Listening Woman
by Tony Hillerman
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The southwest wind picked up turbulence around the San Francisco Peaks, howled across the emptiness of the Moenkopi plateau, and made a thousand strange sounds in windows of the old Hopi villages at Shongopovi and Second Mesa. Two hundred vacant miles to the north and east, it sand-blasted the stone sculptures of Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park and whistled eastward across the maze of canyons on the Utah-Arizona border. Over the arid immensity of the Nokaito Bench it filled the blank blue sky with a rushing sound. At the hogan of Hosteen Tso, at 3:17 P.M., it gusted and eddied, and formed a dust devil, which crossed the wagon track and raced with a swirling roar across Margaret Cigarettes old Dodge pickup truck and past the Tso brush arbor. The three people under the arbor huddled against the driven dust. Tso covered his eyes with his hands and leaned forward in his rocking chair as the sand stung his naked shoulders.
Anna Atcitty turned her back to the wind and put her hands over her hair because when this business was finished and she got Margaret Cigarette home again, she would meet the new boy from the Short Mountain Trading Post. And Mrs. Margaret Cigarette, who was also called Blind Eyes, and Listening Woman, threw her shawl over the magic odds and ends arrayed on the arbor table. She held down the edges of the shawl.
Damn dirty wind, she said. Dirty son-of-a-bitch.
Its the Blue Flint boys playing tricks with it, Hosteen Tso said in his old mans voice. He wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands and looked after the whirlwind. That’s what my mothers father told me. The Blue Flint boys make the wind do that when they play one of their games.
Listening Woman put the shawl back around her shoulders, felt carefully among the assortment of bottles, brushes and fetishes on the table, selected a clear plastic prescription vial, and uncapped it.
Don’t think about that, she said. Think about what were doing. Think about how you got this trouble in your body. She poured a measure of yellow corn pollen from the vial and swiveled her blind face toward where the girl was standing. You pay attention now, daughter-of-my-sister. Were going to bless this man with this pollen. You remember how we do that?
You sing the song of the Talking God, Anna Atcitty said. The one about Born of Water and the Monster Slayer. She was a pretty girl, perhaps sixteen. The legends GANADO
HIGH SCHOOL and TIGER PEP were printed across the front of her T-shirt.
Listening Woman sprinkled the pollen carefully over the shoulders of Hosteen Tso, chanting in low, melodic Navajo. From the cheekbone to the scalp, the left side of the old mans face was painted blue-black. Another patch of blackness covered his bony rib cage over his heart. Above that, the colorful curved stick figure of the Rainbow Man arched over Tsos chest from nipple to nipple painted by Anna Atcitty in the ritual tints of blue, yellow, green and gray. He held his wiry body straight in the chair, his face stiff with sickness, patience and suppressed pain. Listening Woman’s chant rose abruptly in volume. In beauty it is finished, she sang. In beauty it is finished.
Okay, she said. Now I will go and listen for the earth to tell me what makes you sick. She felt carefully across the plank table, collecting the fetishes and amulets of her profession, and then found her walking cane. She was a large woman, handsome once, dressed in the traditional voluminous skirt and blue velvet blouse of the People. She put the last of the vials in her black plastic purse, snapped it shut, and turned her sightless eyes toward Tso. Think about it now, before I go. When you dream, you dream of your son who is dead and of that place you call the painted cave? You don’t have any witch in that dream? She paused, giving Tso a chance to answer.
No, he said. No witches.
No dogs? No wolves? Nothing about Navajo Wolves?
Nothing about witches, Tso said. I dream about the cave.
You been with the whores over at Flagstaff? You been laying with any kinfolks?
Too old, Tso said. He smiled slightly.
Been burning any wood struck by lightning?
No.
Listening Woman stood, face stern, staring past him with her blind eyes. Listen, Old Man, she said, I think you better tell me more about how these sand paintings got messed up. If you’re worried about people knowing about it, Anna here can go away behind the hogan.
Then nobody knows but you and me. And I don’t tell secrets.
Hosteen Tso smiled, very slightly. Now nobody knows but me, he said, and I don’t tell secrets either.
Maybe it will help tell why you’re sick, Listening Woman said. It sounds like witchery to me. Sand paintings getting messed up. If there was more than one sand painting at a time, then that would be doing the ceremonial wrong. That would be turning the blessing around. That would be witch business. If you been fooling around with the Navajo Wolves, then you’re going to need a different kind of cure.
Tsos face was stubborn now. Understand this, woman. A long time ago I made a promise. Some things I cant talk about.
The silence stretched, Listening Woman looking at whatever vision the blind see inside their skulls, Hosteen Tso staring out across the mesa, and Anna Atcitty, her face expressionless, waiting for the outcome of this contest.
I forgot to tell you, Tso said. On the same day the sand paintings got ruined, I killed a frog.
Listening Woman looked startled. How? she asked. In the complex Navajo metaphysics, the concept that would evolve into frogs was one of the Holy People. To kill the animals or insects which represented such holy thoughts violated a very basic taboo and was known to bring on crippling diseases.
I was climbing among the rocks, Tso said. A boulder fell down and crushed the frog.
Before the sand paintings were messed up? Or after?
After, Tso said. He paused. I talk no more about the sand paintings. I’ve told all that I can tell. The promise was to my father, and to the father of my father. If I have a ghost sickness, it would be a sickness from my great-grandfathers ghost, because I was where his ghost might be. I can tell you no more.
Listening Woman’s expression was grim. Why you want to waste your money, Old Man?
she asked. You get me to come all the way out here to find out what kind of a cure you need. Now you wont tell me what I need to know.
Tso sat motionless, looking straight ahead.
Listening Woman waited, frowning. God damn it! she said. Some things I got to know.
You think you been around some witches. Just being around them skin-walkers can make you sick. I got to know more about it.
Tso said nothing.
How many witches?
It was dark, Tso said. Maybe two.
Did they do anything to you? Blow anything at you? Throw corpse powder on you?
Anything like that?
No, Tso said.
Why not? Mrs. Cigarette asked. Are you a Navajo Wolf yourself? You one of them witches?
Tso laughed. It was a nervous sound. He glanced at Anna Atcitty a look which asked help.
I’m no skinwalker, he said.
It was dark, said Listening Woman, almost mockingly. But you said it was daytime. Were you in the witches den?
Tsos embarrassment turned to anger. Woman, he said, I told you I couldn’t talk about where it was. I made a promise. We will talk about that no more.
Big secret, Mrs. Cigarette said. Her tone was sarcastic.
Yes, Tso said. A secret.
She made an impatient gesture. Well, hell, she said. You want to waste your money, no use me wasting my time. If I don’t hear anything, or if I get it wrong, its because you wouldn’t tell me enough to know anything. Now Anna will take me to where I can hear the voice-in-the-earth. Don’t mess with the painting on your chest. When I get back I will try to tell you what sing you need.
Wait, Tso said. He hesitated. One more thing. Do you know how to send a letter to somebody who went on the Jesus Road?