Sacred Clowns

Chapter 3

“THE FACT IS,” said Sergeant Harold Blizzard, “this Sayesva thing is none of your business. Your business ends at the Navajo Reservation boundary.”

Blizzard was wearing his Bureau of Indian Affairs Law and Order uniform with a New York Yankees cap. He was talking slowly and looking straight over the steering wheel and out the windshield. Jim Chee had been reading a book of Margaret Atwood’s short stories he’d borrowed from Janet Pete, thinking it might impress her. He decided Miss Atwood would call Blizzard’s expression either “bleak” or “stolid.” Or maybe “wintry.” That fit the weather, too. It was cold for November, but Robin Marshment had assured them on her KRQE weathercast last night that the snowstorm hitting Utah would stay a little to the north.

“I know the Sayesva thing is none of my business,” Chee said. “In fact, my lieutenant just told me that. He said to find the Kanitewa kid. Nothing else. He’s the grandson of a member of our Tribal Council. A woman. The lieutenant said get that woman off his back. Told me to keep my nose out of everything else and just find the kid.”

Blizzard devoted his attention for a while to guiding the patrol car into that section of the gravel road in which the washboarding was the least severe. Even so, the jolting rattled his clipboard, and the radio mike, and everything not fastened down. “The thing is,” Blizzard said, “the feds want to talk to the kid, too. So your nose is right in the middle of it. Both nostrils.” This caused Blizzard to chuckle.

Chee had lost patience with Blizzard about fifty miles ago – maybe even before they’d left the parking lot at Blizzard’s BIA office in Albuquerque. There was no reason for Blizzard to act like this. He knew how the feds worked. The kid’s name was on the FBI list along with everybody known to have talked to Sayesva in the day or so before he was killed. That included just about everybody at Tano Pueblo and a lot of other people. There was no reason for Blizzard to be such a hardass over this, and Chee was tempted to tell him so. But he didn’t. He was in Blizzard’s jurisdiction, but that wasn’t what inhibited him. Blizzard was a Cheye

“I’m not going to cause anybody any trouble,” Chee said. “Your FBI wants you to find the kid. My boss has ordered me to find Delmar Kanitewa. I’m just supposed to give his big-shot grandma a chance to talk to him about ru

Harold Blizzard didn’t look happy. He said “Uh-huh,” filling the sound with skepticism, and turned the car onto the road into Tano Pueblo. He didn’t hear a word I said, Chee thought. What a jerk. But Chee was wrong about the first part. Blizzard had been listening.

“Trouble with all that is this boy is about name number sixty on the list the feds gave me,” Blizzard said, “and the list looks to me like they copied the son-of-a-bitch out of the Tano Pueblo census report. I think it’s everybody who’s been around Sayesva for the last month or so, plus his kinfolks. And I think everybody out here is kinfolks. And having a Navajo cop underfoot, and having to squire you around, is trouble. It’s both a pain in the butt and a time waster. You find the kid, and tell me, and I tell the feds, and by then they forgot what they wanted to ask him. So don’t try to tell me you’re going to make me happy.”

Mrs. Kanitewa didn’t look happy either. She was standing in the door of a fairly new frame-and-stucco house – one of twenty or thirty such houses built on the fringes of the pueblo to meet the specifications of Indian Service housing. She was holding a box of frozen green beans and a butcher-paper package which Chee guessed would be ground beef to be thawed for supper. Through the doorway behind her, Chee could see a great pile of shucked corn filling a corner of the room. Mrs. Kanitewa gave them the smile made mandatory by traditions of hospitality. She didn’t look like she meant it.

“Well, come on in then,” she said. “Delmar’s not home yet, but if you want me to tell you about it again, then come in.”

“In” did not prove to be in the frame-and-stucco Indian Service house. She led them across the hard-packed yard toward an adobe. It slouched under an immense cottonwood which looked almost as old as the building. A fringe of ragweeds and Russian thistle growing in its dirt roof gave it a disreputable, unshaven look. But paint on the window frames was a fresh turquoise blue and geraniums were blooming in boxes beside the door. Mrs. Kanitewa seated them in the front room, which served as parlor, living room, and dining room. They sat side by side on a sofa whose plastic upholstery creaked and crackled under their weight.

“I guess you haven’t found him yet, either,” she said. She looked worried now, as if maybe they had found him and were bringing sorrowful news.

“No ma’am,” Chee said.

Blizzard had been looking around the room. Its brick floor was uneven in places, but mostly covered with cheap made-in-Mexico throw rugs and one pretty good Navajo horse blanket. Its ceiling was that crisscross pattern of willow branches supported by ponderosa poles which New Mexicans call “latilla.” Its corners were obviously off square by three or four degrees and the white plaster covering its walls wavered with the irregular shapes of the adobe blocks behind it. Blizzard cleared his throat.

“That other house,” he said. “The new one. Does that belong to you?”

The question surprised Chee, and Mrs. Kanitewa too.

“Yeah. The government built it. We use it to store stuff. They put a big refrigerator over there.” She laughed. “They wanted us to live in it.”

Blizzard opened his mouth, and closed it, leaving the question unasked. Chee answered it for him. After all, this Cheye

“This one’s warm in the winter, and cool in the summer,” he said.

“This one’s home,” Mrs. Kanitewa added.

Chee waited a moment in deference to Blizzard. But Blizzard seemed to have assumed the role of spectator. After all, he had already gone through questioning Mrs. Kanitewa once before.

“When Sergeant Blizzard was here,” Chee began, “before the ceremonial, Delmar had just got home then. Is that right?”

Mrs. Kanitewa hesitated. “That’s right,” she said, looking embarrassed. “I didn’t say that when he first asked me because I thought it was just about his ru

“That day at the ceremonial, I saw Delmar at the kachina dance,” Chee continued. “Sergeant Blizzard told me he understood that Delmar had come back to the pueblo but he hadn’t had time to come by the house.”

Mrs. Kanitewa looked uneasy. She glanced at Blizzard. “It wasn’t quite like I told him,” she said. She sighed, the weight of motherhood heavy. “He got home the day before the ceremonial. And he told me he was going back to school right after the ceremonial. Robert Sakani was going to drive him back. That’s his cousin.”