- This poem takes us back to the story of Hummingbird and Fly.
- The two fly down to see Mother and give her presents of pretty things like blue and yellow pollen and turquoise beads.
- Mother figures all the nice gifts mean they want something.
- Hummingbird and Fly have two requests: food and storm clouds.
- Mother says if Hummingbird and Fly get old Buzzard to purify their town, she will consider sending food and rain again.
- So the messengers fly back up and deliver the news to the townspeople.
- Tayo tells Robert he's feeling better and that he wants to start helping around the ranch. But he's not very convincing because his hands are shaking as he says it.
- Robert tells Tayo that old man Ku'oosh and some of the old men want Tayo to get some more help.
- At first Tayo objects. He hasn't been in trouble in a while, after all. But then he caves.
- Giving in makes Tayo feel the old feeling of being invisible again. He agrees to go and do whatever they want.
- After a big page break, we get a pretty confusing paragraph. It's entirely within quotation marks and narrated in the first person. The speaker says traveling made him tired, but he remembers when they got to Gallup.
- Is this Tayo speaking? Seems likely. If it is, why is he suddenly speaking in the first person? Who's he talking to?
- The speaker sees all sorts of Native Americans in Gallup: Navajos, Zunis, Hopis, and even a few Lagunas. None of them seem to be doing too well. They're all leaning against the walls of dirty bars alongside Highway 66 and staring at the ground.
- The speaker compares these people to flies, stuck to the wall.
- Another page break and we go back to the more familiar third-person narrative. It's Saturday morning in Gallup and Tayo knows what to expect—Native Americans in the streets, sleeping off the night before.
- It's kind of funny, if you're just passing through like the white tourists who come to check out the Indian souvenirs.
- But after dark Gallup is another story. It's not funny anymore.
- Page break! (Man, there are a lot of those in this novel.)
- In a sort of shanty town along the banks of the river, in an area called Little Africa, people live in shelters made out of tin, cardboard, and scrap wood. Little Africa is a really racially diverse neighborhood of blacks, Mexicans, Native Americans, and a few white Slavs.
- Two or three times a year the police sweep through this little camp and arrest the men and women for vagrancy and public drunkenness. They take the children away to a shelter.
- This is where you can see "them." The best time to see them is at dawn. (XII.10)
- Who are "they"? Kids who were born in Gallup, with features that let you know they're of mixed race: light-colored hair or eyes, bushy hair, and thick lips (XII.11).
- The women are ashamed to send these kids home for their families to raise, so they grow up in this camp by the river, which isn't a very nice place to live.
- Their mothers are prostitutes, so the kids have to learn to take care of themselves while they're are working at night. They have to learn to avoid getting beat up by their mothers' drunken customers.
- Suddenly we're not looking at this community from the outside. We take the perspective of a little boy who lives there. He's so young he doesn't know how to talk yet.
- The little boy brings his mom water, but she doesn't give him any food. He's hungry and wasn't able to find any garbage to eat that morning. Plus the red-haired woman isn't around to feed him anymore.
- When he was really little, his mom used to take him into town with her. He used to lie on the floor of the bars and put all sorts of stuff into his mouth: coins, old chewing gum, cigarette butts.
- The boy has a hazy memory of living somewhere else where it was warm and they had plenty of food.
- The little boy got used to his mom leaving the bars with men and leaving him behind. She didn't always come back.
- The first time she didn't come back the police came. After a long time his mom finally came to get him. She smelled good and spoke softly.
- The second time his mom left him behind, the boy was taken to a place with white walls and rows of cribs. When she finally came to get him, she smelled different and had had her hair cut.
- After that, they stayed in the arroyo, or creek bed. The woman with reddish hair helped them build their shelter.
- The camp is a really sad place for a kid to grow up. It smells really bad, and in the winter the boy plays with frozen poop instead of toys.
- He avoids the other children in the camp, who belong to the woman under the bridge.
- One night he hears the woman under the bridge crying. The next morning he sees her carry a bundle of bloody rags away from the camp.
- Later the boy walks the way the woman went and finds the place where she buried the rags in a hill of yellow sand. He digs them up and sees that they are stiff with blood.
- After that, the boy has dreams of being buried in the yellow sand.
- The boy sleeps alone when his mother is with the men. All sorts of men come to the bridge looking for women: white men with red faces, Mexican and black men from the railroad.
- One day a bunch of white men come to the bridge and call down to the women. When the women come out, the men yell at them and try to hit them with empty bottles.
- The woman with the reddish hair throws the bottles back at the men and screams at them.
- The police come and drag everybody out of the shelters. They arrest the people and try to round up the children, but the little boy hides.
- The police burn all the shelters. Men in dark green coveralls come and spray disinfectant everywhere.
- That night the boy wanders in search of food and finds pork ribs in the garbage cans behind some houses.
- Late that night the boy hears some drunken men stumbling down into the arroyo. They're speaking the language his mother speaks.
- The boy waits for his mother, knowing she will come back eventually.