Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 02 - Dance Hall of the Dead

by Dance Hall of the Dead(lit)

"She hasn't," Halsey said. "We'll get word to you if anything comes up. No use you wasting your time."

  "Don't mind," Leaphorn said. "It beats working. What you fixing on that bus?" The question was addressed to Hair in Bun. The man stared at him.

  "Loose seat," Halsey said.

  "Be damned," Leaphorn said. "You're welding it back instead of bolting it down? Like to see how you're doing that." He moved toward the bus door.

  Hair in Bun stepped into the doorway, pulled his hands out of the bib of his overalls, and let them hang by his sides. Leaphorn stopped.

  "I've got a one-track mind," he told Halsey. "The only thing I want to do is talk to Susanne and see if we can figure out a way to find that boy. But if Susanne is off somewhere, I'll kill some time by looking around some." He looked at Hair in Bun. "Starting with this bus," he said. The voice remained mild.

  "I think she's over by the windmill," Halsey said. "I'll take you over there."

  The path wandered maybe 150 yards down into a narrow wash and then up its sand-and-gravel bottom toward the wall of the mesa from which Leaphorn had watched the commune two nights earlier. Just under the mesa, an intermittent seep had produced a marshy spot. Some grazing leaser had drilled a shallow well, installed a windmill to pump a trickle of water into a sheep watering tank. A Russian olive beside the tank was festooned with drying shirts, jeans, overalls, and underwear. Susanne was sitting in its shade, watching them approach.

  "Did you find him? Did George come home?"

  "No. I was hoping we could go over it all again and maybe you'd remember something that would help."

  "I don't think there's anything to remember." She shook her head. "I just don't think he told me anything except what I could remember Monday."

  "Like I told you," Halsey said.

  Leaphorn ignored him. "You said George asked you if you knew anything about the Zu¤i religion," Leaphorn said. "Can you remember anything more about that part of the conversation?"

  Behind him, Halsey laughed.

  "Really. Really, I can't." She was looking past him at Halsey. "I just remember he asked me if I knew anything and I told him just what little Ted had told me about it. I'd help if I could."

  "O.K.," Halsey said. "Come on, Navajo policeman, let's go."

  Leaphorn turned. Halsey was standing in the path, hands in the pockets of the army fatigue jacket he was wearing, looking amused and insolent. He was a big man, tall and heavy in the shoulders. Leaphorn let his anger show in his voice.

  "I'm just saying this once. This girl and I are going to talk awhile without you interrupting. We can talk here, or we can talk in the sheriffs office in Gallup. And if we go to Gallup, you and that illegal deer carcass will go along. Possession of an untagged mule deer carcass out of season will cost you maybe three hundred dollars and a little time in jail. And then you're going to go to Window Rock and talk to the Tribe's people about what the hell you're doing on Navajo land without a permit."

  "It's public domain land," Halsey said. "It's off the reservation. Bureau of Land Management land."

  "Our map shows it's on the res," Leaphorn said. "But you can argue with the magistrate about that. After you get clear of the sheriff at Gallup."

  "O.K.," Halsey said. He looked past Leaphorn at Susanne-a long, baleful stare-turned on his heel, and walked rapidly down the draw toward the commune.

  "But I still don't remember anything," Susanne said. She was looking after Halsey, her lower lip caught in her teeth.

  Leaphorn leaned his hips against the steep arroyo bank behind him and watched Halsey out of sight. "How could anybody possibly find him?" Susanne added. "Either he ran away for good or pretty soon he'll come home. There's no use chasing him. I've been thinking about what you told me about the cold weather." She looked at him defiantly. "I don't think I really believe George will freeze. If the foxes and coyotes and things like that don't freeze, I bet George wouldn't. He's just as at home out there as they are. What you were telling me was just crap, wasn't it? Just something to get me to talk about him?"

  "I wanted you to talk about him, yes," Leaphorn said. "And from what I hear, George is smart and tough. But we did have those eleven people freeze last winter. Some of them were old, and one was sick, and one had been thrown by his horse, but some of them were mature, healthy men. Just too much snow, too cold, too far from shelter."

  "I'll bet they were drunk," Susanne said.

  Leaphorn laughed. "O.K. If you made a bet like that, I guess you'd win. Three of them were drunk. I wouldn't worry much about George if he had plenty of food. If he isn't hungry, and a snowstorm catches him, he can keep a fire going."

  "He'll get food," Susanne said. "He killed that deer for us, you know. And he must be just about the greatest deer hunter. He's been keeping his family supplied with meat since he was just a little boy. And he knows everything about deer."

  "Like what?"

  "Like. I don't know. What was it he was telling me?" She made a nervous gesture with her hands, recalling it. "Like deer have their eyes so far on the sides of their heads they can see a lot better behind them than we can. They can see except almost directly behind them. But then he said that deer are mostly color blind and. what was it he said?. they don't recognize shapes very well to the sides of them because they don't have stereoscopic vision as good as we do. Anyway, he said they see things like motion and flashes of reflections better than us. but it's mostly two dimensional. He told me that one day he was standing real still in plain view with two mule deer about seventy-five yards away staring at him. And just to test them, he opened his mouth. Didn't make any noise or anything. Just opened his mouth. And both deer ran away."

  "They're very far-sighted," Leaphorn said.

  "So I think, if he gets hungry, he'll kill a deer," she said.

  "With what?"

  "Didn't he stop and get his daddy's rifle?"

  "Did he say he would?"

  Susanne's expression said she hadn't meant to tell him that. "I guess maybe he did," she said slowly. "Or maybe I just presumed he would."

  "Did he tell you anything else about deer hunting?"

  "Lots of things. He was teaching Ernesto how to hunt, and Ernesto was teaching him the Zu¤i way of hunting. I think he was, whatever that is. Anyway, they talked about hunting a lot." She made a wry face. "Frankly, I learned more about it than I need to know."

  "Like what else?" Leaphorn asked. "If Bowlegs was living off the land, knowing how much he knew about hunting deer could be useful."

  "Like deer don't look up. So if you can get up on a cliff or something above them they won't see you." She stuck up a second finger. "Like they have a great sense of smell." A third finger went up. "And a great sense of hearing." She laughed.

  "So if you're up on that boulder, they won't see you but they smell you and hear you breathing. But they don't smell so well in extremely dry weather, and hardly anything if it's raining or heavy fog, or if the wind is blowing hard. But for miles if there's normal humidity and just a breeze." A fourth finger went up. "And like they don't notice natural sounds much, so if you're moving you're supposed to move right down the deer trail where they'd expect to hear noise, and you move in a sort of stop-and-go pace"-she made vaguish hand motions-"like the deer do themselves if there's a lot of leaves and stuff." She stopped, remembering, frowning. "George said the only noise that scares them is something strange, the wrong kind of noise or coming from the wrong place."

  She looks tired and thin, Leaphorn was thinking. What the hell is she doing here with this hard bunch? She's too young. Why don't white people take care of their children? Then he thought of George Bowlegs. And why don't Navajos take care of their children?

  "You said Ernesto was teaching him the Zu¤i way to hunt," Leaphorn said. "What was that?"

  "Maybe they were just joking," she said. "I guess it was religion, though. There was a poem, a little song. You're supposed to sing it when you go after mule deer. George was trying to memorize it in Zu¤i, and it was ha
rd because he is just beginning to speak Zuni. I had them translate it and I wrote it down in my notebook."

  "I'd like to see it," Leaphorn said. He would like very much to see the notebook, he thought. And so would Baker. What else had she jotted down in it?

  "I can just about remember part of it." She paused.

  "Deer, Deer, Strong Male Deer,

  I am the sound you hear running in your hoofprints,

  I following come, the sound of running

  . Sacred favors for you I bring.

  My arrow carries new life for you."

  Her voice, small and fluting, stopped abruptly. She glanced sidewise at Leaphorn, flushed. "There's a lot more of it, I think, and I probably got it wrong. And then there's a prayer when the deer falls. You take his muzzle in your hands and you put your face against his nostrils and you inhale his breath, and you say, 'Thank you, my father. This day I have drunken in the sacred wind of your life.' I think that's beautiful," she said. "I think the Zu¤is have a beautiful." Her voice trailed off. She put her head down, her hands over her face. "Ernesto was so happy," she said, the voice muffled by her hands. "Happy people shouldn't have to die."

  "I don't know," Leaphorn said. "Maybe death should only be for the very old. The people who are tired and want some rest." Susanne wasn't making any sound. She sat with her head down, her face in her hands. Leaphorn talked about it quietly. He told her how the Navajo mythology dealt with it, how Monster Slayer and Child Born of Water took the weapons they had stolen from the Sun and how they killed the Monsters who brought death to the Dinee, but how they decided to spare one kind of death. "We call it Sa," Leaphorn said. "The way my grandfather told me the story, the Hero Twins found Sa sleeping in a hole in the ground. Born of Water was going to kill him with his club, but Sa woke up, and he told the twins that they should spare him so that those who are worn out and tired with age can die to make room for others being born." He intended to keep talking just as long as she needed him to talk so that she could cry without embarrassment. She wasn't crying for Ernesto Cata, really, but for herself, and for George Bowlegs, and all the lost children, and all the lost innocence. And now she was wiping her face with the back of her hand, and now with the sleeve of her overlarge shirt.

  How old is she? Leaphorn wondered. In her late teens, probably. But her age seemed crazily mixed. As green as spring, as gray as winter. How had she come here? Where had she come from? Why didn't the white man take care of his daughter? Was he, like Shorty Bowlegs, hiding from his children in a bottle?

  "I hope all that about hunting helps, but I don't see how it could," she said. "I think you should wait for him to come home again."

  "I haven't told you about that," Leaphorn said. "There's isn't any home for George anymore. You knew his dad was an alcoholic, I guess. Well, now his dad is dead."

  "My God!" Susanne said. "Poor George. He doesn't know yet?"

  "Not unless-" Leaphorn checked himself. "No," he said. "He hasn't been back."

  "He was ashamed of his dad," Susanne said. "Ashamed of him being drunk all the time. But he liked him, too. You could tell that. He really loved him."

  "So did Cecil," Leaphorn said.

  "It's different when they're drunks, I think," Susanne said. "That's like your father being sick. He can't really help it. You can still love them then and it's not so bad." She paused. Her eyes were wet again, but she ignored it. "Now he doesn't have anything. First he loses Ernesto and now he loses his dad."

  "He has a brother," Leaphorn said. "An eleven-year-old brother named Cecil. He's got Cecil, but until we can find George, Cecil doesn't have him."

  "I didn't know he had a brother," Susanne said. "Not until you mentioned it. He never said anything about him." She said it as if she found it incredible, as if she suddenly didn't quite understand George Bowlegs. She stood up, put her hands in the pockets of her jeans, nervously took them out again. They were small hands, frail, grimy, with broken nails. "I have a sister," she said. "Fourteen in January. Someday, I'm going back and get her." Susanne was looking down the wash. "When I have some money someday I'll go back and go to the school at lunch hour and I'll take her away with me."

  "And bring her here?"

  Susanne looked at him. "No. Not bring her here. Find someplace to take her."

  "Isn't she better off with your parents?"

  "Parent," Susanne corrected absently. "No. I don't know. I don't think so." The voice trailed away. "If you don't really think George would freeze," then you want to find him because you think he killed Ernesto? Is that it? Or somebody thinks he killed Ernesto?"

  "I guess somebody thinks he might have. Or that he was close enough to where it happened to have got a look at who did it. Me, I think he can tell me enough so we'll know what happened, and why it happened."

  "I can't remember anything else," Susanne said. She glanced at him and then at her hands. She tugged the cuff down to her knuckles, looked at her fingernails, then hid them in fists, then put the fists in her pockets. Leaphorn let the silence last, looking at her. She was much too thin, he thought, the skin stretched too tight over fragile bones.

  "There's a problem, though, if I don't find him. Or maybe there is. The way Shorty Bowlegs died was somebody hit him over the head in his hogan last night. Whoever it was was looking for something. Searched through everything in the hogan. O.K. Think about it a little bit. Somebody kills the Cata boy. Two days later somebody kills George's dad and searches George's hogan." He looked at her. "What do you think? I'm nervous about George. Two killings, very much alike, and George is the only thing that connects the two of them."

  "You mean George's father was killed. And you think somebody might be."

  Leaphorn shrugged. "Qui‚n sabe? His friend gets killed, George disappears, his daddy gets killed, what's next? It makes me nervous."

  "I didn't know his dad had been killed. I thought he just died."

  "After George talked to you Monday, he went to their hogan. When Cecil got home Monday night, he found their horse was gone and their 30-30, and some of George's clothes. And George had left a note. He told Cecil he had some business with a kachina, or kachinas, and he was going to take care of it, and he'd be gone several days. Now, does that suggest anything to you? Did he say anything here about that?"

  Susanne was frowning. "He was in a hurry. I remember that. Sweating like he'd been running." She squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating. "He said he wanted to get some venison. And when Halsey said no, George and I went out of the hogan. Then he started asking me about the Zu¤i religion. I remember what he said, and what I said."

  She opened her eyes and looked at Leaphorn. "I already told you that, about telling him I only knew what little Ted told me. And then he asked me if the Council of the Gods forgave people for breaking taboos. I said I didn't know anything about it. And then he said something about going to a dance hall, or to a dance, or something like that." She frowned again. "I think I must have misunderstood him. It sounded something like that, but that doesn't make much sense."

  "Dance hall? I don't seem to."

  "It was something about a dance hall. I remember because I thought it sounded crazy at the time."

  "I'll do some asking around," Leaphorn said. "Another thing. I don't think you should stay here anymore. I don't think it's safe."

  "Why not?"

  "It's not much more than just a feeling," Leaphorn said. "But George didn't have very many people close to him. And now two of them are dead. So that leaves you, and maybe Ted Isaacs, and as far as anybody knows, that's about all."

  There was more to the feeling than that. There was the hostility of Halsey and Hair in Bun, and there was Mr. Baker grinning in the background, smelling heroin in the wind. And O'Malley's uncasual remark about low-flying planes. Whether or not Halsey's commune was a cover for delivery of Mexican narcotics flown up across the Sonoran desert, there were narcotics around. The condition of the man called Otis testified to that. It would be only a matter of time before B
aker moved in.

  "By the way," Leaphorn said. "How's Otis?"

  "He's gone. Halsey took him into the bus station at Gallup yesterday."

  "Was he better?"

  "Maybe a little," Susanne said. "I don't think so." She paused. "Look," she said, "do you think Ted might be in any danger?"

  "I don't know," Leaphorn said. "I wouldn't have figured Shorty Bowlegs was in any danger. Either somebody had a reason for killing him that we don't know about, or somebody was looking for George and he got in the way. To tell the truth, after that I'm nervous about anybody connected with George. That includes you."

  "Have you warned Ted? You ought to warn him. Tell him to go back to Albuquerque. Tell him to get away from here." She looked distraught.

  "I will," Leaphorn said. "I'm telling you, too. Get away from here."