Sacred Clowns

So instead of saying what he wanted to say, he said, “I was thinking about you and me and Cowboy sitting on the roof at Tano – watching the kachina dance. Cowboy’s Hopi, and he’s in one of the Hopi kachina societies himself, so he saw a lot that we missed. But not as much as the Tano people. All of us up there on the roof were outsiders, I mean. Like the Cheye

“Me, too,” Janet said, voice glum. “I mean, me and Blizzard, too. There was a lot I didn’t understand at the movie. Not understanding Navajo very well. And to tell the truth, not understanding about being a Navajo.”

Chee studied her profile. He realized, abruptly and with shock, that she was trying not to cry. He experienced a sudden jarring enlightenment. He was seeing a Janet Pete he had never even dreamed existed. He was seeing a lonely girl. He, who had been a sheep camp boy surrounded by the town kids in boarding school; he, who had been the country bumpkin among the sophisticates at the University of New Mexico; he, of all people, should have recognized what Janet would have encountered on this Big-Reservation-Full-of-Strangers. But he hadn’t. He had seen only the shrewd attorney who looked great in expensive clothing, who wore the armor of wit, humor, education, intelligence. He hadn’t seen the girl who was trying to find a home. He felt an almost overpowering urge to pull Janet Pete to him, wrap his arms around her, comfort her, warm her against this cold moonlight, tell her he understood, tell her that he loved her and would care for her forever, and would die to make her happy.

Almost overpowering. He could have done it a week ago when they were friends. Now there was the question of the Hunger People. They had moved into that territory beyond friendship and Chee didn’t know the way back. If there was a way. Perhaps there was, but Chee couldn’t think of it. So he simply looked at her profile, as she sat, forlorn, shoulders slumped, staring out the windshield. And he said:

“Remember at Tano? The koshare had come tumbling down off their roof and a couple of them had grabbed one of the kachinas. They were doing a lot of loud talking, gesturing, that sort of thing. And the crowd was laughing. Good-natured. Everybody was having fun. Getting into what was going on. And then the clown came in dressed up like a cowboy, riding the stick horse. And the clown with the little toy wagon, selling their stuff to the guy dressed up like he was supposed to be a tourist, or a trader. And remember, sort of suddenly the laughing stopped there for a moment. Everything got quiet.”

“Okay,” Janet said. “Okay. I remember.”

“I wonder what we missed,” Chee said. “I wonder what that meant.”

“I don’t know what that meant,” Janet said. “I have no idea. But I guess this conversation we’re having right now means we have reverted back to our traditional status.”

“Traditional status?”

“Back to being old friends,” Janet said. “Good buddies. Remember? Back to telling each other our troubles. Giving each other all sorts of bad advice. About our love affairs with other people.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Chee said. He couldn’t think of anything more sensible to say. “But don’t you have any ideas about what might have been going on there at Tano? Any-”

Janet leaned across him and opened his door. “Out,” she said. “Go to bed. Be a cop tomorrow.”

In the trailer, Chee dropped on his bunk still in his jacket and boots and managed not to think of Janet Pete. He thought of the Todachene case. The case without leads. He considered where it had happened-on a light-traffic byway used mostly by reservation locals. That meant the driver was probably a Navajo. No matter how drunk he’d been, he must be aware by now of the nature of his crime. He would feel the guilt. It would force him out of hozho, out of that state of harmony which is the goal of Navajo metaphysics. If he was traditional, he would be calling on a shaman for help. Tomorrow, Chee thought, he would begin putting out the word to the medicine people in the Checkerboard and on the northeast side of the Big Rez. If he was patient, maybe some information would come drifting back. A ceremonial cure for a man who had been involved with death. The man was probably a drunk, someone who had left the Navajo Way. But it was worth a try.

The second thing he would do tomorrow would be to provide the lieutenant with a memo about the Sayesva homicide. Leaphorn had made it clear he didn’t want Chee intruding in that very federal, very off-reservation affair. But rigid as he was, Leaphorn was also smart. He’d earned his reputation. The memo would inform the lieutenant that something odd seemed to have transpired at the Tano ceremonial, something involving the performance of the clowns. Leaphorn could take it from there.

And with that thought, Chee sat up, undressed, and got under his blanket. He listened to the night sounds, which on this night included the heavy breathing of a sleeping Cheye

Chapter 12

THE NEXT DAY was a day off for Officer Jim Chee. He drove Blizzard to Gallup to pick up his car at the police station. He went to the office on the chance he might catch Leaphorn and didn’t. He typed up the intended memo and put it in the in-basket on the lieutenant’s tidy desk. He spent a moment examining the oversized map that decorated the wall behind Leaphorn’s desk. The symbolic pins with which the man marked locations still co

He had been thinking, as he left Gallup, of anything except Janet Pete. Time enough for that later. After he had talked to Hosteen Nakai. After he knew what to think. Now he thought about his vehicular homicide case. Apparently hopeless. Nothing to go on. Nothing to hope for except luck. And Lieutenant Leaphorn did not approve of luck. He thought about why Leaphorn, in the face of fairly solid evidence, didn’t seem to believe that Eugene Ahkeah had killed Eric Dorsey, or anyone else. He thought about where he might look next for Delmar, his sneaky little problem. And about why the crowd had fallen silent when the clown’s wagon appeared in the Tano plaza. If Leaphorn was interested how that crime co

Then, as his truck jolted higher into the summer pastures of the Chuskas, and ponderosa pine replaced juniper and piñon, and the air was colder in his nostrils and brought the old high-country smells back to him, he thought of Hosteen Nakai, the Little Father of his boyhood.

Nobody was home at the summer shack of Hosteen Nakai. Chee found Nakai’s mixed flock of sheep and goats in a meadow a mile away, and his uncle sitting on a rotted log with his horse grazing under the aspens. A ghetto blaster sat on the log beside him, apparently tuned to KNDN. From it came the impassioned voice of D. J. Nez singing, “My heroes have always been Indians.”

“Dichin Dine’e,” said Hosteen Nakai. “That would have been way back, a long time ago when we got mixed up with them. Let me think about that a little bit.” While he thought he extracted a package of cigarette papers and a sack of Bull Durham from the pocket of his shirt, offered both to Chee, and made himself a cigarette. “It would have been back when the army made us prisoners and herded us off to Bosque Redondo. Back when we made the Long Walk. Everybody got mixed together then and there was some marrying back and forth. Even some marrying with the Apaches. They had a bunch of Mescalero Apaches pe