- Back to the poem about Hummingbird and Fly. They fly up to see old Buzzard and tell him they want him to purify their town.
- Old Buzzard says if they want him to help them, they're going to have to bring more presents. Where's the tobacco?
- So Hummingbird and Fly have to go back down to get the tobacco. Sigh.
- Robert and Tayo stop on the bridge and look down into the arroyo. We get the feeling Tayo is the little boy from the preceding section.
- The drunks who were sleeping on the riverbed are starting to wake up.
- One couple shouts up to Robert and Tayo, asking if they can spare some change. Tayo tosses them a few coins and remembers tossing coins into a fountain in San Diego with Rocky. Rocky had wished for a safe return from the war.
- The couple "walked like survivors." Their clothes are tattered and they're covered in dirt and bruises (XIII.2).
- Native Americans come to Gallup from the reservation to get jobs, but they're the first to be laid off because "white people . . . already knew they wouldn't ask any questions or get angry" (2).
- There aren't many jobs a Native American can get in Gallup, and none of them pay good wages. White employers know "there were plenty more Indians where these had come from" (XIII.2).
- Why don't people go home when they get laid off from their jobs? The only explanation Tayo can think of is that "Gallup is a dangerous place" (XIII.3). It messes people up, and then they're too ashamed to go home.
- Robert asks Tayo if the drunk couple was "somebody [he] used to know," confirming our suspicion that Tayo was the little boy who used to live in the arroyo (XIII.4).
- Tayo wishes for a safe return, just like Rocky did in San Diego.
- Page break. Auntie and Grandma are squabbling about the medicine man Tayo is going to see. His name is Betonie and he lives in the foothills north of the Ceremonial Grounds.
- The Gallup Ceremonial is an annual tourist attraction. White men organize the event and pay dance groups from the pueblos to perform.
- People come from the reservations nearby to sell things to the tourists and trade with each another.
- Old Betonie's house looks down over the Ceremonial Grounds.
- Old Betonie is getting up there in years, but he's still tall and strong and has the self-assurance of a young man.
- Betonie explains to Tayo why he lives where he does. This is where Gallup keeps its Indians until Ceremonial time, he says, when they bring them out to show them off to the tourists.
- It doesn't matter that the white people force the Native Americans to live in the slums and the less desirable parts of town. They're "comfortable" in the hills, Betonie says, because they know the land (XIII.10).
- Tayo Tummy Update: Tayo feels the old nausea coming back to him because he doesn't really believe what Betonie is saying. How can he be comfortable in a place that's covered with garbage?
- Betonie starts laughing. He thinks it's funny that people think he's weird for living next to this dirty town. After all, it's the town that's out of place, not him.
- Tayo thinks Betonie might be a little crazy, but Robert seems to think everything's OK and leaves.
- Tayo thinks about running after Robert, but he realizes if he doesn't get better he'll have to go back to the hospital in L.A.
- There's something familiar about Betonie. What is it? Hmm . . .
- Oh. Betonie has hazel eyes. Just like Tayo and Night Swan. We're starting to see a pattern here.
- Betonie explains that his grandmother was "a remarkable Mexican with green eyes" (XIII.16).
- They go into Betonie's house, called a hogan. It's built in the old style, partially into the hill, with a dirt roof.
- The enormous circular room is full of boxes and interesting smells. You know, typical medicine man gear.
- There are also bundles of newspapers and old telephone books from different cities. For some reason this makes Tayo's heart beat faster. There's something strange going on here.
- Betonie tells him to calm down—it's too much to take in all at once. Betonie and those who came before him have been gathering these things for a long time.
- Betonie hints at an explanation. In the old days, medicine was simple, but now things are more complicated.
- Some of the calendars are from the Santa Fe Railroad, which gives Betonie a conversational opening. He tells Tayo that he used to ride the train a lot. He went to Chicago in 1903.
- Tayo doesn't know whether to believe him. Did they even let Indians ride trains in those days?
- "She" had sent Betonie to school in California when he was a kid. (We have a feeling "she" might be his green-eyed grandmother.) He had to learn English, she said, because "It is carried on in all languages now" (XIII.30). Hmm…mysterious.
- Betonie loses a hair and immediately goes to lock it up in a footlocker. Tayo knows that medicine men do things with strands of hair and bits of fingernail.
- Tayo gets kind of freaked out about the hair and starts to think maybe his family has abandoned him to be murdered by a crazy medicine man.
- Betonie thinks this is funny. He laughs hysterically and tells the story of how he was at the World's Fair in St. Louis the year they had Geronimo on display. The white people were terrified of him.
- Betonie says if Tayo doesn't trust him he should get going before dark. He can't help anyone who's scared of him.
- Tayo explains to Betonie about the hospital—how everything there is white, and he feels invisible. Betonie says if he's going to go back to the hospital, he might as well go drink himself to death in Gallup. It'll be faster.
- Now Tayo's therapy session begins in earnest. Tayo tells Betonie about the war and the guilt he feels about Josiah and Rocky's deaths. Tayo feels he didn't do anything to save either of them.
- Betonie tells Tayo that he's been doing something all along and that he's an important part of this story.
- The Japanese weren't strangers 30,000 years ago, Betonie explains. The things Tayo saw in the war were the result of evil and witchery.
- When Tayo tells Betonie about the cattle and Night Swan's hazel eyes, Betonie gets very excited. He starts looking things up and mumbling to himself.
- Betonie warns Tayo that "they" will try to keep him from completing the ceremony. Who are "they," and what ceremony is he talking about? Don't worry, Tayo doesn't know what's going on either.
- Tayo is kind of ticked. Why can't this guy just cure him already?
- But part of him knows that what Betonie says is true; his cure will have to involve something large and inclusive, because his sickness is a part of something bigger than himself.
- Page break. Before they can begin, Betonie has something important to explain to Tayo.
- See, lots of people think the ceremonies shouldn't ever be changed, because one little mistake can cause great harm to be unleashed. Betonie admits this is true.
- But Betonie insists that the ceremonies have always been changing, and that they have to change in order to remain powerful.
- Betonie has made changes in the ceremonies, and that's one of the reasons people don't trust him.
- Page break. Tayo wants to believe Betonie, but when he looks around at Betonie's hogan he sees a pitiful house full of junk.
- He compares it to the nice houses that he's seen white people living in in California. He thinks maybe Betonie is just another Indian who's been duped.
- Page break. Tayo walks over to talk to Betonie, who's outside grilling meat on the grill of an old car.
- Betonie explains that Indians need to get over the desire to take back the land that was stolen and stop the white people from destroying it. This only leads to anger, frustration, and guilt.
- The Indians can't fight the destroyers and thieves anymore and hope to survive.
- Anyway, the white people are fooling themselves: the land doesn't belong to them. It's the people who belong to the land.
- Tayo brings up the fact that his father was white. Doesn't that make him partially a bad guy?
- Betonie dismisses that idea. "You don't write off all the white people, just like you don't trust all the Indians," he explains (XIII.71).
- A teenage boy arrives with an armload of firewood. Betonie introduces him as his helper, Shush.
- Shush means bear. Tayo can see there's something a little strange about the boy.