The Tale Teller

by Anne Hillerman

  Rather than starting with the task at hand, Leaphorn introduced himself the traditional way, telling her the clans he came from.

  Mary did the same in halting Navajo, then switched to English. “Sorry my Navajo is so rough. I mostly use it with my dad, and I haven’t been spending much time there.”

  “Your Navajo sounds fine. Better than my English these days.”

  “So, together, we’re bilingually challenged. What’s this call about?”

  “A box arrived at the Navajo Museum filled with old things. I believe you sent that box.”

  He heard only silence. Then, in the background, a man’s voice: “Mary, Barbara needs you.”

  When she spoke again, Leaphorn noticed the change in her tone. “I can’t tell you anything about that, and I have to go.”

  Leaphorn spoke quickly, before she hung up. “I really need to talk to you about the box. Only one question, just a minute of your time. Your privacy is safe with me.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Help me lift the heart of a worried woman and a father who is missing his daughter very much.”

  The male voice sounded more insistent. “Mary. Now, please.”

  “I’m off tomorrow morning. Call me on my cell.” She rattled off the number and ended the call.

  Louisa sighed. “What do you think?”

  “Les go see her tomorrow.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “Winslow. Come wid me.”

  He could see Louisa thinking about it. He reached for a pad on the desk and wrote: “The box was mailed from the Winslow post office and we can talk to the employee there. Mary’s Navajo is marginal, so I’ll need your help with English. I would enjoy your company.”

  “OK. I’m sure Marsha won’t mind if you’d like to sleep at the house tonight. She says her couch is comfortable.” Marsha was the talkative colleague with whom Louisa stayed when she came to Flagstaff on college business. Leaphorn had met her once, and that was plenty.

  He shook his head.

  “I nee some quiet to tink.”

  They made plans to meet on campus in the morning.

  Leaphorn found a motel, plugged in his laptop, checked his email, considered tomorrow’s interview, had a hot roast beef sandwich at a nearby diner, and called it a day. He awoke refreshed. Louisa was ready when he pulled up in his truck.

  She smiled. “Shall we take my car?”

  He shook his head. “I drive.”

  Interstate 40, the quickest way to Winslow, drew an abundance of truck traffic and, in the summer, a bevy of tourists in sticker-covered RVs. Unlike the orange barrels and shoulder repair work he had encountered on his way west, the two eastbound lanes lay clear of construction. They left ponderosa pine country for red rocks, piñon and juniper trees, and then flatter, emptier landscape. As many times as he had driven this route, Leaphorn never tired of it. The vast sky where he’d seen double rainbows and clouds bigger than skyscrapers made whatever problem he puzzled over seem insignificant.

  He asked Louisa if she’d ever been to Winslow.

  “Maybe pulled off the freeway for gas there. I’ve heard lovely things about the old hotel La Posada. When I was working full-time and lived in Flag, I should have checked it out. Thanks for asking me to come with you.”

  Louisa sat quietly. He appreciated not having to work to speak English and used the time to consider the best way to approach Mary. He anticipated Mary wondering how he had found her, and decided he would say he was a detective and leave it at that. He would stress that he and Louisa would keep her identity private. He’d say that the woman who had received her great gift had a question. He’d ask if the special dress had been in the box and move on from there.

  He would call Mary when they reached the outskirts of Winslow and persuade her to let them treat her to a soda, a cup of coffee, or lunch in exchange for a brief conversation. Simple and effective, if she would take his call.

  He studied the scenery as he planned for the encounter, noticing the ribbon of a long train to the south, a few cumulus clouds beginning to build, joining the high, icy cirrus clouds in the brilliant blue of the summer sky.

  Louisa broke the silence.

  “Joe, I enjoy helping you, you know that. I find your work as an investigator interesting, and you do it well. I’ll assist you with this case—I mean, if you want me to. After that, you’ll need to figure out something else.”

  “Waz wrong?”

  She angled toward him. “I don’t want helping with your work to get in the way of our friendship. I offered some suggestions when we were at the Hubbell Trading Post, and you found my ideas intrusive. I’m not one to go where I’m not wanted. I need to get back to my own interests. That’s better for both of us.”

  He recalled his irritation when she interrupted his interview and even invited Peshlakai to their home. His reaction came automatically from years of police work, shutting down hysterical parents and girlfriends, talkative drunks, pesky bystanders who butted in to an investigation. It wasn’t personal. Now he wanted to say the right thing, and until he knew what that might be, he didn’t say anything at all.

  “Joe, do you understand?”

  He shrugged. “Les talk when I can type.”

  “We’ll do that.”

  “You help me wid dis one?”

  “That’s what I said.” He heard the edge to her voice.

  He saw the exit for a rest area and pulled off the interstate. He found a parking place behind the row of trucks lined up like a neighborhood of small buildings, all facing the highway. He took out his notebook and jotted down some thoughts. He preferred typing because the speed more closely matched the workings of his mind. But this would do. He handed the book to Louisa. She read his note twice and then gave the book back to him.

  “That plan looks good, but, as you wrote, we’ll have to see how things develop. Sometimes a little chitchat can loosen people up. I noticed that with my oral histories. Breaking the ice, you know, establishing rapport with a stranger, that’s the hardest part.”

  “Rye.”

  “And Mary will already be suspicious. We can veer from this plan if she isn’t forthcoming.”

  He nodded. He’d step in if he had to.

  He called Mary, but she didn’t answer. He left a message, then sent her a text with the information that he and his friend Louisa were in Winslow and wanted to meet her. He offered to treat her to lunch, stressed that the meeting wouldn’t take long, and underlined their respect for her privacy.

  They waited, watching the traffic pass. In less than a minute, his phone chimed. Mary suggested a place to meet, El Falcon on the east end of town, in half an hour.

  16

  Winslow had seen its share of ups and downs. A thriving railroad town, a trade center where Navajo and Hopi met, and a village that wore its Route 66 heritage like a badge of honor now welcomed tourists on their way to or from the Grand Canyon or Albuquerque. Leaphorn gave Louisa a five-cent tour, starting at another Hubbell Trading Post, the traders’ center for shipping fleece, rugs, and more to East Coast markets. Then they walked to the Standin’ on the Corner Park.

  “I haven’t thought of that Eagles song for a long time. When was it a hit, sometime in the 1970s?” She sang a few bars. “Those were the days.”

  They strolled over to look at the mural that showed the girl in a flatbed Ford from the song. A couple of gray-haired tourists were taking a photo next to the life-sized bronze of a young man with a guitar.

  At El Falcon, they sat at a table with a view of local traffic and waited for Mary. Leaphorn took a chair facing the door and another mural, a large painting of a town on a beach. When the waitress returned with ice water and plastic-coated menus, he asked about it.

  “Oh, the original owners here were Greek and had that commissioned as a reminder of their old home. We’re all so used to it we forget it’s there.”

  Like a lot of things, he thought, including the interesting woman who sat across from
him. He realized that he had grown so accustomed to Louisa’s presence that he’d forgotten to tell her how much he admired her and enjoyed her friendship.

  He was preparing to say just that when he saw a Navajo woman arrive alone. Sunlight from the window shimmered on her black hair. He motioned to her, and she walked toward their table. She took a seat at the end of the table, between him and Louisa. They got the introductions and pleased-to-meet-yous out of the way.

  “This place gets busy later.” Mary picked up her menu. “Let’s order, and then we can talk.”

  “Speaking of that, Joe is more comfortable speaking in Navajo, and I’m fine with it. If it’s something I need to hear, he’ll speak English.”

  “Louisa, you don’t speak Navajo?”

  “I don’t. I’m afraid I don’t have the ear for it.”

  Leaphorn said, “From your name, I wasn’t expecting you to understand Diné Bizaad very well. I’m glad you do.”

  “I understand better than I can speak.” She said it in English. “It’s wonderful to hear Navajo again. And my last name, Nestor? That came from my late husband. He was killed in Afghanistan.”

  She was younger than most widows, only forty at most.

  The waitress told them about the chicken taco and steak salad specials and took their orders. Then Mary leaned across the table toward them. “I’m exploiting your offer to buy me lunch. You two made the trip for nothing. I can’t tell you anything about a box of gifts.”

  “Please don’t say that.” Louisa’s voice had the tone she probably used with her students when they disappointed her. “The lady who received the donations is my friend. She got so excited when she realized what you had sent. Especially because, from what you wrote, one of the pieces has an important link to Fort Sumner.”

  “Fort Sumner?”

  “The Long Walk?”

  Mary shrugged.

  “Joe should explain.”

  Leaphorn studied Mary’s face for clues that she was faking ignorance. Didn’t see any.

  “Hwéeldi.” He hoped that hearing it in Navajo might jar her memory.

  She raised her shoulders to her ears again.

  Leaphorn spoke, in some detail, about the forced eviction of the People from their sacred homelands by the US government, their grueling march across much of New Mexico to an internment camp they shared with the Mescalero Apaches. He mentioned the children and elderly who died on the way, the years of illness, hunger, and sadness, and the survivors’ joy when they returned to the heart of Dinetah instead of being shipped off to Oklahoma.

  The waitress brought their meals. Mary listened, her hands in her lap, her food untouched.

  “Every Navajo alive today is an heir to this time of sorrow and to the resurgence that followed. Our grandparents’ fortitude when they returned to start over is why we Navajo not only survived but grew strong again.”

  As he spoke, he realized that if Mary didn’t know about Hwéeldi, she could not have described the missing dress. He needed to learn more about her. When he stopped talking, he saw the tears in her eyes.

  “I remember learning something about this in school, but I was too young to understand how terrible it was. What an outrage! My shimásani never talked about that, but she, or at least my great-grandparents, must have experienced that terrible time. When I visit my father, I’ll ask him if he can share the stories he has heard.”

  She looked at her untouched sandwich. “You know, my grandmother was always careful about food. She never wasted anything. If my sisters or I dared to complain about what she gave us to eat, she frowned that terrible frown of hers and we ate. Do you think that was because of Hwéeldi?”

  Leaphorn took a sip of his coffee. “All our families were touched by Hwéeldi, one way or another. Even those who fled the soldiers and hid suffered. That’s why my client, Mrs. Pinto, was happy when she noticed a dress on the inventory list related to the Long Walk. The weaving could be a way to open discussion between the generations, to educate young people who don’t understand the way the survivors rebuilt our culture. According to your note, the biil was created by a very powerful and famous woman, one of the leaders who helped us grow into what we are today.”

  He paused, but she didn’t protest or ask a question, so he continued.

  “To have an item created by Juanita’s own hands, her brain, her heart, in a place where many of our people could appreciate it, would be very important to our Diné history. But the biil never arrived.”

  Mary pursed her lips and exhaled. She spoke in English now, and rapidly. “You’ve got this all wrong. All I did was take that box to the post office. I am the one who mailed the box but not the one who gave those things away.”

  Louisa looked surprised, but Leaphorn recalled his first phone conversation with Mary and the voices in the background. “I appreciate you coming to talk with us. I need to contact the person who made the donation and gave you the box to mail.”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “I can give you my information, and you can ask the person to call me or, if you prefer, to call my client, Mrs. Pinto, now that you understand why this is important.”

  She shook her head again and squeezed her lips together.

  Louisa could help with this, he decided, so he moved to English. “You packed da box?”

  “No. I offered to help, but he’s very particular about that old stuff. He should have gotten rid of some of it when he closed his gallery, but those things had memories of when he was a young man. Some go back even before he and Barbara moved to Winslow.” She paused. “I can’t say anything else. I’d lose my job and, worse, he would know I had betrayed him. He might hate me.”

  Leaphorn took a bite of his meatloaf, waiting for what Mary would add.

  Louisa put down her iced tea glass. “I understand. We don’t want to get you into trouble. I haven’t been to Winslow before. It seems like an interesting town. Have you lived here long?”

  “Since I was seventeen.”

  “So you didn’t grow up here?”

  “No, my family is from a little place between Window Rock and Gallup.”

  “That’s beautiful country.”

  “It is. I miss it, but this is home to me now.”

  Leaphorn ate a bite of mashed potato, watching as Mary uncrossed her arms and nibbled at her sandwich.

  “Winslow must have seemed like a big city to you at first.” Louisa smiled that smile he’d seen when she was doing her oral history interviews. “Did your family have relatives or friends here?”

  “I didn’t move here with my family. They stayed near Window Rock. My sister and I came out together, but she left and it was just me.”

  “Wow. At seventeen. Was that an adventure for you?”

  “It was. I came to help a lady who had volunteered as a VISTA worker at our high school. At the end of my senior year, she and her husband decided to move because he had an opportunity to open a gallery here in Winslow. I had just graduated, so she asked me and my older sister if we could help drive and get her new house in order. I had already been driving for a year and my dad was OK with it.”

  Louisa said, “I know some fathers who would have objected, even grown angry.”

  “Angry? He lost his temper once in a while, but only when we had it coming. Dad always told us how much we girls meant to him. He said he would miss me and that I was always welcome to come home, but that he knew I would be fine. The confidence he had in me gave me the courage to say yes. It was hard work, but it was fun, too.”

  Mary smiled at the memory. “It was hot and exhausting, but I liked it. My sister went home. Then the lady got sick and it turned out to be cancer. I stayed and helped her and filled in at the gallery. By the time Barbara was done with her radiation and the chemo, well, it was like I was part of the family, or at least part of the business. They invited me to remain here and I did.”

  “Was the gallery nearby?”

  “Everything’s close here. It was a great l
ocation, right downtown. We were always busy during the tourist season, and we shipped a lot of art to buyers who came on those bus tours. I miss it.”

  “When did the gallery close?”

  “He shut down his art business about two years ago. Since then he’s been selling things online. I usually take a box or two to the post office each week.”

  Louisa nodded. “It sounds like they really appreciate what you do for them.”

  “They’re good people. They don’t have any kids, so they treat me like family.”

  Leaphorn cleared his throat. “Can you tell me where the items in the box came from?”

  She answered too quickly. “I don’t exactly know.” She repeated in English.

  Leaphorn took another bite of meatloaf. Even though the meal was cold, it was still tasty, and like Mary, he had been trained never to waste food.

  “I understand that you’re not sure. But what would you guess?”

  She answered in English, and he interpreted that as a sign of stress. “Well, since the box went to the Navajo Museum, I’d guess that what he packed could have come from his private collection. It was either that or from the inventory he moved from the gallery to the house after the shop closed.”

  Louisa shoved her plate to the side. “Mrs. Pinto noticed that also missing from the box was a bracelet. I have one that resembles it. This one.” She stretched her arm with Peshlakai’s storyteller artistry toward Mary. “Did you see anything like it when you worked in the shop?”

  Mary cleared her throat and spoke faster. “We sold a lot of jewelry. The owner and his wife would buy direct from the jewelers or shop at fairs and markets.” She looked at the bracelet again. “That’s lovely. Wish I could help.”

  Leaphorn knew she was lying.

  The waitress asked about dessert. Leaphorn shook his head. Mary, who hadn’t eaten much of her sandwich, requested a piece of chocolate cake and a to-go container. Louisa ordered a dish of ice cream.

  “I understand that your employer doesn’t want any credit. But what if some present arrived at his door?” Louisa flashed another smile at Mary. “You know, a tin of cookies, a bouquet, something like that? Anonymously, just like what he sent. What do you think?”