Then he opened it.
My darling Jim,
Why am I writing you a letter? Because I want to make sure I manage to say just what I want to say so that you understand it. Maybe that will help me understand it, too.
What I have to say is that I have a friend named Theresa McGill who when she was in college fell in love with a man who was just finishing with the seminary—learning to be a Catholic priest. She loved him, maybe not as much as I love you, but she loved him a lot. And they got married, which meant, of course, he didn't go through with being ordained a priest. He got a job teaching, and they had a daughter, and I thought for a long time that she was happy. But last summer she told me how it really was. She'd notice him being very quiet. Maybe just looking out the window or sitting out in the backyard alone. Or taking long walks by himself. And one Saturday afternoon she followed him, and she saw him go into a church. An empty church. No services. No one there. But he stayed inside for an hour. Theresa told me that she has been living with that. She loves her husband, and she knows she deprived him of something that was terribly important to him. And always will be important.
Well, that's what I'm trying to say. I don't want that to happen to us, so I want to tell you that I've changed my mind. I won't marry you on my terms—that we get off the reservation and raise our family somewhere else. Maybe I will marry you on your terms—that we live here among your people. If you still want to. But I've got to have time to think about it. So I'm going home—back to Wisconsin. I'm going to talk to my family, and walk around in the snow, and go ice skating, and see what happens to my mind. But I'm not going to change my mind about one thing—I'm not going to force my Jim Chee to be a white man…
Chee put the letter on the tabletop beside the envelope and tried to examine himself for a reaction. He was tired, and suddenly sleepy as well. He was not surprised, particularly. This letter was exactly in character for Mary. Exactly. He should have known it. Perhaps he did. Otherwise, why the lack of surprise? And what else did he feel? A sort of blank numbness, as if all this concerned someone else. That was fatigue too, he guessed. Tomorrow the numbness would be gone. And tomorrow he'd decide what to do. Call Mary, probably. But what would he say to her? He couldn't seem to think what it would be. He found himself thinking, instead, of Leo Littleben, Junior, and wondering if Littleben really was going to be the last man alive to know the Ghostway ceremony.
He got up, already stiff, poured himself a cup of coffee, and leaned against the sink while he sipped it. When he finished it, he would go to bed and sleep until spring. And when he awoke, whenever that was, he would think about Mary Landon's letter and what he should do about it. He would also get in touch with Frank Sam Nakai and ask his uncle to arrange for Hosteen Littleben to sing a Ghostway cure for him. And then, he thought, he would talk to Littleben. Feel him out about what he would charge Chee to teach him the ritual. It would be a good thing for a younger man to know it.
And thinking that, Chee fell across his bed with his bathrobe still on and went, almost instantly, to sleep.
Tony hillerman is past president of the Mystery Writers of America and has received their Edgar and Grand Master Awards. Among his other honors are the Center for the American Indian's Ambassador Award, the Silver Spur Award for best novel set in the West, and the Navajo Tribe's Special Friend Award. His many novels include Finding Moon, Sacred Clowns, Coyote Waits, Talking God, A Thief of Time, and Dance Hall of the Dead. He is also the author of The Great Taos Bank Robbery. He lives with his wife, Marie, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.