Deeanna's more about city. urban stuff. bright lights over stars. she went camping and all, but only with good equipment. preferably cabin camping. in a nice clean cabin. and clean toilets. close by. That's why Kate's story disturbed her. all of Kate's stories disturbed her, actually. they were all about deep in the woods or far out in the desert or sixty feet under the ocean. places Deeanna wasn't that wild about. this story bothered her more than a lot of the others.
Kate had gone out to Hopi Mesas country. just to travel around. go to the Silver Guild Store, maybe buy some Hopi jewelry. maybe camp out on the Res, maybe not. sounded safe enough. Deeanna had heard LoneDog's stories about murders and stuff on the Res surrounding the Hopi Mesas. Navajo Dine', 'The People' there. being re-located off the land. which was going back, according to the BIA, into being Hopi Lands again. after like four centuries of occupation by both Tribes. it was an ongoing mess for a couple of decades already. Old people died when they were 're-located' out of their little hogans into the cement block homes in towns. they just seemed to bake in those things like ovens and just blow away dry and salty. probably not all of them. but a lot of them.
Deeanna's husband's uncle had married into the Blue Prayer Feather Clan of the Hopi. there were not many members of this clan left. couldn't prove it by his uncle, due to he wasn't concerned about what happened to the Clans and all. he being an off-Res guy. working for the government also. post office. but he mentioned the Blue Prayer Feather business for some reason to Kate. she took it in like an omen just for her. a Blue Prayer Feather in her future. Kate was kinda a member of the 'Wanna Be' Tribe. all fascinated by Indian stuff. especially Hopi. which didn't exactly make her that popular with the Navajo side of the family. Deeanna didn't care about any of that stuff. it was all too desert and out-doorsy and scary to her, really. stuff that was none of a white person's business. Kate was driven, though. She loved the desert and the Native people's lives. their cultures, so different than the rest of America. yet, so close. so easy to access. Kate didn't mind being intrusive. she thought it was a right, maybe. that was the dangerous part.
In the daylight, little quests like looking for Blue Prayer Feathers seem harmless enough. the Navajo and the Hopi are agreeable people, often. they are patient with the whims of the master race all around them. patient about how they expect to be around longer that these whites. that the white race is only a blip in the full time of Human on this earth. the true Dine' and true Hopi. these are the people who will inherit the earth. they may be quite right about that. time is long, long. The Clans are long as well...came out of the earth. had lived under the earth. are those who came into the sun. It is in the night that all of this is impossible. because the dark is somewhere else. not really of this earth. especially in the desert. even when there is electricity, no light is real there. everything changes in the dark. Deeanna, for some reason, was attuned to this part of life. she never went anywhere when it was dark in the desert. Kate was not so aware. she was not afraid of the dark. which is not, actually, a reasonable way to live. For many, there is much to fear in the dark.
Kate bought a piece of silver jewelry with the blue prayer feather on the back, first off...from the Guild Workshop. it was a Sun Sign medallion of sorts, hanging on a silver chain. she wore it day and night. told everyone how it was designed and crafted by one of the last silversmiths of the Blue Prayer Feather Clan. everyone was polite or interested. Kate kept getting introductions to people who knew people who knew Blue Prayer Feather Clan folks. including Deeanna's husband's uncle. but everything turned up dead-end. people were nice enough. but not that helpful. Kate started wondering if there was such a Clan at all. finally, she went out into the desert less often. especially in the evening. all the dark. the no-electricity. the deepness of the dark. the eyes of the people. watching. but not actually looking at her. looking somewhere through where she was. it was getting less compelling to try to find out anything about any clan at all. too many secrets. and why? what made their secrets so precious?
Deeanna thought she knew. when people have nothing, they hold on to secrets. that's what they do. they are very proud. the secrets are all that they have then. it didn't matter if there were no clans at all. or any people who lived that way of life. whatever it was. what was important was the secrets. they could be in corn. in pottery. in sand paintings. both sides of the Joint Use Area carried the secrets. knew some of eachother's. not other ones. some were not important. others were. or maybe they were. the past and the present were all jumbled up in the desert. people believed this. believed that. unless it moved into violence, it just wasn't that necessary. there was a certain mercy in all of this. what was really going to die was going to die anyway. what didn't die was the secrets. that's how it all seemed anyway. she was scared in the desert. that's all she knew about it.
It took Deeanna a couple of months to get clear that she hadn't heard about Kate in a long time. or seen her either. there were people in town who said she had gone back to California. she had bad-mouthed the Dine' and the Hopi both. she had said that they were just too dramatic about all the Clan stuff and the witches and the dark and the secrets and all. that it was all a way to think that they were special. more special than other people. some people said it was just sour grapes. she couldn't get over that nobody would introduce her to a Blue Prayer Feather Clan person. which was all she had wanted. just to meet one. maybe to ask what it meant to him, or to her. to be a clan member. she kind-of implied that it was rude of the people. no one had actually heard of her again. not since she left, if that is what she had done.
maybe it was more merciful to say that she just didn't belong. she didn't have the silence needed to be told a secret. to see a secret. to understand that it was not important whether there were any or just one or no Blue Prayer Feather Clan persons at all. that the desert had the mercy to cover up everything. that is was and was not important. that there was no way to account for the many ways people could live in the desert waste that was out there for miles and miles and miles.
One day, months later, Deeanna was out on one of the more used roads to no where on the Res. out to bring some heirloom seeds to one of the elders out in the middle of nothing, in the heart of the Hopi lands. she was thinking of Kate for some reason. she reached the hogan. turning off the car meant that bizarre silence that is nowhere else in the US. made her ears pop. quieted her mind at once. the elder came out and hugged her briefly. eyes clear with being nice to her. As usual, Deeanna felt out of place. which was OK really. the elder was out of place too. not re-located yet. resisting relocation. for reasons of her own. a weaver. on her loom was feather, stuck into the weft. it was blue. Deeanna looked at it. the elder looked at her.
It's a clan? Deeanna asked respectfully as posssilble. the elder looked at her long and hard, it seemed. answered something about blessing and something about dying too. maybe clans dying? Deeanna didn't quite catch it. there was no sense in trying to get clarity about it all. It's about water. the elder said. the mercy of water. what did that mean? best not to ask. that Kate person, the elder began. yes? Deeanna waited....she has no questions. no answers. the elder took down the feather. handed it to Deeannna. Just wear this when you need the mercy of water. Deeanna nodded.
Later she heard about Kate again. Kate had lost the sun-sign medallion in the American River. no trying to find it worked out at all...
Kate never came back to the Res. Deeanna went out there rarely. and of course, never at dark...Dark can be merciful too. Mercy is needed when it is needed. the desert gives whenever it pleases. often, not at all.
The blue feather blew away one day.
Deeanna never wore it.
there are things that are secret about the desert.
it's best to let them blow away.
they have places to go.
all the places are
full of mercy...
No one got more annoying when there was a bee in their hat like Kate did. she just wouldn't let go. she had been pokin' around the back roads, where not even most of the Hopi went. looking for leads to where the Blue Prayer Feather people were. of course, she had turned up nothing at all. tho people were pretty clear that she should leave it all alone. Clans were not white folk stuff. there is a lot on any Reservation that is Not For Whites. Period.
What Kate had lost she never found. Mercy eluded her. Magic avoided her. she never even found one blue feather of any kind.
there is a taste and a smell around a powerful Clan Person. Deeanna sometimes smelled such a person. he smelled like a bird in flight. the blue in his feathers was deep in the sun and dark besides.he posted the sign about staying off that part of the Res. the part where the prayer feathers were all blue.
He too, was
in his way
full of mercy.
Mercy being
very, very
dark
deep-water-
blue.
