Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 14] (8 page)

Venus was bright in the western sky when he heard the police cars
coming.

Jim Chee turned down a side road on the high side of Ship Rock and
parked at a place offering a view of both the Navajo Tribal Police
district office beside Highway 666 and his own trailer house under the
cottonwoods beside the San Juan River. He got out, focused his
binoculars and examined both locations. As he feared, the NTP lot was
crowded with vehicles, including New Mexico State Police
black-and-whites, some Apache and Navajo County Sheriffs’ cars, and
three of those shiny black Fords instantly identifiable by all, cops
and criminals alike, as the unmarked cars used by the FBI. It was
exactly what the newscasts had led him to expect. The word was out that
the missing L-17 had been found resting in a hay shed near Red Mesa.
Thus the fervent hope of all Four Corners cops that the Ute Casino
bandits had flown away to make themselves someone else’s problem in
another and far-distant jurisdiction had been dashed. That meant leaves
would be canceled, everybody would be working overtime—including
Sergeant Jim Chee unless he could keep out of sight and out of touch.

He focused on his own place. No vehicles were parked amid the
cottonwoods that shaded his house trailer, so maybe no one was there
waiting to order him back to duty. Chee had time left on his leave.
He’d spent the morning making the long drive to the west slope of the
Chuska range and then into high country to the place where Hosteen
Frank Sam Nakai had always spent his summers tending his sheep, and
where he now spent them doing the long slide into death by lung cancer.
But Nakai wasn’t there. And neither was his wife, Blue Woman, nor their
truck.

Chee was disappointed. He’d wanted to tell Nakai that he’d been
right about Janet Pete—that marriage with his beautiful, chic,
brilliant silver-spoon socialite lawyer would never work. Either she
would give up her ambitions, stay with him in
Dinetah
and be
miserable, or he’d take the long bitter step out of the Land Between
the Sacred Mountains and become a miserable success. In his gentle,
oblique way, Nakai had tried to show him that, and he wanted to tell
the man that he’d finally seen it for himself. Chee hung around for a
while, thinking Nakai would be back soon. Even with his cancer in one
of its periodic remissions, he wouldn’t be strong enough for any
extended travels. Certainly Nakai wouldn’t be strong enough to conduct
any of the curing ceremonials that his role as a
yataalii
required of him.

When the sun dipped behind the thunderheads over Black Mesa on the
western horizon, Chee gave up and headed home. He would try again
tomorrow unless Captain Largo located him. If that happened, he’d be
spending what was left of his vacation trudging up and down canyons,
serving as live bait for three fellows armed with automatic rifles and
a demonstrated willingness to shoot cops.

Now he put his binoculars back into their case, drove down the hill
and left his pickup behind a screen of junipers behind his trailer. A
note was fastened to his screen door with a bent paper clip.

“Jim — The Captain says for you to report in right away.”

Chee repinned it to the door and went in. The light on his telephone
answering machine was blinking. He sat, took off his boots, and punched
the answering-machine button.

The voice was Cowboy Dashee’s:

“Hey, Jim. I filled the sheriff in on us finding Old Man Timms’s
airplane. He called the feds, they got me on the phone, too. (Sound of
Cowboy chuckling.) The agent quizzing me didn’t want to believe it was
the same airplane, and I don’t blame him. I didn’t want to believe it
either. Anyway, they sent somebody down there to make sure us
indigenous people can tell an old L-17 from a zeppelin, and now the
same old manhunt circus is getting organized just like in ‘98. If you
want to save what’s left of your vacation, I’d recommend you keep a
long way from your office.”

The next call was brief.

“This is Captain Largo. Get your ass down here. The feds located
that damned airplane, and we’re going to be the beagles on one of their
fox hunts again.“ Largo, who normally sounded grouchy, sounded even
grouchier than usual.

The third call was his insurance dealer telling him he needed to add
an uninsured motorists clause to his policy. The fourth and final one
was Officer Bernadette Manuelito.

“Jim. I talked to Cowboy, and he told me what you did. And I want to
thank you for that. But I was at the hospital in Farmington this
morning, and they have Hosteen Nakai there. He’s very sick, and he told
me he needs to see you. I’m going to come by your place. It’s ah, it’s
almost six. I should be there by six-thirty or so.”

Chee spent a moment considering what Bernie had said. Then he erased
calls one, three and four, leaving the Largo call (in case the captain
needed to think he hadn’t heard it). Why would Nakai be in the
hospital? It was hard to imagine that. He was dying of lung cancer, but
he would never, never want to die in a hospital. Nakai was an
ultra-traditional. A famous
yataalii
,
a shaman who sang the
Blessing Way, the Mountain Top Chant, the Night Way, and other curing
ceremonials. As the older brother of Chee’s mother, he was Chee’s
‘little father,' the one who had given Chee his secret 'war name,' his
mentor, the tutor who had tried to teach Chee to be a singer himself.
Hosteen Nakai would hate being in a hospital. Dying in such a place
would be intolerable for him. How could this have happened? Blue Woman
was smart and tough. How could she have allowed anyone to take her
husband from their place in the Chuska Mountains?

He was trying to think of an answer to that when he heard the sound
of tires on gravel, looked up and saw through the screen door Bernie’s
pickup rolling to a stop. Maybe she could tell him.

She couldn’t.

“I just happened to see him,” Bernie said. “They rolled him up on a
gurney to where I was waiting for the elevator, and I thought he looked
like your uncle, so I asked him if he was Hosteen Nakai, and he nodded,
and I told him I worked with you, and he reached out for my arm and
said to tell you to come, and I said I would, and then he said to tell
you to come right away. And then the elevator came, and they put him on
it.“ Bernie shook her head, her expression sad. “He looked bad.”

“That was all he said? Just for me to hurry and come?”

She nodded again. “I went back to the nursing station and asked. The
nurse said they had put him in Intensive Care. She said it was lung
cancer.”

“Yes,” Chee said. “Did she say how he got there?”

“She said an ambulance had brought him in. I guess his wife checked
him in.“ She paused, looked at Chee, down at her hands and at him
again. “The nurse said it was terminal. He had a tube in his arm and an
oxygen thing.”

“It’s been terminal a long time,” Chee said. “Cancer. Another victim
of the demon cigarette. Last time I saw him they thought he had just a
few weeks to live and that was -" He stopped, thinking it had been
months. Far too long. He felt shame for that—for violating the bedrock
rule of the Navajo culture and putting his own interests ahead of
family needs. Bernie was watching him, awaiting the end of his
sentence. Looking slightly untidy as usual, and worried, and a little
shy, wearing jeans stiff with newness and a bit too large for her and a
shirt which fit the same description. A pretty girl, and nice, Chee
thought, and found himself comparing her with Janet. Comparing pretty
with beautiful, cute with classy, a sheep-camp woman with high society.
He sighed. “That was far too long ago,” he concluded, and looked at his
watch.

“They have evening visiting hours,” he said, and got up. “Maybe I
can make it by then.”

“I wanted to tell you I talked to Cowboy Dashee,” Bernie said. “He
told me what you did.”

“Did? You mean the airplane?”

“Yes,” she said, looking embarrassed. “That was a lot of work for
you. You were sweet to do all that.”

“Oh,” Chee said. “Well. It was mostly luck.”

“I guess that was the big reason they were holding Teddy. Because he
could fly. And he knew the man who had the plane. I owe you a big favor
now. I didn’t really mean to ask you to do all that work. I just wanted
you to tell me what to do.”

“I was going to ask why you were at the hospital. Seeing about Teddy
Bai, I guess.”

“He’s better now,” she said. “They moved him out of Intensive Care.”

“I didn’t know Bai knew Eldon Timms,” Chee said. “Did you know that?”

“Janet Pete told me,” Bernie said. “She was at the hospital. She was
appointed to represent Teddy.”

“Oh,” Chee said. Of course. Janet was a lawyer in the federal court
public defender’s office. Bai was a Navajo. So was Janet, by her
father’s name and her father’s blood if not by conditioning. Naturally,
they’d give her Bai’s case.

Bernie was studying him. “She asked about you.”

“Oh?”

“I told her you were on vacation. Just back from going fishing up in
Alaska.”

“Uh, what did she say to that?”

“She just sort of laughed. And she said she’d heard you had a hand
in finding that airplane. Said she guessed you must have been doing
that on your own time. I hadn’t talked to Cowboy yet, and I didn’t know
about that, so I just said, well anyway you hadn’t gone back to work
yet. And she laughed again, and said she thought getting egg on the
FBI’s face had become sort of a hobby with you.”

Chee picked up his hat. “It’s not,” he said. “Lot of good people in
the Bureau. It’s just they let the FBI get way too big. And the
politicians get the promotions, and so they’re the ones making the
policies and calling the shots instead of the bright ones. And so a lot
of stupid things happen.”

“Like evacuating Bluff in that big manhunt of ninety-eight,” Bernie
said.

Chee held the door open for her.

Bernie stood there looking at him, in no hurry to leave.

“Would you like to go along?” Chee asked. “Go see Hosteen Nakai with
me?”

Bernie’s expression said she would.

“Could I help?”

“Maybe. Be good company anyway. And you could bring me up to date on
what I’ve been missing here.”

But Bernie wasn’t very good company. As soon as she climbed into his
pickup and shut the door behind her, he said, “You mentioned Janet
asked about me at the hospital. What else did she say?”

Bernie looked at him a moment. “About you?”

“Yeah,” Chee said, wishing he hadn’t asked that question.

She thought for a moment, either about what Janet Pete had said
about him, or about what she was willing to tell him.

“Just what I told you already, about you liking to embarrass the
FBI,” she said.

After that there wasn’t much talking during the thirty-mile drive to
the hospital.

Visiting hours were almost over when they pulled into the parking
lot, and the traffic was mostly outgoing.

“I was noticing faces,” Bernie said. “The ones who had good news and
the ones who didn’t. Not many of them looked happy.”

“Yeah,” Chee said, thinking of how he could apologize to Hosteen
Nakai for neglecting him, trying to come up with the right words.

“Hospitals are always so sad,” Bernie said. “Except for the
maternity ward.”

It took only a glance at the nurse manning the desk on the floor
housing the Intensive Care ward to support Bernie’s observation. She
was talking on a desk telephone, a graying, middle-aged woman whose
face and voice reflected sorrow.

“Did he say when? OK." She glanced up at Chee and Bernie, gave the
'just a moment' signal, and said, "When he checks in tell him the
Morris boy died." She hung up, made a wry face, and replaced it with a
question.

“We’ve come to see Mr Frank Sam Nakai,” Chee said.

“He may not be awake,” she said, and glanced at the clock. “Visiting
hours end at eight. You’ll have to make it brief.”

“He sent a message,” Chee said. “He asked me to come right away.”

“Let’s see then,” she said, and led them down the hall.

It was hard to tell whether Nakai was awake, or even alive. Much of
his face was covered with a breathing mask, and he lay absolutely still.

“I think he’s sleeping,” Bernie said, and as she said it, Nakai’s
eyes opened. He turned his face toward them and removed the mask.

“Long Thinker has come,” he said, in Navajo and in a voice almost
too weak to be audible.

“Yes, Little Father,” Chee said. “I am here. I should have come long
ago.”

A slender translucent tube connected Hosteen Nakai to a plastic
container hung on a bedside stand. Nakai’s fingers followed the tube
along the sheet to his arm. Not the burly arm Chee remembered. Not much
more than a bone covered with dry skin.

“I will go away soon,” Nakai said. He spoke with his eyes closed, in
slow, careful Navajo. “The in-standing wind will be leaving me, and I
will follow it to another place." He tapped his forearm with a finger.
“Nothing will be left here but these old bones then. Before that, I
must tell something. There is something I left unfinished. I must give
you the last of your lessons.”

“Lesson?” Chee asked, but instantly he knew what Nakai meant. Years
ago, when Chee had still believed he could be both a Navajo Policeman
and a
hataalii
, Nakai had been
teaching him how to do the
Night Way ceremony. Chee had memorized the actions of the Holy People
involved in myth and how to reproduce this story in the sand paintings.
He’d sung the chants that told the story. He’d learned the formula for
the emetic required, how to handle the patient, everything required to
produce the magic that would compel the Holy People to end the sickness
and restore the harmony of natural life. Everything except the last
lesson.

The tradition of Navajo shamanism required that. The teacher
withheld the ultimate secret until he was certain the student was ready
for it. For Chee, that moment had never come. Once he had gone away to
Virginia to study at the FBI Academy, once he had flown to Los Angeles
to work on a case, once he’d gone to Nakai’s winter hogan to be tutored
and Nakai had said the season and the weather were wrong for it.
Finally, Chee had concluded that Nakai had seen that he would never be
ready to sing the Night Way. He had been hurt by that. He had suspected
that Nakai disapproved of assimilation of the white man’s ways, of his
plan to marry Janet Pete, had understood that having a Navajo father
would never prepare her for the sacrifices required of a shaman’s wife.
Whatever the reason, Chee had respected Nakai’s wisdom. He would have
to forget that boyhood dream. He was not to be entrusted the power to
cure. He had come to accept that.