- Oh, goody, it's time to find out what comes out of the jar that the people were growing in the last section of the poem! They hear something buzzing . . .
- Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It's . . .
- A big green fly. With yellow feelers on top of its head. (You thought we were going to say Superman, didn't you? Ha! We're so sneaky.)
- Hummingbird and his new buddy the Fly go down to the fourth world, where Corn Mother has been hanging out. Everything is green and beautiful down there.
- We jump back in time to the day Josiah first met the Mexican woman with the hazel eyes. They're at Lalo's bar and she asks him for some cigarette paper.
- There's some awkwardness because she's Mexican and he's Native American. (Just like Romeo and Juliet! Uh . . . we hope it goes a little better for these two.)
- After he leaves Josiah has the uncomfortable feeling that he's left something behind. The next day he realizes it's his heart. Aw.
- Josiah goes back to see the Mexican woman and she invites him upstairs to get out of the heat. If you know what we mean. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
- The woman tells Josiah about her life as a flamenco dancer. Then she puts a flamenco record on and puts on her shiny, shiny shoes.
- The woman's powerful dancing makes the entire room shake. It also gets Josiah's heart rate up.
- The dancer finally reveals her stage name—they called her Night Swan.
- A substantial page break lets us know that we're switching to Night Swan's perspective. This is her story:
- When Night Swan was young, she fell in love with a guy who was super into her.
- It was at this time that she began to feel the power of her dancing really strongly. Since this feeling coincided with her love affair, she mistook it for passion for her lover. But he was actually kind of a loser.
- One day Mr. Loser Lover breaks up with Night Swan, even though she can tell he still wants her.
- So why does he do it? Because his love for her is tempting him to abandon all of his social obligations. He's married, and he can't be running around with a mistress if he hopes to fit in at church and in the town. Plus, there's his mother.
- He blames Night Swan for tempting him and making him cheat on his wife. (Commence eye rolling here.)
- Night Swan keeps her cool and informs the dude that he can make up stories if he wants to, but they both know he's lying. He has always wanted her BAD.
- Mr. Loser has a sort of fit and then pathetically threatens to run Night Swan out of town. He's not convincing. The way we see it, it's Night Swan: 1, Mr. Loser: 0.
- There's a mini page break and we move from Night Swan's bedroom to the bar where she dances. That night, when Night Swan dances, her ex-lover is already a dead man—a living dead man.
- Say what? The text says Night Swan's ex, "sucked life from the living, desiring and hating it even as he took it" (XI.12). So he's kind of like a vampire who's been feeding off of Night Swan's boundless dancer's energy.
- Night Swan dances like she's a bullfighter and a bull at the same time. Olé!
- She dances until all of the bar patrons and the bartender cower in the corner of the bar. The guitarist, worn out, puts his instrument down and holds his head in his hands.
- Another mini page break and Night Swan finishes telling her story to Josiah. She remembers dancing so hard that she could feel the floor break beneath her feet.
- Night Swan tells how the Loser's wife came running into the bar screaming. She had run barefoot to the bar to confront Night Swan—in the middle of a snowstorm!
- Night Swan says that there had been an accident that night—her ex had woken his wife up with his screams. He'd been trampled by his own horses.
- But, as Night Swan explains to Josiah, all that was a long time ago. She's a grandmother now, and she dances for her granddaughters.
- One day Night Swan felt she needed to get out of town, so she took the bus until she saw the mountain, Tse-pi'na, and decided to settle down here.
- Night Swan says she and Josiah must be getting old if they're spending so much time talking when they could be doing something else . . . wink. (No really, she literally winks at him!)
- Another mini page break means "Cut scene." Gotta give these two lovebirds their privacy.
- At first the people in the town of Cubero aren't too happy with Night Swan's choice of a retirement spot. They talk a lot of smack about her. What kind of woman, after all, would choose to live in the dusty rooms above a bar? That's right—only that kind of woman.
- Never mind the fact that the rooms actually aren't dusty anymore after Night Swan moves in.
- What it comes down to is that Night Swan has a certain je ne sais quoi . . . something that makes her really attractive. The women of Cubero are nervous that she's going to steal away their husbands and sons.
- Once Josiah starts seeing Night Swan and his blue truck is parked outside every night, the women start to relax a little bit.
- Page break, and we're back in Auntie's house. Auntie is yelling at Tayo for not telling her about Josiah's new girlfriend.
- Auntie's pretty upset that Josiah is seeing a Mexican woman—what will people think? Is she the only one who cares about their family's reputation anymore?
- Well, yeah, it looks that way. Even old Grandma doesn't care about what people say. She knows better stories about everyone in town anyway. Grandma rocks.
- Back at Night Swan's apartment, she tells Josiah about some cattle her cousin Ulibarri is selling.
- By late July Josiah had bought the cattle, and all his time is spent either with the cattle or with Night Swan. Both are pretty time-consuming.
- Tayo helps Josiah with the cattle. The cows keep breaking through fences and trying to go south, so they have to chase after them a lot.
- They also have to check on the sheep camp. They've hired a pretty good shepherd, but Auntie is kind of obsessive about wanting Josiah to check to make sure everything's OK. Tayo realizes it's to keep Josiah busy so he won't have time to see Night Swan.
- The shepherd, an Apache named Mike, is more interested in auto mechanics than sheep. He leaves, and Josiah has to hire their cousin Pinkie again.
- Remember, Pinkie is one of Harley and Emo's drinking buddies. Sometimes he has black-out spells or disappears from the sheep camp altogether. Not a very good shepherd.
- While Tayo helps Josiah with the cattle and Robert works in the fields, Rocky spends the summer reading magazines, working out, and hanging out with his girlfriend. No one gives him a hard time about it since he's headed to university on a football scholarship.
- Every evening after work, Josiah changes his clothes and goes out again. And every evening old Grandma asks him, "Aren't you going to rest?"
- What she's really asking is, "When is the affair with this Mexican woman going to end?" Josiah doesn't answer (XI.35).
- Josiah is smiling every night, and his face doesn't look tired or old. He's in looove.
- But Auntie doesn't seem to care about that. She compares her brother to their old dog, Pepper, who got run over on the highway, chasing a she-dog in heat.
- Here's a pretty big page break and a paragraph that stands all by itself. Tayo remembers that there had been a drought when his mother died, too.
- Tayo remembers Josiah's kindness to him after they buried her. He held Tayo's hand, gave him some candy, and told him not to cry anymore.
- Back to the summer before the war. Tayo thinks about the holy men and the things they do during the dry spells. He doesn't really know how to pray, but he decides to improvise.
- Tayo gets up before dawn and rides his horse to the spring in the narrow canyon. He makes a little offering with the flowers he picked along the path, sprinkling their pollen on the water. It just feels right.
- Then Tayo sits and watches what happens in the canyon. First he observes a spider who comes to drink from the pool. Later a bunch of frogs come out to swim. And finally Tayo watches as dragonflies hover over the water.
- All these creatures remind him that the world is alive, and made of stories. It's like old Grandma used to say—a long time ago things were different. Animals could talk to human beings, and many magical things happened (XI.41).
- On the way home, Tayo sees a bright green hummingbird hovering above the dry ground. The hummingbird gives Tayo hope. Somewhere there are still flowers.
- The next day it looks like it's going to rain. Woohoo.
- No one goes back to work after lunch. Instead they have a sort of skip-day and wait around for the rain to start.
- Josiah gives Tayo a note to give to Night Swan, saying he won't be able to make their date that night because the rain means there's a lot of work do to.
- This makes Tayo nervous, because he's noticed the way Night Swan always watches him. Even though he's freaked out, Tayo goes to deliver the message.
- Night Swan opens the door. She's wearing a blue silk kimono and smells of lotus blossoms. Her apartment is cool and breezy, with long white curtains over the doorway. She has Spanish music playing on in the old record player.
- Are you ready for this? Tayo and Night Swan have sex. It's a pretty intense experience for Tayo. He feels like he is "swimming away from all his life before that hour" (XI.53).
- Night Swan explains that she's been watching Tayo because of his eyes.
- Tayo has always been ashamed of his hazel eyes because they're a reminder that he's the product of an interracial relationship. Remember how his mom slept around with Mexican men? Tayo's eyes won't let anyone forget it.
- Night Swan has a theory. People are afraid of change, she says. They think that if people go on looking the same, from generation to generation, nothing is changing . . . but they're wrong.
- The way Night Swan sees it, people blame the ones who look different—like Tayo and herself—because that way they don't have to think about what's really happening.
- Then Night Swan gets kind of mystical on Tayo. She says he might not understand what's happening yet, but he will look back on this day and "recognize it later." He is "part of it now." Huh? Part of what? (XI.60)
- A page break lets us know we're jumping forward in time. We're checking back in on Tayo and Harley's burro-riding, bar-hopping adventure.
- Harley is super drunk, so Tayo leaves him at the bar and starts walking west. He stops to eat some menudo at a café run by a little old Mexican man. (Menudo is a traditional Mexican soup made from beef stomach. Yum.)
- The Mexican man swats flies, which reminds Tayo of one of Josiah's lessons. Yep, time for another flashback.
- One afternoon, little Tayo is making a game of swatting flies with a willow switch. When Josiah asks him what he's doing, Tayo says he's killing flies because his teacher at school told him they carry disease.
- Josiah tells Tayo a story. A long time ago, when the mother of the people got angry and made all the animals and plants disappear, the green bottle fly went to her and asked her forgiveness. Ever since then, the people have been grateful to the fly.
- Now Tayo feels bad for killing the flies, but Josiah says it's OK—the flies are very forgiving. They know that people make mistakes.
- In the jungle, however, Tayo couldn't stand the flies that crawled on Rocky. He cursed them and killed them with his hands.
- Back to Harley. Uh . . . come to think of it, where is Harley?
- By the time Tayo gets back to the bar, everyone's gone home, even the bartender.
- Instead of going home, Tayo gets the crazy notion to walk to Cubero, all the way to the store where Night Swan used to live.
- It's closed, so Tayo sits on the porch like he and Rocky used to do while Josiah went inside to buy beer.
- Lalo, the store owner, retired during the war and closed up the bar. But the building hasn't changed much, and it brings back all sorts of memories for Tayo.
- Tayo is particularly fond of the big, dying cottonwood tree next to the bar. It helps him feel "almost alive again" (XI.73).
- Absentmindedly Tayo rubs some plaster dust onto his hands, the way ceremonial dancers sometimes do. It occurs to him that the reason the dancers do that is to feel more connected to the earth. Seems like Tayo's feeling pretty good right now.
- Tayo starts to think about Night Swan. He never saw her again after they slept together.
- Night Swan left after Josiah's funeral. No one knew where she went—she just walked to the highway with a suitcase.
- Night Swan's old apartment is open, so Tayo goes in to look around. It's empty and dusty, and the gauzy white curtains are gone.
- Tayo walks all the way to Harley's grandpa's house and goes to sleep in the loft of the barn.
- He sleeps all night without any nightmares. As you might imagine, this is a pretty big deal for him.