Graphic the Valley by Peter Brown Hoffmeister Page A

later:
    The National Park Service and American Indian Movement are proud to announce the return of the original inhabitants of the Yosemite, Yosemite Valley, Hetch Hetchy, and Tuolumne. The NPS is designing and building a Miwok village at North Wawona, and another Miwok village to come soon to the Yosemite Valley. The new native villages will allow for further cultural competence and recognition by park visitors as the tribe members hunt, gather, craft, and perform ceremonies within the boundaries of the National Park. Visitor centers will showcase the wonderful basketry, blanket weaving, tanning, and stone-napping skills of these original inhabitants
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    • • •
    I read the sign twice.
    Old Tenaya’s blood, Mono Paiute. Further back, Aztecan. I stared at the sign. Opened and closed my broken hand.
    I’d torn the cast off the night before. Cut it with my sheath knife, then ripped shreds with my other hand. Only thirty days, but I could feel the injury healed, the muscles strong and rested. I felt my fist pulling the bones tight once again, tendons correcting. This is how I’d healed my whole life, more quickly than possible, the Valley in me.
    That night, I said, “You have to come with me.”
    My father shook his head.
    My mother didn’t seem to hear us. Sometimes it was like that.
    “You’re my parents,” I said. “So you have to come.”
    My father picked at his thumbnail. He said, “Tenaya, this is something else.”
    I’d come to their camp at dinnertime but I wasn’t hungry. My mother stirred the noodles and she didn’t hum.
    I said, “You won’t come to the wedding, or you won’t come to the feasts? Which one?”
    My mother looked up from her stirring.
    My father said, “If we come, you’ll have to do something for us.”
    I said, “What?”
    He said, “You’ll have to embarrass them.” He licked his front teeth. Yellow across the enamel. Brown lines between each tooth.
    “No,” I said.
    “It wouldn’t have to be anything big,” he said. “Just a small embarrassment to show you understand. A little thing.”
    I took out my knife. Squatted down by the log, and dug the point into the wood. I turned the tip to make a hole. “I can’t do that,” I said.
    My father picked at his cuticle. He said, “I don’t think you ever understood it all. This new ‘Original Inhabitants’ thing, have you heard about that?”
    “Yes,” I said. “I read the sign. I know it’s wrong.”
    “But you don’t care?”
    My mother handed me a bowl of noodles.
    I said, “I care but that’s not the only thing here. Lucy and I are something else.”
    “Do you know that for sure? Is she something else?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, is she involved with this?”
    “No,” I said, “I don’t think so. Probably not.”
    “Probably not?” he said. “There’s a lot more there than you think. And it still matters.” My father pulled a string of skin and a drop of blood appeared. He smeared it with his finger. “You know what you could do?” he said.
    I shook my head.
    My mother spooned two more bowls of noodles. Handed one to my father and took one herself.
    My father ignored his food. He said, “I know you could do this.”
    I carved into the log, deepening the hole. Turned the knife. Felt the indent widen, and cut at the edges.
    My father said, “It’s a small thing to ask.” He took his fork and wound noodles around the tines. “You can do something. A small embarrassment. That’s all.”
    • • •
    We were headed to North Wawona before the first feast. We took two days to backpack together, up Pohono. My parents were not as fast as they used to be. We stopped the first evening just past the steeps, at the rim, in a meadow that reminded me of catching gopher snakes as a child. I always caught them tail first, then slowly dragged them back out of their holes or spun them flat until they hissed.
    We stopped at the meadow and my father said, “This isn’t good. We shouldn’t be