Blue Eyes

Navajo Spaceships, Star Mountain and Life

An online journal- Star Mountain-Navajo Life[John Rustywire] [Laughing Road] [Star Mountains] [Navajo Spaceship] [Heart Songs] [Sign my GuestBook] [Read my GuestBook ]

Blue Eyes
by Johnny Rustywire

There is a woman, she is from up North, she speaks in the lilting way of those from Rocky Boy, Fort Peck, Standing Rock. I am not sure what she is maybe Mandan, Arikara, Hidatsa, Cree maybe.
She told me once but I have forgotten. When she talks her voice is like crushed velvet, soft and inviting and her laughter falls like heavy rain covering you. It sounds as if comes from the soul.
I have known her for some time. When she was a youngster, then as a teenager and then a bright young woman. I have known her mother from a long while ago and sometimes I wonder about her father.
Blue Eyes, she talks about him. How he took care of her, protected her and spoke to her about the way she should live. He passed away a couple of years ago, alone. Her mother left him years ago. Her mother once said she married him because she wanted a powerful man in her life, but he beat her and she got tired of it and left him after many years to make a life of her own, seperate from him.
This young lady has long black hair and eyes that shine even at night and they smile when she speaks to you. I see her every now and then.
I went with her on a trip where we talked about the things of work and day to day living. She dances, women's traditional at pow wows dressed in white buckskin and she moves like a branch in the wind, softly and with a step that has been learned from hours of practice.
She has two boys and they are her life, they are her everything, with them she is complete. She works hard everyday and cares for her children. She is married to a gruff young man and sometimes I wondered how they got together but it is not my place to ask why, but I know she loves him.
He goes about and checks on her every day. Where is she. What is she doing? Who did she go with, he says. Sometimes he drops by and visits her, bringing gifts, presents and sometimes stays for hours.
I saw her the other day like I have in days past in town getting out of her truck. She moved so so slow, her body aching it looked like. Sometimes she comes in with her bright eyes covered by dark glasses hiding the light from her blue eyes.
Sometimes there is a limp in her walk and she moves gingerly, taking the day slow and smiles and talks. She has the gift of talking about anything and everything.
Oh, I fell she says, and there under her arm are the dark lines of fingers some never will go away. Some of those blue colors stay for months, they tell their own story.
She is here today and yet she has been gone for many days. What does she say, Oh I twisted her shoulder...the other day I fell from a horse.
She will dance traditional for July 4th. He brought her new buckskin leggings to dance in at the Pow Wow. How nice they look, she showed them to all.
She was a natural beauty, tall and fair with long black hair and dark brown eyes. She has a soul that shines on her children, they are everything to her. She has a smile that is radiant but it seems her eye brows are sometimes puffy, you could say swollen; retaining water she says and yet she talks about her father wishing he weren't gone.
She would say, he was a tall large man from Northern Montana. He always treated her well and took care of her. If he were here he would take care of me she would say and nothing more. She talks about him so.
She loves this man she married and the other day I asked her why. She looked at me closely. I looked into her eyes and in there spoke to the person inside. You are young and have a long life ahead of you, maybe you should get rid of him.
She was quiet and then said...
I am going to dance at the pow wow this week end and I will wear these new buckskin leggings. Look at the beadwork, they are so nice.
Looking at her I could see that under her dark glasses, she had blue eyes; so her life goes on. Time after time, day after day, and though the world waits at the edge of the dance arena she will dance in the way she has lived and it will go on and on.
Somewhere in her soul, she lives free, and it is a place where she goes to her little world but her children can not go there, they see it all. She is there just a little ways away, smiling and laughing with her blue eyes... and there is nothing else to say until someday when she gets tired of those blue eyes.