House Made of Dawn

Each summer along the southern California coast, “small, silversided fish” (54) spawn at high tide. The tiny fish struggle against the tide. In Los Angeles, a chapel hosts the Los Angeles Holiness Pan-Indian Rescue Mission. Reverend John Big Bluff Tosamah preaches at the chapel, which is barely more than a dimly lit room in a basement. The shaggy, catlike priest is stricken with a mixture of suffering and pride. During one sermon, he discusses the Gospel of John, the power of language, and the emptiness of a world without words. He blames certain Christians for corrupting the language of God and allowing people to communicate thoughtlessly. He blames the author of the Gospel of John for obfuscating the truth with excessive language when the word of God is actually simple. Tosamah warns his congregation of Indigenous American men that the white people seek to manipulate them through words with “a grace and sleight of hand” (56)—unless, he says, the congregation learns how to comprehend God’s word.

Tosamah’s sermon moves to a recollection about his Kiowa grandmother, Aho. Although she was illiterate, Aho told great stories. She held a reverence for “the power and beauty of words” (57) that has been lost in the corrupt, white American world. One of her stories recounted how her people, the Kiowa, prayed to a supernatural being named Tai-me in times of hunger. Tosamah compares the oral traditions of the early Christians, including the preliminary versions of the Gospel of John, to the powerful language of his grandmother. John can’t grasp the true power of language, he says. Although his sermon begins to lose its central thrust, Tosamah’s thoughts are filled with a dazzling vision of the stars, the moon, and the sun. He ends his sermon, telling the congregation to “get yours.”

Still stricken with pain, Abel remembers his Navajo friend and roommate, Ben Benally. He wonders whether Ben’s ideas about Indigenous ceremonies take the sea into account. Abel wakes up on a beach. In the distance, he sees a construction site. Abel’s body is sore. He remembers drinking heavily but doesn’t remember why he has been so savagely beaten. The injuries remind him of when he fell from a horse as a child. Then, a village elder treated him. She helped him recover and grow up to be a strong young man. Thoughts about his brief sexual relationship with Angela mix with images of how he murdered the albino man six and a half years ago. Abel was tried and convicted of murder. Father Olguin testified at his trial. Like many others, Olguin simply couldn’t understand why Abel killed the man but, to Able, it was “very simple.” After telling his own story, Abel said nothing. He was certain that he did the right thing. At the time, he was convinced that the albino man was his enemy.

Abel is in a daze. As he tries to gather himself together, he’s overwhelmed by memories. He tries to recall participating in a ceremonial run, but his thoughts are scattered and overlapping, filled with scraps of the bureaucracy through which the US organizes and marginalizes Indigenous American lives. Employment forms, social worker questionnaires, psychological reports, and other official documents push other memories aside. Abel struggles to remember riding the bus after enlisting in the military. He tries to picture a social worker named Milly, with whom he’s romantically involved. Milly, he remembers, is still naive enough to believe in “the American Dream” (63). The sound of the sea overruns Abel’s thoughts.

Tosamah and his congregation ritualistically use peyote. After reciting scientific information about the psychedelic plant and its capacity to induce “visual hallucinations or color visions” (64), Tosamah holds the peyote up to his painted face as the congregation plays drums and watches expectantly. At the event’s culmination, the congregation follows Tosamah in taking the peyote. As the peyote takes effect, the “celebrants” sing, chant, and play their drums. Their vision blurs as they hallucinate, and some launch into spontaneous speeches. Among the people giving speeches is Ben Benally, who calls out to the “house made of dawn” (66). When the peyote begins to wear off, Tosamah signals the end of the event by blowing on a whistle made of eagle bone.

Abel is awake and in pain. He remembers the physical beating he endured, in which his thumbs were bent until they almost left their sockets. Abel feels cold and flaps around like a helpless fish. The experience makes him remember fat Josie, a woman whose bawdy humor helped him deal with the trauma “after his mother died” (67). Only the thought of Milly shakes Abel out of his recollection.

During his murder trial, witnesses came to defend Abel. A fellow soldier described his courage under fire, telling the court how he performed a “goddam war dance” (68) in the face of an oncoming tank. Abel resented the man’s presumption in speaking on his behalf. Just before he falls unconscious again, Abel’s recollection is again interrupted by thoughts of Milly.

Abel’s thoughts become even more confused. Memories and thoughts overlap. He remembers hunting ducks with Vidal, and he thinks of trying to please Milly the first time he had sex with her, but his thoughts eventually drift everywhere to the point that they become incomprehensible. They coalesce for a moment around a memory of Milly describing how she grew up in a poor community, was briefly married, and how she lost her daughter, Carrie. Finally, Abel breaks free from his reveries, knowing that he’ll “die of exposure” (72) unless he gets up. He decides to seek help and begins to crawl toward a nearby truck. After a short ride in the back of the truck, he steps out and waits in the shadows for another opportunity. He slips in and out of consciousness, picturing Milly and Ben in his mind.