Chee heard the voice of Bentwoman's Daughter, loud and patient, explaining the visitor to someone who apparently was deaf, saying that he wanted to see "Ashie Begay's granddaughter." So she's been here, Chee thought. Almost certainly, she's been here. And then the blanket curtain pushed aside and a wheelchair emerged.
The woman in the chair was blind. Chee saw that instantly. Her eyes were open, aimed past him at the front door, but they had the clouded look of the glaucoma that takes such a heavy toll among the old of his people. Blind, and partially deaf, and immensely old. Her hair was a cloud of fluffy white, and her face, toothless, had collapsed upon itself into a mass of wrinkles. This was Bentwoman.
Chee stood and introduced himself again, talking slowly and very loud, and making sure he followed all of the traditional courtesies his mother had taught him. With that out of the way, he paused a moment for a response. None came.
"Do I speak clearly enough, my grandmother?" he asked. The old woman nodded, a barely perceptible motion.
"I will tell you then why I have come here," Chee said. He started at the beginning, with going to the hogan of Ashie Begay, and what he found there, and of meeting Margaret Billy Sosi there later, and what Margaret had told him, and what he had forgotten to ask her. Finally he was finished.
Bentwoman was motionless. She's gone to sleep, Chee thought. This is going to take time.
Bentwoman's Daughter stood behind the chair, holding its handles. She sighed.
"The girl must go home," Bentwoman said in Navajo. Her voice was slow and faint. "There is nothing for her here but trouble. She must go back to her family and live among them. She must live in Dinetah."
"I will take her back to her people," Chee said. "Can you help me find her?"
"Stay here," Bentwoman said. "She will come."
Chee glanced at Bentwoman's Daughter, inquiring.
"She took the bus," Bentwoman's Daughter said. "She went into the city when the sun came up. She said she would be back before it gets dark."
"It's getting dark now," Chee said. He was conscious of how elusive Margaret Sosi had been. Something was making him uneasy. The number written on Mrs. Day's calendar hung in his mind.
"Has anyone else been here looking for the girl?" Chee said. "Asking about her?"
Bentwoman's Daughter shook her head.
"When do you think she'll be back?"
"The bus comes every hour," Bentwoman said. "It stops down there where the map is. Every hour until midnight."
"About when does it stop?"
"Twenty minutes after the hour," Bentwoman's Daughter said. "When it's on time."
Chee glanced at his watch. It was five thirty-five. Two and a half miles to the bus stop, he guessed. She might be home in fifteen or twenty minutes. If she walked fast. If the bus was on time. If—
Bentwoman made a noise in her throat. "She should go home to her family," Bentwoman said. "She wants to find Ashie Begay, my grandson. Ashie Begay is dead."
It was an unequivocal statement. A fact stated without emotion.
Bentwoman's Daughter sighed again. She looked at Chee. "He was my nephew," she explained.
"Ashie Begay is dead?" Chee asked.
"He is dead," Bentwoman said.
"Did Margaret Sosi tell you this?"
"The girl thinks he is still alive," Bentwoman said. "I told her, but she believes what she wants to believe. The young sometimes do that."
Chee opened his mouth. Closed it. How should he frame the question?
"When I was young, I too believed what I wanted to believe. But you learn," the old woman said.
"Grandmother," Chee said. "How did you learn that Ashie Begay is dead?"
"From what you told me," Bentwoman said. "And from what the girl told me."
"I thought he might be alive," Chee said. "The girl is sure he is alive."
Bentwoman's eyes were closed now. She was asleep, Chee thought. Or dead. If she was breathing under those layers of blankets and shawls, Chee could see no trace of it. But apparently Bentwoman was simply mustering her strength for what she had to tell him.
"Ashie Begay has Tewa blood in him," Bentwoman said. "His grandmother was from Jemez. The Salt Clan went out toward the morning sun, beyond the Turquoise Mountain, to get some sheep one winter, and they came back with some children from Jemez. Some of them they sold back for corn and horses, but Ashie Begay's grandmother became the wife of one of the men in the Salt Clan and bore the child who was Ashie Begay's mother. So Ashie Begay has the blood in him of the People Who Call the Clouds. Tewa blood, and Salt Clan blood, and his father married into the Turkey Clan, and his mother's lineage was Standing Rock on her father's side. And all that has to be considered when you understand why I know Ashie Begay is dead."
Bentwoman paused, to catch her breath—which was laboring by now—or perhaps to allow Chee to comment. Chee had no comment to make. He didn't understand why Ashie Begay had to be dead. None of this had helped.
Bentwoman inhaled a labored breath, stirring her layers of coverings. She began explaining Ashie Begay's lineage in terms of the character of ancestors. Bentwoman's Daughter stood patiently behind the wheelchair, thinking her thoughts. Chee glanced at his watch. If the bus was on time, if Margaret Sosi had been on it, if she had walked rapidly, she should be within half a mile of here by now.
"So you see," Bentwoman was saying, "Ashie Begay, my grandson, has my blood in him too. All this blood combines, and it makes a certain kind of man. It makes the kind of man who would not have allowed the Gorman boy to die in his hogan. He would have been prudent. The Tewas are prudent. The Salt Clan is a prudent clan. He would have taken the Gorman boy out of the hogan so he could die in the safe, clean air. So the hogan would not be ruined by the chindi."
It had taken Bentwoman a long time to say all of this, with many pauses. Now she was silent, breathing heavily.
"But the hogan was broken," Chee said. "The smoke hole was closed. The north wall was broken open. Everything in it was gone."
"Was everything gone?" Bentwoman asked. "Nothing was left?"
"Nothing but trash," Chee said.
"Did you look?" Bentwoman asked.
"It was a chindi hogan," Chee said. "I did not go inside."
Bentwoman breathed. She coughed. She exhaled a long breath. She turned her blind eyes toward Chee, as if she could see him. "So only a belacani looked?"
"Yes," Chee said. "A white policeman." He knew what Bentwoman was suggesting.
She sat for a long time, her eyes closed again. Chee was aware of the changing light outside the window. The sky turning red with sunset. Darkness gathering. Margaret Sosi would be walking through that darkness. He remembered the telephone number on Mrs. Day's calendar. He wanted urgently to go and meet Margaret. He would ask her immediately what was said on that postcard. He would take no more chances.
"If Ashie Begay is alive," Bentwoman said, "one day I will hear it. Someone in the family will know and the word will come to me. If he is dead, it would not matter. But it matters because this child believes he is alive, and she will always look for him." Bentwoman paused again, catching her breath, turning her face toward Chee again. "She should be looking for other things. Not for a dead man."
"Yes," Chee said. "Grandmother, you are right."
"You think Ashie Begay is alive?"