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Below is a short story from Navajo Spaceships.

Old Ned...
by Johnny Rustywire

He came to this country from a place no one can remember, not even him. I spoke with him from time to time, he was an old man and often times I would see him with his grandchildren. They would run around at his feet.

He was skinny and tall, though bent with age and his hair was black with flecks of gray. He had a wistful smile and liked to laugh. His name in the traditional way of talking was the Tall Red One. I never heard anyone say it, maybe because it was in Navajo.

He moved away from there a long time ago, maybe in the 1920's. His family may have been migrant farmers, or followed the railroad work with the Union Pacific. He was a young boy then and found his way up north to another country and it was in this place of mountain tops, and high valleys he came to live.

He met a young woman with a willingness to follow him wherever he would want to go. It was in the valleys of her land, her reservation he called home.

Today I saw 12 great grandchildren, and seven of his own. His wife passed on a few years ago and it took a little out of him, he was not as spry as he used to be. I saw him some time ago at the VA hospital he had lost his legs to diabetes.

He spoke to me in Navajo, and though he was an old man he still had all his own teeth and they glistened when he talked. I used to call him the Tall Red One and he laughed to hear his name in English. One time he came to me maybe fifteen years ago or so and sat down. He was with some of his grandchildren and he wanted some help to find out where he was born and where he came from.

I looked into his eyes, they were like a deer's eyes, they hid nothing. He quietly told me he had forgotten where he came from, who his people were. That in the many years since he left Navajoland he did not have any contact with them, nor did they remember him. They never visited him or sent him a letter.

I sat there and thought maybe he comes from a past you want to forget, to walk away from a life down there for whatever reason, sometimes it is that way. You move to get away from such things.

It was my first thought, I forgot that many of our people had many hardships, being without some things, and needing to survive we go where we have to. When you need to eat you go where to where you can survive.

We survive at any cost it seems, and for him he left, but the one thing that stayed with him was his language, the ability to talk in the proper way. Even though he was far removed from his place of birth, his Navajo was smooth and eloquent, using old words which I did not know.

It was a different time back then, there were many children born under trees, without a record, or birth certificate. Their names were given in the Navajo way of speaking describing the place born, or being the son of Silversmith, or the family area or clan where they lived. I do not know where he was born, we tried to find it, but no one seemed to know.

There was no record of him, he could have come from Comb Wash near Montezuma Creek, or White Mesa by Kaibeto, or Round Top not too far north of Ganado. He may have been born near Lupton, near Carino Canyon, or Coyote Canyon a little ways from Gallup. When he was born there was not one to write it down, and to prove it could not be done to satisfy the his own people.

Where do such men go when they can not find themselves, their family and place of birth? They stay with the their children, their families and do the things family men do. They continue on with their lives.

I knew him for a little while and could see the love he had for his grandchildren. He had a hard life working as a laborer. He was not an educated man, but he survived and so did his children.

Today he was laid to rest and as I stood there looking at his family gathered there. I could see him standing with his father and mother, and his aunts and uncles and they were saying to him. It has been a long time since we have seen you, Hosteen Nez.

He came to them with a young face, a fit body and wept at the sight of them. They came to him and began to let him know where he was from, who these people were and how he got his name.

I wondered about them, and those children left here to continue on. A part of them weren't there, those living now in Navajoland. Maybe there are none, I would rather like to think that over a winter night, someone talking in a family gathering might say....

A long time ago, way over this way, not too far from here there was this Navajo woman. She had a child and he was called the Tall Red One. I remember him and he went with her far from here. He comes from that place just over there. He is one of us, and we are him.

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