- This poem seems to be talking about Tayo's recovery.
- There's still "dry skin" stuck to his body. Like a scab? Or maybe they're referring to the animal skins the witches wear? What do you think?
- But Tayo has reached a turning point. The effects of the witchery are starting to leave his body. Yippee!
- The evil has gone back "below the North." Directions seem pretty significant to the ceremony.
- The truck driver Tayo has hitched a ride with stops to get gas. Tayo gets out and goes into the station to buy some candy.
- The inside of the station is really dirty. Tayo contemplates a wall calendar with a picture of a blonde girl hugging a horse. The picture makes him feel sick.
- To make matters worse, the candy machine is sold out of candy.
- The man who runs the gas station looks at Tayo suspiciously, like he thinks Tayo might try to steal something.
- Tayo is offended, but he tries to stay cool. He doesn't want to "let them stop him" (XXI.2). (Remember Betonie's last words to Tayo? "Don't let them stop you. Don't let them finish off this world" [XX.5]. We still don't really know who "they" are, but they seem to be a sort of mystical force, working for evil.)
- The station man is a white man with red hair. He's grimy and wrinkly—not very attractive. Tayo thinks he's never seen a white person so clearly before.
- Tayo wants to laugh thinking about how the station man doesn't even know he's an invention of Indian witchery.
- Tayo says goodbye to the truck driver because he feels like walking. He wants to walk "until he recognize[s] himself again" (XXI.4).
- But then Tayo hears a truck behind him, and it turns out to be his friends Leroy and Harley. They have a girl with them named Helen Jean.
- Leroy and Harley are drunk, and they have more booze in the car with them.
- Helen Jean rubs up against Leroy, but she seems distracted. She's wearing a lot of perfume, which makes Tayo feel like he's choking.
- Harley offers Tayo a drink but he declines.
- Tayo wants to walk, but he knows that if he refuses a ride they'll follow him down the road until he gets in the truck.
- What he really wants to do is catch a grasshopper. But what Harley wants him to do is have a drink.
- The guys and Helen joke about Leroy's new truck, which is a piece of junk. Most of their jokes are about how white people try to scam Indians.
- Something about Helen's face reminds Tayo of a hawk.
- Tayo tries to get Leroy to drop him off, but Harley wants him to go drinking with them. Tayo hesitates.
- We're thinking, Don't do it, Tayo! Go home and drink some tea! Start looking for the spotted cattle!
- But he goes with them. Uh oh.
- Leroy is driving like a madman, swerving into the oncoming lane of traffic. His passengers laugh and scream. They're enjoying themselves.
- Tayo thinks about the army captain who gave smallpox-infected blankets to the Apaches. It's a lot like white men selling Indians junky cars. Maybe Leroy's junky car will be the death of them!
- Harley promises to give Tayo a "cure." Tayo grabs the bottle of wine and finishes it off. (XXI.34)
- The car burns rubber toward some bar.
- Tayo "[sinks] down into sensations," forgetting all about the war and the ceremony. He doesn't have to remember anything or feel anything. He wishes they could ride like that forever. (XXI.37)
- Page break. Leroy parks the truck at the Y bar but he accidentally leaves it in gear. The truck lurches, spilling the contents of Helen Jean's purse.
- Harley picks up Helen Jean's mirror and starts acting effeminate.
- Tayo teases Harley, asking him where his nail polish and lipstick are.
- A moment later, Harley is racing them to the bar for a cold beer. He's back to his old, ultra-masculine self.
- Helen Jean is pretty drunk by this point, and she's caught the eye of a gang of Mexican men in the corner.
- Tayo is so not cool with the idea of the Mexican guys hitting on Helen Jean. Suddenly he's not having fun anymore.
- Helen locks eyes with a tall Mexican man with long sideburns. When he leaves the bar, she follows him. Harley and Leroy are too drunk to notice.
- Page break. This is Helen Jean's story:
- Helen was thinking that morning about how she left the reservation a year ago to find a job.
- She had left without saying goodbye to Emma and her little sisters, but she figured she'd be back every weekend to visit, so it was no big deal.
- These Laguna guys (Harley, Leroy, and Tayo) aren't very much fun, especially the weird one they picked up walking along the highway. She wants to get away from them.
- At least they're not as bad as the two guys from Oklahoma who beat her up that one time.
- Helen Jean hadn't sent any letters to Emma and the girls. She'd written them, but she was waiting until she had a few dollars to include in the envelopes, and that never seemed to happen.
- She and her roommates had given themselves makeovers, perming their hair and plucking their eyebrows. Then Helen Jean went out to look for a job.
- She inquired at the Kimo Theater, where she saw a help wanted sign in the window. She was too shy to ask what the job was or tell the manager she knows how to type.
- The manager gives her a job but tells her she might want to change her clothes. He gives her a broom and a bucket and tells her the pay is 75 cents an hour.
- Her roommates think she's a secretary and don't understand why she never has any money.
- Every morning Helen Jean gets dressed and leaves the house when her roommates do. Then she changes her clothes in the ladies' room when she gets to work.
- The creepy manager has started following her into the restroom. This job really isn't working out.
- The day Helen Jean quits her job, she walks by a bar where a bunch of Indian guys are drinking. She goes inside to ask them for a loan, and they pour her a drink.
- Helen Jean looks for work, but she starts spending more and more time at the bar with the veterans. Usually one of the guys will give her five or ten dollars at the end of the night.
- One day a sergeant starts getting a little too friendly. He tells her about a white woman who was in love with him during the war, then he tries to get her to leave with him. When she refuses, he slaps her across the face for thinking she's better than a white woman. (XXI.63)
- By now Helen Jean knows all the stories. Every vet seems to have a blond or redhead in California who's in love with him.
- When Helen Jean goes out with these men, they drink until they can barely stand up. She asks them for money then, and then they go to a hotel.
- Needless to say, sleeping with these drunks is not a very pleasant experience. Gross.
- These Laguna guys are pathetic. If she keeps hanging out with them, she'll wind up just like all the other Indians.
- The Mexican guy winks at her. He has a pile of cash from his railroad paycheck on the table in front of him. Helen Jean knows he'll help her out, and this time she'll really send some money home.
- That's the end of Helen Jean's story.
- Page break. In his drunken stupor, Tayo hears one of the other bar patrons singing. It reminds him of Betonie's singing, and . . .
- Tayo Tummy Update: He feels a twinge in his belly, telling him he has more important things to be doing.
- "Shut up, belly!" Tayo says. "I want to sleep!"
- Suddenly someone is yelling and shaking him. It must be Betonie, telling him to go look for the cattle.
- Turns out it's the bartender, who's kicking him out because Harley just got beat up.
- Tayo and Leroy carry Harley to the drunk, where Leroy passes out. Tayo drives the beat-up old truck gingerly, as if it were the old blind mule.
- Tayo wonders how much longer he and the others can last like this. Sooner or later one of them will be killed in a bar fight or a car accident.
- Tayo pulls off the highway. The smell of vomit and urine in the truck makes him gag, and he gets out and vomits like he's trying to vomit out the past. (XXI.78)
- Page break. The Scalp Ceremony that Betonie performed seems to have helped, partially. Tayo no longer dreams about Japanese soldiers in the jungle.
- But it doesn't fix everything. There's another problem.
- Now Tayo and the other Indian war veterans have seen everything the white people have done with the land they stole: their big cities, tall buildings, and destructive weapons.
- Tayo compares it to the story of the man who found a strand of white shell beads by the side of the road.
- The man picks them up with a stick and leaves them hanging in a piñon tree. But even though he never touches the beads, they haunt him. He can't think about anything else, he stops eating, and he can't work.
- Likewise, the Indian men who have fought in the war are haunted by what they have lost.
- Page break. On the way back to Laguna, Tayo thinks about what Betonie might say about healing. Maybe he'd say that there are transitions that have to be made in order to become whole again (XXI.80).