The Blessing Way

Chapter 3

Bergen McKee approached his faculty mailbox on the morning of May 26 as he habitually approached it-with a faint tickle of expectation. Years of experience, of pulling out notices to the faculty, lecture handbills, and book advertisements, had submerged this quirk without totally extinguishing it. Sometimes when he had other things on his mind, McKee reached into the box without this brief flash of optimism, the thought that today it might offer some unimaginable surprise. But today as he walked through the doorway into the department secretary's outer office, said good morning to Mrs. Kreutzer, and made the right turn to reach the mail slots, he had no such distraction. If the delivery was as barren as usual, he would be required to turn his thoughts immediately to the problem of grading eighty-four final-examination papers by noon tomorrow. It was a dreary prospect.

'Did Dr. Canfield find you?' Mrs. Kreutzer was holding her head down slightly, looking at him through the top half of her bifocals.

'No ma'am. I haven't seen Jeremy for two or three days.'

The top envelope was from Ethnology Abstracts. The form inside notified him that his subscription had expired.

'He wanted you to talk to a woman,' Mrs. Kreutzer said. 'I think you just missed her.'

'O.K.,' McKee said. 'What about?' The second envelope contained a mimeographed form from Dr. Green officially reminding all faculty members of what they already knew-that final semester grades must be registered by noon, May 27.

'Something about the Navajo Reservation,' Mrs. Kreutzer said. 'She's trying to locate someone working out there. Dr. Canfield thought you might know where she could look.'

McKee grinned. It was more likely that Mrs. Kreutzer had decided the woman was unattached and of marriageable age, and might-in some mysterious way-find McKee attractive. Mrs. Kreutzer worried about people. He remembered then that he had met a woman leaving as he came into the Anthropology Building, a young woman with dark hair and dark eyes.

'Was she my type?' he asked. The third and last letter was postmarked Window Rock, Arizona, with the return address of the Division of Law and Order, Navajo Tribal Council. It would be from Joe Leaphorn. McKee put it into his pocket.

Mrs. Kreutzer was looking at him reproachfully, knowing what he was thinking, and not liking his tone. McKee felt a twinge of remorse.

'She seemed nice,' Mrs. Kreutzer said. 'I'd think you'd want to help her.'

'I'll do what I can,' he said.

'Jeremy told me you were going to the reservation with him this summer,' Mrs. Kreutzer said. 'I think that's nice.'

'It's not definite,' McKee said. 'I may have to take a summer-session course.'

'Let somebody else teach this summer,' Mrs. Kreutzer said. She looked at him over her glasses. 'You're getting pale.'

McKee knew he was not getting pale. His face, at the moment, was peeling from sunburn. But he also knew that Mrs. Kreutzer was speaking allegorically. He had once heard her give a Nigerian graduate student the same warning, and when the student had asked him what Mrs. Kreutzer could possibly have meant by it, McKee had explained that it meant she was worrying about him.

'You ought to tell them to go to hell,' Mrs. Kreutzer said, and the vehemence surprised McKee as much as the language. 'Everybody imposes on you.'

'Not really,' McKee said. 'Anyway, I don't mind.'

But as he walked down the hall toward his office he did mind, at least a little. George Everett had asked him to take his classes this summer, because Everett had an offer to handle an excavation in Guatemala, and it irritated McKee now to remember how sure Everett had been that good old Bergen would do him the favor. And he minded a little being the continuing object of Mrs. Kreutzer's pity. The cuckold needs no reminder of his horns and the reject no reminder of his failure.

He took the Law and Order envelope from his pocket and looked at it, neglecting his habitual glance through the hallway window at the chipping plaster on the rear of the Alumni Chapel. Instead he thought of how it had been to be twenty-seven years old in search of truth on the Navajo Reservation, still excited and innocent, still optimistic, not yet taught that he was less than a man. He couldn't quite recapture the feeling.

It wasn't until he had opened the blinds, turned on the air conditioner and registered the familiar creak of his swivel chair as he lowered his weight into it that he opened the letter.

Dear Berg:

I asked around some in re your inquiry about witchcraft cases and it looks only moderately promising. There's been some gossip down around the No Agua Wash' country, and an incident or two over in the Lukachukais east of Chinle, and some talk of trouble west of the Colorado River gorge up on the Utah border. None of it sounds very threatening or unusual-if that's what you're looking for. I gather the No Agua business involves trouble between two outfits in the Salt Cedar Clan over some grazing land. The business up in Utah seems to center on an old Singer with a bad reputation, and our people in the Chinle subagency tell me that they don't know what's going on yet in the Lukachukai area. The story they get (about fourth-hand) is that there's a cave of Navajo Wolves somewhere back in that west slope canyon country. The witches are supposed to be coming around the summer hogans up there, abusing the animals and the usual. And, as usual, the stories vary depending on which rumor you hear.

The first two look like they fit the theories expressed in Social and Psychotherapeutic Utility of Navajo Wolf and Frenzy Superstitions, but you should know, since you wrote it. I'm not sure about the Lukachukai business. It might have something to do with a man we're looking for up there. Or maybe it's a real genuine Witch, who really turns himself into a werewolf and wouldn't that knock hell out of you scientific types?

There were two more paragraphs, one reporting on Leaphorn's wife and family and a mutual friend of their undergraduate days at Arizona State, and the other offering help if McKee decided to 'go witch-hunting this summer.'

McKee smiled. Leaphorn had been of immense help in his original research, arranging to open the Law and