Code Talker

As a boy, I had never hunted. The sheep and goats fulfilled my family’s need for meat. But living in the city, I missed the open vistas of the countryside. And meat no longer approached me on the hoof. A couple of friends and I decided to go for a hunt. Jake Morgan was a buddy I had known overseas, and Jack Begay had been in the Air Force. As veterans, we three found we had a lot in common.

That first hunt, I was nervous about the other hunters. All those guys with guns. I wondered whether they’d be careless.

We slept outside with no tent. Away from civilization, the New Mexico night sky held brilliant splatters of stars. I had grown to know the constellations as a child. They appeared so close. I could almost reach out and pick them like silvery, mica-laden rocks.

We brought no meat with us. After all, we were hunting meat, and we didn’t want the Holy People to think we didn’t need it. I knew we’d shoot a deer if we saw one, but never a bear. We Navajos see bears as relatives, and we respect them like a grandfather. Unlike other tribes, we don’t use bear claws in our jewelry, and bear “trophies” never appear in Navajo homes.

When I bagged a deer, I immediately gave thanks with corn pollen. My prayer apologized for killing the deer and thanked him for allowing me to use his meat. I ate only the liver during the trip, and removed the entrails. I brought the remainder of the meat home.

Although I didn’t take a daylong sweat bath before hunting, as hunters in “the old days” would have done, I left the head and hooves where I’d shot the animal, a sign of respect. There would be no trophies on my wall.

At home I butchered the carcass and saved the pelt. The butchering was done in the “Right Way,” according to tradition, so that the deer could return to the place where it had lived and inform the other deer that it had been treated with respect, in keeping with the balance required by nature. No meat was wasted, so the deer knew there had been a purpose in his death. He would tell the other deer of this. Ethel and I had meat for several months from that single deer.

I paced across the visitors’ lounge in Gallup’s Catholic hospital. How long would this take? Ethel lay somewhere in a delivery room. In a matter of hours, maybe even sooner, I’d be a father. I sat, then stood to resume pacing.

“It was a rough birth,” he said. “We had trouble getting your daughter to breathe. I don’t think she’s going to make it. I’m sorry.”

I held little Georgann nervously. She seemed perfect, with all ten fingers, all ten toes, and a mop of black hair. But the birth had traumatized her tiny body and she had scratches on her shoulder, cheek, and knees.

In traditional Navajo culture, girl babies are highly valued. When they marry, their husbands come to live with the family, providing more hands to take care of the animals and crops. When boy children marry, they move away to live with their wife’s family, so their labor is lost. I always wanted a girl, and I often think about the little girl who would have been my oldest.

Almost immediately, Ethel became pregnant again. When her time was near, I took her back to the hospital in Gallup—a three-hour drive from Albuquerque. I again paced the hospital floors while she endured labor. What if this baby died, too? But Stanley survived, a healthy boy, who later showed a talent for art, like me.

Michael was born two years later, in 1955, in Bernalillo County Medical Center in Albuquerque. He was followed by Ray and Albert, who we called “Chubby.”

Chubby didn’t stay with us long. Ethel, older son Stanley, and Chubby went to visit Grandpa Catron on the train. At their stop, two-year-old Chubby jumped off the metal step, then, in high spirits, threw his head back and hit the step, fracturing his skull. He lapsed into a coma and died two weeks later of pneumonia in the Gallup hospital.

Chubby’s death, in October, left my family bereft. Ethel couldn’t seem to stop crying. I often walked outside our little house by myself. Mike tried to follow.

“Your father needs to be alone,” I heard Ethel tell him. But Mike followed me anyway. I tried to wipe the tears from my face before my son saw them.

Then, on December 24, Ethel’s teenage niece had a baby boy. Unmarried, Francine didn’t want to keep the baby. Ethel and I discussed it. I talked to Ethel’s mother, saying we’d like to adopt Tyah.

The baby arrived just after Christmas, when he was only a week or two old. When we placed him in Ethel’s arms, she cried from happiness. We told the other kids that he was a wonderful Christmas present. Everyone was thrilled to have him, the little boy Tyah, whose Navajo name meant “he goes among the people.” His middle name was Chester. We called him TC for short. Stanley became his protector.

Life settled back into a routine, and I prayed that things were once again in balance, that nothing else bad would happen.

Early to late 1950s