My Heroes Have Always Been Navajo Cowboys
When I started writing Marathon Cowboys, I noted that once again one of my heros was a Navajo Marine vet. Like all writers, I worry that I’m writing the same story over and over, or, in my case, writing about the same characters over and over. They all seem unique to me, but I started to think about where these stories are coming from. Why does a writer reach for the same place, the same people? What deep, dark place are we mining? For me, it seems like when I write from the heart, or maybe from the belly, I get a story that resonates. Stories I write from my head? I just don’t feel them the same way. They don’t have any heat. They don’t have any pain. When I reach blindly after a story that’s causing my stomach to clench up, and get it down on paper, those heros turn out to be Navajo men.
I’ve written about other Native American characters, but I lived with the Navajo for six years, and while I don’t believe in racial or ethnic characteristics-people are much too individual and complicated for that-I have come to respect the Navajo men I knew, most of whom were Marine Corps vets, as some of the bravest, gentlest, kindest, and most honorable of men.
The Marine Corps has been the warrior’s path for young Navajo men and women since WWII, when the Navajo Code Talkers arguably won for us the war in the Pacific. With their usual modesty and quiet, they went home to Dinetah and said nothing, and so most of the country never knew or honored their work. Their families knew, though, and the stories that were passed down of sacrifice and bravery motivated their kids and grandkids down to today’s generation to serve.
When my son and I moved out to the reservation, I had a small medical clinic at one of the tribal boarding schools. Word got out pretty quickly that I was retired Navy Nurse Corps. The Navy was always responsible for medical care for the Marine Corps, still is today, which is why Navy Corpsmen are assigned to Marine Combat units. So after I had been on the reservation for a bit, the Marines started checking in with me. I would take their blood pressure and maybe double check their meds were correct, explain what a lab test meant, look at a sore toe. Since the Navajo trade in stories, like we use currency, they would usually tell me a story in exchange for their medical care. I really loved to hear their stories about their military service- WWII, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. There were a few guys my age who had been in Iraq the same time I was there on the hospital ship, and we exchanged stories about where we were when- like all vets do.
They tell stories as gifts, or to teach a lesson, and I soaked up every bit of the ritual that surrounded the storytelling- the long silence before they started, to make sure I didn’t have anything else to say, then making coffee and pouring cups, the quiet moments of feeling the wind, or looking at the sky and commenting on the weather, and then someone would sit a bit straighter in their seat and start telling a story. At birthday parties for the kids, there were not piles of presents. But everyone had a chance to tell a special story, about the baby’s first laugh, or the time the horse picked up the kid in his diaper, and he ran off across the mesa bare-butt, or the time the Uncle caught the boy kissing a girl out next to the corral.
But the Marines--the stories they told me sank into my bones. When I reach down somewhere deep, like right behind my solar plexus, where the good stories hide, and pull one out- usually one of the heros is a Navajo Marine Corps vet. I wish I could really do them justice. In real life, they are so much tougher, so much braver and more honorable than I have the skill to write them. And I am haunted by some of these characters- Clayton Etsitty from Border Roads, Lorenzo Maryboy from Marathon Cowboys, Mike and Curtis and Jay from Murder at Black Dog Springs--Curtis Benally’s ghost still lives with me, waiting for me to get it right. I wish I could do them justice. I wish they could have justice.