Summary
The Mexican woman bore Descheeny a girl child, who she
gave to Descheeny's daughters to raise. In time, the girl child
bore a child of her own, Betonie, who was raised by his grandmother
the Mexican woman.
Tayo feels that the ceremony has begun to cure him, but
Betonie warns that in order for a true cure the ceremony will have
to continue for a long time. When Tayo tries to pay Betonie, Betonie refuses
the money and tells Tayo, "This has been going on for a long time
now. It's up to you. Don't let them stop you. Don't let them finish
off this world."
Tayo leaves Betonie's the next morning. He rides with
a trucker a little way. When he gets out at a gas station to buy
some food, Tayo sees white people clearly for the first time in
his life. He decides to walk home, but after a few minutes Harley
and Leroy drive by and stop to pick him up. They have been drinking
and carry bottles of wine and beer along with a woman from another
tribe, Helen Jean. At first, Tayo resists their offers of wine and
leans out the window watching grasshoppers but after a while he
joins in, trying to feel nothing. The go to the Y bar and continue
drinking. Helen Jean begins flirting with a Mexican sitting at another
table. When she leaves to join him, Tayo is the only one sober enough
to notice.
Helen Jean is from Towac. She went to Gallup to find a
job and make money to help out her family, but although she knows
how to type, she is only offered a job cleaning a movie theater
for seventy-five cents an hour and cannot even afford to pay rent
for her room. Then her boss begins to expect sexual favors, and
she quits. Desperately in search of someone who can loan her rent
money, she goes to the bars in town she knows the Indians hang out
at, and they invite her in to have a drink with them. She tries
to continue looking for work but is drawn back to the bars where
they guys are always happy to see her, to tell her their war stories
and to help her out with a little money at the end of the night.
At first she tries to hold out and not have sex with the men in
return for the money, but she is not able to withstand their advances
for long. She promises herself that this time with the Mexican will
be different.
Tayo falls asleep at the bar and is woken when Leroy and
Harley get into a fight. He puts them into the truck and drives
them home. On the way, Harley throws up, and Leroy urinates. When
he stops the car Tayo gags and vomits, trying to rid himself of
all of his past. The scalp ceremony rids Tayo of the memories of
the Japanese that have been haunting him, but not of everything
to which he has been exposed. Like in an ancient story, just having
touched and seen certain things can haunt you. Tayo decides to try
to follow some of Betonie's advice and to figure out how to call
himself back to his people.
A long poem tells of Ck'o'yo Kaup'a'ta the gambler who
tricked everyone who came his way into losing his or her life. He
even captured the rain clouds, which he could not kill, but which
he could keep prisoner. After three years their father the sun went
looking for them. He finds his grandmother Spider Woman who tells
him how to outsmart the gambler, and the Sun wins back his children,
the clouds.
