Sacred Clowns

find it, lead them across the south fork of Chico Arroyo and thence to the place of Gray Old Lady Benally, who was some sort of paternal clan relative of Delmar’s. Blizzard was driving, giving Chee a rest. It was early afternoon, and both were tired of driving down bumpy dirt roads, tired of searching for people who weren’t at home, of asking questions of people who didn’t know the answer – and maybe wouldn’t have told them if they did know. Besides, Chee’s back hurt. His lower back, about where the hips connect.

“Well,” Blizzard said. He had been silent so long that Chee had forgotten what they were talking about. “Maybe not exactly those words, but he got the idea.” He gestured out the windshield. “Look at that,” he said. “Those colors. In the clouds and in the sky and in the grass. I think I could get used to this. Nothing much to do out here in the boonies, but lots to look at.”

Chee shifted his thoughts from back pain to landscape. Indeed it was beautiful. The sun was in its autumn mode, low in the southwest, and shadows slanted away from every juniper. They formed zebra stripes where the slopes ran north and a polka-dot pattern where they slanted. The grass was never really green in this land of little rain. Now it was a golden autumn tan with streaks of silver and white where the sickle-shaped seeds of grama were waving, tinted blue here and there by distance and shadow. Miles away, beyond the hills, the vertical slopes of Chivato Mesa formed a wall. Above the mesa stood the serene blue shape of Tsodzil, the Turquoise Mountain which First Man had built as one of the four sacred corner posts of Navajo Country. And over all that, the great, arching, multilayered sky – the thin, translucent fan of ice crystals still glittering in the full sun. Thousands of feet lower, a scattering of puffy gray-white cumulus clouds – outriders of the storm the weatherman had been predicting – marched eastward ahead of the wind.

“It’s beautiful. I’ll give you that,” Blizzard said. “But you need some way to pull it together a lot better. Everything is too damn far apart.”

“You get used to that, too,” Chee said. “Somebody once wrote a book about it. They called it The Land of Room Enough, and Time.”

“We’re sure wasting enough of that today,” Blizzard said. “You keeping track of the mileage?”

“The man said it was 16.3 miles from the gas pump at the trading post,” Chee said. “That ought to be it there.”

Up ahead, tracks led from the gravel into the roadside borrow ditch, climbed out of it, crossed a cattle guard between two fence posts, and wandered erratically through the grass toward the horizon, disappearing on down- slopes and reappearing on ridges.

“Not exactly the Pennsylvania Turnpike,” Blizzard said. “And when we get down it, Gray Lady what’s-her-name won’t be home.”

“She’s home,” Chee said. “But it’ll turn out she’s the wrong Mrs. Benally.”

“She won’t be home. I’ll bet you,” Blizzard said. He reached for his billfold.

“You lose,” Chee said. He pointed. “See the old boot stuck on the fence post? The toe’s pointed in. If it’s pointed out, they’re gone to town and you save yourself the drive.”

Blizzard stared at him, impressed. “My God,” he said. “That’s pretty damn clever. Wonder if us Cheyennes figured out anything like that.”

“You’ve really never been to your reservation? Never lived out there with your people at all?”

“Just once,” Blizzard said. “When my dad’s mother died, we went out for the funeral. I think we just stayed couple of days. I remember the night. I was little and about all I could think of was how cold it was in my uncle’s shack. And I remember the other kids didn’t seem friendly.”

“You were a town boy,” Chee said. “They were country kids. Bashful. They figured you’d be stuck-up.” He grinned, trying to imagine this hardassed cop as a boy. “I bet you were, too.”

The dirt track to the Benally place proved to be smoother than the washboard gravel of Route 7028. It led a mile and a half to an expanse of packed dirt on which stood a log hogan with a dirt roof and one of those small frame houses which, before the era of aluminum mobile homes, were hauled around on flatbed oil-company trucks to shelter crews of drilling rigs. It had been painted white once but not much paint had survived the winters. Two standard fifty-five-gallon oil drums stood on a platform beside the door. An empty corral was behind it, with too many poles missing to make it useful, and behind the corral, a brush arbor sagged.

A woman with a shawl over her head leaned in the open doorway, watching while Blizzard parked. To Chee, she looked about eighty, or a little older, with a once-round face now shrunken by the years.

“I hope you are well, Grandmother,” he said in Navajo. He told her his mother’s clan, and his father’s, and that he was a tribal policeman. “And this man beside me is a Cheyenne Indian. His people were part of those who beat General Custer. And we have come to find out if you can help us with a problem.”

Gray Old Lady recited her clans, including being born to the Bitter Water People of Delmar Kanitewa’s father. She invited them in, signaled them to seat themselves on a bench beside the table, and offered them coffee. While the pot heated on the wood stove against the wall, Chee made his pitch. It was the fifth time he’d made it since morning and he hurried through it, making sure the old woman knew they didn’t want to arrest the boy – only to talk to him.

She poured the coffee into two tin cups. The pot held only enough for a half-cup for Chee and Blizzard. None for her. She put it back on the shelf.

“I know the boy,” she said. “My grandson’s son. We called him Sheep Chaser. But I haven’t seen him this year. Not for a long time.”

Chee sipped the coffee. It was strong and stale. Through the doorway into the other room he could see a form lying motionless under a blanket. “Does Sheep Chaser have any good friends around here? Somebody he might be visiting?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “He goes to live with his mother’s people. The Tano People. I don’t know anything about him anymore.”

Which was exactly what Chee had expected to hear. He translated the gist of it to Blizzard. Blizzard nodded and grunted. “Tell her I said thank you very much for all the assistance,” Blizzard said.

“We thank you,” Chee said. He nodded toward the doorway. “Is someone in your family ill?”

She turned and looked into the bedroom. “That is my husband,” she said. “He is so old that he does not know who he is anymore. He has even forgotten how to walk and how to say words.”

“Is there anyone helping you?” Chee said. “Taking care of things?”

“There is the bilagaana from the mission at Thoreau,” she said. “He comes in his truck and keeps our water barrel filled and twice a week he brings us food. But this week he hasn’t come.”

Chee felt sick. “Is his name Eric Dorsey?”

Gray Old Lady produced an ancient-sounding chuckle. “We call him our begadoche. Our water sprinkler. Because he brings our water. And because he makes us laugh.” The memory of laughter produced a small, toothless smile. “He has this thing, like a duck, and he pretends to make it talk.” But the smile went away and she drew her hands up to her chest, looking worried. “Except this week, he didn’t come.”

“How much water do you have?” Chee asked.

“One barrel is empty,” she said. “The other one, maybe about this much.” She demonstrated six inches of water with her hands. “When he comes he always looks into the barrels, and last week he said he would fill them when he came this time. But he didn’t come.”

Blizzard had said polite words to the old woman in English and was walking back to the car. She kept her eyes on Chee, looking worried.

“Do you think he will come next week?” she said. “If he doesn’t come next week I will have to use less water.”

“I will send someone out here to fill your water barrels, Grandmother,” Chee said. “I will send somebody from the mission at Thoreau or somebody from the tribal office at Crownpoint. And when they come you must tell them that you need help.”

“But the bilagaana has helped us,” she said, looking puzzled. “In many ways.” She pointed at the rocking chair. It was beautifully made, with simple lines, and looked new. “He made that for us, at the school I think. He said that chair would be better for my back when I sit beside the bed. And with the duck he would make my husband laugh.”

“Grandmother,” Chee said. “I think the bilagaana who helped you is dead.”

She seemed not to hear him. “He brings us food and he fills our water barrels and he took my man in to see the bilagaana doctors. And he helped us when my daughter had rugs to sell. He told us