Sacred Clowns

the man at the trading post was not paying enough. And he sold them for us and got a lot more money.”

“Grandmother,” Chee said. “Listen to me.”

But she didn’t want to listen. “The trader had been giving us fifty dollars but Begadoche got three hundred dollars once, and once it was more than six hundred. And when I had to sell my necklace and my bracelets because we didn’t have any money he told me the pawn place in Gallup didn’t give us enough, and he knew someone who would pay a lot more because they were old and he got them out of pawn and the man he knew gave us a lot more money.”

Chee held up his hand. “Grandmother. Listen. The bilagaana won’t come anymore because he is dead. I will have to send someone else. Do you understand?”

Gray Old Lady Benally understood. She must have understood all along because even while she was talking her cheeks were wet with tears.

Chapter 11

LOOKING BACK on it, trying to analyze how it came to be, Chee finally decided it was partly bad luck and mostly his own fault. They had left Blizzard’s car at Gallup. Bad luck. It meant they had to head back in the direction of Chee’s place to get it. Bad luck, again. It happened that way because the very last people they’d wasted their time checking lived over by the Standing Rock Chapter House. So they drifted homeward past Coyote Canyon on Navajo Route 9. That took them right past the Yah-Tah-Hay intersection, which put them almost as close to Chee’s trailer in Window Rock as to Blizzard’s car in Gallup. And somewhere before then Blizzard had said he was just too damned tired of driving to drive home. That brought them to the part that was Chee’s own fault.

“Why don’t you get a motel room in Gallup?” Chee said. “Then you can just call your office tomorrow. Find out if they’re ready to let us give up on this one.”

“I’ll just sleep in my car,” Blizzard had said.

It was at that point Chee had screwed himself up once again. Maybe it was being tired himself – not wanting to drive into Gallup and then back to Window Rock – or maybe it was feeling sort of guilty for thinking Blizzard was such a hardass when actually he was just new and green. Or maybe it was sympathy for Blizzard – a lonesome stranger in a strange land – or maybe he was feeling a little lonely himself. Whatever the motive, Chee had said, “Why don’t you just bed down at my place? It’s better than the backseat of a car.”

And Blizzard, of course, said, “Good idea.”

And so there they were, Blizzard deciding he’d sleep on the couch and saying he’d volunteer to cook supper unless Chee wanted to go back into Window Rock and eat someplace there. Then the telephone rang.

“It’s Janet,” the caller said. “I got the impression the other day at the Navajo Inn that you wanted to talk to me about something. Was I right?”

“Absolutely,” Chee said.

“So I have an idea. Remember you telling me about that old movie that used Navajos as extras, and they were supposed to be Cheyennes but they were talking Navajo, and saying all the wrong things? The one that they always bring back to that drive-in movie at Gallup? Sort of a campy deal, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show?”

“Yeah,” Chee said. “Cheyenne Autumn. A couple of my relatives are extras in it.”

“Well, it’s back again and I thought-”

But Blizzard was eavesdropping. He overheard. He entered the conversation. “Cheyenne Autumn,” he said. “Yeh!”

“Who was that?” Janet said. “You have company?”

“A BIA policeman. Harold Blizzard.”

“You told me about him,” Janet said. “He’s a Cheyenne himself, isn’t he? I bet he’d like to see that movie. Why don’t you ask him to come along?”

“I’m sure he’s already seen it.”

“No, I haven’t seen it,” Blizzard said, in a voice Chee felt was inappropriately loud. “I’ve heard about it, but I never have seen it.”

“He hasn’t seen it,” Janet said. “I heard him. Why don’t you bring him along? Don’t you think it would be fun to get a Cheyenne’s reaction?”

Chee didn’t think so. Janet didn’t know this Cheyenne. He glanced at Blizzard, sitting on the edge of his couch, looking expectant. “You wanna go?”

“Sure,” Blizzard said. “I’d love to go. If I won’t be in the way.”

“We can talk after the movie,” Janet said.

Of course. But they could have also talked during the movie. And talking about the movie during the movie – celebrating the small victory of The People over the white man that this John Ford classic represented – was the reason Navajos still came to see it, and the reason the owner of the Gallup Drive-In still brought it back. And besides talking during the movie, if things developed as Chee had hoped, there were things to do besides talk.

So here they were in Janet Pete’s Ford Escort, parked fifth row from the screen with pickup trucks on both sides of them, with Janet sitting beside him and Sergeant Harold Blizzard hulking over them in the backseat. But one might as well make the best of whatever fate was offering.

“Right in here,” Chee said. “Just a minute now. She’ll be the first girl you see doing the drumming. There she is. That’s Irma. My oldest sister.”

The scene was solemn. Three Navajos playing the roles of three Cheyenne shamans were about to pray to God that the U.S. government would keep its treaty promises – a naive concept, which bad drawn derisive hoots and horn honkings from the rows of pickup trucks and cars. A row of Cheyenne maidens were tapping methodically at drums, accompanying the chanted prayers.

“How about the song?” Blizzard asked. “Is that Navajo, too?”

Blizzard was leaning forward, chin on the seat back, his big ugly face between Janet and Chee.

“Sort of,” Chee said. “It’s a kind of modification of a song they sing at Girl Dances, but they slowed it down to make it sound solemn.” This was not the way Chee had intended this date with Janet Pete to turn out.

Richard Widmark, commanding the cavalry detachment in charge of keeping order at this powwow between government bureaucrats and the Cheyenne, was now establishing himself as pro-Indian by making derogatory remarks about the reservation where the government was penning the tribe. Since the landscape at which Widmark was pointing was actually the long line of salmon-colored cliffs behind the Iyanbito Chapter House just south of Gallup, this produced more horn honking and a derisive shout from somewhere.

And so it went. Scenes came in which somber-looking Cheyenne leaders responded to serious questions in somber-sounding Navajo. When converted back into English by the translator the answers made somber sense.

But they produced more happy bedlam among the audience, and prompted the “What did he really say?” question from either Janet or Blizzard – and often both. What he really said tended to have something to do with the size of the colonel’s penis, or some other earthy and humorous irrelevancy. Chee would sanitize this a bit or put the humor in the context of Navajo customs or taboos, or explain that the celebratory honking was merely noting the screen appearance of somebody’s kinfolks.

It was a long movie, but not long enough for Chee to come up with a plan that would have disposed of Blizzard. The most obvious solution was to simply drive by the Navajo Nation Inn, drop him off, and tell him you’d pick him up in the morning. But that was blown by the fact that Blizzard had left his briefcase at Chee’s place and the briefcase contained (as Blizzard had proudly told him) “everything you have to have if you get caught somewhere overnight.” Coming up with something better, such as sending Blizzard off to the snack bar at the projection center to buy another bucket of popcorn and driving off without him, was ruled out by Janet’s unexpected behavior. She seemed to have developed a liking for the man, laughing at his jokes, engaging him in discussions of their mutual childhoods as city Indians, quizzing him about what he knew about his tribe, and so