Tazhií, the Turkey, and Chee, a Navajo Boy
by Johnny Rustywire
Tazhií
Tazhií
Tazhií
"Why does he keep saying that?"
Nahgebah (Nah-gee-bah) asked,
looking at her 5-year-old nephew, Chee.
"Tazhií,
Tazhií,
Tazhií"
"He is worried about not having a tazhií for Thanksgiving Dinner."
"Tazhií,
Tazhií,
Tazhií"
Chee's small round eyes looked out the window,
down Frisco street,
the Southside of Flagstaff.
His parents had moved into a small apartment behind the Manhattan Club,
a hard luck bar that was across the alley.
The light reflected all kinds of colors
off broken wine and beer bottles lining the alleyway
that separated their place from the back door of the bar.
"We won't need a tazhií," Sharlene said, "We can cook him!"
pointing at Chee, who looked at her quickly with large eyes.
She laughed at him.
"Don't say that!" Nahgebah said.
The little boy with curious eyes had been looking out the window.
He saw men and women standing out there with brown paper bags,
drinking Roma wine, cheap liquor.
They were out there all the time,
some standing,
some staggering,
some dirty and dressed in rags,
some just laying out there until the police came and picked them up.
His mother told him not to talk to them,
not to look at them,
not to take anything from them even a candy bar.
He didn't speak to them;
he would just look and then run inside.
His mother was off working somewhere,
and her sisters, his aunts, Nahgebah and Sharlene, were watching him.
They were teenagers and they were mean to him.
They were in high school,
raised there in town.
They were "Town Navajos";
Much "better" than those who came from the Gap,
Grand Falls,
Dennehotso,
Cow Springs
and Shiprock
and a host of other places they didn't even want to know about.
"Tazhií, where is the Tazhií?"
Chee would say over and over.
The two girls got tired of him saying it.
Chee wished he could see Ché (Grandfather).
When he was with him in Dinetah.
Chee could run around there and no one cared,
but here he was cooped up like a chicken all day.
Chee remembered he saw some tazhiís in a pen at his Ché's.
Ché told him that those tazhiís were there to help them.
Ché told Chee that long ago there was a boy who was poor
and who left his home near Two Gray Hills to make his way in the world.
He went to Dibensa, the mountain,
and when he left he was followed by a tazhií, who kept him company.
This tazhii' taught the Mountain Boy to walk in a circle to find his way,
making the circle a little bit bigger each day,
starting from a place he knew and then going out a little further each time.
The Mountain Boy was alone and poor, dressed in rags,
and as the tazhii' walked in a circle, the boy followed.
Each day the Mountain Boy learned something new about other people and places.
Chee's Ché told him that when you caught a tazhii',
sometimes they have things hidden in their wings;
and if you caught one and held it up you could see a rainbow in their wings.
This boy from long ago carried the bird and learned some things from it;
it was a special bird, a special friend to him.
Chee used to dream about that tazhií.
Ché told him that it was put there to help his people,
Tsinalbiiltnii, Mountain People Clan,
and that is why Ché kept them.
During this time, Keshmish Yazhi—Little Christmas,
the tazhii' would be fixed up,
and they would gather as a family,
and he would see his cousins, his brothers in the Navajo way of speaking.
They would play and run around all over the place.
Chee could see these people outside his window
were different from the ones he had known.
They carried on with the bottles they were drinking,
breaking them on the ground as they finished them.
Chee would look at the broken bottles, the small pieces of glass,
and wonder if these were the special jewels
he had heard the Twin Heroes had gathered for gifts to their father.
They glistened under the lights of the bar,
all colors, red, blue, green, brown and clear.
He sometimes picked them up and held them in his hand.
Chee's father was gone,
working in California for the Southern Pacific railroad laying tracks.
He would be back to pick them up,
and they would be going with him to live on a railroad car.
He had seen his cousins at Belmont on a railroad car;
it was a place that rolled around on wheels.
He wondered how it would be to live on such a thing.
It was his father's people that came from Two Gray Hills
and he missed seeing them.
Chee only knew the place from when he heard people talk about it,
he didn't know where it really was, except it was a long ways off.
Chee waited by the door and watched the outside world go by.
Sometimes, when his mother came home, they went to Chacon's store on Frisco Street.
The owner was a kind Nakai man who gave him a penny candy when he went in.
They would go and stand in line next door and get commodity food with other people.
He saw kids there.
Some were like him,
Others he tried to talk to but they couldn't understand him.
He was told these were Nakai, a different people who spoke in another way.
It was that day he heard the announcer on the radio, KCLS,
say Thanksgiving was here.
Chee looked around.
His aunts were getting dressed to go to Indian Mission for some kind of show.
Nahgebah and Sharlene told him to go to sleep, and then left him behind.
When he woke he was all alone.
He began to cry to be by himself.
Why had they left him behind?
He looked outside and wished his mother was home,
but she didn't come when he called.
He stood by the window and cried.
There was this one old man who came around,
and he would drink out there everyday, staggering around.
Chee would watch him sometimes and see him walk funny.
Sometimes the old man would try to talk to him;
he talked Dine Bizaad, the Navajo language.
He spoke like Chee's mother.
His aunts would hide when they saw him come by.
They called him "Chili Man,"
because when he got mad and started shouting, his head would turn all red.
It was him who was outside and heard the boy, Chee, crying.
He came to the window and said, "What is wrong?" in Navajo.
Chee talked better Navajo than Beligana (English)
and said his mother was gone and his aunts had left him alone.
He cried out loud for his mother.
The Glahnees (Winos) in the alley just looked at him and said, "poor boy,"
and kept drinking.
In those days people didn't want to get involved with such things;
they kept to themselves.
It was the rough part of town,
and so the little boy cried and called out for his mother for a long time;
It grew dark,
and he kept calling for her and for his Ché and for the turkey he wanted.
In the light of the bar across the way, he could see that someone was coming,
carrying a bag and some cooked food.
It was Chili Man, carrying a gunnysack.
He reached in through the screen door and opened it.
The boy's eyes were swollen from crying.
He watched Chili Man come into the place.
Chili Man reached in the bag
and gave the boy some Kneel Down Bread and Sweet Corn Cake.
It was traditional food and Chee liked the taste.
He watched the old man go into the kitchen and do some things.
Chee was not sure what he was doing.
The old man turned around, and he had a plate full of food.
It was turkey, with dressing, and gravy and some sweet potatoes.
The little boy sat at the table and the old man fed him a little at a time, by the spoonful.
He talked to him and sang him a song his mother used to sing to him.
He made him laugh as he told him some stories about Tazhií and the mountain boy,
stories just like he remembered Ché telling him.
The old man had a strong laugh and was easy to talk to,
but something inside Chee made him wonder why his aunts hid when they saw him.
It was then that Sharlene and Nahgebah came home
and saw the old man sitting at the table with Chee.
One got a broom and the other a stick and they told him to get out.
The old man stood up and started to talk to them,
scolding them for leaving his ShíNalí all alone,
The girls yelled at him and started hitting him with the broom.
"Get out, Chili Man, get out!" they said.
Chili Man left and ran out the door, down the alley into the night.
Later when Chee's mother got home after working all day,
Chee told her what happened
even though his aunts had said not to say anything about it.
She listened carefully to him when he said, "They called him Chili Man,"
and as he said his name, his mother asked him to say what they called him again,
and he said, "Chili Man."
She sat there for while and looked away out the window.
There were tears in her eyes.
Chee asked his mother, "What's wrong, Shima?"
She looked at him and said,
"That man, the one they called 'Chili Man' is my father.
He is your Ché, too."
Chee sat there and smiled at his mother and said,
"I wished for my Ché to come and get me and he did, he did.
He heard me and came.
He made me laugh, Shima."
The little boy told her that this Ché knew the story of Mountain Boy and Tazhií
and had told him about the way things were back then in the Navajo Way.
She sat there and told him about the old man, and how he couldn't live in the city,
and had no place on Dinetah (Navajoland) to go to.
After a while, the two, Chee and his mother,
went out into the streets under the lights of the honkytonks,
went from place to place and found Ché standing outside the Rose Tree,
and brought him home.
Chili Man stayed with them
and gave up the life he led before.
And that is how it was that Chili Man found his way back home one Thanksgiving.
volume 9(6)
This poem is copyright © 2004, Johnny
Rustywire, all rights reserved.
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