The Wailing Wind

by Tony Hillerman

  “How about now? How about running those ads, having me try to find her? Do you think she was working with McKay?”

  Denton shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. I wore myself out trying to figure it out—month after month after month. Never did decide. After a while I just didn’t give a damn. Maybe she did. Just a girl, you know. Didn’t know anything about how the world works. All tied up with music and daydreams. I don’t care what she did. I still love her.”

  Denton started to add something to that, but didn’t. He stood a moment, staring at Leaphorn, waiting for a reaction. And then he said: “Does any of that make sense to you?”

  “It does,” Leaphorn said. “And it made sense to William Shakespeare.”

  “Shakespeare.”

  “He wrote plays a couple of hundred years ago.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure.”

  “I had to do a paper about one of his dramas about forty years ago when I was in college. Othello. Young lady named Desdemona falls in love with a rough old warrior. He’s trying to explain it sort of like you were, and he says . . .” Leaphorn stopped, wishing he’d never gotten into this.

  But Denton was interested. “Said what?”

  “Said, ah: ‘She loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I loved her because she pitied them.’ That’s about how it went.”

  “Pretty well fits Linda and me, I guess,” Denton said. “How’s that story end?”

  “It’s not very happy,” Leaphorn said.

  14

  Officer Bernadette Manuelito had spent some of her not-suspended-but-out-of-favor time off sorting through her income tax records, responding to an IRS objection to her April 15 return. Perhaps that explained her negative attitude as she surveyed the swarm of tax-paid people now congregated at the Coyote Canyon Chapter House. Sergeant Chee had overheard something she muttered and had assumed his role of mentor, which didn’t improve her mood either.

  “It’s a political law. Like physics,” Chee said. “When a federal agency gets into something, the number of tax-paid people at work multiplies itself by five, the number of hours taken to get it done multiplies by ten, and the chances of a successful conclusion must be divided by three.”

  Bernie responded to that with an ambiguous shrug. It had been a long day—more tiring than usual for her because she was working to establish a correct attitude toward Sergeant Chee. At first that had shifted all the way from friend to potential boyfriend to arrogant boss. During the day it had modified itself to something like fairly nice boss. This improvement in Chee’s rating had been helped along by how well he’d accepted his own secondary role, with her in the primary position, as source of information for Agent-in-Charge Osborne. It got another big boost when Osborne had wondered aloud how Doherty had happened upon this place, and Chee had explained that Doherty had been the post-burn clean-up man assigned here after the fire had swept through the canyon. How could Chee have learned that? Only if he zeroed in on this canyon himself. But if he had, he had said not a word about it. He’d left all the credit to her.

  After she had directed Osborne and his crime scene experts to the burned area where she had been (probably) shot at, and showed him where she’d noticed what she presumed were the victim’s boot prints, this area of the canyon had been made off limits by strips of yellow crime scene tape. She and Chee, their usefulness exhausted, had then been advised to go about their business elsewhere while the crime scene folks sniffed the air, read the sand, and deduced what had happened here. But by the time they’d reached the chapter house on the way out, a New Mexico state policeman had waved them down, said Agent Osborne wanted them, and directed them back to the hogan near the canyon entrance.

  The hogan now was definitely occupied. Smoke, and the aroma of burning piñon, emerged from its stovepipe. The track up the slope was occupied by three vehicles—a McKinley County sheriff’s car, a Ford sedan in FBI black, and an elderly Chevy pickup. Bernie recognized the grinning deputy at the hogan’s plank door as a young fellow who had made a move on her last spring when they were both working the Navajo Fair, and said “Hello, George,” as he waved them in.

  Not all of the smoke produced by the hogan’s stove had escaped out the pipe. Three men were awaiting them in the aromatic haze: Agent Osborne, a young fellow in a jean jacket standing with him by the door, and an elderly man, his gray hair tied in the traditional bun, sitting on a bench beside the hogan’s table.

  “We’re having a little trouble getting any information out of Mr. Peshlakai,” Agent Osborne said to Chee. And having said it, he endowed Bernie Manuelito with a sort of “Oh, yes, I forgot” nod.

  “What sort of information are you after?” Chee asked. He was nodding to the old man, smiling at him.

  “We found the spent round that was fired at Officer Manuelito,” Osborne said. “Glanced off a rock, and it’s well enough preserved to get a match.” He pointed toward a plastic evidence sack leaning against the wall. “He has an old Savage thirty-thirty carbine, the right caliber and so forth to match the slug we found, but the old fella doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.”

  Chee glanced at Peshlakai, who had looked faintly amused at Osborne’s description. To Mr. Peshlakai Chee nodded again, and said in Navajo: “He doesn’t know you understand English.”

  Peshlakai erased the beginnings of a smile, looked very somber, and said: “It is true.”

  “Officer Harjo, Ralph Harjo, he’s my interpreter,” Osborne said. “With the Bureau of Indian Affairs Law and Order office. He’s Navajo.”

  “Good to meet you,” Chee said, and switched into Navajo. “I’m born to the Slow Talking Dineh, born for the Bitter Water. People call me Jim Chee.”

  “Ralph Harjo,” Harjo said, looking slightly abashed as they shook hands. “My father was Potawatomi, and my mother grew up over near Burnt Water. I think she said she was a member of the Standing House clan.”

  “Hostiin Peshlakai may have been raised way over on the west side of the reservation. The language over there is a little different,” Chee said. “Lot of Paiute words mixed in, and some things are pronounced differently.”

  “That might be part of my problem,” Harjo said. “But he’s not being responsive to questions. He wants to tell me about something that happened a long time ago. I think it’s about religion. We moved to Oregon when I was a kid. I don’t have the vocabulary for that stuff.

  “If you get down to the bottom line, all we really want here is whether he admits shooting at Officer Manuelito. And why he did it. We’re going to hold off on the Doherty homicide for now. Don’t want to stir the old man up on that until we get a search warrant and see what we can find in here.”

  “How about the rifle?” Chee asked, nodding toward the evidence sack.

  “I asked him about it,” Harjo said. “He said go ahead, take it. Bring it back before hunting season starts.”

  “Sounds like that makes it legal,” Chee said. “Now, with this questioning, you’re going to have to have patience.”

  It began, of course, with Chee telling Mr. Peshlakai who he was—not in belagaana terms of what he did to make money but how he fit in the Dineh social order. He named the maternal clan he was “born to” and paternal clan he was born for. He mentioned various relatives—most notably the late Frank Sam Nakai, who was a shaman of considerable note. That done, he listened to Mr. Peshlakai’s listing of his own clans and kinfolks. Only then did Chee explain his position in the belagaana world and that it was his duty to learn who had fired a shot at Bernadette Manuelito. Anything Mr. Peshlakai could tell him about that would be appreciated.

  This produced a silence of perhaps two minutes, while Mr. Peshlakai considered his response. Then he motioned at Chee and his other visitors and asked if they would like to be served coffee.

  A good sign, Chee thought. Mr. Peshlakai had something to tell them. “Coffee would be good,” he said.

  Peshlakai arose, collected an assortment of cups from the shelf behind him, lined them up on the e
dge of the stove, put a jar of Nescafé instant coffee beside them, tested the pot of steaming water on the stovetop with a cautious finger, pushed the pot into a hotter spot, said: “Not quite hot enough,” and resumed both his seat and his silence.

  Osborne frowned. “What’s all this about?”

  “It’s about tradition,” Chee said. “If you’re going to do any serious talking in a gentleman’s home, he offers you some coffee first.”

  “Tell him we haven’t got time to brew coffee. Tell him we just want him to answer some simple questions.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to have simple answers,” Chee said.

  “Well, hell,” Osborne said. He started to add something angry to that, changed his mind. “I have a couple of calls to make. Come get me when he’s ready to cooperate,” he said, and disappeared through the doorway.

  The silence stretched until Peshlakai touched the coffeepot, judged its temperature sufficient, spooned instant coffee into each cup, filled them with steaming water, passed them around, sat, and looked up at Chee.

  Chee sipped his coffee, in which the flavor of the Nescafé blended nicely with the alkaline and whatever other minerals enriched Peshlakai’s water. It was a taste that pleasantly recalled to Chee his hogan boyhood, and he nodded his approval to Hostiin Peshlakai.

  “My grandfather,” Chee said, “as you have heard, when this woman with me came to this canyon yesterday in her duty as a policewoman for the Dineh, a rifle shot was fired and the bullet almost hit her. We have come here to see what you can tell us of that. Did you hear the shot? Did you see the one who fired it?

  Peshlakai sipped his coffee, considered the questions.

  Chee glanced around. Harjo was leaning against the wall, looking interested. Bernadette was sitting on the bench by the door, her eyes on him. Chee looked away.

  “They say,” began Peshlakai, using the traditional Navajo form separating the speaker from any personal claim to knowledge, “that when people come to another person’s property, first they ask that person for his permission. This person “—Peshlakai nodded toward Bernie—“did not ask if she could be on my property.”

  “They say,” Chee responded, “that our Mother Earth is not the property of any person. Do you say you own this canyon?”

  “This is my grazing lease,” Peshlakai said, looking slightly abashed. “You can look at the papers down at the chapter house. I have a right to protect it.”

  “Did you think Officer Manuelito was a thief who came to steal from you? Were you the one who fired the shot?”

  Peshlakai considered. “What I have here,” he said, gesturing around the hogan, “the woman can have all of that. It is nothing of any value. I would not shoot her to protect that.”

  Now Chee took charge of the silence. He guessed Peshlakai would want to expand on that, and he did.

  “There are holy things that must be protected,” he said.

  Chee nodded. “I once thought I could be a yataali, and my uncle, Hostiin Frank Sam Nakai, taught me for years the way of the Talking God, and the Blessing Way. But before it was finished, Hostiin Nakai died.” Chee shrugged. “So I am still a policeman, but he taught me something of the wisdom Changing Woman taught us.”

  Peshlakai was smiling now. “A great singer of the healing songs,” he said. “I knew him. He never joined the Medicine Man Association.”

  “No,” Chee said. Peshlakai seemed far too traditional to want to hear that Hostiin Nakai had planned to join the MMA. He was always just too busy to get to the meetings.

  “Had he been here,” Peshlakai said, creating the canyon outside with a gesture of his hands, “then he would have done what I try to do.” Then he looked down at his hands, thinking.

  Here it comes, Chee thought. He is deciding how to tell me, and it will start from the very beginning. He glanced at Bernie, who had also sensed the long, long story coming and was settling more comfortably on the bench. Harjo, newer to the ways of his people, looked at Chee, raised his eyebrows into a question.

  “I understood some of it,” he said. “But did he ever answer your question? Was he the shooter?”

  “Not yet he hasn’t,” Chee said.

  “My mother told me that if you keep asking a traditional Navajo the same question, the fourth time you ask it, they have to tell you the answer.”

  “That’s the tradition,” Chee said. “Sometimes—“ But now Hostiin Peshlakai was ready to talk.

  “They say that Changing Woman had almost finished her work here. She was all ready to follow the light toward the west and go live with the sun across the ocean. But before she did that, she went all around Dinetah. She started at the east, and on the top of the Turquoise Mountain she left her footprints, and blue flint grew everywhere around where she stepped.” About here Peshlakai’s voice slipped into the storyteller’s cadence, recounting the travels of the great Lawgiver of the Navajo People from one of the Sacred Mountains to the next.

  Officer Bernadette Manuelito had heard it all before, although some of the details varied, and she found herself more interested in the listeners’ reaction than in the tale. Ralph Harjo’s knowledge of religious/mythological terminology in the Navajo language had obviously fallen far short of requirements, and he had lost the thread of Peshlakai’s discourse. Harjo, she noticed, had become more interested in her than in the suspect. He glanced at her, made a wry “we’re in this together” face, smiled, and sent the other signals that Bernie, being a pretty young woman, often received from young men. Sergeant Chee, on the other hand, was totally and absolutely focused on Peshlakai and what he was saying.

  At the moment, he was connecting Changing Woman’s visits to various places with the minerals and herbs she had endowed them with—getting into territory that touched Bernie’s botanical interest. He was also moving into her home territory—specifically Mesa de los Lobos.

  Peshlakai was saying that both Changing Woman and Mirage Girl had been here, and he gestured up the canyon, up the slope. And these great yei, these great spirits, they had left behind here, so that the Dineh could be cured, could be returned to the cosmic harmony of the Navajo way, the materials to be used in two curing ceremonies. They were the Wind Way and the Night Chant. Here our uncles (the spirit forms of the plants) had left the seeds for a long list of herbs and grasses (only some of which Bernie recognized under their Navajo name) required for the proper conclusion of one or both of those rituals.

  Somewhere in this listing Agent Osborne appeared at the hogan doorway and stood looking in, still holding his cell phone. He motioned to Harjo. They talked; Harjo shrugged. Osborne came in, tapped Chee’s shoulder. Peshlakai fell silent, watching him.

  “What’d he say about it?” Osborne asked Chee. “Admit it? Deny it? What’d you learn?”

  “Not yet,” Chee said. “We’re getting there. Hostiin Peshlakai is explaining motivations. Why this canyon must be protected.”

  Osborne looked at his watch. “Well, hell,” he said. “Tell Mr. Peshlakai that I’m in a hurry. Just ask him if he shot at Officer Manuelito here.”

  Chee looked thoughtful.

  “Harjo,” Osborne said. “Ask the man if he shot at Officer Manuelito.”

  “Mr. Peshlakai,” Harjo said, and pointed at Bernie. “Did you shoot your rifle at this woman here?”

  Peshlakai looked puzzled. He shrugged.

  Bernie found herself hoping he’d say no. She hadn’t been able to visualize this frail old man in the role of sniper, trying to murder her. His mention of the Night Chant had brought back a great, great memory of the last night of that ceremony. She’d been eleven, a fifth grader, and there she stood with her cousin Harold and seven other kids—the boys wearing only breechcloths and shivering in the November cold, the girls wearing their very best ceremonial dresses and all the silver they could borrow, and shivering with a mixture of awe and excitement. The Singer shaking the sacred pollen from a flask, sprinkling it on her shoulders, looking above her into the stars as he sang the
prayer. And then, that great dramatic moment that signified the entry of a child into the fullness of humanity, the figures of Grandfather of the Monsters and White Flint Woman appearing in the firelight, walking down the row inspecting them, then removing their terrible yei masks to reveal themselves as fellow humans. White Flint Woman had proved to be Bernie’s paternal aunt. She put her mask on Bernie’s head, allowing her to see through the eyeholes the world as seen by the Holy People.

  “Mr. Peshlakai,” Harjo repeated, “did you—“

  Chee held up his hand. “I’ll handle this,” he said.

  This surprised Bernie, who had been analyzing Chee’s performance and giving him a pretty good grade. Why this abrupt, and rude, interruption?

  Chee tilted his head toward Osborne. “This officer here wants you to tell him if you tried to kill this young woman.”

  Peshlakai had no trouble answering that. He said, “No.”

  “I will ask you again. Did you try to kill her?”

  Peshlakai shook his head. “No.”

  “I have no need to tell you what we are taught about the truth,” Chee said. “You have taught many others. Mr. Harjo here asked you once, now I will ask you the fourth time. Did you try to kill this woman?”

  Peshlakai said no again, rather loudly, and followed the answer with a very slight smile.

  Chee looked at Osborne. “He denies it.”

  “Finally,” Osborne said. “We’ve got that on the record, for whatever it’s worth.” He looked at his watch again, said thank-you-very-much to Peshlakai, and ducked out the hogan door with Harjo following.

  Chee and Officer Manuelito lingered long enough to make their polite departure. At the doorway Bernie paused and looked back at Peshlakai. “I never did think you tried to kill me,” she said.

  The ride out of the canyon and past the chapter house was mostly silent. When they hit Navajo Route 9 and headed west toward Gallup, Bernie decided she had to know.

  “What were you doing back there?”

  “What do you mean?”