Chee’s passion on this subject was showing in his voice and Janet’s expression made him aware of it.
He made a wry face and shook his head. “Well, that’s why we Navajos have endured. Survived with our culture alive. This philosophy of hozho kept us alive. And some of the shamans I know, mostly the younger ones, they split a long ceremony over two weekends, so working people can take part. That’s the way I’d do it. And Hosteen Nakai knows it, and it’s poison to him, and the other two. They say done that way, the ceremony does more harm than good.”
“They won’t let me vote,” Janet said. “But I would agree with you. They sound like some fundamentalist Christians. Can’t see the metaphor in the gospel.”
Chee didn’t comment. The school bus was coming over the hill.
“You went up there to see about me, didn’t you? To find out if I was taboo?”
Chee nodded.
“What did you find out?”
“Just a second,” Chee said. “I want you to meet somebody.”
Ernie had climbed off the bus. He stood looking at Chee’s pickup, then walked toward them, grinning.
“Who?” Janet said.
“Ernie,” Chee said. “Ernie who is the greatest.” Ernie was standing at Janet’s window, looking at her and then at Chee.
“Hello,” he said. “I saw mister before. You came back, didn’t you? Now do you want to see Grandfather’s pickup truck?”
“Not today, Ernie,” Jim said. “But we want to talk to you a little.”
“It’s green,” Ernie said. “Real pretty.”
“Is that backpack full of your homework?” Janet asked.
“I have to draw pictures tonight,” Ernie said. “When Grandfather gets home from work, he helps me.”
“After he cooks supper?”
“After that. Now he lets me peel the potatoes. And he let me cook the oatmeal yesterday. And he lets me drive the truck.” Ernie turned away from the window and pointed at the dirt road which wandered toward infinity behind Clement Hoski’s place. “Down there,” Ernie said. “He keeps his foot on the gas but he lets me steer.”
“I’ll bet that’s fun,” Janet said.
Ernie laughed, his face contorted with delight. “Lots of fun,” he agreed.
“I brought something for your grandpa,” Chee said. He opened the glove box, took out a Quikprint sack, and extracted from it a bumper sticker. He unfolded it and showed it to Ernie.
“What does it say?”
“It says, ‘I have the world champion grandson,’” Chee said. “That’s you. You’re the grandson, and your grandpa knows you’re a champion.”
Ernie reached across Janet, took the sticker, and inspected it. “Grandfather’s teaching me to read,” Ernie said. “But I don’t do it yet.”
“It’s hard,” Janet said. “You really have to work at it.”
“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 funny red and green and black tartan, and the MacDougals are in no way linked to anybody named Chee.”
“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: