The Dark Wind

'What did you tell him?' Chee asked.

'I denied it.'

'But how?' Chee asked. 'Tell me everything you told him.'

Cowboy frowned. 'I told him we didn't think he broke the windmill. I said we thought some Navajos broke it because they were angry at having to leave Hopi land.'

'Please tell Taylor Sawkatewa that we wish to withdraw that denial,' Chee said, looking directly into Sawkatewa's eyes as he said it. 'Tell him that we do not deny that we think he might be the man who broke the windmill.'

'Man,' Cowboy said. 'You're crazy. What are you driving at?'

'Tell him,' Chee said.

Cowboy shrugged. He spoke to Sawkatewa in Hopi. Sawkatewa looked surprised, and interested. For the first time his fingers left off their nimble work. Sawkatewa folded his hands in his lap. He turned and spoke into the darkness of the adjoining room, where the albino boy was standing.

'What did he say?' Chee asked.

'He told the boy to make us some coffee,' Cowboy said.

'Now tell him that I am studying to be a yat-aalii among my people and that I study under an old man, a man who like himself is a hosteen much respected by his people. Tell him that this old uncle of mine has taught me respect for the power of the Hopis and for all that they have been taught by their Holy People about bringing the rain and keeping the world from being destroyed. Tell him that when I was a child I would come with my uncle to First Mesa so that our prayers could be joined with those of the Hopis at the ceremonials. Tell him that.'

Cowboy put it into Hopi. Sawkatewa listened, his eyes shifting from Cowboy to Chee. He sat motionless. Then he nodded.

'Tell him that my uncle taught me that in many ways the Dinee and the Hopi are very, very different. We are taught by our Holy People, by Changing Woman, and by the Talking God how we must live and the things we must do to keep ourselves in beauty with the world around us. But we were not taught how to call the rain clouds. We cannot draw the blessing of water out of the sky as the Hopis have been taught to do. We do not have this great power that the Hopis were given and we respect the Hopis for it and honor them.'

Cowboy repeated it. The sound of thunder came through the roof, close now. A sharp, cracking explosion followed by rumbling echoes. Good timing, Chee thought. The old man nodded again.

'My uncle told me that the Hopis have power because they were taught a way to do things, but they will lose that power if they do them wrong.' Chee continued: 'That is why we say we do not know whether a Hopi or a Navajo is breaking the windmill. A Navajo might do it because he was angry.' Chee paused, raised a hand slightly, palm forward, making sure that the old man noticed the emphasis. 'But a Hopi might do it because that windmill is kahopi.' It was one of perhaps a dozen Hopi words Chee had picked up so far. It meant something like 'anti-Hopi,' or the reverse-positive of Hopi values.

Cowboy translated. This time Sawkatewa responded at some length, his eyes shifting from Cowboy to Chee and back again.

'What are you leading up to with all this?' Cowboy asked. 'You think this old man sabotaged the windmill?'

'What'd he say?' Chee asked.

'He said that the Hopis are a prayerful people. He said many of them have gone the wrong way, and follow the ways the white men teach, and try to let the Tribal Council run things instead of the way we were taught when we emerged from the underworld. But he said that the prayers are working again tonight. He said the cloud will bring water blessings to the Hopis tonight.'

'Tell him I said that we Navajos share in this blessing, and are thankful.'

Cowboy repeated it. The boy came in and put a white coffee mug on the floor beside the old man. He handed Cowboy a Styrofoam cup and Chee a Ronald McDonald softdrink glass. The light of the kerosene lamp gave his waxy white skin a yellow cast and reflected off the thick lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses. He disappeared through the doorway without speaking.

The old man was speaking again.

Cowboy looked into his cup, cleared his throat. 'He said that even if he had been there, he was told that the plane crashed at night. He asks how could anyone see anything?'

'Maybe he couldn't,' Chee said.

'But you think he was there?'

'I know he was there,' Chee said. 'I'd bet my life on it.'

Cowboy looked at Chee, waiting. The boy returned with a steaming aluminum pan. He poured coffee from it into the old man's mug, and Cowboy's Styrofoam cup, and Chee's McDonald's glass.

'Tell him,' Chee said, looking directly at Sawkatewa, 'that my uncle taught me that certain things are forbidden. He taught me that the Navajos and the Hopis agree on certain things and that one of those is that we must respect our mother earth. Like the Hopis, we have places which bring us blessings and are sacred. Places where we collect the things we need for our medicine bundles.'

Chee turned to Cowboy. 'Tell him that. Then I will go on.'

Cowboy translated. The old man sipped his coffee, listening. Chee sipped his. It was instant coffee, boiled in water which tasted a little of gypsum and a little of rust from the barrel in which it was stored. Cowboy finished. Again there was a rumble of thunder and suddenly the pounding of hail on the roof over their heads. The old man smiled. The albino, leaning in the doorway now, smiled too. The hail converted itself quickly into rain—heavy, hard- falling drops, but not quite as noisy. Chee raised his voice slightly. 'There is a place near the windmill where the earth has blessed the Hopis with water. And the Hopis have repaid the blessing by giving the spirit of the earth there pahos. That has been done for a long, long time. But then people did a