![]() ![]() The story moves back to the time just after Tayo return home from the Veteran’s Hospital. Thinking of Rocky makes Tayo fall off the donkey and throw up. As they ride the burro, Tayo thinks about his cousin Rocky, who joined the army with Tayo but died overseas. Tayo’s friend Harley, a fellow war vet, comes riding on a burro and convinces Tayo to ride with him to the nearest bar, even though Tayo doesn’t like to drink. Tayo thinks back to his return from the Veteran’s Hospital in Los Angeles where he felt like a white spirit and couldn’t keep any food down. Tayo tells a story about Corn Woman scolding her sister, Reed Woman, who then takes the rain away in her anger. The ranch where Tayo lives in New Mexico, unlike the wet Philippines, is suffering from a drought that came because, Tayo believes, he prayed for the rain to stop while he was in the jungle during the war. One memory in particular bothers Tayo – he was unable to execute a Japanese soldier in the Philippines during World War II because he saw his Uncle Josiah in the Japanese uniform. Tayo, a Pueblo man, wakes up in his spare ranch house, dreaming deliriously of different scenes from his life. Stories are the only way to fight off illness and death and stand up to evil. ![]() The novel opens by describing Ts’its’tsi’nako, the Thought-Woman, who is telling this entire story. ![]()
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