Code Talker

by Chester Nez

We pushed bodies and parts of bodies aside, some looking more like raw beef than the limbs of human beings, fought our way forward, and finally fell gasping on the beach.

  Onshore, we attempted to find our assigned unit. Japanese fighter planes—Zeros—flew overhead in a formation that echoed the V-formations of Canadian geese. The Zero no longer dominated Allied fighter planes as it had in the first months of the war, but those bright red disks, sun symbols, on the underside of its wings sent a chill down my spine. I knew those enemy planes carried machine guns, cannons, and bombs.

  We found General Vandergrift, who assigned us to Signal Officer Lieutenant Hunt. Following Hunt’s orders, we moved to the tree line on the edge of the beach and hauled small folding shovels from our backpacks. Making ourselves as small as possible, crouching at the tree line, about 150 yards from the surf, we performed our first battle duty: digging foxholes. Every feverish thrust and twist of the shovel brought us closer to crude shelter from land-based bullets, but nothing would protect us from the bombs and bullets dropping from the sky. Enemy fire exploded around us from every direction. Rainwater filled the holes as we dug.

  “All those bodies in the water,” I said to Roy.

  “Yeah?”

  I stabbed my shovel deep into the sand. “We didn’t really have a choice.”

  “No.”

  I tossed the shovelful of sand. Neither of us needed to say more. It was good, having Roy with me. Roy understood.

  I was lucky to be partnered with Roy. He was a really good man, serious as can be about our code work. Some of the code talkers joked around a lot, probably to relieve the constant tension. But Roy and I were temperamentally well suited to each other. The gravity of our code work kept us both pretty solemn, although we appreciated a good laugh when it was provided by one of the other men. Roy was superb with the code. He and I, we never once let each other down.

  We tested our radio equipment, with me cranking and Roy speaking into the microphone. Roy nodded. Good. Our TBX radio was unique, a wireless system that generated its own electricity via the cranking motion. Our only wires were the ones connecting the headsets and microphone to the crank box. Other modes of communication used on the islands, both radio and telephone, depended upon the wiring, which was strung by Marine communications men. Our TBX could pick up radio stations, the news, but we weren’t allowed to switch to that. We had to keep communications open for coded messages.

  That first night, Roy and I crouched in our foxhole, side by side but facing in opposite directions, so my knee was pushed against Roy’s shoulder and vice versa. The water crept nearly chest-high. Heavy drops fell like bullets, causing the water in the foxhole to splash. We two desert boys had heard tales of rain like this.

  I bumped Roy’s arm with my knee. “Remember in boarding school? The white man’s Bible,” I said. “All this rain.”

  Roy chuckled. “Yeah. Noah and the flood.”

  “Ouu. Noah.” I hesitated. “I’d volunteer to board his ark right now.”

  Although we were supposed to take turns in our foxhole sleeping and keeping lookout, neither of us slept. Gunshots sounded in intermittent bursts, tearing through the dark, soggy night. Blue-white artillery tracers streaked across our field of vision—enemy artillery shells. Our own shells had red tracers. I couldn’t yet distinguish between the sounds of Japanese and American gunfire, but the colors were immediately evident.

  In the heavy murk, I tried to picture myself back home in sunny New Mexico.

  “Do you think we’ll be scared like this all the time?” Roy asked, his voice breaking.

  I answered simply, “Yes.”

  Roy sighed. “I’m going to pray,” he said.

  Hot tears burned my eyelids, and I noticed that Roy wiped at his eyes with both fists.

  “You and I, we’re going to get through this,” I said.

  Roy just nodded.

  I moved my lips, making no sound.

  Lord, please help me.

  I switched to a traditional Navajo prayer.

  In beauty I walk.

  With beauty before me I walk.

  With beauty behind me I walk.

  With beauty around me I walk.

  With beauty above me I walk.

  With beauty below me I walk.

  Prayers were a comfort for me. They gave me confidence. My prayers brought me back home to Chichiltah, and I walked with the sheep in the place whose name meant “Among the Oak Trees.” I could picture it so clearly. The view from Grandmother’s land was beautiful in all seasons. Patches of bright green in spring, with the new buds on the oaks and scrub oaks. Masses of silver-green in summer, with the chamisa and sagebrush growing as tall as a small adult. Splashes of gold and red in autumn, when the oak trees changed color. Red and white in winter, the snow deep and nourishing over the brick- and tan-colored soil. And a powerful sky watched the changing seasons, turquoise blue and studded with stark white clouds—a view you drank in like cold water on a sweltering day.

  When I arrive home after this war, I promised myself, my father will be happy to learn how the Navajo language helped the troops. My family will be proud of my part in developing the top secret code. I just had to make it through, so I could see Chichiltah again.

  I smiled, remembering the sheep and goats, the sound of their bells. The baby sheep and goats wore jingle bells, and the adults a kind of small cowbell, nothing too loud, just enough noise to reveal their location if they wandered off. I loved the sound, like soft chimes in the dark. Maybe, if I concentrated, I could block out the gunfire and hear, instead, the bells.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sheepherding, Back on the Checkerboard

  Mid-1920s

  The smell of Auntie’s coffee and the bleat of a lamb woke me well before sunrise. Opening my eyes to slits, I looked for Old Auntie. Was she still angry? Yesterday my older brother Coolidge and I had lagged behind the herd, playing with our slings. We got in trouble with Old Auntie.

  Ah! There she was, piling juniper branches onto the campfire. Her form etched a black shadow against the dark gray of the landscape. Shimá Yázhí (“auntie” or “little mother”) hummed as she worked. She must be in a better mood.

  I turned and stared up into the dark. The sky arched above me, decorated by First Man and First Woman with familiar groupings of stars. The rain had stopped. Lying still, I savored the aromas of earth, wet piñon, and sagebrush. The comforting smell of damp wool and the fragrance of juniper sticks burning in Auntie’s fire told me that all was as it should be. I breathed quietly, not wanting Old Auntie to know I was awake. In a few minutes I’d get up and start chores.

  I hadn’t heard the owl last night. That was good, because the previous night its screeching had awakened us. If the owl followed us, it meant there was trouble—even death—brewing, and we’d have to find a medicine man to set things straight. I’d been born in winter, and this was my sixth spring, but I already knew the importance of the “Right Way.” Things must be in balance.

  Even before sunrise, I could picture the wide-open country, thousands of unfenced acres, that surrounded me. The land spread out like a random-patterned blanket. Piñon, juniper, and oak trees stretched in dense, intermittent bands. Occasionally, the delicate blue-green foliage of cedars interrupted the yellower green of their relatives, the junipers. 11 In the open areas, silvery chamisa sprang up in the rust-colored earth. Cactus, too, thrived: many-branched cholla and flat-lobed prickly pear. Yucca plants, with sharp, swordlike leaves and spectacular white flower clusters, stood like soldiers. And over everything stretched the sky—at times boiling with thunderheads, at others a bottomless inverted lake of pristine blue. The sun ruled supreme, making its powerful presence known nearly every day.

  “Shimá Yázhí,” I said, “I’m awake.”

  “Me, too,” said Old Auntie’s twelve-year-old sister.

  My two older brothers, Charlie Gray, in his early twenties, and Coolidge, in his teens, rolled out of their bedrolls. Uncle, Auntie�
��s late-twenties brother, just a couple of years younger than Old Auntie, stirred and stretched under his sheepskin blanket.

  “Hang your blankets to dry,” said Auntie, her voice commanding.

  Maybe she is still angry, I thought. A sheep bleated softly. The goats and sheep were my best friends. We always named the babies, and they responded to their names. Sometimes, when my aunt was mean, my sister Dora and I hid in the cornfield. Dora, whose Navajo name, Biníshiit Baa, meant “woman who fights a battle in a circle,” was a good companion. When we felt lonely, the sheep and goats always made us feel better. Especially the kids and lambs that followed us around, just like dogs.

  Old Auntie hoisted the heavy sheepskin water bag and poured water into the empty coffee can that she used to cook breakfast. The herd always found shallow, scattered water holes when it was on the move, but we Diné (the People) wanted clean water. We carried drinking water from our well at home when traveling with the sheep and goats. I’d watched Grandma make that water bag, stripping the wool, oiling the leather with animal fat to make it waterproof, then stitching the thick material. It had taken a week.

  I stood and shook my blankets, the bottom one soft and the top one slick to shed rain or snow. A lamb, no more than a few weeks old, jumped at the sudden flapping. Last night’s shower, a soft, female rain, had lasted for only a short while, barely dampening the bedding. I hung the blankets over a tree limb to dry, along with the sheepskins on which I’d slept the previous night.

  I pulled a shirt on over my head. I slept in my shorts, a hodgepodge of patches and mends. The soles of my feet had thick calluses that enabled me to walk over rough ground without pain. I preferred to go barefoot in the warmer months.

  Auntie frowned at me but grabbed a pinch of corn pollen from the pouch worn around her neck. She touched my tongue and head with the pollen derived from our tribe’s staple food. Then she held her pinched fingers out to the east, south, west, and north, the morning blessing.

  “Betoli, milk a couple of the ewes and fill this bottle.” Auntie handed me a Coke bottle. “Don’t spill any.”

  Betoli, my “traditional” name, meant “light complexion” in Navajo.12 I belonged to my mother’s clan, the Black Sheep (Dibé-lizhiní or Dibéŧizhiní in Navajo). Navajo clan affiliations are passed down through the mother, not the father. Decisions involving me were made by the clan. I had heard Father offer opinions, which were considered respectfully. But I knew the clan was responsible for the final verdict when considering any problem involving me and my brothers or sister.

  I did as told, first washing the manure from the teats of two sleepy ewes. The manure assured that their lambs did not nurse until the humans wanted them to. Then, leaning my forehead against the warm flank of the first sheep, I mimicked what I’d heard Old Auntie say as she milked.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll leave some milk for your lamb.”

  I milked both ewes into a small pail, pouring the milk carefully into the soda bottle. When I looked around, Old Auntie was still busy at the campfire. I placed the bottle of milk on the ground, not too close to the fire, so Auntie wouldn’t knock it over in the dark. That would anger her for sure.

  Grabbing the small pail, I approached a female goat. While I petted her head she nuzzled against me, content. After a while I reached for a teat and bent to squirt milk into the pail. I raised the pail to drink.13 I loved goat’s milk, although it was really better after it had been boiled. My eyes squinted as the sharp milk hit my tongue. Boiling gave the milk a milder flavor, although it didn’t always get rid of all impurities. Once I found a bug—I think it was a louse—gorged on milk till it was about ready to pop, in the boiled milk pail. Still, I preferred the sharp goat’s milk to the cow’s milk provided at the trading post.

  I walked over to Old Auntie. “Is there any goat cheese left?”

  “Just a little. I’m saving it for later. But breakfast will be ready soon.”

  Auntie took the soda bottle filled with sheep’s milk and fitted a nipple onto the top. She fed a lamb whose mother had abandoned her, holding the bottle with the nipple facing downward and tugging it gently, causing the lamb to suck noisily. It was unusual for a ewe to ignore her lamb, but fairly common among the goats and kids. So we always kept a couple of soda bottles and nipples on hand.

  I laughed, watching the hungry little animal. Despite her mother’s neglect, she was thriving. She’d adapted well to the bottle.

  The others joined us, and we six gathered around the campfire, a source of warmth and orange-tinged light in the still-dark morning. We ate the breakfast Old Auntie had made—blue cornmeal mush and goat’s milk. The herd was already restless, and just before sunrise it would be on the move, so we ate quickly in the wavering light cast by the fire.

  That day we would follow the three hundred sheep to a new grazing area, where we’d stay for a few days before moving on. Ewes and lambs made up our herd, along with a few goats and kids. The eight rams belonging to Grandmother, Shimásání (the old mother), were corralled until mating season. The really young lambs and kids were corralled separately, and didn’t accompany the herd until they were strong enough to keep up. When we had newborns in the herd—in the spring—we brought the mothers back to nurse them at night or nursed them by bottle. Later, when Grandmother’s herd more than tripled in size, the logistics became quite complicated.

  The sheep were placid and easy to care for. Even so, Old Auntie wanted us to be on constant alert. The twenty goats who also accompanied the herd were more lively than the ewes. Traditionally, Navajos had a lot of respect for sheep, and not so much for goats, although they were certainly cute and fun when they were babies. At any rate, combining sheep and goats was a common practice. The two species blended well.

  After breakfast, we all helped Auntie pack bedrolls, the remaining food, and the heavy water bag onto the big brown “sheep horse.” This horse lived on the range with the sheep and carried the items necessary for us Diné to survive.

  Snow, a white eighty-pound dog, stood alert at one side of the herd. Five other dogs took up their posts around the fringes. Then my two aunties, my uncle, my two brothers, and I moved out with the animals. We walked through deep grass, never worrying about our flocks having enough to eat. Other Navajo families shared the range, with no fences to keep anyone out.

  After grazing in one place for two or three days, Grandma’s herd moved on to new grass. I knew that the constant movement was good for the safety of the livestock. Predators did not gather in any one area, knowing where to find the animals.

  We followed the sheep. The day grew warm and quiet. A straggler headed toward a clump of juniper. I glanced at Old Auntie. She nodded, then watched me throw a small rock out beyond the lamb, turning her back in toward the rest of the herd.

  A gray shadow flashed off to my right. Coyote? The hated animals often lurked among the thick piñon and sagebrush. I stood absolutely still and waited, then carefully bent down and picked a stone, fitting it into the rubber of my inner-tube slingshot. Young Auntie held a coffee can filled with rocks at the ready. The noise of the rocks, when the can was shaken, would scare a coyote. But I heard and saw nothing.

  Just as I turned back to the herd, the sharp cry of a kid rang out. A coyote had grabbed the baby goat by the leg, pulling it into a clump of sagebrush. My heart beat fast as I aimed the slingshot, heard it thud, then charged toward the fracas. Young Auntie shook the coffee can, creating a racket. Old Auntie yelled and plunged from across the herd. Three dogs raced over, barking and growling. The coyote dropped its prey, running with its tail between its legs.

  The mother goat and I reached the kid before Auntie did. It cried piteously. Four punctures marked its leg. Blood flowed freely.

  “Good,” said Auntie, when she arrived. “The blood will clean the wound.” She examined the leg. “It’s not bad. He can walk.”

  I stayed close to the kid and his mother as we continued our trek. Coyotes posed a serious threat to the lambs and kids,
and sometimes even to the older animals. And any animal lost to a coyote was a double loss. Not only was the wool (or in the case of a goat, the milk) gone, but the meat as well. Even if our dogs recovered the carcass, no self-respecting Navajo ate meat killed by the devil coyote. Everyone knew evil people came back as coyotes after they died.

  The scared little goat kept up with the herd. As the few scattered remnants of rain clouds evaporated, a turquoise-blue sky arched over us. The temperature in the early part of the “moon of large plants”—the white man’s month of May—rose to the midseventies. Life was good.

  Some days we covered between fifteen and twenty miles on foot. That day we walked eleven miles or so, stopping to build camp on a slight rise in the shade of a piñon grove. Snow, the big sheepdog, selected the rise that day. He, like his six humans, preferred to watch the sheep from above, keeping an eye out for danger and stragglers.

  I scratched behind the big dog’s ears. “Good boy.”

  Snow, like all of the dogs, herded by instinct. Every morning he approached the sheep, eager to be moving. On the days when we stayed put, Snow climbed a rise and watched, ever alert.

  There was time before dinner. I walked to the horse, turned back once to Snow. “Stay,” I said. I pulled my toys from the load lashed to the back of the sheep horse.

  My sling, different from the slingshot I had used on the coyote, was made from the tongue of a shoe, cut off when Grandma wasn’t looking. Two holes on either side of the tongue allowed a string to be attached. I returned to the rise, sitting near Snow, placed a pebble on the shoe tongue, and wound the sling over my head like a cowboy’s lasso. Slap! The pebble hit the trunk of a dead tree, bounding back and startling Snow.

  “What are you doing, Betoli?” shouted Old Auntie. “You’ll alarm the sheep.”

  I shoved the sling into a frayed pocket and pushed my toy car around in the dirt. “Barooooommmm, barrrrroooomm!”

  The car had wheels made from empty spools of thread. Windows had been carefully cut into a rectangular cardboard matchbox from the trading post, creating the car’s body. Red dirt—now dry and powdery despite last night’s rain—puffed out from the car’s wheels.