From the March/April 1986 issue
The Werewolf
see the illustrations for this story
One time I was with my little sister and my big brother. I was outside getting the kitten. I saw something. It went behind the pickup. I told my brother. He did not see anything. He said, “You are just lying.” Suddenly the door on the car slammed. We went outside to look around. My brother saw something. He saw something that looked like a dog. It was real big. It was black and brown. It ran on two legs. It ran from our hogan and jumped down into a ditch. We couldn’t see it anymore. I was really scared and my brother was scared too. My sister was crying.
I said, “Phyllis, don’t cry. It won’t get you. Roger will take care of us.”
Roger said, “I know when Mother comes back we must tell her right away.”
We went back inside the hogan and my little sister stopped crying and went to sleep. We stayed up until Mother came back from town.
When Mother came into the hogan, Roger said, “Last night something came like a werewolf. It slammed the door of the car and tried to knock on the door of the hogan.”
I said, “When I was going to bring in my little kitten, Nishoni, I saw something run behind the pickup.”
Mother said, “I think it was a werewolf.” She thought we had better go tell Grandma and Grandpa who live about a mile from us.
Grandma said, “We need a medicine man to sing over the hogan, the car, and the pickup so you will not have bad luck and no one will get sick.” Then Grandma and Mother went to get a medicine man. When he came he put something like sand in the middle of the hogan. Then the medicine man put ashes on top of the sand. Then Roger and the medicine man went outside and opened the car hood and found something that looked like a bullet lying on the motor. The medicine man sang on it and put ashes and cornmeal on the bullet-like thing and then he prayed on it. After that he threw it to the east. He wanted to throw it away so we would not have bad luck or get sick. Then he said, “I’m going to start singing now. If you hear a noise like a horn or someone knocking on the door you must tell me. If it happens I will go outside.”
So he began to pray. He went outside and put cornmeal inside the car and pickup. Then he went back inside and put cornmeal inside the hogan.
When it was almost morning he heard something that sounded like a wolf howling. He said, “That wolf is trying to give you more evil spirits. Don’t worry about it. It can not hurt you.” Then he went back inside and sang some more.
After breakfast the medicine man went home. I said, “I hope we don’t have any bad luck.”
Grandma said, “You can’t have any bad luck because the medicine man came. He put cornmeal and ashes on the evil spirits. They will not bother you anymore.”