Now she was hugging Chee to her. "He wanted to see you before he dies," she said.
"Dies? What is it? What happened?" It didn't seem possible to Chee that Hosteen Nakai could be dying. Blue Lady had no answer to that question. She led him over to the trees and motioned him into a rocking chair beside the bed. "I will get the lantern," she said.
Hosteen Nakai was studying him. "Ah," he said, "Long Thinker has come to talk to me. I had hoped for that."
Chee had no idea what to say. He said: "How are you, my father? Are you sick?"
Nakai produced a raspy laugh, which provoked a racking cough. He fumbled on the bed cover, retrieved a plastic device, inserted it into his nostrils and inhaled. The tube connected to it disappeared behind the bed. Connected, Chee presumed, to an oxygen tank. Nakai was trying to breathe deeply, his lungs making an odd sound. But he was smiling at Chee.
"What happened to you?" Chee asked. "I made a mistake," Nakai said. "I went to a bilagaana doctor at Farmington. He told me I was sick. They put me in the hospital and then they broke my ribs, and cut out around in there and put me back together." His voice was trailing off as he finished that, forcing a pause. When he had breath again, he chuckled. "I think they left out some parts. Now I have to get my air through this tube."
Blue Lady was hanging a propane lantern on the limb overhanging the head of the bed.
"He has lung cancer," she said. "They took out one lung, but it had already spread to the other one."
"And all sorts of other places, too, that you don't want to even know about," Nakai said, grinning. "When I die, my chindi will be awful mad. He'll be full of malignant tumors. That's why I made them move my bed out here. I don't want that chindi to be infecting this hogan. I want it out here where the wind will blow it away."
"When you die, it will be because you just got too old to want to live anymore," Chee said. He put his hand on Nakai's arm. Where he had always felt hard muscle, he now felt only dry skin between his palm and the bone. "It will be a long time from now. And remember what Changing Woman taught the people: If you die of natural old age, you don't leave a chindi behind."
"You young people—" Nakai began, but a grimace cut off the words. He squeezed his eyes shut, and the muscles of his face clenched and tightened. Blue Lady was at his side, holding a glass of some liquid. She gripped his hand.
"Time for the pain medicine," she said.
He opened his eyes. "I must talk a little first," he said. "I think he came to ask me something."
"You talk a little later. The medicine will give you some time for that." And Blue Lady raised his head from the pillow and gave him the drink. She looked at Chee. "Some medicine they gave him to let him sleep. Morphine maybe," she said. "It used to work very good. Now it helps a little."
"I should let him rest," Chee said. "You can't," she said. "Besides, he was waiting for you."
"For me?"
"Three people he wanted to see before he goes," she said. "The other two already came." She adjusted the oxygen tube back into Nakai's nostrils, dampened his forehead with a cloth, bent low and put her lips to his cheek, and walked back into the hogan.
Chee stood looking down at Nakai, remembering boyhood, remembering the winter stories in his hogan, the summer stories at the fire beside the sheep-camp tent, remembering the time Nakai had caught him drunk, remembering kindness and wisdom. Then Nakai, eyes still closed, said: "Sit down. Be easy."
Chee sat.
"Now, tell me why you came."
"I came to see you."
"No. No. You didn't know I was sick. You are busy. Some reason brought you here. The last time it was about marrying a girl, but if you married her you didn't invite me to do the ceremony. So I think you didn't do it." Nakai's words came slowly, so softly Chee leaned forward to hear.
"I didn't marry her," Chee said.
"Another woman problem then?"
"No," Chee said.
The morphine was having its effect. Nakai was relaxing a little. "So you came all the way up here to tell me you have no problems to talk to me about. You are the only contented man in all of Dinetah."
"No," Chee said. "Not quite."
"So tell me then," Nakai said. "What brings you?"
So Chee told Hosteen Frank Sam Nakai of the death of Benjamin Kinsman, the arrest of the Hopi eagle poacher, of Jano's unlikely story of the first and second eagles. He told him of the death sentence and even of Janet Pete. And finally Chee said: "Now I am finished."
Nakai had listened so silently that at times Chee—had he not known the man so well—might have thought he was asleep. Chee waited. Twilight had faded into total darkness while he talked and now the high, dry night sky was a-dazzle with stars.
Chee looked at them, remembered how the impatient Coyote spirit had scattered them across the darkness. He hunted out the summer constellations Nakai had taught him to find, and as he found them, tried to match them with the stories they carried in their medicine bundles. And as he thought, he prayed to the Creator, to all the spirits who cared about such things, that the medicine had worked, that Nakai was sleeping, that Nakai would never awaken to his pain.
Nakai sighed. He said: "In a little while I will ask you questions," and was silent again.
Blue Lady came out with a blanket, spread it carefully over Nakai and adjusted the lantern. "He likes the starlight," she said. "Do you need this?"
Chee shook his head. She turned off the flame and walked back into the hogan.
"Could you catch the eagle without harming it?"
"Probably," Chee said. "I tried twice when I was young. I caught the second one."
"Checking the talons and the feathers for dried blood, would the laboratory kill it then?"
Chee considered, remembering the ferocity of eagles, remembering the priorities of the laboratory. "Some oft hem would try to save it, but it would die."
Nakai nodded. "You think Jano tells the truth?"
"Once I was sure there was only one eagle. Now I
don't know. Probably he is lying."
"But you don't know?"
"No."
"And never would know. Even after the federals kill the Hopi you would wonder."
"Of course I would."
Nakai was silent again. Chee found another of the constellations. The small one, low on the horizon. He could not remember its Navajo name, nor the story it carried.
"Then you must get the eagle," Nakai said. "Do you still keep your medicine jish? You have pollen?"
"Yes," Chee said.
"Then take your sweat bath. Make sure you remember the hunting songs. You must tell the eagle, just as we told the buck deer, of our respect for it. Tell it the reason we must send it with our blessings away to its next life. Tell it that it dies to save a valuable man of the Hopi people."
"I will," Chee said. "And tell Blue Lady I need the medicine that makes me sleep."
But Blue Lady had already sensed that. She was coming.
This time there were pills as well as a drink from the cup.
"I will try to sleep now," Nakai said, and smiled at Chee. "Tell the eagle that he will also be saving you, my grandson."
Chapter Twenty-two
WHERE WAS ACTING LIEUTENANT Jim Chee? He'd gone to Phoenix yesterday and hadn't checked in this morning. Maybe he was still there. Maybe he was on his way back. Check later. Leaphorn hung up and considered what to do. First he'd take a shower. He flicked on the television, still tuned to the Flagstaff station he'd been watching before sleep overcame him, and turned on the shower.
They had good showerheads in this Tuba City motel, a fine, hard jet of hot water better than the one in his bathroom. He soaped, scrubbed, listened to the voice of the television newscaster reporting what seemed to be a traffic death, then a quarrel at a school board meeting. Then he heard "—murder of Navajo policeman Benjamin Kinsman." He turned off the shower and walked, dripping soapy water, to stand before the set.