Sewing Can Be Dangerous and Other Small Threads

by S. R. Mallery

  Helen nodded, fascinated.

  “In our religion, the Kachinas are supernatural spirits that live half the year in the San Francisco peaks of Arizona. They come down to the Hopi villages and live in the bodies of different men. So, for six months, these men are not who they really are; they become the Kachina spirits. They put on masks and dance different ceremonial dances, and this then helps bring good things to the village.

  “Another old custom is that these Kachina-men spend a great deal of time carving Kachina dolls to give to the children of the village. There are about three hundred different Kachina dolls, each one representing a different Kachina spirit.” She eyed Helen carefully for any negative reaction, then, uncharacteristically, winked.

  On the way back to her bedroom, Helen could hear one last jingle from the Kachina doll as Little Wind put it away for the night, and crawling into bed, she felt oddly peaceful. Maybe tribal ancestry was watching over her somehow.

  After that, a pattern formed, with Helen stopping by the little room next to the kitchen before retiring to her own bed each night. Knocking on her maid’s door, she was always told to enter to listen to Indian folklore tales. One night it might be learning all about the Four Corner region, where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico all intercept—a deeply spiritual region called the ‘circle with the four O’s’. The next, it could be all about how Kachina dolls were only carved by the village men, never the women.

  One night, Little Wind edged the conversation around. “If you are still looking for a good story, I have one for you.”

  Helen cocked her head slightly. “Oh?”

  “Yes. About ten years ago, someone from my reservation was accused of killing a white man, but he didn’t do it. No one would listen to him at the time, so he ran away from everyone, leaving his family in pain ever since. They know he is innocent, but no one ever believed them. He is still in hiding, unable to ever see his loved ones again.” She paused, her voice thick.

  “Did this person’s relatives hire a decent attorney?”

  “You have to understand, my people are not listened to like your people. Indians will never be taken seriously.”

  Helen bristled slightly. “I can’t believe that’s true anymore. Why, it’s politically correct to bend over backwards toward Native Americans, don’t you agree?”

  “If you say so.” Little Wind didn’t seem convinced.

  “You know, to tell you the truth, I really think you need a good detective rather than a newspaper person. Do you have any documentation?” Despite herself, Helen could feel the old investigative juices percolating.

  Reaching into her closet, the Native American brought down an oversized cardboard box from the top shelf and together, the two women placed it onto the bed. Crammed inside were many Hopi trinkets: baskets, dolls, blankets, and feathers. Little Wind had to shove her hand down deep in order to bring out whatever it was she was looking for, but finally, she extracted several manila folders, filled with old, frayed newspaper articles and legal documents.

  “This person must be a part of your family, right?” Helen gasped. “I mean, why else would you have kept everything all these years?”

  Little Wind looked up with narrowed eyes. Could she really trust again? Softening, she let out an involuntary sigh. “Yes, that was my brother, White Eagle. He was just eighteen when all this happened, and it has destroyed my family. We don’t know where he has gone, only that he is innocent. Please, can you help us? I don’t want to go to a detective. We tried that, and it led us nowhere. Please help me, Helen, please.”

  Helen paused a beat. “I wouldn’t even know how to write something like this.”

  “You said you wanted to be a serious reporter. Well, maybe you could hire a detective. It didn’t work for us, but maybe for you. Here, I have some documents from the original investigation and some local newspaper articles written at that time. Would you at least read them?”

  When a pile of yellowed papers was placed into her employer’s hands, Helen quickly noted a police report, what looked like several eyewitness accounts, and an old, dusty videotape.

  In her room three hours later, she was still reading about how White Eagle, Little Wind’s brother, had been accused of going off the Indian reservation and killing Sherwood Kensington, a white man who had been attempting to stop the local government from securing water rights for neighboring Indians. It seemed any Native American Indian would have a legitimate beef against this agitator. Helen was hooked. Even if White Eagle was not innocent, a strong urge to get in touch with him overpowered her, like when she was in college and stayed up night after night, researching her journalism papers.

  She took out their laptop and logging onto the Internet, surfed for anything to do with Hopi Indians. Among a myriad of related articles, she entered a chat room, sponsored by the American Indian Movement, or AIM, a legitimate, spiritual Indian group, claiming to have helped in various Native American causes. Keying in her own email address, she requested contact with White Eagle. I must be insane, she thought. It’s been years. Who would ever know what I’m talking about? Still, she continued, probing into a decent detective out in the Nevada and New Mexico area, someone who might be more familiar with the reservation problems. She got several names near where they were going to stay, jotted down one or two of them, and took off, scouting for her new-found colleague.

  Little Wind was busy folding laundry and softly humming one of her chants when Helen approached her. She turned around. “Well, if you do need someone, I can put you onto the detective we tried at the time. He was supposed to be good and he knew the area real well, but he didn’t do anything for us. I mean, he was kind of nasty to us.” Her voice was bitter.

  “It’s a start, and if we don’t like him, we don’t have to hire him, do we?” Helen put a hesitant arm around her new confidant.

  “What do you mean, we?” popped out, along with one arched eyebrow.

  “We’re both going to Arizona. C’mon, I bet you would like a chance to visit your family, and I will need an interpreter. I’m paying you your salary the whole time, so what do you have to lose?” She grinned at Little Wind’s reaction.

  Helen’s husband Bill was surprised at his wife’s latest venture, but absentmindedly supportive. After carefully packing their best camera with the telephoto lens, stocking the refrigerator with gourmet take-out frozen foods, and hugging him with a promise to contact him every few days, she uttered a rushed good-bye.

  But it was in the rental car, winding their way up State Highway 264 in Northern Arizona, that Helen visibly caught her breath. She glanced over at her companion, who nodded and remarked simply, “Yes, there are no words…”

  Before them, pitted against a brilliant blue southwestern sky, lay the famous three mesas of the Hopis, with their flat-topped centuries-old Oraibi pueblo on the third, Black Mesa, as everyone called it. Surrounded by dry rocks eroded by years of wind, rain, and a hot, blazing sun, the pueblo was the oldest inhabited village in the United States. It was also the hamlet where the Hopi ancestors had stood their ground against the greedy Spanish Conquistadors, a historical fact that still made them proud.

  Out of the corner of her eyes, Helen could tell Little Wind was crying, but chose not to invade her employee’s space. She was learning about these people and their dignity; to probe any further would only be the white man’s clumsy, inappropriate way.

  Up the road lay a tiny, makeshift western town, covered in a fine layer of sepia dust. Little Wind called out, “This is it! This is where we should stay. The detective used to be here, and so was the local sheriff.”

  After checking into their motel, Helen looked up the original detective in the local directory and found him to be still in business. Using her most autocratic voice, she phone Clyde Washburn to make an appointment as soon as possible. The fact that he immediately answered himself indicated no secretary on hand and probably little client revenue.

  His thick, country twang instantly brought a cr
ystal-clear image, and in his office the next morning she wasn’t disappointed; the voice and look definitely matched. The cowboy hat, pushed back on his head, gave a finishing touch to the Western shirt, string tie, and tan-hide boots. He started out friendly enough to Helen, but as soon as he caught sight of the Native American, his tone altered considerably. Little Wind was right, maybe in Los Angeles people were more politically correct, but out here, people like her were still thought of as second-class citizens.

  Before Helen sat down, she instinctively wiped off some dust on the seat of the chair, an action that made Clyde snort and growl his first couple of responses. Little Wind’s heart sank. This was going to be more difficult than she had thought.

  “OK ladies, what is it you want?” Clyde lit up a cigar and waited.

  “Well,” Helen started in, “we are here from Los Angeles. My friend and I want to reopen a case you handled about ten years ago.”

  “And what case is that?” He emitted a loud sniff.

  “Do you remember a case about a young Hopi Indian man, by the name of White Eagle, being accused of killing a local white man named Sherwood Kensington?”

  Clyde suddenly looked nervous. “Yeah, of course, who wouldn’t around here? So what of it? What’s this got to do with you two?” His hostility was definitely auguring in.

  “Well, my friend here knows the family of the missing Indian boy, and they believe he’s innocent. Is there any way I could get you to locate the boy, or at least reinvestigate what might have ha–”

  Clyde was already up on his feet, dismissing them with a right-handed wave. “Geez, now why would I want to go back to this after all these years? Huh?”

  “Because I am a person of means, Mr. Washburn, and I can pay you a lot of money.” Helen waited for a reaction.

  He sank back down in the cracked, leather chair and after a few seconds, spoke. “Well, if I did take on this case, I’d want five hundred dollars up front and a hundred dollars a day in expenses. And I’m tellin’ you right now, I’m not welcome up at the Mesas. They don’t want no white folk up there, so we’d have to use your friend here to help us. Understand?”

  Little Wind broke her silence. “I do understand Mr. Washburn, and I am ready to translate. I have relatives who still live on the reservation and I know they would be very helpful to us. They just want their son found and have his name cleared.”

  “OK, OK. Now, if you’ll just give me my deposit, I’ll begin today if ya want.” He was already dusting off a metal container labeled ‘deposit slips’ from a nearby shelf. Helen sighed, dashed off a check, handed him copies of their documentation, and left with her partner.

  The next morning the detective didn’t mince any words. “These transcripts here make it kind of unclear the whereabouts of your relative. I mean, he said he had an alibi and it sort of checks out, but then there are three witnesses who swore he was off the reservation at the time. Two more people claimed they saw his pick-up truck, speedin’ up the road toward Sherwood Kensington’s house that morning, and a videotape that shows some Indian firing a rifle at Kensington. Even if your man’s innocent, there’s powerful evidence against him. How ‘bout that?” As he leaned forward, both women coughed through his cigar smoke haze.

  “I know my brother, and if he said he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it!” Little Wind looked fierce.

  “Now calm down, calm down. I didn’t say I didn’t believe him, I just want you both to realize there’s powerful evidence against this fella. What I’m gonna do is find out from the locals all about Kensington. Maybe there’s a motive that’ll stand out more clearly. Meantime, you can contact your relatives on the reservation. As I said before, the Hopis sure don’t want the likes of me up there in the Mesas, and they sure don’t want you, neither.” His eyes shifted over to Helen.

  Up towards the Mesas, Little Wind exited the car and walked the last quarter mile alone, as Helen sped back down to the town. Word had already gotten out about Little Wind’s return, and as she arrived, dozens of family and tribe members closed in around their long-lost relative and friend like ants surrounding the last morsel of food left on a picnic table.

  The hotel manager wasn’t as welcoming to Helen. She openly sneered when asked questions about Sherwood Kensington’s death.

  “What do I care? It was all about some dumb Indian. Now, I know you’re here with one of them, but I’m just tellin’ you what it’s like out here.” Helen watched the blousy, overweight woman swat at a fly that had landed next to her plate while picking out pieces of her chicken sandwich from her front teeth.

  The manager continued. “But if ya want more info, you can always try old Earthman. He was living up on Old Oraibi at the time. Maybe he knows something. Knock yourself out!”

  She pointed towards an old, ramshackle, vine-covered adobe structure down the street and Helen went off, energized.

  Just outside its front door the reporter was about to knock, when an undefined sound came from within. Leaning sideways towards an open window, she tripped over a rusty tin can, catching herself just in time on an old crate barrel, filled with stagnant water. Once her heart stopped pounding, she slowly angled back to the window. The next step was to position herself behind a nearby shrub and take out her husband’s camera from her backpack. Then, peering out through his state-of-the-art telephoto lens, she spied a sun-leathered Indian standing in the middle of a sparse room.

  On a small table to his left lay some tools––neat, organized, facing him like surgical instruments in an operating room. To the right of him was a large metal bin, filled with chunks of Cottonwood, which he kept extracting for his whittling. Bits of wood kept flying through the air, creating a semi-circular pattern of chips on the floor around him and soon, all Helen could hear was the rub-click, rub-click sound of a chisel against wood.

  After a while, she could see a shape emerging from out of the wood. First, a headdress, then a crude, unsettling mask resembling a Wolf-man. Then shoulders and arms appeared, carrying what looked like a bow in one hand and a spear in the other.

  Rub-click, rub-click, the noise repeated, and with each few clicks, another body part would emerge. At last came the base of the fringed dress and boots and Helen rotated her focus lens ring nervously, aiming for a better look. As if by osmosis, the old man looked up and swiveled his head in her direction.

  She could feel his direct gaze boring through her lens at her and instinctively, she jerked her head back. Then, listening to his slow shuffle over to the window ledge, he suddenly called out, “Who’s there? What do you want?”

  The game was up. She sheepishly ventured out from behind the bush, ready to explain herself, but there was no need; Earthman was always grateful for an audience. Within minutes, he was going on a tirade against Old Oraibi.

  “I knew too much. I saw what happened, and they knew I might tell, so they got rid of me. I was one of their head Kachina spirits for years and still, they threw me out!”

  Helen leaned in eagerly. “Tell me, did you know my friend’s brother, White Eagle? Do you know what might have happened to him?”

  Earthman was stunned. After all these years, someone, a white person, actually wanted to hear from him. Ten years ago, you couldn’t pay the police enough money to listen to him; everyone was in too much of a hurry to indict that poor boy.

  Watching Helen get out her notepad and pen, he grinned and eased himself down on a stool. “It started many years ago, even before the incident,” he began. “There’s a Hopi ceremony that’s different from other tribes…”

  Marked Wings and White Eagle clutched each other in fear. It was almost time for each of them to go their separate ways into the Kiva and meet with their individual Kachina Spirits for the first time ever. The older boys had scoffed, but to an eight and nine-year-old, the anticipation was agonizing. If only they could go in together, maybe it wouldn’t be so terrifying, but that was not the Hopi way.

  White Eagle was a good boy, always willing to help out; Marked W
ings, on the other hand, was reckless, and often didn’t do what he was told. When the other villagers considered shunning him, as was expected in their village when a child was bad, his mother lowered her head, unable to hide her shame.

  That day White Eagle was fortunate. He was assigned Earthman, then a man in his early forties, who was dressed up as a clown Kachina, the “Koyemsi” Mudhead Kachina. He circled around White Eagle, making funny sounds and waving his arms energetically. White Eagle started to laugh and he almost fell over. This wasn’t so bad, the young boy thought. What was all the fuss about? This doesn’t scare me at all. He’s so funny, this Kachina. The ceremony was short, and at the end of it, White Eagle was handed a Kachina doll representing this clown. Giggling with delight, he walked away from the Kiva, dying to compare notes with Marked Wings.

  But Marked Wings’ experience was a different story. Being a mischievous boy, the elders felt that he should be in the presence of a Kachina that would make him respect authority, and although everyone in the village knew Sly Dog had a drinking problem, it was decided that he was safe enough around a small boy, if only to discipline him—within reason.

  That day, when Sly Dog stepped into the Kiva dressed as Wiharu, the White Ogre/White Nataska Kachina, his blood-shot eyes spoke volumes. In full dress, he charged towards the frightened boy huddled in a corner, his arms flailing and half-choking noises spewing out of his mouth. Then he began hitting Marked Wings for real with his walking stick, instantly producing huge welts on the boy’s back and arms that would last for weeks. Marked Wings tried to shield himself with his hands, but he was no match for the all-powerful man/Kachina.

  Sly Dog was never seen again. But his presence lived on inside Marked Wings forever, the terror of that day slowly festering until it smoldered into a deep hatred that colored everything the boy did. Impish before, now he was cruel and harsh and the more White Eagle begged his friend to talk about it, the more he was met with impenetrable stares.

  As time went on, the boys pursued opposite paths. White Eagle, an excellent law student, specialized in Indian rights. Alcohol became Marked Wings claim to fame. By eighteen, he was a full-blown alcoholic, bitter towards everyone and in particular, White Eagle. In fact, some people maintained that if it hadn’t been for Kensington, the two young men wouldn’t have had anything to do with each other at all.