Riders on the Rez Read online

her and they both went sprawling.

  11

  The Fight

  Shawna rolled over, holding a hand to her bloody mouth. The other kid jumped up right away and I figured he was gonna ask her if she was OK.

  Instead, he kicked her leg and stomped around her to get his board. I couldn’t believe it! I took off running. I jumped over Shanna and grabbed him by the shoulder.

  “Pick on someone your own size!”

  “Get away from me! She deserved it!”

  He tried to kick me, too, but I jumped to the side, wrapped an arm around him and landed a hard right to his gut.

  He made an oof! sound and took a step backward. I held on as tight as I could, but he got one arm free and whacked the side of my head with his board.

  What they say about seeing stars is true! A big one exploded in front of my eyes! My knees went weak but I didn’t let go of him. Mostly because I would have fallen down if I had.

  He was about to hit me again when someone grabbed his wrist from behind. Whoever-it-was yanked the kid out of my arms. I heard a THWACK and he went down, but on top of me!

  Everybody at the park must have gathered around to watch us fight. I could see a herd of duct-taped sneakers, but not much else. Someone finally pulled the kid off me and held out a skint-knuckled hand.

  It was Danny. “We showed him, didn’t we, Cuz?” He was almost smiling.

  12

  Buddies

  Danny turned and helped Shawna up next. “Are you okay?” He wiped her face with his shirt.

  “Yep. Somehow. Look!” She held out a blood-smeared tooth.

  I said, “I’m sorry about your tooth, Shawna,”

  “Oh, that’s okay, Billy. It was loose, anyway. “I’m gonna go show T.C.!” She stuck the tooth in her pocket and ran off.

  “Hey, man, do you think I could try your board?” Danny asked.

  “Sure.” I skidded it over to him. “You know how to skate?”

  “Nope. Not yet,” he said, hopping onto it and duckwalking backward. “So, how do you make this thing jump up in the air?”

  I showed him once and he ollied in no time at all.

  “Balance,” he said, “It’s just like riding a horse.”

  “No way!” I said. “They aren’t anything alike”

  “Oh, yeah? Come riding with me tonight and I’ll show you.”

  Shawna came back with T. C. and the big girls in tow. Everybody wanted to know what happened. After they heard the story, Danny and I got high fives all around.

  13

  Clans and Names

  Before long our two trucks pulled into the parking lot. Mom and the rest of the rellies got out with a bucket of fried chicken and some colas. They put one of the tailgates down for a picnic table and we stood around it and ate. Shawna told the fight story all over again.

  “You did good, Billy,” Atsiti said.

  “Real good,” agreed the Os.

  “The Navajo way is to take care of family above everything else,” said Jelly-Belly. He poked Mom again. “Billy, what’s your lineage?” he asked.

  “Huh?” I looked at Mom for some help.

  She sighed. “Billy, you are born TO the Red Towering Rocks clan. That's my side. On your Dad’s side, we would say you were born FOR the Bitterwater clan.”

  “That sounds cool,” I said. “What’s it mean?”

  “Think of your Mother’s clan as your closest family.” Jelly-Belly said. “That makes me and Atsiti like fathers to you, and your cousins here are your brothers and sister.”

  I figured, if we were all so tight, I could ask the Os a question. It had been bugging me all day. “Are you triplets?”

  They laughed and one of them said, “Why, do we look alike to you?”

  “Sort of, not too much; but your names….”

  Everybody laughed at that. One of the Os put his hand on his chest.

  “I’m Robert,” he said. He nodded at the others. “He’s Joseph. That’s Moses….”

  Moses nudged T.C. and said, “And this is Floyd.”

  T.C. pointed his lips at Jelly-Belly and said, “Jelly’s name is Mike.”

  Jelly turned to Mom and said, “And this here’s Pie Face.”

  Everybody cracked up laughing at that. I must have looked totally confused.

  Atsiti said, “It’s a Dine thing. Everybody gets a nickname. Margaret’s came from the day she was chasing Jelly and tripped. She went splat into a cow pie.”

  “Billy has a nickname, too!” Shawna announced. “Danny called him “Wheelie-feet” back at the bus station.”

  “Wheels could be cool!” T.C. said.

  “How about Fighting Wheels?” asked Danny.

  Mom pulled her eyebrows pulled down into a sharp point above her nose. “Don’t encourage him. He gets in enough trouble as it is. A little hozho wouldn’t hurt him at all.”

  I didn’t know what she meant, but I didn’t want to ask and look even more ignorant.

  She opened the truck door. “We have to leave now if we want to be home before dark.”

  “We have to go, too,” Robert said. “T.C. needs to get back to the prep school in Crown Point tonight.”

  14

  The True Story

  Danny and Shawna and me rode home together in the back of Atsiti’s truck. The wind beat our hair against our faces and peeled our eyelids back when we looked directly into it. When we turned off the pavement onto a rutted road, the three of us bounced around like sacks of potatoes. It was way more fun than the bus ride had been!

  “Billy, how come you never came to see us before?” Shawna yelled.

  “I don’t know, I said."I was gonna ask you if you knew why not.”

  Danny looked around like he thought maybe the folks in the cab could hear him. He leaned his mouth to my ear.

  “Your grandmother used to drink a lot. Sometimes she left Margaret, Jelly and Atsiti alone for a long time. Your mom’s sister, who was T.C.’s and our mom's mother, took them in for a while, but then she got real sick. Some people tried to take Margaret back to your grandmother's house and she ran away as soon as they left.”

  Now I understood why Mom had never told me any of this. It was a sad story.

  15

  Riding

  Danny showed me how to slip Thunder’s bridle on over his head and then let me do it myself. Except for a few bristly whiskers, the horse’s nose felt like pure velvet. Then Danny caught hold of the silver mane and jumped up on his back. I climbed on from the fence.

  “This isn’t like riding a board at all!” I said. Thunder’s back was very wide.

  “You’ll see,” Danny said. We headed up and over the rise. Danny showed me the trails up into the hills where sheep were taken to graze in the summer. We rode down into a sandy wash that he said filled up with running water after a big rain.

  Suddenly, he goosed the horse's sides with a kick and Thunder took off running. It was like going from rocking chair to rocket ship in a split second! I grabbed onto Danny and his hair flicked around my head like black lightning.

  But when Thunder galloped up the side of the gully, I let go of Danny’s waist and leaned forward over his back. I clinched the horse’s sides with my knees, as much as I could.

  Danny slowed Thunder to a trot and said, “See, what I mean about balance?’

  I did. Somehow, I had just seemed to know how to use my knees and body to move with the horse.

  Danny pulled up on the reins and nodded toward a clump of bushes. It took a minute, before I saw the deer stripping leaves off the limbs of a bush. We watched until she moved on out of sight.

  16

  Hozho

  The sun was almost down and the cliffs nearby glowed with a pinky light. I thought maybe Danny would answer some more questions for me, if I could only figure out where to start.

  Finally, I just said, “What’s hozho mean?”

  “Walking in beauty,” he said. “That comes from the Beauty Way Sing
.”

  He stared up at the red and purple sky. I knew he would say more if I didn't ask. “That’s like…when someone needs healing, the whole family gets together and has a ceremony for them. We call it a sing, because there are different songs for different cures. Uncle is a singer."

  He went on. "Some people would call him a medicine man, but he is a hataale to us. He uses the Beauty Way sing to bring sick people back into harmony. It’s like…another kind of balance thing.”

  I didn't really understand what he meant, but a bird called in the low brush nearby and a dozen others hurried across our path, some with little feathers bobbing over their heads.

  None of my questions seemed important just then.

  17

  Around the Fire

  Uncle and Jelly closed the sheep up in the pen and went into the trailer.

  “Who lives there?” I asked.

  “Uncle and Jelly,” Danny said. “Jelly’s studying to be a hataale, too.”

  Down at the hogan, Mom and Mona had Navajo tacos ready for everyone. We ate and then Jelly built a fire in rock pit in the center of the room. There were some chairs but everybody sat on the floor on rugs and sheepskins, including my Shi-ma and Uncle, who sat across from the door. He didn’t talk much. When he did, it was in Navajo.

  Jelly told them about the fight at the skate park.

  Uncle looked at me said some long something to Jelly, who turned to me and said, “Billy, Uncle wants me to tell you that fighting when you have to is good. Knowing when you don’t have to fight is even better.”

  “You never have to fight someone who calls you names because you are different from them,” he went on. “Be proud to be Dine.”

  I thought about that. I wished I could spend more time with my rellies. Maybe I could learn how to be real Dine like them.

  I wanted to tell Uncle that, but Mom