nothing honest to say to that.
“But after the other evening in Gallup, when you were so angry with me, I began to understand,” she said.
“Remember once a long time ago you asked me about a schoolteacher I used to date? Somebody told you about her. From Wisconsin. Just out of college. Blonde, blue eyes, taught second grade at Crownpoint when I was a brand-new cop and stationed there. Well, it wasn’t that there was anything much wrong with me, but for her kids she wanted the good old American dream. She saw no hope for that in Navajo country. So she went away.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Janet said. “She wasn’t a Navajo.”
“But I am,” he said. “So I thought, what’s the difference? I’m darker. Rarely sunburn. Small hips. Wide shoulders. That’s racial, right? Does that matter? I think not much. So what makes me a Navajo?”
“You’re going to say culture,” Janet said. “I studied social anthropology, too.”
“I grew up knowing it’s wrong to have more than you need. It means you’re not taking care of your people. Win three races in a row, you better slow down a little. Let somebody else win. Or somebody gets drunk and runs into your car and tears you all up, you don’t sue him, you want to have a sing for him to cure him of alcoholism.”
“That doesn’t get you admitted into law school,” Janet said. “Or pull you out of poverty.”
“Depends on how you define poverty.”
“It’s defined in the law books,” Janet said. “A family of
“I met a middle-aged man at a Yeibichai sing a few years ago. He ran an accounting firm in Flagstaff and came out to Burnt Water because his mother had a stroke and they were doing the cure for her. I said something about it looking like he was doing very well.
And he said, ‘No, I will be a poor man all my life.’ And I asked him what he meant, and he said, ‘Nobody ever taught me any songs.’”
“Ah, Jim,” she said. She rose, took the two steps required to reach the bunk where he was sitting, put her arms carefully around him and kissed him. Then she pressed the undamaged side of his face against her breast.
“I know having a Navajo dad didn’t make me a Navajo,” she said. “My culture is Stanford sorority girl, Maryland cocktail circuit, Mozart, and tickets to the Met. So maybe I have to learn not to think that being ragged, and not having indoor plumbing, and walking miles to see the dentist means poverty. I’m working on it.” Chee, engulfed in Janet’s sweater, her perfume, her softness, said something like “Ummmm.”
“But I’m not there yet,” she added, and released him.
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TheFallenMan
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Floop/Local%20Settings/Te...
“I guess I should work on it from the other end, too,” he said. “I could get used to being a lieutenant, trying to work my way up.
Trying to put some value on things like—” He let that trail off.
“One thing I want you to know,” she said. “I didn’t use you.”
“You mean—”
“I mean deliberately getting information out of you so I could tell John.”
“I guess I always knew that,” he said. “I was just being jealous. I had the wrong idea about that.”
“I did tell him you’d found Breedlove’s body. He invited Claire and me to the concert. Claire and I go all the way back to high school. And we were remembering old times and, you know, it just came out. It was just something interesting to tell him.”
“Sure,” Chee said. “I understand.”
“I have to go now,” she said. “Before you guys close the highway. But I wanted you to know that. Breedlove had been his project when the widow filed to get the death certified. It looked so peculiar. And finally, now, I guess it’s all over.” Her tone made that a question.
She was zipping up her jacket, glancing at him.
“Lieutenant Leaphorn gave Mr. Shaw that photograph of the climber’s ledger,” she said.
“Yeah,” Chee said. The wind buffeted the trailer, made its stormy sounds, moved a cold draft against his neck.
“She must have thought that terribly odd—for him to just leave her at the canyon, and then abandon their car, and go back to Ship Rock to climb it like that.”
Chee nodded.
“Surely she must have had some sort of theory. I know I would have had if you’d done something crazy like that to me.”
“She cried a lot,” Chee said. “She could hardly believe it.”
And in a minute Janet was gone. The goodbye kiss, the promises to write, the invitation to come and join her. Then holding the car door open for her, commenting on how it always got colder when the snowing stopped, and watching the headlights vanish at the top of the slope.
He sat on the bunk again then, felt the bandages around his eye, and decided the soreness there was abating. He probed the padding over his ribs, flinched, and decided the healing there was slower. He noticed the coffeepot was still on, got up, and unplugged it. He switched on the radio, thinking he would get some weather news. Then switched it off again and sat on the bed.
