Sacred Clowns

“Now here’s what you have to tell your grandpa. Tell him he has to take off the bumper sticker that’s on his truck now or put this one on over it. It would be better to scrape off the ‘Ernie is the greatest’ sticker, though.”

Ernie looked sad. “I like it,” he said.

“Can’t leave it on, though, and this new one is better. It says you’re the champion.” Chee reached across Janet and took Ernie’s hand. “Now this is important, Ernie. Remember this. Tell your grandpa he might get arrested if he has that old sticker on his tailgate. Tell him a lot of people saw it at the radio station. You got that?”

“Get arrested because a lot of people saw it at the radio station,” Ernie said.

“Right,” Chee said. “Will you tell him that?”

“Okay,” Ernie said. “You want to see the truck now?”

“Maybe later, Ernie,” Chee said. “Now we’ve got to go to Aztec.”

They drove up the hill and over it in silence. Then Janet said, “Fetal alcohol syndrome, wasn’t it?”

“Looks like it to me.”

“When did you get the bumper sticker made?”

“Yesterday.”

Silence again.

“I asked you what you found out from the three shamans about me. You said ‘just a second.’”

“They didn’t know.”

“So maybe I’m taboo?”

“I told you how they were. I got the history of my clans and the history of your dad’s clan, with nobody knowing of any linkage. But since they didn’t know there wasn’t one, maybe there was. It was that kind of thinking. And Janet, you know, I don’t care what they think.” He was looking straight ahead, gripping the steering wheel. “Not if you don’t. I mean if you’re taboo for me, I’m taboo for you. I know you’re not my sister because if you were I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you, and I wouldn’t be thinking about you all the time, and longing for you, and-”

“You said there was an old, old, old woman there. The wise woman. What did she say?”

“Well,” Chee said, and laughed. “We were talking all the time about your dad’s clan, of course, since your mother isn’t Navajo. And she said we were wasting everybody’s time because only the maternal clan really mattered.”

“Stop the car,” Janet said.

Chee pulled off on the shoulder. “What?” he said.

“I want to go back to that ‘what to do’ question. About which justice you use on your hit-and-run case. I want to talk about that.”

“Okay,” Chee said. “What?”

“First, I want to tell you I decided I’m a Navajo. And I love you for how you handled that. And second I want to tell you I called my mother. And she told me that her clan, and my clan, is MacDougal, and we have this fu

“Not yet,” Chee said, and pulled her to him.

Chapter 27

NORMALLY JOE LEAPHORN was good at waiting, having learned this Navajo cultural trait from childhood as many Navajos of his generation learned it. He’d watched his mother’s flocks on the slopes above Two Grey Hills, and waited for roads to dry so he could get to the trading post, and waited for the spring to refill the dipping pool with the water he would carry to their hogan, and waited for the nuts to ripen on the piñon where his parents had buried his umbilical cord, thereby tying him forever to the family home of Beautiful Mountain. But this morning he was tired of being patient and especially tired of being patient with Officer Jim Chee.

He paced back and forth across the grounds of the Saint Bonaventure Mission School, fully reinstated and wearing his Navajo Tribal Police uniform again. At least Chee was finally following orders to keep his whereabouts known. Chee had called to inform the night shift dispatcher that he’d be reachable at the San Juan Motel in Aztec. Indeed, he had answered the phone there when Leaphorn called him at six A.M. That had been a pleasant surprise.

“Chee,” Leaphorn had said. “I’m driving over to Thoreau. To the Bonaventure Mission. Come on down and meet me there and we’ll see if we can find something to wrap up this Dorsey business.”

Chee had said yes sir, but where the hell was he now? It was maybe a hundred and thirty miles down from Aztec – two and a half hours’ driving time if Chee kept to the speed limit, which Leaphorn doubted. Give him fifteen minutes to dress and check out and he should have reached Thoreau an hour ago. Leaphorn had watched the school’s teachers arrive – mostly healthy-looking whites who looked like they were just a year or so out of college. He’d watched the mission’s small fleet of castoff and recommissioned school buses discharge their loads of noisy Navajo kids. He’d watched relative silence descend as classes began. He had read every word in last night’s edition of the Navajo Times. The top headline read:

COUNCILMAN DENOUNCES LOBBYIST

Chester Claims Nature First Lawyer Aired Illegal Tape

The story beneath it said that employees at Navajo Tractor Sales had tentatively identified Roger Applebee, Santa Fe attorney and lobbyist for the environmental group, as the man who had walked in and broadcast the troublesome telephone call. It quoted Captain Dodge as saying that the investigation was continuing. Dodge said that a photograph of the lobbyist had been shown to employees at Navajo Tractor Sales, where the broadcast had originated. He said that the man who broadcast the tape “generally resembled the photograph of Applebee” except for the hair.

“The suspect might have been wearing a wig,” Captain Dodge said. Applebee, of course, “could not be reached for comment.”

Leaphorn examined the Applebee photograph that accompanied the story. He had caused Leaphorn a hell of a lot of trouble, but he was a decent-looking fellow. The only thing certain was that Dodge was doing his job, which was to get Councilman Chester cooled down and defused. Leaphorn was very much in favor of that. He also approved Dodge’s silence on the matter of the tape left in his tape player, on Leaphorn’s brief suspension, and on Jim Chee’s boneheadedness. Let the department lick its wounds away from the public gaze.

With even the want ads read, he’d unlocked Dorsey’s office and spent thirty minutes pla

Here was Chee now, driving onto the gravel of the visitors’ parking area, looking sheepish.

“I guess you stopped off for breakfast,” Leaphorn said. “Or had car trouble.”

“No sir,” Chee said.

Leaphorn looked at his watch.

“I had to detour over to Window Rock,” Chee said.

“Why?”

Chee hesitated. “I had to drop somebody off.”

“You pick up hitchhikers?”

“This was a lawyer,” Chee said. “Had some business at the courthouse in Aztec.”

“Which-” Leaphorn began, and then decided he didn’t need to ask which lawyer. He kept his expression absolutely neutral. “Let’s get to work,” he said, and ushered Chee into Dorsey’s cramped quarters.

“Dorsey’s trailer was originally searched by Dilly Streib and Lieutenant Toddy. They were looking for nothing in particular, just anything that would shed a little light. Then Toddy and I took a second look at it. We were specifically looking for anything that would explain why Dorsey made that Lincoln Cane. Here’s what we found.”

He handed Chee the sketch of the cane. “This was on top of Dorsey’s ‘unfinished business’ basket.”

Chee examined it, glanced up at Leaphorn. “Interesting,” he said.

Leaphorn nodded. “I’ve had time to do some checking. The genuine Pojoaque Pueblo cane seems to have disappeared back in the nineteenth century. So I’m told it could be sold to a collector if you found one whose conscience wasn’t too well developed.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Chee said. “Is that why you were thinking of Asher Davis?”