The Code Talkers

Chapter 1

Back home in Flagstaff, Geneva Granger gathered in one arm the week’s mail her daughter Karen had so carefully stacked into two piles. In the other hand, she held a lurid purple construction-paper card: Welcome Home, Gramma! Very nice printing, honey, she thought, smiling. But best of all was his self-portrait pasted at the bottom—wide grin shining around the newly missing tooth.

When she dropped the mail on her desk upstairs, a hand-addressed letter slid out. Postmarked Window Rock, AZ. Navajoland. That was familiar, but the handwriting wasn’t. No return address. She pushed aside the rest of the mail, opened the envelope, and unfolded the single page from a yellow tablet.

My name is Margaret Littleben. My father is Harrison Billy I think you know, she read. He wants me to write for you to come back to the reservation to see him. He can see alright now and he wants to talk about your husband Edward that got killed. He said the newspapers did not say the truth. He said Labor Day weekend would be good.

Geneva dropped the paper and pushed back from her desk hard but her gaze stayed on the words. Newspapers did not say the truth? But that’s the only truth I have, she whispered.

The image of the huge headline from three years ago rose and pulsed in her memory: SENATOR EDWARD GRANGER KILLED IN CRASH! The photographs of the wind-whipped water and snowy shores of Roosevelt Reservoir loomed again in her mind. No wreckage, no body, neither Edward’s nor the pilot’s. Nothing but driving sleet and snow for two long days and three nights.

Geneva fought the old wave of sorrow and guilt that rose, curled, and threatened to come crashing down to splinter all rational thought.

She closed her eyes and struggled to push down the memory of the vision—experience—that catapulted her out of bed onto the floor three years before.

No. This makes no sense. No sense that this old Navajo Code Talker, blinded in the war so long ago, and someone she hadn’t seen in years, should send her a message about Edward. Harrison Billy couldn’t possibly know anything about the plane crash, the investigation, the fruitless dives in the huge reservoir afterwards. Or her endless pain.

Sometimes even now, an unexpected reference, the mere mention of Edward’s death, could strike her with the same force as the initial news. Just for an instant, of course. She knew. It was an old fact. This sweep of utter desolation was, after all, uncalled for, she told herself.

Newspapers did not say the truth.

She turned away from the note and went outside to the little balcony that faced northeast toward the beautiful, familiar San Francisco Peaks, the sacred Mountains of the North that bounded the Navajos’ traditional homeland.

Grief was one thing, her counselors had told her, and hard enough to deal with, even with knowledge of its stages, even with the dearest supporters. Her grief would not abate until she peeled away the added burden. Her guilt. Her psychic vision of the high, pink mesa spinning away below did not constitute fact. Her failure to reach Edward on the phone the night before the crash did not constitute guilt. You are not guilty, the counselors said. Not guilty. Not. Not.

The early morning light shimmered now among the ponderosa pines below her deck as the distant upper peaks turned pink. Geneva watched but saw nothing, felt only the old hot tears threatening, and the familiar clench of pain behind her sternum.

Sometimes she could laugh at her psychic glimpses, her lifelong curse, as she called it. Sometimes. As a child, it had made her feel different, especially after she ventured to tell a friend in her class. She had thought everyone experienced the same flashes of the future. But the girl became frightened and afterwards avoided Geneva. And the time she’d tried to bridge the distance between herself and her stern father by sharing her secret did not go well either. Nonsense, he’d said. Don’t speak of it again.

But she did fail to reach Edward the night of the crash, failed to keep trying, failed to call the Navajo police yet again or think of somewhere or someone or something else. Her guilt stood like a boulder in the sea, sometimes apparent, allowing her to steer around it, sometimes submerged. Always there.

She’d finally sought out experts. Experts to explain psychic phenomena. Experts who tried to guide her through the bottomless caves of grief. Too often still, it would come upon her—a choking red surge striking her eyes as she felt herself flung into the sky above an unfamiliar mesa, spinning above the formation that looked like a headless bird with half-folded wings and a shiny wet breast, out of place in the high desert.

After a while she went down to the kitchen, brewed some tea, and took it back up to the balcony, hoping the changing light on the slopes would again soothe her. Mounts Fremont and Humphrey glowed with varied shades of green. The monsoon winds had fulfilled their promises of afternoon showers for weeks this summer, but already the upper slopes were shot through with bright gold as the first aspens proclaimed the coming of fall. September again. Next month Agassiz Peak, sacred to the Hopis, would show its stand of rare reddish aspen. Another October. Better to think of it as an aspen event rather than the anniversary of Edward’s death.

But the mountains couldn’t work their magic today. She went back in the house to telephone Desbah Chischilly, her Navajo sister of her heart. Desbah knew the old Code Talker and probably his daughter as well.

Geneva got as far as her desk when she stopped and looked at the little gold clock there. Desbah would just be returning from that big Indigenous Peoples education conference in Hawaii. She was probably somewhere in the air over the Pacific at this moment. Geneva sighed, picked up the empty teapot, and went back down to the kitchen. Waiting for the water to boil, she leaned against the counter and gazed unseeing out the kitchen window.

Come out of it, she told herself and reached for the phone. Call Mason. He’ll have some idea about Harrison Billy these days.

Mason Drake, Edward’s best friend, Uncle Mason to her two daughters and their children, was someone who knew the old Code Talker. She would ask Mason what Harrison Billy might possibly know about Edward’s death. And why in the world he would send for her.

Geneva, came Mason’s jovial voice through the phone. I was about to call you. Just landed in Flagstaff. That committee meeting ended earlier than I thought. I can be at your house in twenty minutes.

Good. I’ll put on some coffee. She tapped the letter, folded tight now in her jeans pocket. Without thought, she switched from tea making to coffee making and put out the plate of Karen’s cookies.

Mason, in the second year of his term as senator ten years ago, suffered a terrible car crash and lay for weeks in a coma. It was Mason, during his year of physical therapy and slow recovery, who’d convinced Edward to run for his seat in the senate. And Mason had been a strong support for her and the girls through those agonizing early days after the crash. Mason had been a family friend for twenty-five years.

But last Christmas he blind-sided her by proposing marriage. Her speechless astonishment was all the answer he needed, and they’d avoided each other for several months after that. Only in May when her daughter Julianna asked Mason to be their baby’s godfather, had Geneva and Mason resumed a friendship. Not the old comfortable one, at least not for her, but a friendship.

When Mason arrived, they settled at the kitchen table. Glad you’re back, he said. Did you enjoy Chicago? Book sales go up again?

The conference went well. More than three hundred writers this year.

Ah, he said, settling back and reaching for a cookie. I’ll bet these are some of Karen’s oatmeal-raisin gems. Your girls really take care of their mom, don’t they?

She smiled. The cookies were waiting for me, with a sweet note from my grandson attached. She pulled out Margaret Littleben’s letter. This was waiting for me, too. She read him the note. Mason, what could Harrison Billy mean that the newspapers hadn’t told the truth about the plane crash?

Nothing at all! I think the old fellow is making up a yarn, he said. Geneva, it’s not worth your time. You can’t take this thing seriously at all.

But I have to. Harrison was a friend of Edward’s. He wouldn’t make light of his death.

My dear, forget it and come to dinner with me tomorrow night. Then we’ll go up to Lowell Observatory and watch the meteor showers. The sky is supposed to be clear well before midnight. That’s why I called. Besides, I’ve got a little surprise for you, something I want to show you before dinner.

When Geneva didn’t answer right away, Mason went on. You hardly know that old geezer, Geneva. And he was a drunk for years—remember that. Promise me you won’t go out there now.

Geneva studied her coffee cup, trying not to resent all this pushing.

I’d take you to the reservation myself—today, he said, leaning closer. But I have a golf date at Pine Canyon with Senator Clay and a couple of his staff. And then we meet his wife for lunch. You remember, she’s from here in Flagstaff—her family owns both banks in Sedona.

He paused then, waiting for her to acknowledge, or more precisely, she thought, to be impressed.

She glanced up and nodded. Yes, I remember her.

And then I’m stuck at that banquet with the speaker and his fat wife on Sunday night. That banquet I asked you to accompany me to.

She let another beat go by. Mmm.

Oh, Geneva, forget this old Code Talker and his crazy note. Stay home for a while.

No, Mason. I am going, and I’m going tomorrow. My secretary, Angie, will go with me, I’m sure. And I have a friend who’ll meet us, I know.

Please, my dear. Wait ’til one day next week, and I’ll take you. I’ll fly us to Gallup and we’ll rent a car and drive over to Window Rock, make a little outing of it, and—

No, but thank you, Mason. She stood up. I can surely get a charter on a Saturday. I have to know what Harrison Billy knows.

A few minutes later she watched him trudge down to his car. She could read perfectly well the annoyance—this could scarcely rate as disappointment—in his walk.

She gave a little shrug, closed the door, and turned away. She paused a moment more, thinking of her twins’ enthusiasm for helping decorate Uncle Mason’s bachelor pad, the condo he’d bought in Flagstaff just before Christmas—in addition to his big house in Tempe. Lord, she thought for the first time, did they know of his proposal? They would have approved, she knew that. Would he have actually told them? She made a little face and shook her head.

Back in the kitchen, she absently put their cups in the dishwasher, wishing her crazy psychic flashes would, for once, be useful and convey what the old Navajo had in mind to tell her.

Still, she felt eager to put her plan into motion and called Angie Sanchez. The two women, so different culturally and temperamentally—and a generation apart—had become fast friends in the year since Angie had started working for Geneva. 

What do you think of going with me to the Navajo Reservation, Angie?

Sure, I will, Angie said without hesitation. I’ve read so much about Window Rock and the other places in your papers, I should finally see them. I’ll be ready early. It’ll be fun!

Raised in Albuquerque’s South Valley, Angie Sanchez often spoke in the vernacular of its tough Hispanic streets. But she could take a stack of Geneva’s manuscript pages bristling with sticky notes and marred with handwritten corrections in two colors of ink, and return them in perfect order, impeccably typed. She lived now in a modern adobe guest house in Flagstaff behind her brother’s big home. She kept books for his thriving real estate operation and Geneva’s burgeoning career as a writer and speaker. Mostly she took a few courses at Northern Arizona University and played the beloved tía to her nieces and nephews.

Geneva, ever the teacher, encouraged Angie’s intellectual pursuits. Angie’s family culture, however, did not value her education, but only her beauty. Her gorgeous face, luxuriant hair, and perfect figure should attract a rich husband, they said. And high time—she was already twenty-five.

Geneva replaced the receiver with satisfaction. Whatever she might learn from Harrison Billy, the trip would be good. She hadn’t been back to the reservation in a while. High time she did.

Chapter 2

As the single-engine charter plane circled the Window Rock airstrip, Geneva felt the dread of what might be an upsetting conversation with Harrison Billy about Edward’s death start to lift in favor of a sweeter feeling—almost of homecoming.

The sight of the Window Rock, the high, tilted pink sandstone formation with the enormous elliptical hole through its side, delighted Angie. Geneva smiled, too, remembering good times with Edward and the twins, their picnics in the little park at the foot of the long mesa. Nearby, many of the flagstone tribal offices stood so close to the mesa walls, Edward would always say that someone with a poker could reach out a window and carve his initials in the rock. And the girls, when they were little, always wanted to run behind the offices to see if someone had done just that.

Now on a second pass over the airport, their annoyed pilot mumbled, Waiting for some big shot’s little Lear to get the hell out of my way. A moment later, however, he gave a low whistle of admiration. That’s one sweet craft, he said, watching it take to the air. Learjet 35, for sure.

I thought you said Window Rock was a real small town, Angie said as they turned for the approach. How could this place have an airfield that a Learjet could land on?

Geneva hoped Angie’s chatter wouldn’t distract the pilot’s concentration. She lowered her voice. Window Rock is the capital of the Navajo Nation, Angie. Tribal officials come and go regularly through this little airport. Even state and federal government people.

Angie continued to stare out the window. Looks like a lot of folks down there. Do they know you’re coming? 

Geneva looked down with pleasure at the colorful crowd milling through the fairgrounds and hodge-podge parking lot next to it and laughed. They’re not here for me. It’s the first day of the Navajo Nation fair.

Carnival rides whirled and sparkled in the sunlight. Geneva picked out the jumbled midway alive with booths selling everything from roasted corn in the husk, sausages, the beloved dill pickles children ate like candy bars, to funnel cakes and, of course, Navajo fry-bread. She could almost smell the wonderful fragrance of those plate-sized fried rounds, all bubbled and golden. 

We can be glad we missed the parade, Angie, she said as the plane landed. They close the highway for hours, as I remember. Let’s hope Tucker was able to get through. Otherwise, we’ll be standing out there waving our dollar bills at passing cars along with the rest of the hitchhikers.

"Dios mío," Angie murmured, wrinkling her nose.

After they landed, Angie shifted her bags and looked around the tarmac. This is some big deal, she said, pointing to the two Navajo Police cars, lights flashing, standing at the end of the airport property and two more next to the highway, where officers tried to keep traffic flowing. There must be a thousand people here.

Oh, yes, at least. Geneva stood on tiptoe, trying to see past a group near the doorway to the little waiting room. She saw no sign of her old friend’s tall black hat or bushy red beard. I wonder if he’s stuck somewhere. Let’s go on in, Angie.

Doc-tor Gen-eee-vah Granger! boomed a voice that might have come through a PA system. Hold it right there! 

Angie jumped and looked about. Geneva smiled and shook her head. Tucker Bayless would never change, would he? She put down her bags and opened her arms. A huge man in a worn leather jacket and an old Navajo-style black hat burst out of the building and rushed toward them to sweep Geneva up in a bear hug that lifted her off her feet.

Oooo-eee! he cried. It’s been a hundred years, hasn’t it? He set her down and stared into her face. Hell, girl—you got more gray hair! Who’s this pretty thing with you?

Thank you for mentioning that, Tucker. Geneva laughed as her breath returned. This is Angie Sanchez, my indispensable friend and sometimes secretary and bookkeeper.

Pleased to meet you, he said, shaking her hand.

Despite Tucker’s habitual greeting, she’d seen him and Shándiíne only a month earlier in a Phoenix hospital.

As Tucker settled them into his red SUV, Angie said, I know you used to teach with Geneva, Tucker. Do you still teach math at the high school?

He maneuvered his vehicle into the barely moving traffic. Nah, I retired a couple of years ago. Straightening the wheel, he turned to Geneva. Teaching is not what it used to be when you and Edward were out here, Geneva. Kids here now are just like kids in a city. Drugs, gangs—they’d just as soon flip you off as look at you, some of them. But you know that. You were smart to get out of it when you did. Smart to get that first book done and published—the blockbuster, of course—and now those high-class speeches all over the country. My hat’s off to you, girl.

Geneva made a dismissive gesture. Tell me about Shándiíne. Is she any better since the chemo, Tuck? 

Tucker tugged at his rusty beard. About the same as I wrote you in August. After our Millie finished her two years at Diné College up there at Tsaile, she came home. Refuses to leave her mom hardly at all now. He turned eyes full of grief toward Geneva. The docs say it’s just a matter of time, Geneva. All they’re doing is keeping the pain down. They’ve given up. He turned his face away, giving a curve in the road more attention than it needed. But not me."

A moment passed as neither of them spoke. Geneva knew about Tucker’s continuing efforts to find a cure, a new treatment, anything that would extend Shándiíne’s life—and his hope. Geneva had thought she might go out and see Shándiíne on this trip, but hadn’t mentioned it, and wouldn’t, uncertain what she might learn from Harrison Billy or where that might take her.

Tucker Bayless had loved his Navajo wife, Shándiíne—meaning Sunshine—for more than half his life. Geneva didn’t want to think now about his grief.

Neither did he. His usual booming voice returned. Let’s talk about old Harrison Billy, Code Talker extra-ordi-naire, back from the dead, so to speak. I got his daughter to bring him down from Wheatfields. They’re waiting for you at her house in Fort Defiance, like I said on the phone last night.

Harrison Billy, said Angie from the back seat. I can’t get used to that. Seems like his name is backwards—should be Billy Harrison.

Geneva, glad of the change in subject, turned half-around to answer her. Billy is a fairly common last name out here, Angie. So are Joe, Jim, Sam, Pete, and the like. I think it was the various Bureau of Indian Affairs people and other government or military types who either couldn’t understand or find out the Navajo names or didn’t care—just slapped something down on paper. You’ll see names like Slim, Shorty, Laughing, Curly—

Or Jumbo, my personal favorite, Tucker said, chuckling. My wife, now, hers was something different. Try Yazzie! He and Geneva both laughed.

Angie’s pretty brow furrowed. Yazzie? I’ve seen that one in some of Geneva’s papers before.

It’s the Navajo equivalent of Smith or Jones, Tucker said. "It means small. Just about everyone out here’s a Yazzie or a Tsosie. Me, now, I’m just a plain old Arkansas hillbilly of Scots-Irish descent, come to Navajoland just for a look-see—what—thirty-one years ago!"

They moved slowly through the thick traffic past a supermarket and two gas stations. Everywhere horse trailers, school buses, trucks and cars caked with red mud, and even big, expensive motor homes vied for parking space along the highway. Still blocks from the fairgrounds, they could hear country music blaring from loudspeakers, interrupted occasionally by calls for rodeo participants to start assembling. Navajos, Anglos, and a sprinkling of blacks and Asians milled about or flowed across the highway toward the fairgrounds, oblivious of the crawling cars and trucks.

Who is this Harrison Billy, anyway, Geneva? Angie leaned forward with her hand on the back of Geneva’s seat. I still don’t know why we’re going to see him. Is he an old friend?

More a friend of Edward’s. I didn’t meet him until later. Even though Harrison, along with Mason Drake, was largely responsible for our coming to the reservation, Geneva said. They met when Edward was taking some graduate courses down at Arizona State one summer. Harrison lived next door to Edward’s rooming house and would wake him up at dawn with his chanting. She had to laugh, remembering Edward’s goofy rendition of Harrison’s dancing and singing. They became great friends. Harrison was blind, wounded in the war, and Edward got him started on Books for the Blind. He said for Harrison, it was like water to a man dying of thirst. And Harrison’s experience with boarding schools as a boy on—and off—the reservation deeply affected Edward.

Lord, yes, Tucker said, shaking his head. How many Indian kids all over the West got jerked up from their families and hauled off to those schools to be ‘de-cultur-ated,’ whipped for talking their own language, and—worse. He and Geneva exchanged unhappy glances.

Geneva turned back to Angie. But I met Harrison only once or twice during those early years. He spent most of his time in Phoenix with his sister, especially during the time Edward and I taught here in Fort Defiance.

Tucker nodded. Harrison was in one of the special Indian units the government called up during World War Two and trained to use their native language to fool the Japanese, Angie. Those Japs were killing us—seemed like they could figure out our messages as fast as we could think up new codes. Tucker ducked to catch Angie’s eye in the rear-view mirror. "The Code Talkers used their Navajo words for planes and ships, all kinds of actions, troop movements, and so on. Like gini, meaning chicken hawk, for dive-bomber."

Angie applauded. That’s great! Tell me some more.

Geneva smiled at Angie. "And the word for beaver, cha, for mine-sweeper. I used to know the one for hummingbird, a fighter plane, but now I forget."

"That was da-he-tih-hi, I think, Tucker said. All that was still classified by the DOD for decades. But I’ll tell you this—the Marines could never have taken Iwo Jima without those Navajo and other Indian radiomen. And the Corps finally said so, too."

So Harrison Billy was one of them? He must be a hundred years old! Angie said.

Tucker laughed. Not quite, but lots of those boys were barely grown then. Harrison, I know, lied about his age to get into the Marines. Like a thousand others, his birth in some remote hogahn way out here hadn’t been recorded, and he was tall for sixteen. Besides, by 1943, the Code Talkers had already proved their worth, and Uncle Sam wasn’t in the mood to quibble.

So young, Geneva mused as Tucker talked. We were young, too, when we came to this place. Edward just finishing his master’s, the twins still so small. We believed that education was the best hope of the Navajos. And we never stopped believing. 

. . . battles of Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Okinawa, and certainly Iwo Jima, Tucker was saying to Angie. Every year since the Code Talkers finally came to the attention of the world, they gather to be honored at this fair and the two or three others across the reservation. Some of them can still walk in the parade and carry their Marine Corps Reserve flag. He shook his head slowly. Those Code Talkers were heroes. Still are. Aren’t they, Geneva?

Geneva, lost in memories, barely noticed Tucker looking at her for assent. She nodded vaguely.

As I got it, he continued, ducking again toward the rear-view mirror and Angie’s reflection, old Harrison hit the bottle off and on for a lot of years after coming home blind from the war. I was glad to hear about the operation on his eyes. He glanced at Geneva. He must be a whole lot better to go read up about Edward’s death and want to talk to you about it. Wonder what he knows.

If anything, she said. I’m happy to see him for Edward’s sake—they were good friends, but . . .

Sure enough, they were friends, Tucker said. I know Edward tried to look him up at different times after y’all moved to Flagstaff. The last time was when he came out during his campaign for reelection that summer, what—three years ago? He leaned toward Geneva, his voice softer. How long’s Edward been gone now, hon?

Three years next month. October.

Must’ve been three years ago in July, then. I had Shándiíne in the hospital in Phoenix and missed his last speech, the one in October with the tribal bigwigs. But I remember how he looked on that grandstand on the Fourth of July, our senator speaking right here at the Window Rock fairgrounds. He gestured out the window in that direction. Big and tall he was, with that mane of silver hair, laughing his same old rumbly laugh. Lordy, we were proud! He slapped the dashboard. Old Vanderhorst—that superintendent that we all hated so, the one that tried to get Edward fired that time—remember, Geneva? But that day Old Vanderhorst acted like he’d invented Senator Granger single-handed.

Three years, yes, she thought. Three years and two weeks before that November election. And Edward’s body never recovered. What could Harrison Billy possibly know about any of it—now able to see or not? I probably shouldn’t have come.

Harrison’s daughter lives right down here, Tucker said, turning down a lane of mobile homes. This sure beats driving way up there past Wheatfields where the old man lives.

What’s Margaret Littleben like, Tuck? Geneva asked. You said she works in the Economic Development Office.

Tucker’s usual loquaciousness seemed to have deserted him. You’ll see.

* * *

A stocky woman with an ample bosom and an embattled expression opened the door to her mobile home without a word. She pulled at her blouse and smoothed the sides of her slacks.

I’m Margaret Littleben, she said at last, in a cold voice. Harrison’s daughter. I wrote that letter to you that he told me to. Without offering her hand or changing her expression, she stood aside for them to enter.

Margaret led them into the dining room while speaking in Navajo to her father, who sat at the dining