Make No Sound to Wake

________

evening gusts moved shadows and air the dogs couldn't smell.

This late into Niłch'ih Tsoh, with the ground buried beneath three day's snow, two mutts curled for warmth inside a scrap-wood shelter built against the northeast side of a hogan. Travel this night was unlikely, though not impossible, if someone were forced to venture across the darkness and cold. Many generations ago this land had belonged to Hastiin Łįį›dóó ł›izhé, a pious if not saintly man quick to judge those of us living in imbalance, out of tune with the harmonious songs of the earth and constellations. Who had come to own the property I had no way of knowing other than to look in and observe the doings of those who lived there.

Inside, the hogan was furnished meagerly, several bedrolls with a blanket each, two wooden chests, a loom, a metal wood-burning stove in the center, and a washbasin with shelves for food and dish storage. A couple of saddles were piled near the eastward-facing door, though I had seen no corral anywhere near on my approach.

In the dim light of two lanterns a scrawny-shouldered boy played a game of mimicking an older girl. He wore a shirt a few years too big for him, the darkened skin of being winter-fed circling his eyes. The girl crouched with her skirt flared around her, dirt caking the cracks of her rough-skinned hands.

"Your face is dirty," she said. "Wipe it off."

"No," said the boy, "you wipe yours off. I don't like it looking at me. It's ugly."

"You're the ugly one, an ugly dirt boy."

The girl sprang forward, lumbered toddlerlike on her knees, and tackled the boy. Their skinny bodies fell flat against one another in the fashion of a man and woman bedding together. Any sort of play like this between kids in my day was taboo, touching that siblings and cousins were cautioned never to engage in. It was disrespectful, overly sexual, and unbecoming of children who would become adults.

Near the bedrolls, an old, wind-beaten woman hunched over a folded blanket on her lap. She yelled "Yaa'dilah," and paused her game of seven cards set in a row, stacked according to number, color, and suit. A game I didn't recognize, but then, so much was unfamiliar to me these days.

"Doo beehaz'áa da. You kids don't act that way. Nia, get off your cousin."

The kids continued to wrestle despite the old woman's urging. Punishment would have been my next impulse, were these delinquents mine. Especially for the boy—it's boys who grow into irresponsible men, hardly able to mature beyond hungry hands, groping eyes, and temporary hearts.

The old woman's cards scattered as she rose. Grabbing the girl by her ponytail, she yanked her off the boy, who scampered backward to the south wall.

"You're hurting me, shimásání," the girl whined.

She was slapped, let go. The girl sat still only a moment before fake-stepping toward the boy, who flinched. She was slapped again, shoved to the floor. Angered, the girl glared at the boy from her defeated position.

"Flincher diigis," she said.

"You're stupid," whispered the boy, huddled against the wall.

The grandma retrieved her blanket and cards, rearranged and resumed her game.

Ignored or forgotten, the children, like alerted prairie dogs sniffing unfamiliar wind, stood and chased each other around the stove in the center of the hogan. The girl galloped ahead of the boy, taunted him with whinnies as his failed grasps caught the empty space between them. He dove for her and missed, tumbled toward a corner table and into the legs of a younger woman slicing onions for a stew simmering on the stovetop. The woman cut her thumb and cursed; blood seeped into the fine crevices of the halved onion so that it looked like a bloodshot eye. She loomed over the boy, knife in hand, slammed it...