Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 06 - The Ghostway

by The Ghostway(lit)

The sound of the gunshot drowned out the rest of it. Vaggan had shot him, but he felt nothing except the pain where Vaggan's rifle barrel had stuck him. For a crazy split second Chee's mind searched for the point of impact, for the feeling that the bullet must be causing. He saw, past the clump of snakeweed in which his cheek was pressed, the motion of Vaggan falling, falling sideways, arms thrown out.

  "Don't," someone screamed. "Don't."

  In another fragment of that moment, Chee realized he had not been shot. The voice was Grayson's, and as he scrambled up from the dirt, his mind was making the automatic correction from Grayson to Beno. He staggered to his feet, trying to tear the pistol out of his coat pocket, trying to cock it. But he didn't need the pistol.

  Margaret Sosi was leaning out of the driver's side of the pickup, a huge revolver gripped in both hands. The revolver was aimed at Beno. Vaggan was sprawled on his side, face turned toward the earth, one leg slowly bending toward his chest, his rifle in the dirt beside him.

  "Don't," Beno screamed again. "Don't shoot." Beno held his arms stretched high over his head.

  Chee finally got his own pistol untangled from the jacket pocket. Beno had no weapon now. He'd dropped his pistol beside Vaggan's leg. Chee picked it up. He heard a metallic rapping sound. Margaret Sosi was shaking, the barrel of her pistol rattling against the metal of the pickup window. Where had she gotten the gun? And then he remembered. It must be the same pistol Vaggan had dropped when Chee had hit him with the flashlight back in Los Angeles. She'd kept it. That was the sensible sort of thing Margaret Billy Sosi could be expected to do. And she had shot Vaggan with his own gun.

  Chapter 27

  When chee got back to shiprock, the letter was in his mailbox. He saw immediately that the handwriting on the envelope was Mary Landon's and that it was thick enough to contain two or three sheets of paper. A long letter. He put it in his jacket pocket along with what seemed to be a solicitation from an insurance company.

  Back in his trailer, he put the letter on the table. He hung up his jacket and his hat, locked his pistol in the drawer, and poured a pot of water into his Mr. Coffee machine. He stripped and took a hot shower. That left him feeling clean and a little more relaxed. But he was tired. Absolutely, utterly tired, and it was that, probably, that was causing his head to ache. He sat beside the table in his bathrobe and looked at the letter. In a moment, he would open it. Was there anything else he needed to do first-any loose ends? He could think of none. The helicopter ambulance had come from the University of New Mexico Medical Center and its attendants had inspected Vaggan, their faces grim. And then they had flown away with him. The New Mexico State Policemen had come to the Ca¤oncito Police Station with two fbi agents Chee had never met. They had taken Beno off Chee's hands. Margaret Sosi had eaten breakfast with him in the Albuquerque bus station, and had made a telephone call, and had shortly thereafter been picked up by a middle-aged woman who Chee gathered was the mother of a schoolmate from Isleta Pueblo. The woman had not seemed to approve of Chee and had fussed over Margaret and taken her away to get some sleep. And then he'd checked into a motel intending to sleep a little himself. But he was too tense to sleep. So he'd made the 200-mile drive back to Shiprock, and called Captain Largo to tell him what had happened, and picked up his mail and come home.

  No loose ends. Nothing. All finished. He pushed the envelope with his finger, turning it around so that he could read his name, right side up, in Mary Landon's bold, reckless handwriting.

  Then he opened it.

  My darling Jim,

  Why am I writing you a letter? Because I want to make sure I manage to say just what I want to say so that you understand it. Maybe that will help me understand it, too.

  What I have to say is that I have a friend named Theresa McGill who when she was in college fell in love with a man who was just finishing with the seminary-learning to be a Catholic priest. She loved him, maybe not as much as I love you, but she loved him a lot. And they got married, which meant, of course, he didn't go through with being ordained a priest. He got a job teaching, and they had a daughter, and I thought for a long time that she was happy. But last summer she told me how it really was. She'd notice him being very quiet. Maybe just looking out the window or sitting out in the backyard alone. Or taking long walks by himself. And one Saturday afternoon she followed him, and she saw him go into a church. An empty church. No services. No one there. But he stayed inside for an hour. Theresa told me that she has been living with that. She loves her husband, and she knows she deprived him of something that was terribly important to him. And always will be important.

  Well, that's what I'm trying to say. I don't want that to happen to us, so I want to tell you that I've changed my mind. I won't marry you on my terms-that we get off the reservation and raise our family somewhere else. Maybe I will marry you on your terms-that we live here among your people. If you still want to. But I've got to have time to think about it. So I'm going home-back to Wisconsin. I'm going to talk to my family, and walk around in the snow, and go ice skating, and see what happens to my mind. But I'm not going to change my mind about one thing-I'm not going to force my Jim Chee to be a white man.

  Chee put the letter on the tabletop beside the envelope and tried to examine himself for a reaction. He was tired, and suddenly sleepy as well. He was not surprised, particularly. This letter was exactly in character for Mary. Exactly. He should have known it. Perhaps he did. Otherwise, why the lack of surprise? And what else did he feel? A sort of blank numbness, as if all this concerned someone else. That was fatigue too, he guessed. Tomorrow the numbness would be gone. And tomorrow he'd decide what to do. Call Mary, probably. But what would he say to her? He couldn't seem to think what it would be. He found himself thinking, instead, of Leo Littleben, Junior, and wondering if Littleben really was going to be the last man alive to know the Ghostway ceremony.

  He got up, already stiff, poured himself a cup of coffee, and leaned against the sink while he sipped it. When he finished it, he would go to bed and sleep until spring. And when he awoke, whenever that was, he would think about Mary Landon's letter and what he should do about it. He would also get in touch with Frank Sam Nakai and ask his uncle to arrange for Hosteen Littleben to sing a Ghostway cure for him. And then, he thought, he would talk to Littleben. Feel him out about what he would charge Chee to teach him the ritual. It would be a good thing for a younger man to know it.

  And thinking that, Chee fell across his bed with his bathrobe still on and went, almost instantly, to sleep.

  Tony hillerman is past president of the Mystery Writers of America and has received their Edgar and Grand Master Awards. Among his other honors are the Center for the American Indian's Ambassador Award, the Silver Spur Award for best novel set in the West, and the Navajo Tribe's Special Friend Award. His many novels include Finding Moon, Sacred Clowns, Coyote Waits, Talking God, A Thief of Time, and Dance Hall of the Dead. He is also the author of The Great Taos Bank Robbery. He lives with his wife, Marie, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

  The End