- This poem tells the story of Shush.
- When Shush was a little boy who had just started to walk, his family went into the mountains to pick piñons, or pine nuts.
- Shush wandered off on his own. Everyone thought someone else was watching him.
- When they tracked him the next day, Shush's footprints went into the part of the canyon that belonged to the bears. His little footprints were mixed in with the bear tracks. Oh my!
- The family called the medicine man, who knew how to call the child back. But there wasn't much time.
- What does one wear to a bear party? Why, bearweed, of course! Everyone ties some on their wrists and ankles.
- The medicine man pretends to be a mother bear, grunting and scratching the ground. Soon the little bears come out of the cave.
- Eventually the child comes out, too. He's crawling on the ground like the other bear cubs.
- The medicine man couldn't just grab the child, because then he would be stuck in-between forever and would probably die.
- They do a ceremony to call the child back, but Shush is never quite like the other children.
- Betonie tells Tayo he doesn't need to be afraid of Shush. Witchery isn't responsible for everything that happens; the boy's condition was just an accident.
- Don't be so quick to call something good or bad, Betonie tells Tayo. It's all a matter of balance and transitions.
- Page break. This paragraph looks like an entry in some sort of medicine man's encyclopedia. It's titled: "Note on Bear People and Witches."
- The note explains that bear people and witches are two entirely different things.
- Bear people actually think they are bears. They live with the bears and aren't aware of being different from their bear family.
- Witches crawl into the skins of dead animals. Animals are terrified of witches because they can smell the dead skins.
- This concludes our lesson on bear people and witches.
- Page break.
- Looking down on the lights of Gallup at night, Tayo is reminded of Rocky and Emo. He decides to tell Betonie about them.
- He tells Betonie about Rocky's dreams to get off the reservation and make it in a big city, and how he didn't make it back from the war.
- And he tells Betonie about scary Emo with the dead man's teeth. Emo is always talking about how the white people have the cities and the Indian people have nothing. The Indians should abandon the land and go take what they want from the white people.
- Tayo admits that it seems like Emo is right. What can Indian ceremonies do against the evil of white people's wars, bombs, and lies?
- Here's where Betonie drops a real bombshell: white people aren't really the enemy. They're just the products of Indian witchcraft.
- Yep, you heard him right. Indians invented white people.