The Shape Shifter

story in their mythology about how it came to be pink.

And that’s going to make that pot a lot more valuable to the fellow who collects it.”

He stared at Leaphorn, looking for some sign of agreement.

“I know that’s true,” Leaphorn said. “But I’m not sure I understand why.”

“Because the collector gets the story along with the pot. People say why is that snake pink. He explains. That 36

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makes him an authority.” Tarkington laughed. “You Navajos don’t practice that one-upmanship game like we do.

You fellows who stay in that harmony philosophy.” Leaphorn grinned. “Be more accurate to say a lot of Navajos try, but remember we have a curing ceremony to heal us when we start getting vengeful, or greedy, or—

what do you call it—‘getting ahead of the Joneses.’”

“Yeah,” Tarkington said. “I could tell you a tale about trying to get a Navajo businessman to buy a really fancy saddle. Lots of silver decorations, beautiful stitching, even turquoise worked in. He was interested. Then I told him it would make him look like the richest man on the big reservation. And he took a step back and said it would make him look like a witch.”

Leaphorn nodded. “Yes,” he said. “At least it would make the traditional Dineh suspicious. Unless he didn’t have any poor kinfolks whom he should have been helping. And all of us have poor kinfolks.” Tarkington shrugged. “Prestige,” he said. “You Navajos aren’t so hungry for that. I’ll ask a Navajo about something that I know he’s downright expert about. He won’t just tell me. He’ll precede telling me by saying,

‘They say.’ Not wanting me to think he is claiming the credit.”

“I guess I’ve heard that preamble a million times,” Leaphorn said. “In fact, I do it myself sometimes.” He was thinking that at his age, already retired, left on the shelf like the pink snake, he should understand that white cultural values were different from those of the Dineh, remembering how Navajo kids were conditioned by their elders to be part of the community, not to stand out, not to be the authority; remembering how poorly that attitude THE SHAPE SHIFTER

37

had served his generation, the age group that had been bused away to Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools to be melded into the belagaana culture.

“Who discovered America?” the teacher would ask.

Every student in the class knew the belagaana answer was Christopher Columbus, but only the Hopi and Zuni kids would hold up their hands. And if the teacher pointed to a Navajo kid, that kid would inevitably precede his answer with the “they say” disclaimer. And the teacher, instead of crediting the Navajo with being politely modest, would presume he was taking a politically correct Native American attitude and implying that he was refusing to agree with what textbook and teacher had been telling him. Remembering all that, and the confusion it sometimes produced, caused Leaphorn to smile.

The smile puzzled Tarkington. He looked slightly disappointed.

“Anyway, I’d like to hear more about the stories you’ve collected about this tale-teller rug,” Leaphorn said.

“I’ll tell you what I hear if it’s anything new.” Tarkington took another sandwich. He passed the tray to Leaphorn, his expression genial again.

“First one I’ll tell you is pretty well documented, I think. Probably mostly true. Seems the rug was started by a young woman named Cries a Lot, a woman in the Streams Come Together clan. It was in the final days of the stay in the Bosque Redondo concentration camp. She was one of the nine thousand of your people the army rounded up and marched way over to the Pecos River Valley to get them out of the way.”

Tarkington paused, raised his eyebrows. “But I guess 38

TONY HILLERMAN

I don’t need to refresh your memory about the Long Walk.”

“No,” Leaphorn said, smiling. “My maternal grandfather used to tell us about freezing to death out there in his winter hogan stories when I was a boy. And then my paternal great-grandfather had his own stories about the bunch who escaped that roundup, and spent those years hiding out in the mountains.”

Tarkington chuckled “And the government then makes sure you don’t forget it. Calls a big piece of your space out here the Kit Carson National Forest, in memory of the colonel in charge of rounding you up, and burning down your hogans, and chopping down your peach orchards.”

“We don’t blame Kit Carson much,” Leaphorn said.

“He comes out pretty decent in the hogan stories, and the history books, too. It was General George Carlton who issued that General Order 15 and gave the shoot-to-kill and scorched-earth orders.”

“Most Americans never heard of that, I’m afraid,” Tarkington said. “We don’t teach our kids our version of how we tried Hitler’s final solution on you folks. Round you all up, kill anyone who tries to escape, drive off the cattle, let the Indians starve. We ought to have a chapter in all our history books describing that.” Tarkington took the final bite of his sandwich, considering this, seeming to Leaphorn to be more troubled by the failing of historians than by the deed itself.

“There’ll never be a chapter on that,” Leaphorn said.

“And I’m glad there isn’t. Why keep that kind of hatred alive? We have our curing ceremonials to get people back in harmony. Get rid of the anger. Get happy again.” THE SHAPE SHIFTER

39

“I know,” Tarkington said. “But according to the stories I hear, a lot of memories of that brutality live on in that Woven Sorrow rug. They say that when the Navajo headmen signed that treaty with