He got up, poured coffee from the steaming pot, handed a mug to Leaphorn, and sat again.
“You know my brother was the leader of our koshare society. Do you know about the koshares?”
“A little,” Leaphorn said. “I’ve watched them at kachina dances. The clowns, with the striped body paint, making people laugh. I know their duties are more than just to entertain.”
“In our pueblo, and in some of the others, men who have jobs in towns and live away from us can’t be members of the most sacred societies, the kachina societies. They can’t spend enough time in the kivas. So they become koshares, and that is sacred too, but in a different way.” He paused, seeking a way to explain. “To outsiders, they look like clowns and what they do looks like clowning. Like foolishness. But it is more than that. The koshare have another role. I guess you could say they are our ethical police. It’s their job to remind us when we drift away from the way that was taught us. They show us how far short we humans are of the perfection of the spirits.”
He paused, an opportunity for a question. Leaphorn said, “An old friend of mine, a Hopi, told me their koshares are like policemen who use laughter instead of guns and scorn instead of jails.”
Sayesva nodded.
“You’ve been to kachina ceremonials,” he said. “Lots of Navajos like to come to them.”
“Sure,” Leaphorn agreed. “We are taught to respect your religion.”
“Then you’ve seen the koshare doing everything wrong, everything backward, being greedy, reminding us of how badly we behave. That’s the purpose. If you had been to this last one, you would have seen the clowns come in. They work with the clown team, to help teach the lesson. This time one of the clowns pulled in a wagon, and one of my cousins was there with the big billfold and the big dollars play-acting, pretending to buy sacred things. That’s what my brother had decided to warn the people about that day. Selling things they shouldn’t sell. What Delmar brought him in that package, I don’t know. But I think it must have been something to put into the little wagon. Something symbolic.”
Teddy Sayesva looked at Leaphorn over his glasses. Shrugged. Sipped his coffee.
“Something made of dark wood and silver?” Leaphorn said.
Sayesva looked up from his cup, shook his head, produced a wry smile. “Silver, too? Black wood and silver?”
“We think so. We found a form for casting something in metal. About this big.” Leaphorn made a small, round shape with his hands. “And with letters in it.”
“Found it where?”
“In the school crafts shop at Thoreau.”
“Where that man was killed?”
Leaphorn nodded. “Do you know what it was?”
Sayesva’s expression said he knew, and that the knowledge hurt. But he didn’t answer the question.
“Whatever it was, it seems to have been made in the shop that morning. We think Mr. Dorsey probably made it. We think it was taken about the time he was killed. Maybe before, maybe after, but about that time. A friend of Delmar’s says Delmar went to the shop about that time to pick up something the friend had made. When the friend came to pick up Delmar, Delmar had the package with him.”
Sayesva shook his head, rejecting what he was hearing. He looked very tired. “You think Delmar killed this teacher?”
Leaphorn shook his head. “We have a suspect in jail at Crownpoint,” he said. “He’s a Navajo named Eugene Ahkeah, a maintenance man at the school. He was seen around the school about the time of the homicide. A box full of items stolen from the shop turned up under his house.”
Sayesva looked relieved. “So you just want to know what was in the package?”
“Whatever you can tell us,” Leaphorn said.
“I guess it was the Lincoln Cane,” Sayesva said.
“Not the cane itself, of course,” Sayesva said. “I mean a copy of it.” He nodded, agreeing with his own guess. “I guess my brother had a replica made. I guess he must have sent Delmar to get it for him.”
Leaphorn waited. Teddy Sayesva was thinking, considering the implications of what he had concluded. Leaphorn gave him time to think. And then he said, “You think your brother had it put in the wagon? I heard that when the wagon was pulled around the plaza, past the crowd, the people quit laughing when it went by. I heard they got quiet. Serious.”
“Yes,” Sayesva said.
Leaphorn waited. “I thank you for what you’ve told me so far,” he said. “Now we know what we’re looking for. Sometimes that helps you find something, but it may not help this time. Whoever killed your brother may have taken it.”
Sayesva acknowledged that with an absent nod.
“Your brother was killed for some reason. Could it be because he put the cane in the wagon? Would that suggest that it was being sold?”
Sayesva rose. “I don’t think I know anything else to tell you,” he said. He moved toward the door but stopped short of opening it. “No,” he said. “No. Francis wouldn’t have got someone to make a copy of that cane.” He shook his head, hand still on the doorknob.
Leaphorn, who had been rising, sat down again.
“Why not?” he asked.
For a moment Leaphorn thought Teddy Sayesva hadn’t heard the question. He waited, aware of the autumn smells in this small, closed kitchen – the aroma of chili drying somewhere, of cornhusks, of sacks of pinto beans and onions.
Sayesva left the door and sat down across the table. “Why not? Well, he and Bert Penitewa – Bert’s the governor – they were friends. They disagreed on a lot of things but they respected one another. He wouldn’t insult the governor like that. Putting that cane in the wagon like it was for sale was the worst kind of insult.”
“Officer Chee said the wagon was full of things to be sold,” Leaphorn said. “He thought it was sort of a general protest against people selling artifacts with religious value.”
“Sure,” Sayesva said. “The koshare have done that before. Warned against selling sacred things, I mean. But the cane was another matter. There aren’t any rules, exactly, about what the clowns can do, or what they can ridicule. But they do follow traditions. And traditionally, the clowns don’t get involved in politics and they don’t get personally insulting. Putting that cane in there was like accusing Bert of being willing to sell it – and God knows what some collector would pay for something that old and sent out by Abraham Lincoln himself. It would be a personal insult because the governor is the keeper of the cane. A sort of a sacred trust.”
“So that broke with tradition? I mean putting the cane in the wagon?”
Sayesva nodded. “Everybody’s been talking about it. Maybe as much about that as about what happened to my brother. Francis was a valuable man. He didn’t do foolish things. People wonder what he was telling them.”
“If your brother didn’t have that cane made, do you have any idea who might have done it?”
Sayesva thought, shook his head. “No idea.”
They sat, with Teddy Sayesva considering what he now knew along with what he had known before – considering how a cane taken from a murdered man’s shop came to be made part of the symbolic cargo of a clown’s toy wagon. Leaphorn was content to give him time. He let his eyes wander.
Sayesva’s kitchen was the kitchen of a man who lived alone. Leaphorn saw the same untidy clues he saw in his house since Emma’s death, the grimy stove, the cluttered sink, the unkempt shelves. He saw the sad look of loneliness.
“I talked to Henry Agoyo,” Sayesva said, finally. “Henry is the chief clown – the one in charge of the team that does the skit.” Sayesva hesitated, looked at Leaphorn, made a wry face, and continued. “I’m talking too much. About things we don’t talk about. But something very strange has happened here. I think we should try to understand it. I talked to Henry. I asked him what he knew about putting the cane in the wagon. Why in the world
