Sacred Clowns

He lit the cigarette. Exhaled. “Why you interested in the Hunger People? It sounds to me like you finally found yourself a Navajo girl.”

Chee nodded.

Nakai said, “I don’t know. Her father’s mother was born to the Dichin Dine’e, you think. But what’s her father’s clan? What’s the rest of the family co

“She doesn’t have a ‘born to’ clan,” Chee said. “Her mother is a white woman. Her dad’s a Navajo. But they’re one of those relocation families. The government moved his family off the reservation in the l940s. He was just a kid when it happened and I guess his family raised him white. He thinks his mother was Dichin Dine’e. Says he doesn’t know about his father’s clan.”

Hosteen Nakai considered this, exhaled a cloud of blue smoke, muttered some imprecation under his breath.

“Tell me about this woman,” he said. “And tell me about yourself. Tell me about the work you are doing.”

Chee told Hosteen Nakai about Janet Pete, the city Navajo. And he told him about the driver who had hit the old man walking beside Navajo Route 1 and left the man to die beside the highway. Could Hosteen Nakai spread the word about this man among the small fraternity of medicine people? Nakai said he would. Chee told him about the deaths of the Christian at Thoreau and the koshare at Tano, and how nobody seemed to know why either one had died, and about his frustrating hunt for Delmar Kanitewa.

Nakai asked questions, about the Christian, about the koshare, about the grandmother of Delmar, about the package Delinar had carried.

Five goats had separated themselves from the flock and drifted downslope. Nakai whistled to his dogs, resting in the tall grass beside the aspens. He pointed. The dogs raced down the slope, circled, brought the reluctant goats back to the fold. The autumn sun was low enough now to begin giving shape to rolling plains far below them. Chee could make out the dark line of shadows cast by Chaco Mesa forty miles to the east. North of that, the yellow-tan of the grama grass prairie was marked by spots of darkness and color – the slate erosion of the Bisti Badlands and the De-Na-Zin Wilderness. Beautiful. Peaceful. But Chee was nervous. Pretty soon Hosteen Nakai would be finished thinking and be ready to talk. For the first time Chee noticed that his uncle had become an old man. Now, what would he say?

“The man who hit the old man, and left him to die,” Nakai said. “I will ask the right people. You are right, if he is following the Beauty Way of the Navajos he would want to be cured of that. But why do you want to find him? What good does it do for the man he killed? What good does it do him? I think you would put him in jail. That won’t help him.” Nakai shrugged, dismissing it. He allowed the silence to take over, giving Chee time to frame his response. Chee simply nodded.

“The Christian and the koshare. Two good men, you tell me. Valuable men. But somebody killed them. Usually the people who get killed like this have worked at it themselves.” He puffed on the cigarette, exhaled. “You know what I mean. They fooled with somebody’s wife. They got drunk and hit somebody. They butchered somebody’s cow. Did something wrong, usually. They got out of harmony with everything so somebody might kill them. But not this time, you tell me. Two good men who helped people, hurt nobody. And they were a lot alike in other ways. The koshare, you know about them. I used to know a Hopi man who was a koshare at Moenkopi. He would say to me: ‘Compared to what our Creator wanted us to be, all men are clowns. And that’s what we koshare do. We act fu

Hosteen Nakai tapped the ash from his cigarette and looked at Chee, thoughtfully. As if wondering whether Chee could extract any meaning from this. Chee gave no sign that he had.

“Two good men who made fun and helped people. Valuable men. But somebody killed them. There has to be a reason. Everything is co

Nakai pushed himself up from the log, stretched, looked down at Chee. “But you want to hear about the woman. That’s why you came here. The incest taboo. You know about it. How it makes you sick, makes you crazy. How it hurts your family. Gets everything out of harmony. So be careful about that woman for a while.” He took another drag on the cigarette.

“I know an old man who lives over near Crystal. That’s where the Hunger People used to be a long time ago before the army moved them to Bosque Redondo. He’s a hataalii. He sings the Mountain Top Way, and the Red Ant Way, and some of the other cures. I will talk to him about this woman. I think he will know something about the Hunger People and our Slow Talking Clan. When I know, then I will tell you.”

“How long will-”

“Young men are impatient when they see the woman they want,” Nakai said. “I know that. I will start tonight.”

“Thank you,” Chee said.

“One more thing. This boy you are looking for. You think he is ru

“Ah,” Chee said. Why hadn’t he thought of that? “No. Not for several days.”

“Then the grandmother knows where to find him,” Nakai said. He exhaled smoke and stood looking into the blue cloud hanging in the still air. “And she also knows, I think, that the boy has some reason to be afraid.”

Chapter 13

THE VERY FIRST thing Jim Chee intended to do when he reached his office the next morning was call Tribal Councilwoman Bertha Roanhorse. The memos Virginia had left on his blotter asked him to return calls from Lieutenant Toddy at Crownpoint and Captain Largo at Tuba City. They could wait. So could the manila envelope Virginia had dropped in his in-basket. As it turned out, so could Jim Chee. The Navajo Communications Company telephone book listed a Roanhorse number among the nineteen telephones served by the Toadlena exchange, but a stern feminine voice on an answering machine instructed Chee to leave a message. He did. Then he called the Legislative Secretary’s Office. Another blank. None of the Tribal Council committees on which Mrs. Roanhorse served was meeting today. He left another message. Next, he called the Navajo Nation I

Having exhausted all possibilities he could think of, he returned the call to Captain Largo. Largo was out, but the Tuba City dispatcher had a message for him: “Tell Chee we have drawn a blank on front end repairs here in his hit-run case.”

He called for Lieutenant Toddy at Crownpoint. The lieutenant was in. “I just wanted you to know we didn’t forget you guys in the Navajo Nation’s Capital City,” Toddy said. “We haven’t forgotten, but if your vehicular homicide suspect was somebody around here nobody seems to know about it.”

So much for that. The day was off to a bad start. He’d call Blizzard and tell him that he’d deduced that Councilwoman Roanhorse was hiding Delmar. That should impress Blizzard. But naturally Blizzard wasn’t in. Chee took the manila envelope out of the in-basket. He’d see what Virginia had left for him.

The envelope had for officer chee printed across it in big letters, but nothing else. He tore it open and poured out an audiotape cassette. He turned it over. Nothing on either side to suggest what it held. He dialed Virginia to ask her who had left it. Virginia wasn’t at her desk. The radio on the shelf behind Lieutenant Leaphorn’s desk included a tape player. He’d borrow that.