in rhythm between his hind legs.
We all had chores to do around home. My sister helped out around the house mostly, and I was supposed to carry water from the hydrant and bring in kindling. I helped my father look after the horses and pigs, and Uncle Tony milked the goats and fed them. One morning near the end of September I was out feeding the pigs their table scraps and pig mash; I’d given the pigs their food, and I was watching them squeal and snap at each other as they crowded into the feed trough. Behind me I could hear the milk squirting into the eight-pound lard pail that Uncle Tony used for milking.
When he finished milking he noticed me standing there; he motioned toward the goats still inside the pen. “Run the rest of them out,” he said as he untied the two milk goats and carried the milk to the house.
I was seven years old, and I understood that everyone, including my uncle, expected me to handle more chores; so I hurried over to the goat pen and swung the tall wire gate open. The does and kids came prancing out. They trotted daintily past the pigpen and scattered out, intent on finding leaves and grass to eat. It wasn’t until then I noticed that the billy goat hadn’t come out of the little wooden shed inside the goat pen. I stood outside the pen and tried to look inside the wooden shelter, but it was still early and the morning sun left the inside of the shelter in deep shadow. I stood there for a while, hoping that he would come out by himself, but I realized that he’d recognized me and that he wouldn’t come out. I understood right away what was happening and my fear of him was in my bowels and down my neck; I was shaking.
Finally my uncle came out of the house; it was time for breakfast. “What’s wrong?” he called out from the door.
“The billy goat won’t come out,” I yelled back, hoping he would look disgusted and come do it himself.
“Get in there and get him out,” he said as he went back into the house.
I looked around quickly for a stick or broom handle, or even a big rock, but I couldn’t find anything. I walked into the pen slowly, concentrating on the darkness beyond the shed door; I circled to the back of the shed and kicked at the boards, hoping to make the billy goat run out. I put my eye up to a crack between the boards, and I could see he was standing up now and that his yellow eyes were on mine.
My mother was yelling at me to hurry up, and Uncle Tony was watching. I stepped around into the low doorway, and the goat charged toward me, feet first. I had dirt in my mouth and up my nose and there was blood running past my eye; my head ached. Uncle Tony carried me to the house; his face was stiff with anger, and I remembered what he’d always told us about animals: they won’t bother you unless you bother them first. I didn’t start to cry until my mother hugged me close and wiped my face with a damp wash rag. It was only a little cut above my eyebrow, and she sent me to school anyway with a Band-Aid on my forehead.
Uncle Tony locked the billy goat in the pen. He didn’t say what he was going to do with the goat, but when he left with my father to haul firewood, he made sure the gate to the pen was wired tightly shut. He looked at the goat quietly and with sadness; he said something to the goat, but the yellow eyes stared past him.
“What’s he going to do with the goat?” I asked my mother before I went to catch the school bus.
“He ought to get rid of it,” she said. “We can’t have that goat knocking people down for no good reason.”
I didn’t feel good at school. The teacher sent me to the nurse’s office and the nurse made me lie down. Whenever I closed my eyes I could see the goat and my uncle, and I felt a stiffness in my throat and chest. I got off the school bus slowly, so the other kids would go ahead without me. I walked slowly and wished I could be away from home for a while. I could go over to Grandma’s house, but she would ask me if my mother knew where I was and I would have to say no, and she would make me go home first to ask. So I walked very slowly, because I didn’t want to see the black goat’s hide hanging over the corral fence.
When I got to the house I didn’t see a goat hide or the goat, but Uncle Tony was on his horse and my mother was standing beside the horse holding a canteen and a flour sack bundle tied with brown string. I was frightened at what this meant. My uncle looked down at me from the saddle.
“The goat ran away,” he said. “Jumped out of the pen somehow. I saw him just as he went over the hill beyond the river. He stopped at the top of the hill and he looked back this way.”
Uncle Tony nodded at my mother and me and then he left; we watched his old roan gelding splash across the stream and labor up the steep path beyond the river. Then they were over the top of the hill and gone.
Uncle Tony was gone for three days. He came home early on the morning of the fourth day, before we had eaten breakfast or fed the animals. He was glad to be home, he said, because he was getting too old for such long rides. He called me over and looked closely at the cut above my eye. It had scabbed over good, and I wasn’t wearing a Band-Aid any more; he examined it very carefully before he let me go. He stirred some sugar into his coffee.
“That goddamn goat,” he said. “I followed him for three days. He was headed south, going straight to Quemado. I never could catch up to him.” My uncle shook his head. “The first time I saw him he was already in the piñon forest, halfway into the mountains already. I could see him most of the time, off in the distance a mile or two. He would stop sometimes and look back.” Uncle Tony paused and drank some more coffee. “I stopped at night. I had to. He stopped too, and in the morning we would start out again. The trail just gets higher and steeper. Yesterday morning there was frost on top of the blanket when I woke up and we were in the big pines and red oak leaves. I couldn’t see him any more because the forest is too thick. So I turned around.” Tony finished the cup of coffee. “He’s probably in Quemado by now.”
I thought his voice sounded strong and happy when he said this, and I looked at him again, standing there by the door, ready to go milk the nanny goats. He smiled at me.
“There wasn’t ever a goat like that one,” he said, “but if that’s the way he’s going to act, O.K. then. That damn goat got pissed off too easy anyway.”