Sacred Clowns

Chapter 17

EVEN BEFORE he had finished reading Chee’s memo, Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn had come to a couple of conclusions. The first was that he had guessed right about Chee. He was young, and he still had the crazy idea that he could be both a hataalii and a tribal cop simultaneously, and he had a tendency to do things his own way. But he was smart. And in this job, being smart was something you needed to be a lot. The second conclusion was that he should clear up this question of the link between Eric Dorsey and Francis Sayesva now, and the place to start was exactly in the unlikely place that Chee’s memo had suggested.

He picked up the cap he’d just taken off and headed for the door. The first step was to talk to Dilly Streib. Streib would probably still be lingering over his breakfast at the Navajo Nation I

Dilly wouldn’t. He called the Albuquerque FBI office, and got the proper people at the BIA Law and Order Division to set things up across the jurisdictional boundaries. But as far as making the trip was concerned, he told Leaphorn, “Sorry, I got other sheep to shear.

“Maybe you’ve got the time to solve problems for people over in the Albuquerque office. Not me,” Streib said. “Besides, my tailbone’s hurting from all the driving we’ve been doing.”

So, a little before noon, Leaphorn arrived at Tano, stopped at the pueblo administrative office, asked appropriate questions, and got directions to the house of Teddy Sayesva.

Teddy Sayesva showed no enthusiasm for giving a Navajo policeman the fifth repetition, as he put it, “of what damn little I know about how my brother got killed.” But the Tano culture’s demand for hospitality quickly overpowered his irritation. He prepared coffee in the pot on the cookstove, and then perched stiffly on the edge of a kitchen chair – a small, thin man with a burr haircut and wire-rimmed glasses that looked too youthful for a face that was lined and tired. No, he hadn’t been at home when his nephew had come to see his brother Francis. He was a member of a kachina society and had duties to take care of at the kiva society. Except for the boy’s visit, which he hadn’t been home to witness, he could think of nothing unusual happening that evening.

He recited what had happened as if he’d memorized it. Francis had driven in from his home in Albuquerque early in the afternoon. As always during ceremonials, he used Teddy’s place as his home base. At supper he’d seemed preoccupied, maybe worried, but Teddy presumed that was because he had to go the next week to testify before a federal grand jury. Teddy paused after mentioning that and glanced at Leaphorn to see if it needed explanation. It didn’t. Leaphorn had read of that in the FBI report. It seemed to involve an auditing technicality in a banking case with no co

Leaphorn nodded. Teddy resumed his recitation.

Teddy had left for the preceremonial meeting at his kiva. When he got home, Francis was in bed, sound asleep. He was still asleep when Teddy had left the next morning before dawn for prayers at the kiva.

“I didn’t have any more chance to talk to him,” Teddy said, looking down at his hands as he said it. “The last time I saw Francis he was sleeping.” He pointed into the next room. “Sleeping in that bed there. Where we both used to sleep when we were boys.”

“That would be a hard loss,” Leaphorn said. He thought of telling the man of Emma’s death, comparing the loss of the wife of your lifetime to the loss of a brother. But he could see no consolation in that. For either of them. Instead he said:

“The FBI agent’s report indicates that you had no idea what your nephew brought over here that night to give to Francis. Is that correct?”

“No idea,” Teddy Sayesva said. “The man told me it was supposed to be something long and narrow and wrapped in a newspaper. Like I said, I wasn’t here when Delmar came with it. And I didn’t see anything like that when I got back from the kiva. In fact, I didn’t see anything different at all.”

He gestured, taking in the small, cluttered room. “Where would you put something in here where I wouldn’t notice it? Right here in my own house. Anyplace he might have put it, we’ve looked. We didn’t find anything.”

“We think it might have been something made of wood. Of a heavy dark wood,” Leaphorn said.

“Oh,” Teddy Sayesva said. His tone indicated that this interested him.

“Your nephew said this object, whatever it was, had religious significance,” Leaphorn added. “That it had something to do with the ceremonial.”

“Delmar told you that?” Sayesva’s expression showed his shock. “He shouldn’t-” He let the sentence hang.

Leaphorn cleared his throat. “Actually, he told the officer that he couldn’t talk about what was in the package. He said he couldn’t talk about it at all because he was not supposed to talk about anything involving his religion to anyone not initiated into his kiva.”

“Oh,” Teddy Sayesva said. He looked relieved. “That’s right. He couldn’t talk about it if it concerned his religious duties.”

“And he didn’t talk about it,” Leaphorn said. “When the BIA officer told him he would have to take him in to Albuquerque to be questioned by the FBI if he didn’t tell them what it was, then Delmar ran away.”

Sayesva nodded, approving both Delmar’s action and this Navajo’s understanding of it. He got up, walked quickly to the door, opened it, and stood for a moment looking out into the cold autumn sunlight. A pickup truck rolled down the alley past the porch. Teddy Sayesva waved, and shouted something unintelligible to those who don’t speak the language of Tano. Then he looked up and down the street again, shut the door, and sat down.

“You’re Navajo,” he said. “Do you have a wife from any of the pueblos? Are any of your family married into our people?”

Leaphorn said no.

“I will have to tell you a little bit about our religion then,” Sayesva said. “Nothing secret.” He produced a wry smile. “Just former secrets – things that the anthropologists have already written about.”

He got up, poured coffee from the steaming pot, handed a mug to Leaphorn, and sat again.

“You know my brother was the leader of our koshare society. Do you know about the koshares?”

“A little,” Leaphorn said. “I’ve watched them at kachina dances. The clowns, with the striped body paint, making people laugh. I know their duties are more than just to entertain.”

“In our pueblo, and in some of the others, men who have jobs in towns and live away from us can’t be members of the most sacred societies, the kachina societies. They can’t spend enough time in the kivas. So they become koshares, and that is sacred too, but in a different way.” He paused, seeking a way to explain. “To outsiders, they look like clowns and what they do looks like clowning. Like foolishness. But it is more than that. The koshare have another role. I guess you could say they are our ethical police. It’s their job to remind us when we drift away from the way that was taught us. They show us how far short we humans are of the perfection of the spirits.”

He paused, an opportunity for a question. Leaphorn said, “An old friend of mine, a Hopi, told me their koshares are like policemen who use laughter instead of guns and scorn instead of jails.”

Sayesva nodded.

“You’ve been to kachina ceremonials,” he said. “Lots of Navajos like to come to them.”

“Sure,” Leaphorn agreed. “We are taught to respect your religion.”

“Then you’ve seen the koshare doing everything wrong, everything backward, being greedy, reminding us of how badly we behave. That’s the purpose. If you had been to this last one, you would have seen the clowns come in. They work with the clown team, to help teach the lesson. This time one of the clowns pulled in a wagon, and one of my cousins was there with the big billfold and the big dollars play-acting, pretending to buy sacred things. That’s what my brother had decided to warn the people about that day. Selling things they shouldn’t sell. What Delmar brought him in that package, I don’t know. But I think it must have been something to put into the little wagon. Something symbolic.”