Shooting Chant

by Aimée

  “No, the meat was left for my wife. The animal was the result of artificial insemination and that made some of the traditionalists who were also exhibiting their animals very angry. Claire is sure that Angela Charlie is responsible. She came in second and complained a lot.”

  “Angela Charlie is a traditionalist, I know that.”

  “I think her husband, Gene Charlie, is also a member of the Fierce Ones.”

  The secret vigilante group known as the Fierce Ones espoused traditionalist values and, philosophically, they had some good ideas. Their problem was that they often used underhanded means and strong-arm tactics to achieve a goal. “Is there any evidence linking the killing to Angela or the traditionalists, other than the typical method of slaughter?”

  Big Ed nodded. “A couple of things. The large intestine was thrown toward our home. According to the old ways, it then becomes another sheep. Also, we found the head of the animal sprinkled with pollen and laid beneath a juniper. That’s said to tell Talking God and Black God to bring another animal.”

  “Were there any tracks?”

  “Whoever did this wore moccasins, or only socks. I checked that part out myself. By now, my wife and her sister will have butchered the ewe and taken the meat. Tracks won’t do you any good, but the impressions were so light, they were barely visible.” He paused then added. “There is something else. Claire saw a figure in the distance walking toward the Charlie home just before our daughter discovered the ewe. The person had a red skirt on like the one Angela usually wears.”

  “I’ll talk to the woman this morning, then.”

  “Thanks, Shorty. Let me know how it goes.”

  Ella watched him. “There’s something else that’s bothering you about this, isn’t there?”

  Big Ed nodded. “My wife’s ewe wasn’t the only animal that was a product of artificial insemination. I suggest you stop by Rex Jim’s house. He ran the Agricultural Society show and he knows all the exhibitors. Get a list and follow it up.”

  “I spent some time at that show myself, at the community policing booth, and I’ve known Rex for years. I’ll take care of it.”

  Ella returned to her small office and read the preliminary report Justine had left on her desk. She then wrote down quick notes on what had happened last night to Claire Atcitty, adding pertinent information from her conversation with Big Ed. She’d need to make out a full report later.

  Hearing a knock at her door, she looked up. Kevin Tolino, one of the most respected defense attorneys working for the tribe, walked in. Kevin was over six feet tall, lean, fit, and good-looking. He was said to be one of the tribe’s most eligible bachelors though, like Ella, he walked the dangerous line between the progressives and the traditionalists, as well as between the Anglo and Navajo worlds.

  Ella had known Kevin for two years now, and had been dating him off and on for the last few months. Both of them were considered outsiders by many because they’d lived off the Rez in the past and had adopted many Anglo ways. That common ground had drawn them together initially, along with a natural physical attraction, but in the end it hadn’t been enough to sustain their relationship. Although they’d remained friends, they’d both decided a month ago not to date again.

  Now she was pregnant with his child and this seemed destined to test the friendship they’d forged. The fact was, she had no intention of marrying Kevin. They’d already proven that would be a mistake. She would raise the baby on her own. Kevin’s only choice would be to admit paternity and play a part in the baby’s life, or walk away forever.

  Ella started to give him the news, but then changed her mind. This wasn’t the right time or place. Until she got her own thoughts more organized and there was time to tell him without rushing everything out, she’d wait.

  “I thought I’d drop by and make sure you were okay,” he said. “I heard you confronted a burglar last night, got jumped by two more, then had to fight your way out of a jam.”

  “Well, it was something like that. How did you hear about it so soon?”

  “I overheard two cops talking at the Totah Cafe this morning.”

  And that was exactly how news traveled. She wondered how long it would be before everyone also knew she was pregnant.

  “So, what really happened? I heard shots were fired, but you didn’t even draw your weapon. Is that true?”

  “Yeah,” she admitted grudgingly. “The call indicated I was dealing with only one perp. I figured it was a teenager, so I’d planned to use my nightstick.”

  Kevin said nothing for a long time. “When cops underestimate a situation or become complacent, they get killed. Be careful,” he said at last.

  She nodded once. “Count on it.”

  THREE

  Ella left a note for Justine, then decided to go speak to Angela Charlie, Big Ed’s neighbor. There had always been conflicts between the traditionalists and the progressives on the Rez but, lately, things were taking on an edge that worried her. What was needed was unity, not the division she kept seeing everywhere.

  The term “neighbor,” on the Rez sometimes meant the closest dwelling to another but not necessarily within sight, and certainly not across any street. This was true for the Atcitty and Charlie homes. Ella drove down the gravel road past Big Ed’s residence, a comfortable looking pueblo-style three-bedroom set down a dusty lane. There was a small unpainted shed out back, and several corrals. A metal loafing shed covered the latest cutting of hay, and there were two apple trees, side by side several yards away. As was typical, there were no lawn or landscaping plants, but a small vegetable garden was on the south side of the house, surrounded by a low wire rabbit-proof fence.

  In contrast to the Atcitty’s progressive lifestyle, Angela and Gene Charlie lived much as their grandparents did. Two hogans, one of traditional mud and log construction, and the other of unfinished gray stucco, lay at one end of a deeply rutted track that must have been difficult to negotiate even after a light rain.

  The stucco hogan was undoubtedly the chief residence, while the old-style was for ceremonial purposes. A cottonwood bough–covered framework provided shelter from the sun for a dozen or so chickens, and a larger pen a short distance away held two sturdy looking horses.

  No smoke was visible from the wood and coal stovepipe sticking out of the center of the home, so Ella stopped the Jeep and looked around the brush-covered countryside. The clank of a bell signaled the location of several sheep and goats along an arroyo, where the runoff had enhanced the grazing value of the grass and brush.

  Ella shut off the engine, climbed out of her vehicle, and stood by the door, waiting to be discovered. A woman sitting on a large slab of sandstone looked her way, stared for a minute or two, then waved for her to come over.

  She recognized Angela Charlie, who was dressed in a simple cotton dress, no belt at the waist, and a wool cardigan sweater. Her hair was in a tight bun, a style more often seen in women twice her age. Angela was probably forty years old.

  As Ella approached, she saw Angela wore three silver bracelets and a turquoise ring, but no watch. Who needed a watch around here, where the sun’s position told a shepherd all she needed to know?

  “Hello, Officer,” Angela called as Ella drew near. “I can imagine what brought you here. Have you come to arrest me for sheep murder?”

  “I’m here because I want to hear your side of the story with my own ears. Nothing more.” As Ella looked down, she spotted a common contradiction between the traditionalists of twenty years ago and those of today. Instead of leather boots or moccasins, Angela Charlie wore canvas and vinyl jogging shoes.

  “Then I should tell you that I didn’t do it, no matter what that woman down the road says.” Angela crossed her arms, and looked defiantly at Ella.

  “I haven’t heard all the story, so can you tell me why she might say you were responsible for killing her ewe?” Ella pressed carefully knowing that she needed Angela’s cooperation to get to the truth.

  “The police chief’s
wife told me herself. She came up a few hours after it happened because she first had to take care of the carcass before the meat went bad. She said she saw a woman in a red skirt walking away from her pen and coming in this direction right before her daughter found the sheep. She knows I have a red skirt—well, at least I did have.”

  Ella’s eyebrows rose. “What happened to it?”

  “I don’t know. It was gone from my clothesline yesterday. Not that she would believe me. That woman has made up her mind, like I told my other neighbor, across the highway.”

  Ella knew Angela was referring to Maria Benally, another traditionalist, who was a weaver and sometimes went to the Plant People meetings. According to Ella’s mother, who was in a position to know, Maria was a gossip who seldom got her facts right.

  “Maybe I should talk to the weaver, too,” Ella said. “I’ll investigate, and maybe come back later if I find out anything that’ll help settle this matter.”

  “Say hello to your mother for me, won’t you?” Angela ended the conversation with those words, and walked back to her rock, shooing away a goat who tried to take a nibble at her shoelaces.

  Twenty minutes later, Ella arrived at a more modern residential area in Shiprock, north of the valley elementary school, just below the mesa. She’d stopped by the weaver’s home on her way, but had been unsuccessful.

  Maria Benally had not been at her loom, which had been covered by a large plastic tarp. Though Ella had waited a good five minutes, the woman either hadn’t been in the mood to talk, or wasn’t inside her tiny cinder-block and tar-paper home. The absence of a pickup, however, though tracks were visible, suggested Maria had gone on an errand.

  Ella drove down the side street in Shiprock, watching preschoolers play in the yards, their moms hanging up laundry and taking care of vegetable and herb gardens. It seemed peaceful and quiet, definitely a low crime area.

  As she approached Rex Jim’s house, she saw him standing in the front yard talking to a neighbor. He waved at her, and she parked at the curb. Ella had known Rex since her high school days. He’d been a teacher in Shiprock for years until his recent retirement.

  He walked slowly, a bad hip obviously giving him trouble again. “Hey, Ella! It’s good to see you. What brings you here?”

  She left her unit. “I need to talk to you. Can we go inside?”

  “Sure thing.” He led her across the well-tended lawn and into his living room, then gestured for her to take a seat. “Forgive the mess. I had a party for my granddaughter last night. It was her third birthday and we had close to one hundred people stop by.”

  It wasn’t unusual for that many people to come to a party hosted by someone as well known in the community as Rex Jim. The surprising thing was that there wasn’t more chaos inside. “Your house looks fine,” she assured him, noting two stuffed plastic garbage bags in the kitchen and an errant length of crepe paper beneath the sofa.

  “What’s this all about?” he asked. “Is it official?”

  She nodded. “I need the list of exhibitors from the last Agricultural Society show,” she said, and saw his expression change instantly.

  “Have there been more problems?”

  “Tell me what you mean,” Ella asked without answering.

  “I heard that late last night Dolores Begay found her blue-ribbon billy goat dead. She spent a year feeding him special bagged feed, consulting with the county agricultural agent, and following all the latest management techniques. I’ve got to tell you, that animal looked great. They were going to use him to artificially inseminate some goats on a project at Tuba City, but that plan is now as dead as the goat.”

  Ella looked at him in surprise. “I hadn’t heard about this.”

  “I just found out about it earlier this morning. Dolores thinks that Nancy Bitsillie killed the animal. Nancy was mad because her goat lost out to Dolores’s. Nancy raised her animal traditionally, and spent lots of time finding the best places for it to graze and making sure it stayed healthy.”

  “I don’t know Nancy. Is she a traditionalist?”

  Rex nodded. “Very much so, and that’s one of the reasons why the animals’s death pointed to her. The head was sprinkled with pollen and left beneath a juniper. Also, it was butchered in a way that allowed Dolores and her family to still use the meat. Traditionalists don’t believe in waste.”

  “So then,” Rex continued, “somebody got back at Nancy. They scattered some of the store-bought feed around the corral where Nancy keeps her goats at night, mixing it with the hay in the feeders. Now Nancy’s goats have eaten the same feed that she spoke out against.”

  “So, now Nancy blames Dolores, right?”

  “No, that’s just it. Dolores was helping at a Chapter House meeting and lots of people saw her there this morning. Nancy thinks it was Norma Sells who scattered the feed in her pens. Norma is a good friend of Dolores, and uses the same bagged feed on her goats. Norma runs the feed store.”

  Ella felt her skin prickle. “This reminds me of the petty things that went on in junior high school. Maybe it’ll stop now.”

  “I doubt it. Somebody has already gotten back at Norma. She had her entire storage barn trashed about half an hour ago, with feed and fertilizer and manure mixed in together all over the ground. That’s what Ethel Yazzie was telling me when you came up. Things are getting worse, not better. The traditionalists and progressives are lining up against each other.”

  “Do you have the list of those who went to the ag show? I need to contact some of those people and try putting a stop to this before more animals get hurt and property gets damaged.”

  He shook his head. “I wish I could help you, but I can’t. I had the list as a file in my computer, but the machine crashed. I shipped it back to the manufacturer to get as many of the files recovered as possible. But I wouldn’t count on getting anything from that hard drive. A virus scrambled everything in it, and it could be gone forever.”

  Ella had him make out a partial list from memory, then thanked him. “If you get a chance, try to calm people down, okay? Things will only get worse unless everyone starts backing off.”

  “Too late. It’s gone too far already. My guess is that it’ll just have to play out on its own.”

  Ella knew he was right. But anything that set the traditionalists against the progressives was bound to grow increasingly dangerous, and not just for the unfortunate animals.

  Ella was back in her police unit, heading to the station, when Justine reached her on the cell phone. “I’ve located Jimmie Herder, the security guard who found Hansen’s body,” she said.

  Ella had meant to ask her brother about Herder, but by the time things had wound down it had been too late in the evening to call. “Where is he?”

  “He’s with John Tso. I’m outside his hogan now.”

  Ella knew the ninety-year-old hataalii. Although many people saw Clifford these days, Gray Eyes, as John was known, was still a favorite in the area. “I can’t remember how to get to his hogan. Give me directions.”

  Justine complied. “Shall I wait for you, or start questioning him now?”

  “What’s happening?”

  “I think Jimmie’s having a Sing done over him.”

  “Then don’t interrupt the hataalii. I’ll be there in thirty.” Ella placed a call to the sheriff’s office, but was forced to leave a message since Taylor was in court.

  Hungry, Ella reached into her purse for a grain and fruit bar. She’d barely had a moment’s peace since daybreak, and now she was starving again. She made a mental note to stick more nutritious snack food in her vehicle.

  When Ella finally arrived at Gray Eyes’s medicine hogan, she saw Justine leaning against the side of the car, enjoying the early fall weather, and relaxing in the sun.

  Joining her, they waited and, as they did, Ella filled her assistant in on what she’d learned. “We’ve got the beginnings of a problem that could explode all over the Rez. We have to find a way to defuse this before the entire comm
unity gets involved and takes sides.”

  “But how? From what you’ve told me things are already taking a life of their own, at least here in the Shiprock area.”

  “We have to nip this now, even if it means bringing people in to the station. If we can remind them that what they’re doing is illegal, maybe we can shake them up enough to have them stop.”

  “But no one’s actually seen anyone else doing these things, right?”

  “Just the red skirt in the distance, in that first instance. The rest is mostly gossip rooted in old rivalries, as far as I’ve been able to learn.”

  “How can we build a case against anyone, then?” Justine asked.

  “We can’t, unless we get solid evidence. But we can still question those involved and, if we get them rattled enough, maybe someone will ‘fess up’ to their part in this. It’s the only tool we have.”

  “And just when are we supposed to do this? We have the Anglo’s death to look into, the break-in at the clinic, and now this?”

  “We’ll do what we usually do when things all come at us at once—juggle.”

  A few minutes later Gray Eyes came to the hogan entrance and waved at them to approach. As Ella and Justine came closer, Jimmie Herder came out of the hogan to join them.

  “You can talk in here, if you want,” Gray Eyes said, indicating the hogan with a wave of his hand. “I have to leave to attend to another patient.” Without further explanation, he walked to a hitching post where a horse was tethered, took the reins in his left hand, jumped on, and trotted away.

  “I hope when I’m his age, I can still be as limber as he is. He’s amazing,” Jimmie said, then focused back on Ella and Justine, who had followed him into the hogan. “I know why you’re here, and you probably know why I’m here, but there’s nothing I can tell you that will help. I went outside to tell the man he was past break time and to let him back inside the gate. When I got to his car I saw an arm dangling out of the driver’s side. I thought he’d gone to sleep, so I took a closer look. That’s when I saw the handgun on the asphalt and the body. I ran back inside the main building, reported what I found, then split when Doctor Landreth went out to take a look. I knew I’d have to find Gray Eyes. I was already getting sick. I’ve never seen anything like that in my entire life, and I hope I never do again!”