people live out here.” He glanced at the odometer. “In the thirty-one miles since we left Whitehorse we have not passed even one residential place. And just about forty people live at Whitehorse. Where there are very few people, the people who are there all seem to know one another, no matter their tribe or their race.”
“It was that way in our mountains, too. But just in the mountains. Out of the mountains where there were more people nobody liked the Hmongs.”
“Look to the south,” Leaphorn said, gesturing to the mountain dominating that horizon with enough early winter snowpack to provide a glittering reflection of afternoon sunlight. “The map you have calls it Mount Taylor; it’s fifty miles from here, and there is absolutely nobody between us and that mountain.”
Vang considered that. “It looks so close.”
“It’s an old volcano,” Leaphorn said, finding himself lapsing into his habit of becoming a tour director anytime he was driving with anyone unfamiliar with his territory.
“Biggest mountain in this part of the reservation. Eleven thousand three hundred and something feet high. It has a lot of historical and religious significance for us. In our people’s origin story, it was built by First Man when the Navajos first got here. It’s one of our four sacred mountains. Four mountains that mark the boundaries of our land. We have several names for that one. The Navajo ceremonial name is
TONY HILLERMAN
And then on the map it’s named after General Zachary Taylor, and we also call it ‘Mother of Rains’ because the west winds pile clouds on top of it and then drive out over the prairie.”
Leaphorn noticed Vang had been trying to suppress a grin. Recognized what might be an opportunity to get closer to this man. To understand him. To be understood.
“You’re smiling,” Leaphorn said. “What?”
“The way you say those two Navajo names,” he said, grinning again. “Our Hmong language has words like that.
You have to make funny sounds when you say them.”
“Some of our words don’t fit well with the white man’s alphabet,” Leaphorn said. “And since your people originated in China—well, at least a lot of anthropologists believe you did, and there’s pretty good evidence that was your point of origin, too. So it wouldn’t surprise me if we had some connections way back in time. How about your tribe’s stories of how it originated?” Vang looked surprised. Raised his eyebrows. Said, “I don’t anything know about that. About what you mean.”
“I mean like what we call ‘origin stories.’ For example, in the Judeo-Christian culture—the Europe-based white culture—in that one God created the universe in a series of six days, and then said we should rest on the seventh one.” Leaphorn summarized the rest and mentioned the Garden of Eden.
“Adam and Eve,” Vang said. “I’ve heard about that.” He smiled, touched his side. “And that’s why we have one less rib on one side of our chest.”
Leaphorn paused, glanced at Vang, his facial expression a question. Vang nodded. Yes. He was interested.
THE SHAPE SHIFTER
185
“Well, Navajo tradition, at least the way I was taught it in my clan, doesn’t give us such a clear statement of the creating power, or the sequences of how it happened. We believe we first existed in a series of previous worlds, but not exactly as flesh and blood humans. We were more like concepts, sort of the notion of what we would eventually be. Anyway, in our first world we do evil things and the Creator destroys it, and we escape into a second world.
These early humans . . .” Leaphorn paused again, studying Vang. “Am I getting too confusing?”
“Go on,” Vang said.
“Let’s call this early version of humans prehumans,” Leaphorn said. “Anyway, bad conduct again, and the second world was destroyed, and they escaped into the third world. Now our origin stories get more detailed. We learn how the prehumans were separated into the sexes; men and women. Men doing the hunting and fishing and being the warriors, and the women raising families.
The selfish, mean, greedy behavior was going on again, and the Creator repeated the process. The way my clan teaches the story, a sort of super-version of Coyote kid-napped the baby of another of these primal beings— one we call Water Monster—and he was so enraged he produced a terrible flood and drowned the third world as punishment. So we climbed up through a hollow reed and escaped into this world.”
Leaphorn gestured at the landscape they were driving through, the eroded slopes of the butte they were passing, the distant mountain ridges, the high, dry, semi-desert landscape of rabbit brush, snakeweed, bunchgrass, and juniper and, above it all, a scattering of puffy clouds decorating the clear deep blue of the high country sky.
186
TONY HILLERMAN
“Our Fourth World,” Leaphorn said. “We call it Glittering World.”
He glanced at Vang, who was staring out the windshield.
It was a longer statement than Leaphorn had intended, but Vang’s expression showed he was interested.
Maybe even intensely interested.
“You have any questions?” Leaphorn asked.
“Oh, yes,” Vang said. “You climbed up to here—” Vang indicated “here” with a wave of his hand at the landscape.
“Climbed up a hollow reed?”
