The Ghostway jlajc-6

by Tony Hillerman

  Beyond this house, the rusted corpses of three vehicles stood in a neat row—a delivery van, a pickup truck too cannibalized for easy identification, and a red Dodge sedan with its hood and engine missing. Beside the house, an old Chevy sedan was parked, the window of its driver's-side door held together with tape.

  Chee parked on the side of the track in front of the house, tapped twice on the horn, and waited.

  Almost five minutes passed. The front door opened just a little and a face peered out. A woman. Chee got out and walked slowly toward the house.

  The woman at the door was old, with a round, plump face framed with graying hair. She was obviously a Navajo, and Chee introduced himself in their language—telling her his mother's clan and his father's clan and naming various aunts and uncles—both maternal and paternal—old enough or prominent enough in affairs ceremonial or political that this old woman might have heard of them.

  She listened, nodded when he was finished, and motioned him inside.

  "I am born to the Turkey Clan," she said. "My mother is Bentwoman Tsossie of the Turkey Clan and my father was Jefferson Tom of the Salt Dinee." She spoke in a rusty old-person's voice, giving Chee the rest of her clan genealogy, mentioning relatives and clan connections, a litany of names of her extended family and its ancestors. Chee recognized a few of them: a woman who had served long before he was born on the Tribal Council, a singer of the Mountain Way Chant whom his own father had sometimes mentioned, and a man who had been, long, long ago, a tribal judge. When she had finished all the formalities and offered him a bottle of cold Pepsi-Cola, Chee accepted it, and sipped from it, and allowed the proper amount of time to pass, and then put the bottle on the floor beside his chair.

  "My grandmother," he said, "I come here from Shiprock in the hope that I can find a woman of your clan. She calls herself Margaret Billy Sosi." Chee paused. "I hope you can help me find her."

  "The girl isn't here," Bentwoman's Daughter said. "Why do you wish to see her?"

  "I work for the Dinee," Chee said. "I am a member of the Navajo Tribal Police. We hope to find a man of the Turkey Clan who is called Hosteen Ashie Begay. He is the grandfather of Margaret Billy Sosi. She is hunting for him too." Chee paused, noticing the expression on the old woman's face. It was skeptical. He would not look to her like a Navajo Tribal Policeman—out of uniform, in a travel-rumpled plaid shirt and blue jeans. Chee had the usual Navajo's propensity for personal cleanliness, plus a little more. But his only packing for this journey had been to stick his toothbrush holder in his shirt pocket and a spare pair of socks and shorts in the glove box of his pickup. Now he looked like he'd spent two nights in jail. He extracted from his hip pocket and displayed his police credentials.

  The expression of Bentwoman's Daughter did not change. Perhaps, Chee thought belatedly, her skepticism was not of Chee, the rumpled stranger, but of Chee, the Navajo Policeman. The relationship between the Dinee and their police force was no more universally serene than in any other society.

  "You should talk to Bentwoman," the old woman said.

  Chee said nothing. Bentwoman? When he'd seen the age of Bentwoman's Daughter, he'd presumed that Bentwoman would be dead. Chee was not good at guessing age, particularly of women. But she must be eighty. Perhaps older.

  Bentwoman's Daughter was waiting, her wrinkled hands folded motionless in the folds of her voluminous skirt.

  "If she will talk to me," Chee said. "Yes. That would be good."

  "I will see," said Bentwoman's Daughter. She raised herself painfully from her chair and hobbled past the heavy blanket that hung over the doorway leading to the rear of the house.

  Chee examined the room. The blanket was a black-and-gray design popular among weavers of the Coyote Canyon area and looked very old. The only furniture was the worn overstuffed sofa where the old woman had put him, a rocking chair, and a plastic-topped dinette table. A calendar hung on the wall opposite him—a color print of the gold of autumn cottonwoods in Canyon de Chelly issued by a Flagstaff funeral home. The calendar page was August, and seven years old. Two cases of Pepsi-Cola bottles were stacked against the wall and, beside them, three five-gallon jerricans that Chee guessed held water. A kerosene lamp, its glass chimney smudged with soot, stood on the table. Obviously, such amenities as water, gaslines, electricity, and telephone service had not yet been provided by whoever had sold this addition.

  Chee heard the voice of Bentwoman's Daughter, loud and patient, explaining the visitor to someone who apparently was deaf, saying that he wanted to see "Ashie Begay's granddaughter." So she's been here, Chee thought. Almost certainly, she's been here. And then the blanket curtain pushed aside and a wheelchair emerged.

  The woman in the chair was blind. Chee saw that instantly. Her eyes were open, aimed past him at the front door, but they had the clouded look of the glaucoma that takes such a heavy toll among the old of his people. Blind, and partially deaf, and immensely old. Her hair was a cloud of fluffy white, and her face, toothless, had collapsed upon itself into a mass of wrinkles. This was Bentwoman.

  Chee stood and introduced himself again, talking slowly and very loud, and making sure he followed all of the traditional courtesies his mother had taught him. With that out of the way, he paused a moment for a response. None came.

  "Do I speak clearly enough, my grandmother?" he asked. The old woman nodded, a barely perceptible motion.

  "I will tell you then why I have come here," Chee said. He started at the beginning, with going to the hogan of Ashie Begay, and what he found there, and of meeting Margaret Billy Sosi there later, and what Margaret had told him, and what he had forgotten to ask her. Finally he was finished.

  Bentwoman was motionless. She's gone to sleep, Chee thought. This is going to take time.

  Bentwoman's Daughter stood behind the chair, holding its handles. She sighed.

  "The girl must go home," Bentwoman said in Navajo. Her voice was slow and faint. "There is nothing for her here but trouble. She must go back to her family and live among them. She must live in Dinetah."

  "I will take her back to her people," Chee said. "Can you help me find her?"

  "Stay here," Bentwoman said. "She will come."

  Chee glanced at Bentwoman's Daughter, inquiring.

  "She took the bus," Bentwoman's Daughter said. "She went into the city when the sun came up. She said she would be back before it gets dark."

  "It's getting dark now," Chee said. He was conscious of how elusive Margaret Sosi had been. Something was making him uneasy. The number written on Mrs. Day's calendar hung in his mind.

  "Has anyone else been here looking for the girl?" Chee said. "Asking about her?"

  Bentwoman's Daughter shook her head.

  "When do you think she'll be back?"

  "The bus comes every hour," Bentwoman said. "It stops down there where the map is. Every hour until midnight."

  "About when does it stop?"

  "Twenty minutes after the hour," Bentwoman's Daughter said. "When it's on time."

  Chee glanced at his watch. It was five thirty-five. Two and a half miles to the bus stop, he guessed. She might be home in fifteen or twenty minutes. If she walked fast. If the bus was on time. If—

  Bentwoman made a noise in her throat. "She should go home to her family," Bentwoman said. "She wants to find Ashie Begay, my grandson. Ashie Begay is dead."

  It was an unequivocal statement. A fact stated without emotion.

  Bentwoman's Daughter sighed again. She looked at Chee. "He was my nephew," she explained.

  "Ashie Begay is dead?" Chee asked.

  "He is dead," Bentwoman said.

  "Did Margaret Sosi tell you this?"

  "The girl thinks he is still alive," Bentwoman said. "I told her, but she believes what she wants to believe. The young sometimes do that."

  Chee opened his mouth. Closed it. How should he frame the question?

  "When I was young, I too believed what I wanted to believe. But you learn," the old woman said.
/>   "Grandmother," Chee said. "How did you learn that Ashie Begay is dead?"

  "From what you told me," Bentwoman said. "And from what the girl told me."

  "I thought he might be alive," Chee said. "The girl is sure he is alive."

  Bentwoman's eyes were closed now. She was asleep, Chee thought. Or dead. If she was breathing under those layers of blankets and shawls, Chee could see no trace of it. But apparently Bentwoman was simply mustering her strength for what she had to tell him.

  "Ashie Begay has Tewa blood in him," Bentwoman said. "His grandmother was from Jemez. The Salt Clan went out toward the morning sun, beyond the Turquoise Mountain, to get some sheep one winter, and they came back with some children from Jemez. Some of them they sold back for corn and horses, but Ashie Begay's grandmother became the wife of one of the men in the Salt Clan and bore the child who was Ashie Begay's mother. So Ashie Begay has the blood in him of the People Who Call the Clouds. Tewa blood, and Salt Clan blood, and his father married into the Turkey Clan, and his mother's lineage was Standing Rock on her father's side. And all that has to be considered when you understand why I know Ashie Begay is dead."

  Bentwoman paused, to catch her breath—which was laboring by now—or perhaps to allow Chee to comment. Chee had no comment to make. He didn't understand why Ashie Begay had to be dead. None of this had helped.

  Bentwoman inhaled a labored breath, stirring her layers of coverings. She began explaining Ashie Begay's lineage in terms of the character of ancestors. Bentwoman's Daughter stood patiently behind the wheelchair, thinking her thoughts. Chee glanced at his watch. If the bus was on time, if Margaret Sosi had been on it, if she had walked rapidly, she should be within half a mile of here by now.

  "So you see," Bentwoman was saying, "Ashie Begay, my grandson, has my blood in him too. All this blood combines, and it makes a certain kind of man. It makes the kind of man who would not have allowed the Gorman boy to die in his hogan. He would have been prudent. The Tewas are prudent. The Salt Clan is a prudent clan. He would have taken the Gorman boy out of the hogan so he could die in the safe, clean air. So the hogan would not be ruined by the chindi."

  It had taken Bentwoman a long time to say all of this, with many pauses. Now she was silent, breathing heavily.

  "But the hogan was broken," Chee said. "The smoke hole was closed. The north wall was broken open. Everything in it was gone."

  "Was everything gone?" Bentwoman asked. "Nothing was left?"

  "Nothing but trash," Chee said.

  "Did you look?" Bentwoman asked.

  "It was a chindi hogan," Chee said. "I did not go inside."

  Bentwoman breathed. She coughed. She exhaled a long breath. She turned her blind eyes toward Chee, as if she could see him. "So only a belacani looked?"

  "Yes," Chee said. "A white policeman." He knew what Bentwoman was suggesting.

  She sat for a long time, her eyes closed again. Chee was aware of the changing light outside the window. The sky turning red with sunset. Darkness gathering. Margaret Sosi would be walking through that darkness. He remembered the telephone number on Mrs. Day's calendar. He wanted urgently to go and meet Margaret. He would ask her immediately what was said on that postcard. He would take no more chances.

  "If Ashie Begay is alive," Bentwoman said, "one day I will hear it. Someone in the family will know and the word will come to me. If he is dead, it would not matter. But it matters because this child believes he is alive, and she will always look for him." Bentwoman paused again, catching her breath, turning her face toward Chee again. "She should be looking for other things. Not for a dead man."

  "Yes," Chee said. "Grandmother, you are right."

  "You think Ashie Begay is alive?"

  "I don't know," Chee said. "Maybe not."

  "If someone killed him, would it have been one of the People? Or would it have been a belacani?"

  "A white man," Chee said. "I think it would have been a white man."

  "Then a white man buried Albert Gorman. And a white man broke the hogan?"

  "Yes," Chee said. "If Ashie Begay is dead, that must have been what happened."

  "I don't think a belacani would know how to do it right," Bentwoman said.

  "No," Chee said. He was thinking of Albert Gorman's unwashed hair.

  "Somebody should find out for sure," Bentwoman said. "They should do that so this child can know her grandfather is dead. So this child can finally rest."

  "Yes," Chee said. And who else would there be to do that but Jim Chee. And doing it meant going into the ghost hogan, climbing through the black hole in the north wall. It meant stepping through the doorway into darkness.

  Bentwoman was facing him, awaiting his answer. Chee swallowed. "Grandmother," he said, "I will go and do what I can do."

  Chapter 18

  Chee drove slowly through a darkening landscape under a glowing copper-colored sky. He was something of a connoisseur of sunsets, a collector of memories of gaudy cloudscapes and glowing western horizons that the Colorado Plateau produces in remarkable season-changing variety. But Chee had never seen a sunset like this one—with the slanting evening light filtering through an atmosphere of ocean-side humidity and chemical fumes. It gave a golden tint to objects that should be gray or tan or even blue; and made the cool evening seem warmer than it was, and caused Jim Chee to feel somehow that he was in a strange land, and that the bird call he was hearing from somewhere to his right was not produced by a bird at all but by something unknown, and that when he topped the ridge he would not look down upon the billboards proclaiming the entrance to Jacaranda Estates but upon God knows what.

  At the top of the ridge, Chee pulled his pickup off the track and turned off the engine. A small figure was walking up the slope toward him. He took his binoculars from the glove box and focused them on the walker. It was Margaret Billy Sosi, as he'd guessed, looking tired. Down the slope far below a car moved along the asphalt, its lights on. Through his open window he could hear the muted roar of freeway traffic somewhere beyond the next hill. Another vehicle, driving with its parking lights, slowed to a stop past the Jacaranda entrance billboard, backed, and turned onto the development road. Chee watched it a moment, then switched back to the girl. She'd left her pea jacket somewhere and was wearing jeans and a white shirt. She was even smaller than he'd remembered. And thinner. Would she be willing to come back to the reservation with him? Maybe not. Bentwoman would help if he needed help. But first he would get the answers to the questions he had failed to ask at Begay's hogan. He would get the answer to that mean little puzzle.

  The vehicle coming up the dirt track was a van, dark brown or maybe dark green. Its lights came on, illuminating the girl with backlighting. She moved off the track. The van drew even with her and stopped. The driver leaned out the window, talking to Margaret. Then the dooropened, and the man stepped out. A big man, blond, maybe six-two or -three and bulky. He towered over Margaret, showing her something in his hand. Through the binoculars, the object seemed to be a wallet. Chee sucked in his breath. The big man's other hand, dangling stiffly by his side, was marked by something white. One finger was bandaged.

  Chee put down the binoculars, remembering Mr. Berger's pantomimed account of the blond man who had come for Albert Gorman and had his finger slammed in the car door. He also thought of his own pistol, locked in a drawer beside his bed in Shiprock. He turned on the ignition and started the pickup rolling down the hill.

  Chapter 19

  Vaggan had noticed the pickup truck parked on the ridge almost the moment he'd turned on the cracked asphalt at the entrance of Jaca-randa Street. It registered in his attention merely as a nuisance. If it was occupied, the occupant would be a witness. That would affect, necessarily, the way Vaggan conducted his business. The immediate business was determining if the female figure trudging up the hill in the direction of the pickup truck was Margaret Billy Sosi, as Vaggan suspected. If it was, it was good luck. Much better to pick her up here than at whatever residence he'd fi
nd at that address McNair had given him. Here it should be simple enough to get the woman in the van and to do it without arousing any alarm. Thus Vaggan had been conscious of the pickup, but only as a minor irritant. Now, suddenly, the truck engine had started and it was rolling down the hill toward him.

  Vaggan had stopped the van so that when he leaned out of its driver-side window he was just behind the woman. He had said "Miss Sosi" in a clear, emphatic voice. She had stopped and turned, and stood staring at him doubtfully.

  "I'm Officer Davis, Los Angeles County Sheriffs Office," Vaggan had said, holding out the leather folder of credentials he used when the situation called for him to be police. "I need to talk to you."

  "What about?" Margaret Billy had asked. "Is it about my grandfather?"

  "Yes," Vaggan had said, and, sure now that she'd stand there and wait for him, he opened the van door and stepped toward her. "It's about your grandfather. I need to take you to him."

  Vaggan had held out the identification folder again and, as she looked at it, taken her forearm in his hand. It was a skinny arm—a bone—and Vaggan's confidence that this girl would be no problem at all was reinforced. The girl made no attempt to pull away.

  "Where is he?" she asked, looking into Vaggan's eyes. "Is he all right?"

  "At the hospital," Vaggan said. "Come along." It was then that Vaggan heard the truck, its motor racing suddenly, bumping erratically down the hill. It ran off the rutted track, bumping across a hummock of cactus, and then jolted back onto the road, rolling directly for them.

  "Crazy son of a bitch!" Vaggan shouted. He jumped toward the van door, then jumped back. There wouldn't be time to move it. He pulled the girl away from it.

  "What's wrong with him?" she said.

  Vaggan didn't respond. He'd reached under his jacket, extracted his pistol, cocked it, and held it against his back.

  The pickup engine died as suddenly as it had started. It ran off the road again and slid to a stop, the door opening while it was still rolling. A man was leaning out the door, and as he leaned his hat fell off.