by Gayl Jones
I know, ’cause I still ain’t know what you’s talking about.
Well, during World War Two, for example, the Germans learned how to decipher all of the codes, so they used a Choctaw to send a message in Choctaw, and so the Germans weren’t able to decipher it. The code talker would take the English message, translate it into Choctaw, but not only Choctaw but a special coded Choctaw, and then when the message was sent it would be retranslated into English. The Germans never could figure out what the messages meant. It worked so well during the first war that someone decided to do the same thing during the second war, and so they had Comanche and Navajo code talkers.
That sound like a confabulatory history.
He said nothing, then he said, Yes, because people don’t read about it in the official history books. I’ve even told Native Americans about code talkers and they themselves had never heard of them. I know some people who are the descendants of the code talkers, so they know about them. I’m sort of ambivalent about them being referred to as code talkers, because the whites who developed codes and whose codes were used aren’t referred to as code talkers.
Yeah, they’s intelligence people or whatever.
Posah-tai-vo, that was the name the Comanches used for Hitler.
What that mean?
Crazy white man.
I gots to remember that. Posah-tai-vo. They got any word for crazy white woman?
I don’t know Comanche. I just know that. We want to try to develop something similar to use in addition to the other codes. Some people want to use Navajo, but even though code talking isn’t known generally, among the government people, there are surely people who know of or remember the code talker, so we might use another language, probably some obscure language. But it has to have a syntax as complex as Navajo and complex tonal qualities, you know.
Yeah, they is a lot of history they don’t teach, ain’t it? I thinks they is even a book that claims to teach the history that the other history books don’t teach. And I don’t even think that that book teaches that history. What we has to do is to just tell the peoples the histories that the books ain’t teach. Well, whether I’s a Navajo or not, I’s going to tell people about the Navajo code talkers. ’Cept when I tells people any kinda history they thinks it’s all confabulatory, so maybe it is better for the believable peoples to tell about the Navajo and other Native American code talkers and to put them into they books. I is sho going to call some Posah-tai-vos everywhere they is, ’cause it ain’t just the word for Hitler. I just wish I knew the Comanche word for all the crazy white peoples, ’cause I don’t limit it to the mens amongst them. There is Hitlerish womens I knows for sure. I don’t like to talk about other people’s childrens. But if I was still a child, I would ask you they names as well, ’cause although. . . . Well, I will limit it to the crazy white mens and they crazy womens and other Hitlerish peoples. . . . I does know one Comanche word, uru, which I think mean thank you. Or it kinda sound like that. Least that how it sound, like uru. ’Cause I knows a Comanche truck driver named Little Coyote. He don’t know no Comanche ’cept uru. They calls him Little Coyote, but it’s like calling me Mosquito. I know the Navajo word for yucca, that’s tsah-as-zih. Sometimes when I’m driving my truck I meets peoples and learns little bits of they languages. Little Coyote and me we ain’t on the same route now, though, ’cause he travel around Arizona and New Mexico and Nevada, where I usedta have me my route, and he a true Comanche. I just be thinking about Little Coyote, but I ain’t think of him as Native American, though I knows he Comanche, ’cause he grew up amongst the cowboys, so that kinda more his culture, though he know who he is hisself. He know he Comanche. He say he be knowing more Comanche if his people hadn’t had to stop speaking Comanche, ’cause they went to them schools where they made them speak English. ’Cept they kept one Comanche word. He say sometimes he use that word and it ain’t mean thank you, though. He say it mean thank you, but because it the only Comanche word he know, he sometimes got to use it to mean other words than thank you. Sometimes when he use it it might even mean the same thing as posah-tai-vo. One time I come in this track stop in Nevada. Little town got the name of a Colorado town, but it in Nevada. I come in the track stop and he’s saying uru, he just keep saying uru. Something with one of the locals. He ain’t tell me what the scene was, but I know that uru ain’t mean thank you. How you, Nadine? he says when I sits down with him. Sometime he call me Nadine, other time he call me Mosquito. Uru, who uru? I be asking, or saying that word that sound like uru. He tell me it mean thank you. But he say he ain’t use it to mean thank you. He say it the only Comanche word he know, so it got to contain the meaning of every word. So that uru, it might mean thank you in ordinary Comanche, but the way that Little Coyote and his people have transformed that word, they have made it into the most powerful word in the universe, ’cause I ain’t know of a word to contain every word. Most words is they own word, or they is other little words and meanings, but they ain’t every word. I be thinking somebody else the first Native American I met, but it Little Coyote. But I ain’t think of him as somebody to meet, ’cause he somebody I knows. Least whiles I was on his route. Not no lovers, though, I mean, ’cause he has him a Mrs. Little Coyote. ’Cept the way he describes her she ain’t no Little Coyote neither. He transport furniture, I mean Little Coyote. Italian classical furniture, English, Italian Renaissance, seventeenth century, modern, you know, different styles. I remember he was transporting some bookcases, and one of them was supposed to be from a seventeenth-century sailing vessel, from a captain’s cabin. It was supposed to be a real expensive bookcase. All the others was modem, but this were a seventeenth-century bookcase. He ain’t tell me, but when I looked at that bookcase I knowed it was from a slave ship. I ain’t knowed if it was seventeenth century or some other century, but I just knowed it was from a slave ship and ain’t nobody have to tell me that bookcase from a slave ship. He hisself called it a sailing vessel, but I knowed it was from a slave ship. Little Coyote was transporting it to some wealthy people that had ordered it, so I ain’t told him he were transporting the bookcase from a slave ship. Or maybe he know hisself and ain’t want to say that. He the one showed it to me though, ’cause when we went out he say Mosquito, then he say he want to show me this seventeenth-century bookcase, ’cause it is more intricate you know than the modern-type furniture. Then he opens the back of his truck and shows me that bookcase, and we both lets each other call it a sailing vessel, though I knows we both knows the true nature of that sailing ship. But what we talking about? I looks at the little book.
Anyway, this section, he say, pointing out the section in the book, is about this group of Indians, of Native People, whose tradition and culture and even religion are based on com, but they’re not allowed to plant corn because their government claims that they use the corn to feed the guerrillas, the rebels who want to overthrow the government. Instead, they force the people to grow cotton. A group of us—you saw one of them, Alvarado, in the alley behind the cathedral . . .
The one you called the eternal revolutionary.
Revolutionist. Anyway, we tried to petition the government, but all governments respond the same. They don’t see their own abuses of human rights—people who are part of their own history of abuse, you know. The book I’ve given you is considered a pretty subversive book. I know what that subversive mean.
Good. Anyhow, they planted subversive and compromising literature on us, Alvarado and myself, called us communists and political propagandists and had us deported . . . But these people, the ones who want simply to return to growing com, they’re descended from the world’s first poets, first artists, first astronomers. People talk about the Chinese. But these people, you might call them the Chinese of the New World.
And treated like shit, right? I heard somebody else say the Africans supposed to be the first poets and artists and astronomers. One of them African-American poets that was reading at the Community Center. Everybody want to be the first.
He comb his fingers through his hair. I notice he got a gold band on his little finger. I know them nuns wear rings, mean they married to Christ, but I didn’t know them priest wear rings. I don’t ask him about that ring though. Right, he say. Anyway, Alvarado, he speaks Quechua and a lot of different languages, so he does most of our interpreting . . . We didn’t go there to politicize the people. But, to quote someone from that book that I gave you, the masses have always been instinctively revolutionary, the common people, you know. As I suppose most of the ruling classes are instinctively non-revolutionary —which I prefer to counterrevolutionary. And everybody has their own language. Intellectuals everywhere, no matter how “revolutionary” always tend to speak the same language as the oppressors. Even I myself was schooled in the language of the oppressors. The language of the oppressed has always been a different language. But, like I said, we weren’t there to politicize the people. But people know that truth is them, not their oppressors. That’s why all governments want to turn people into things. People instinctively know political falsehoods, even those who spout them. The small political falsehood, people tend to know anyhow. It’s the bigger ones that often people accept. Like that there’s such a thing as an illegal alien. As Elie Wiesel asks, How can a human being be illegal? But I’m sure you don’t want to hear any speeches from me. The reason I wasn’t sure of you in the beginning is that we’re trained not to trust strangers and especially strangers who come and ask about the Sanctuary movement. You’re saying now that you’re not interested in the movement, but then you were showing a great deal of interest. We break the law, after all, you know, even though we break it in the name of conscience, in the name of what we feel is our integrity. People trust the state, but the state doesn’t always tell you what’s true.
Texas?
The state, I mean, the government.
Oh, you mean like the State Department?
Sorta. Not just transporting them but encouraging so-called illegal aliens is a crime, you know. Anyway, every one of us has been spied and informed on . . . Sounds like something outta that movie.
What movie?
Nineteen eighty-four.
You should read the book.
Yeah, it seem like a good book, I says, indicating the book he’s just given me. I puts it back in my pocket.
I mean Nineteen eighty-four.
Oh, yeah? They made a book outta that movie? I gotta tell Delgadina they made a book outta that movie. We seen it on her cable TV.
You’d better tell her that they made a movie outta that book.
That’s clever. You a revolutionist too, like your friend Al? Alvarado. Actually, he’s a psychiatrist. Actually, he’s a licensed psychiatrist, but photography is his avocation.
Yeah, I seen a documentary on them refugees. Says that they has got all kindsa psychological problems and shit, you know. When they was describing them refugees I was thinking of us people, ’cause I knows a lot of peoples even in us community in Covington, which is where I’m from, where they behaves just exactly like them refugees. This is they country, or it supposed to be, and they is behaving just like them refugees. I ain’t mean them refugee immigrants that they prides theyselves on and tells us to be more like, like them Koreans, I means them that has the psychological problems.
In the refugee communities and detention camps.
Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about, Father Ray. I seen me a documentary on that. They was talking about self-destructive behaviors and psychopathologies that’s the exact word they used ’cause I remembers all them documentaries. They was even comparing them to minority groups and oppressed peoples and talking about they different manias and calling them hyperactive and even paranoid fools, ’cept they didn’t use the word fool.
The book explains all that. Every time we bring a new group of refugees, Alvarado interprets and helps them with whatever psychological problems are brought on by the status of being not just a refugee, but an illegal refugee. That’s what’s his kind of guerrilla warfare. To keep people from being self-destructive. He interviews them and writes up their stories and a psychological profile so that we know how best to work with them. Not just to help them establish themselves in America or work with them on various kinds of legal defense.
Yeah, I knows. All that they have in them documentaries. I ain’t even have to read no book to know that, Ray. I don’t have to hear no pamphlet talk to know all that, ’cause all that is in them documentaries. I ain’t seen you on television, though.
We keep away from the media, our group.
Yeah, I can tell you everything you needs to know and wants to know about them refugees. I ain’t saying that I knows them better than they knows theyselves, but I knows them at least as good as them documentaries knows them. Well, if I was a social worker or some shit, I would treat us peoples like refugees, ’cause they is so many of us who is self-destructive towards usselves and each other. I ain’t saying that we all is like that. They said in that documentary, though, that them refugees was especially destructive towards they own group, meaning other refugees.
That’s all in the book I just gave you.
I know, Ray, but what I’m saying is I ain’t have to read no book to know it, ’cause them documentaries. . . .
The book tells you more than the documentaries. . . .
Refugees, at least among usselves, should build a harmonious community. That’s what I learned from them documentaries. The book teach me that?
It teaches you everything that’s publishable about the Sanctuary movement. For security reasons, of course, even the book can’t tell you everything. All of our strategies are not in those books, of course.
I ain’t never understood y’all revolutionaries to write books on y’allselves. Y’all writes books and gets on television and expresses y’all opinions and a lot of y’all even tells y’all’s strategies and I’m thinking is this revolution? Course I heard one woman say that true revolutionists is peacemakers. But then other peoples believes that revolutionaries is soldiers and all revolutionary soldiers has got to know what side they is on. I believes I believes in revolution at least the way they describes it and all them oppresses and abuses they describes, but everybody can’t be no soldier.
Everybody can be a soldier, I mean, there are different ways of being a soldier.
I knows I ain’t no soldier. Even them oppressors, they ain’t make everybody a soldier. Even amongst the oppressors everybody ain’t no soldier.
Think about it, Mosquito. Aren’t they? Don’t they conform to what I’ve said about different ways of soldiering? They work for the cause of oppression in their own different ways, even those who don’t believe themselves to be oppressors.
But everybody can’t be a soldier.
Some people transport the refugees, others do different work with them. We have some their only function is just to help the refugees start businesses, for example. Since they can’t get green cards, we try to set them up as independent contractors—you know, like cottage industries. A lot better than being exploited in sweatshops, you know.
Yeah, like Maria’s dolls.
He lift his chin and scratch at a little shaving bump on his jaw. Yeah. Of course all that’s subversive. But we call it a constructive kind of guerrilla war. Sometime I’ll show you this video we have. It’s called An Act of Subversive Love. I bet you didn’t know that love could be subversive, eh?
I guess I kinda instinctively knows. Talking about aqueducts. I mean that Latin I remembers about them aqueducts. I know y’all remembers all them Latin lessons and the history of them romance countries that talks about all them aqueducts. The municipal park look like it trying to build a aqueduct, actually it one of them fountains that they like to put in them parks. They don’t just build them ordinary fountains now, a lot of that water uses computers, you know to choreograph the water. It a nice fountain. A few of them students done left the pizza joint and sitting around the fountain reading books or chatting.
&nbs
p; He laughs. He looking at the fountain too and at that nose-ring girl who taken her shoes off and walking in the fountain water. People who have a tradition that tells them those who win are good have a different way of seeing the world. An Act of Subversive Love, he repeat. Like they say, America loves a love story. It’s just America wants to control what sorta love story and whose love story. And the lovers gotta always . . .
What?
We don’t protest, we resist. It all has to do with reality, Mosquito, and authority, and who decides reality and who decides what’s legal and illegal. That’s why international law is important, my good friend. Perhaps we’re violating national law, but I don’t believe we’re violating international law. The law of humanity. Like one of our Sanctuary workers says, We can take our stand with the oppressed or we can take our stand with the oppressors, or rather, with organized oppression. We can be collaborators or resisters.
You sound like you’s preaching. I don’t mind preaching, ’cause I’m a member of the Perfectability Baptist Church. I likes to preachify myself, but I don’t like to get too preachified. Anyway, the Perfectability Baptist Church just allows mens in the pulpit. Delgadina, I told you ’bout Delgadina, she don’t like preachification, when it’s other people preachifying. But what’s a collaborator? I knows what a collaborator is, but what do y’all mean by collaborator? You know, ’cause everybody got they own meaning.
He don’t hear me or he don’t want to answer. Maybe he ain’t like me saying he sound like he preaching, ’cause that ain’t his idea he have of hisself. But I’s always been kinda attracted to preacherly talk myself. Of course that don’t mean I’m attracted to every preacher or everything that’s being preached.