“You’re right about that, so let’s keep it between us for now. Do you remember what the man looked like?”
“I was still half asleep, and I only saw him from the back. All I can tell you is that he was tall, had wide shoulders, and ran like he had a bear chasing him,” she said. “Later, after I calmed down, I remembered that everyone’s looking for ‘white at night’ for your friend. That’s when I began to wonder if the man I saw was one of your tribe’s medicine men who’d come to check her garden.”
“If the person had been here on legitimate business, he wouldn’t have run,” Rose said, “or come at that hour. Traditionalists don’t like to be outside roaming around late at night.”
“I also found out something else … .” Sadie took a deep breath. “I’ve been trying to help by seeing if I could find any patches of ‘white at night’ up in the canyons north of here. That’s pretty rough terrain that the older Plant Watchers usually don’t visit. I didn’t find any of the plants, but I ran into Sara Henderson, Clara’s daughter. She was up there working on one of her paintings. Sara told me that two of the Plant Watchers have had plants taken from their gardens late at night. But the thief didn’t take any endangered plants, just a few varieties that are hard to locate.”
“Like what?”
“Joe-pye weed, for one.”
“That’s used to heal deep cuts, particularly puncture wounds,” Rose said thoughtfully.
“I know. It was one of the varieties I listed in a medicinal plant report for one of my botany classes.”
“You did a report on herbal medicine?” Rose asked. “I’d love to see it sometime.”
“Sure. It’s in my computer. Let me print out a copy for you.”
Ten minutes later, Rose sat in the living room reading the term paper. As she glanced at the footnotes on the first page, she noticed that Bradford Knight was one of the experts cited. “I didn’t know Mr. Knight was an authority on herbal medicine,” she said.
“I found that out during my initial research. He’s written several papers on the subject recently too. Although they’re not specific to plants found on the Navajo Reservation, I found them useful. He also has several articles on the Internet. Would you like to see them?”
“Yes, I would.” She was curious to learn the Anglo man’s viewpoint on herbal medicine. She had a feeling it wasn’t something he practiced or really endorsed. For many educated Anglos, herbal medicine was simply a primitive substitute for someone who mistrusted or couldn’t afford conventional medicines.
Sadie went to a specific site she’d bookmarked on the computer. On the table of contents listing the writers that had contributed to the literature on the site, Rose saw Professor William Hoff’s name as well.
“So he also writes about herbal medicine?” she asked, pointing.
“He’s one of the best. His articles are really wonderful. I think he believes in herbal medicines—and he uses them himself. I don’t know that for a fact, mind you,” Sadie added quickly. “But that’s what he said in one of his articles.”
“Do you remember which article it was?” The news had come as a surprise and now Rose intended to learn more.
Rose sat at Sadie’s computer for quite some time reading the articles both men had written. In one, Willie claimed to have successfully used Penstemon barbatus, also known as beard-tongue, as a cough suppressant.
From the photo Rose recognized the plant. Navajo called it “hummingbird food,” and it was one of the endangered plants.
“He used ‘hummingbird food’ as cough medicine,” Rose told Sadie. “We use it in the same way. Does it say anywhere in here when this article was written?”
Sadie reached for the arrow key and scrolled down. “It was published in 1980, so it would be sometime before that.”
Back then, “hummingbird food” had grown almost everywhere. Rose remembered the story Willie had told her about falling in love with a Navajo woman. It was entirely possible that she’d taught him about their native plants.
Bradford Knight’s articles were written in a completely different tone. He treated the subject exactly the way she’d suspected he would, stating that none of the health claims had been proved, and that reliance on dubious medicinal plants could result in harm to the user, not only from ingesting folk herbs that could have hazardous side effects, but by delaying the ill person’s visit to a physician.
“I really appreciate your help with this,” Rose said as she finished the second article.
“No problem. It was my pleasure,” she said. “Are you going plant hunting today?”
Rose nodded. “Yes, but I have to make another stop first.”
“Do you mind if I tag along with you? I’m going a little stir crazy. I thought I wanted to be alone so I could study, but there’s such a thing as being too alone—and studying too much,” she added with a smile.
“I’d love to have your company, but I should warn you that I have to go to my friend’s trailer, and that’s bound to be difficult, and very sad,” she said, and explained about Charlie’s final requests.
“From the sounds of it, you’ll definitely need a friend along, so it’ll work out for both of us,” Sadie answered. “I’ll drive so you won’t have to worry about anything.”
They said little to each other during the forty-five-minute drive to Charlie’s trailer home near Teec Nos Pos. The tension and discomfort she felt about entering the home of a recently deceased Navajo built inside her with every breath she took.
Soon they arrived near the base of a low cliff and parked in front of a shiny new single-wide aluminum structure, topped with an evaporative cooler. Rose stepped out of the SUV and glanced around. Charlie’s truck wasn’t around, and she guessed it was still at the place where he’d died or, more likely, had been towed to the impound yard at Chinle. The vehicle would have to be sold to someone off the reservation. Charlie had loved that relic more than anything else, and possessions that dear to a person called to their chindi. She wouldn’t go near it now, and neither would any other Navajo following The Way—a traditional Navajo’s path.
Rose noted that except for a small garden delineated with wooden stakes and white twine, the ground around Charlie’s home had not been disturbed from its natural state. She walked to Charlie’s trailer, climbed up two steps to a metal porch with decorative railing, and opened the door. It hadn’t been locked.
As she went in, instead of the stale odor associated with closed-in rooms, she became instantly aware of the pleasant aroma that seemed to fill the entire living area. It was a wonderful scent reminiscent of flowers and fruit. She looked around and found only one flowering plant inside. Somehow the pot had crashed to the floor beside the long planting bench below a large western-facing window and underneath four long fluorescent light tubes.
As she crouched by the shattered pot, she noted the vivid blue-violet flowers and remembered Charlie telling her about his search for a blue dye. But he’d mentioned having ten plants, and there was only one damaged specimen here.
“I’m going to take this little plant back with me. But there should be some others in here as well. Help me look,” Rose said, finding an empty pot on a shelf and carefully transferring the damaged plant into it.
They searched both ends of the trailer, including the bedroom, but there were no more blue flowering plants. Stepping outside, she looked at the native plants Charlie had growing in his garden, but there were none of the endangered ones on her list. “Those plants will continue to flourish here, tended or untended,” Rose said, then went back inside Charlie’s home.
While Sadie finished repotting the damaged plant with additional soil taken from outside and added water to it from the tap in the sink, Rose went to Charlie’s desk. It was actually a large shelf that was attached to the wall by a piano hinge and held level by two small chains. Rose searched through the few papers there and found some bills, including one for the trailer, but nothing of a more personal nature.
As Rose moved from one
end to the other, she searched the drawers throughout the mobile home. The one thing that struck her was the absence of photos or anything that might reveal a bit about him. It was almost as if Charlie had never had a past. But then again, maybe he hadn’t—at least not his own.
Then, at the back of a drawer in the kitchen containing eating utensils, she found a single dog tag. It was old and scratched up, but it looked identical to the one found on the makeshift casket unearthed at Hogback. Its presence here confirmed the link between Charlie and that long-dead Marine. It seemed too important to leave behind, but it was such a personal item that it didn’t seem wise to take it either.
Sadie came up behind her. “What do you have there?”
Rose showed the tag to her. “One identical to this was on the body found when my friend was about to be buried. I think it may be evidence of something, but I don’t know if it is too dangerous to carry around. It was very personal to my friend at one time, and now he’s dead.”
Sadie nodded. “My tribe has different beliefs about the dead and their property. I don’t mind keeping it for you, just in case it’s needed later on by the police or lawyers. If we leave it here, it’s only going to get thrown away and lost,” Sadie said.
“Thank you. It sounds like a good idea.” Rose handed her the dog tag, and Sadie placed it in her pocket.
Two hours later, after a fruitless search for anything that might reveal more about Charlie’s true identity, Rose walked to the door. Except for the Charlie Dodge dog tag, the only things of significance were the pink slip on his truck and the loan papers for the trailer, which he’d purchased less than a year ago after making a down payment of five thousand dollars. She stood there for a moment, taking one last look at her friend’s home, then continued to Sadie’s SUV. She would never return to this site.
As they drove back to Shiprock, Rose glanced at Sadie. “I have to go to the high school next and attend to some business, but I should go in alone, and it may take a while. Would you prefer it if we went back and I got my truck?”
“The high school is on the way, so it makes sense to stop there next. I’ll be happy to wait for you outside. I have a book in my purse. I never get to read books for pleasure anymore and I’ve got a great romance I’ve been wanting to read.”
“You read those?” Rose asked, grimacing. She’d never approved of the white world’s emphasis on romance. She understood the necessity of pairing, but in her mind the right pairing had very little to do with romance.
“Believe it or not, it’s got a Navajo hero, so it sounded interesting,” she said, and smiled when Rose grimaced.
“Well, since you don’t mind, let’s stop there when we get into town,” Rose said.
When they arrived at Shiprock, they turned and drove into the parking lot of the high school, just south of the road they were on, Highway 64.
Rose opened the door, then glanced back at Sadie. “If it gets too hot, just come into the front lobby and sit on one of the benches,” she said, “or wait in the principal’s office.”
“I’ve always tried to stay away from places like that,” Sadie said with a smile. “Don’t worry about me at all. I’ll be fine.”
Rose hurried up the front steps and went inside quickly, headed straight for the main office. Asking the first adult she saw for assistance, she was guided to Sheila Jim’s desk. Sheila, after the last government boarding school on the mesa had closed down for good years ago, had started as a records secretary here, a position similar to her old job.
Sheila looked up and, seeing Rose, smiled. “Well, hello. This is a surprise. Sit down.”
Rose took the seat she offered. “I’ve come to ask you a favor,” she said, and explained that she was looking for anything to do with Charlie’s past. Although forced to use his name here, she didn’t feel threatened by the chindi because she doubted Charlie had ever been here.
“I’m not sure I can help you. The records you want date back to the Great Depression. Back then, things weren’t as organized as they are now, and there were only a few staff members at the boarding school, which was in the valley then. I worked at the last one here, up on the mesa across town, of course, and those records ended up at tribal headquarters in Window Rock. But the real old records—I have no idea where they might be.”
“Who might know about his or his brother’s childhood? Can you think of anyone?”
Sheila considered it for a while. “There is one person that might, but I’m not even sure he’s still alive. My mother would visit him at least once a month when I was in high school, and he’d always take time to talk to me about plants and the old ways. He lived out by Rattlesnake.”
“Can you tell me anything more about him?”
“His name was Ha … Ha something.” She shook her head. “He was a traditionalist, so he never used his real name. He wanted to protect his Navajo name, and he’d never had an Anglo name because he never went to school.”
“Could it have been Ha’asídí?”
“Yes, that was it! I remember now.”
Rose knew the man, but she too wasn’t sure if he was still alive. He had to be over eighty if he was, but some of their people were strong and lived long lives.
“Thanks. I appreciate the help you gave me.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more,” Sheila said.
Rose walked outside to where Sadie’s SUV was parked. She was still sitting behind the wheel, engrossed in the paperback novel. As Rose slipped into the seat, Sadie dogeared the page she was reading, set the book down beside her, and started the engine.
“Where to?”
“Let’s stop at my house to put this plant in a safe place then I want to track someone down. He used to live in a hogan out by Rattlesnake. I remember him walking all the way into Shiprock once a week, then sometimes carrying back a load of groceries if he couldn’t find a ride home.”
Sadie looked at her thoughtfully as they were heading south of Shiprock. “I met an old man wandering around in that area not long ago over by Shiprock Wash. In spite of this four-wheel drive monster, which should be capable of going almost anywhere, I managed to get myself stuck in the soft sand of an arroyo, and he came out of nowhere. Scared me half silly, but he knew that area like the back of his hand. He was very old, but he had more energy than I did, and his thinking was as clear as springwater. He helped me dig out and showed me how to stuff brush in front and around the tires to get enough traction to pull free. If it’s the same person, he was very much alive just a few months ago.”
“He sounds like the man I’m looking for.”
“You might ask him about ‘white at night’ if we find him,” Sadie added after a moment. “I remember that he was out collecting plants when he found me stuck in that sandy arroyo.”
“You’re right. There was a time when ‘white at night’ could be collected around the sides of the arroyos flowing away from Ship Rock all the way to Rattlesnake. Of course, that was a long time ago.”
After leaving the plant in Rose’s kitchen to recover under the light, they traveled north again, then west. At long last, after wandering around for nearly a half hour looking for the right dirt road, they arrived at a hogan near a small oil field. Rose asked Sadie to stop fifty feet away within view of the east-side entrance, which had a door in place of the traditional blanket-covered entry.
“If he’s inside, he’ll come out,” Rose said.
“That’s assuming he knows we’re here. What if he’s hard-of-hearing?”
“We can wait outside by the vehicle, but we shouldn’t approach because he’s a traditionalist. It would be considered rude.” Seeing the empty sheep pen constructed of cottonwood branches, Rose studied the area, noting the globe willow tree that shaded the pine-log hogan. Ha’asídí had made another concession or two to modern times. His hogan had a tarpaper roof and a metal chimney, which meant a woodstove had taken the place of a fire pit, and the joints between the logs had been sealed with some kind of stucco or plast
er instead of mud.
“The tracks over there by the sheep pen look fresh. My guess is that during the day he probably takes his livestock along the arroyos where it’s cooler, and they feed on the grass that grows in damper soil.”
“I got stuck in one of those arroyos near here. Do you want me to try and take you to that same spot—emphasis on try? I’m not sure I can find it again.”
Rose smiled. “I lose track of distances around here sometimes too, and end up going down the wrong road. But as long as I can see the mountains to the west, or Ute Mountain over there to the northwest, I can always reorient myself at least on directions.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” Sadie said, “but if you get down into the arroyos, you sometimes get turned around and have to get to higher ground to see landmarks.”
Sadie continued west, with the pinnacle of Ship Rock on her left. A low, wide, and currently dry arroyo with the equivalent of sandbars in the center appeared before them, running in a southerly direction. They reached a hard spot down on the arroyo where the seasonal flow of rainwater had created a gravel deposit near the center of the channel, and Sadie stopped the vehicle. As they climbed out, they could hear someone whistling farther down the arroyo, but they couldn’t see anyone.
“I think it’s coming from around the next bend,” Sadie said. “But it’s hard to say for sure because of the way the wind carries sounds out here.”
“Wind is said to hide or uncover secrets at will,” Rose whispered. Then she stood perfectly still for several moments. “Over there,” she said at last, gesturing.
As they walked around a curve in the arroyo, they saw an old Navajo man bent over, picking some plants growing near the edge of a smaller channel. Several sheep were grazing on the grasses atop a high spot in the wash where the sun shone most of the day. A few goats were farther downstream, and she could hear a bell as one of the animals moved.
“Yáat’ééh,” Ha’asídí greeted in Navajo, standing up as Rose and Sadie approached.
“Aqalani,” Rose answered, using the word for greetings.
Plant Them Deep Page 23