Time here for an explanatory digression. A few years later Harper & Row published my one and only venture into children’s books, a simplification of an ancient Zuni account of how one of the tribe’s religious societies was founded. A Czech artist was chosen to illustrate it and his Indians had a distinctly Central European appearance. Having recovered from the “first baby” mental block by now, I felt that was a cultural slight. When a new edition was published the illustrations were done by my daughter Janet, who had a Zuni boyfriend at the time. This leads into another digression—the foolishness of calling Indians “indigenous people.”
I have occasionally used the Native American term. I was cured of that failing when the Smithsonian formally established its division for artifacts from tribal history and named an Indian as its director. He came to Santa Fe, a panel was assembled to discuss affairs of this new division, and I was invited to sit on it. There were nine of us, I believe, representing Hopi, Navajo, Mescalero Apache, Taos, Cherokee, Choctaw, Modoc, and a couple from the Eastern tribes that had somehow escaped the total extermination policy of our British ancestors. I sat as Mongrel-American. One of the first questions from the audience was which title the panelists prefered.
The first respondent asked for a show of hands of those in the audience who hadn’t been born in the United States. Two hands appeared. Then all the rest of us here are Native Americans, said the Indian. We are all the offspring of immigrants. He said his people preferred to be identified as Modocs, but if you don’t know our tribe, call us Indians. So it went down the row, each respondent preferring his tribal name, saying that Indians call each other Indians if they don’t know the tribe. The verdict was unanimous, with the Apache adding they were only thankful that Columbus was looking for India and not Turkey. The Cherokee noted that the real insult was to be called indigenous people. Since the Western Hemisphere had no native primates from which humanity descended, that suggested they had evolved from something else—perhaps coyotes—and were not really human. The Navajo concluded this discussion by proposing that all be happy Columbus hadn’t thought he’d landed on the Virgin Islands—a sample of the sense of humor that makes the Dineh my favorite folks.
But now it was time to part from these favorite folks. The Blessing Way was out. The time had come to quit stalling and actually write The Great American Novel, which would concern journalists and politicians and have nothing to do with Indians. I was going to call it The Fly on the Wall, Walter Lippman’s metaphor for the ideal reporter who saw and reported everything but kept his opinion to himself. But putting The Blessing Way behind me wasn’t as easy as it sounds. I had a bad feeling I hadn’t done it very well. My goal of denting the ignorance of Americans about Navajo culture hadn’t been reached. When I finished The Fly I would have to go back and try again.
Besides, that first book had taken on a sort of life of its own. In 1970, the nomination committee of the Mystery Writers of America put it on their short list for Best First Novel along with Dick Francis’s first book. Those who have read both won’t be surprised to hear that Francis won the Edgar Allan Poe Award and I got the Honorable Mention. Even so it caught the eye of Eleanor Timmerman, who ran the Warner Brothers scouting office in New York. She decided Warners should option it for a movie.
I was in the big city again on university business and had taken our daughter Janet along to see the sights. Timmerman wanted to talk to me. I was taking Janet for a ride on the Staten Island Ferry (10-cent fare in those bygone days, and right past the Statue of Liberty) and we stopped at Timmerman’s office en route. It was a short and amiable conversation with no assurance that any movie would ever be made. Ms. Timmerman said she was having lunch with Dustin Hoffman and invited us to join them. I said we wouldn’t want to intrude. She said it was just a social lunch and they’d be happy to have us. I said thanks but no thanks, citing the promised ferry ride.
This must be put in perspective. Janet, in her early teens, was a movie buff typical of her age. Dustin Hoffman’s star was at its zenith that season. I was not then, am not now, and will never be, interested in actors. I hadn’t a notion that Hoffman was a superstar and didn’t recognize him when the elevator door opened and he stepped out to let us step in. Janet did, of course, and made the ride down in a sort of stunned silence digesting the fact that her brain-dead, fuddy-duddy dad has denied her the thrill of a lifetime.
In addition to adding to my admiration of Janet (who never complained) this affair with Warner Brothers it caused Avon to add a “Soon to be a major motion picture” legend to the cover of its paperback and provided me with my first close view of the movie industry. The caller identified himself as Arthur Rowe, a writer for Warners. He had been assigned to script The Blessing Way. How about coming down to his hotel, having a drink, and talking about locations?
Rowe proved to be a true professional writer. He told me he had been sent because he had a little time left on a multiyear contract with Warners and the company didn’t want him to waste it. He said he doubted a movie would come of this but the company would have a script on file. Maybe they’d sell it somewhere. His first suggestion was changing the Land Rover I had Big Navajo driving to a Ford or General Motors product. Why? Because Land Rover didn’t give freebies for using its cars in films. U.S. makers did. When I suggested places on the Navajo Reservation for various scenes, Rowe said he wanted to take a look at an Indian pueblo. I said the book involved sheep camp Navajos, who live scattered around the landscape in hogans. They don’t live in pueblos.
“You know that,” Rowe said. “Now I know it. Nobody else knows it. This is for a movie. We’re not in the educational business.” So we visited Isleta Pueblo. But then Rowe chartered a little single-engine Cessna and we flew to the Big Reservation, landed on a dirt strip to take a look at Chinle and Many Farms and then flew up narrow Canyon de Muerto, often in so low we looked up to see the rim of the cliffs on both sides of the aircraft. I didn’t appreciate that at the time, but twenty-eight years later it was useful when I had Jim Chee doing the same thing in Hunting Badger. Writers do not waste useful memories.
Now it was time to tap a fifteen-year accumulation of journalistic memories to write the important book. It would concern a hard-bitten political reporter who followed Walter Lippmann’s dictum, proudly serving as “the fly on the wall,” reporting all with total objectivity. I would confront this fellow with an awful choice. Should he expose corruption in the state highway department even though his story would destroy a good man and save an evil one? The setting would be the State Capitol Building in Oklahoma City. It offered an ideal site for a fatal push (a four-story drop from a balcony to a marble floor), slow and creaky elevators, and spooky echoing silence after working hours. You can invent such details but why make your imagination work when you can remember them?
I didn’t name the state and disguised the city a bit so my old Oklahoma newsroom friends wouldn’t be finding themselves among the characters. I based the plot on the way “bid rigging” used to be worked in New Mexico road contracting.
I lucked into a six-month sabbatical at the University. Instituto Allende offered me free lodgings and other perks in return for teaching a writing course at San Miguel Allende, Mexico. Anne stayed behind in her own courses at the U. Tony, Jr. had lined up a mechanic’s job in the garage down the street he didn’t want to quit and Tony was one of those mature teenagers parents can leave in charge of things (including themselves) with absolute confidence.
So we piled the four younger kids into our old station wagon, paid the customary bribe to the Mexican immigration cop at Juarez and headed south.
San Miguel Allende in 1971 was a small, cool, lovely, and historic town infested with hard-drinking middle-aged Americans blowing their inheritances where things were cheap. The instituto as far as I could tell was run as a place for the affluent to send troublesome college-age offspring and for older folks to amuse themselves. The students to whom I lectured about writing showed no particular interest
and the stuff they turned in tended toward romance and fantasy. Thus no challenge, minimal work, time to write Fly, and to get acquainted with a most unusual place.
For example, the small cathedral on the plaza bore an uncanny resemblance to Chartres in France. Someone had sent the Mexican architect a picture postcard of that famous place and he had recreated one here at about one tenth the size. It was a beautiful job, made slightly lopsided by the explosion of fireworks being arranged on the facade for a patriotic celebration. The blast had eliminated both the arranger and some of the French Gothic features. The town bandsmen who serenaded the plaza in the evenings wore Austrian-looking uniforms, the musical menu was Central European, and the sound was brass—tubas, french horns, etc. The joyful sound of the mariachi orchestras was not to be heard. Only the bullfights in the little arena, the language, the pulquerias, farmacias, and—most of all—the market reminded you that you were in the very patriotic heart of the Republic of Mexico.
The town’s patriotism had been celebrated fairly recently with the government giving San Miguel Allende a great bronze statue of its namesake in Mexico’s war to evict its French emperor. The city fathers had declared their own artistic independence by having the bronze preserved under a seal coat of neon green paint. That offended the intellectual aesthetes in Mexico City, but the locals were fond of it. It gave their statue the special San Miguel touch, just as the fireworks explosion had fixed their cathedral.
When I poke about among my memories of that summer in Mexico I come up with a lot of happy stuff. The little house we rented was built on a hillside. You stepped from the cobblestone street through your gate into an entry court dominated by bougainvillea. Steve and Dan occupied a bedroom below, their doorway guarded by a mud nest of young swallows who stuck their heads out and solicited food when one passed. After a hit-andrun bus driver sideswiped our station wagon a passing mechanic saw it parked by our wall, offered to fix it for about 20 percent of what an Albuquerque body shop would charge, and drove it off with none of the exchange of references, etc., needed in the U.S.A. He kept it an extra day to take his family on a picnic (observed by Steve, who misses nothing) but brought it back good as new. The remarkably ugly dog that emerged from under a table at the town market and bit Marie proved to be non-rabid. The rusty ice pick that Dan and pal were using to perforate a jar top for their insect collection, and which stuck through Dan’s hand, proved free of tetanus. When the license plate disappeared from our vehicle in Guanajuato, Steve advised me to check with the police station. A cop handed it back to me after I handed him the fee for illegal parking. Things went well.
Janet, ready to enroll in college come autumn, had been a reluctant participant. But she found an interesting sculpturing course in the instituto, and among the fellow students was an interesting young man with whom friendship formed. Monica was sort of taken over (or, remembering Monica at fourteen, took over) by a neighboring family with kids her age. Danny found a soul mate his size and rich territory for collecting unusual stuff, and Steve got acquainted with a family who made coffins and fireworks for the town folks.
The book got written, and San Miguel was a wonderful source of memories. But too many of those were the sort that make the “truth is stranger than fiction” aphorism true itself. The fresh beef one found in the market after bullfights, for example. For another, the morning a writer (I’ll call him Davis) making the town his permanent home went to the local utility company office to deliver an ultimatum to Mrs. Sandoval, the manager. He would not make the payments due on his electric and telephone bills until she corrected consistent billing errors. Then, said Mrs. Sandoval, we will discontinue your service. Davis told me he was unconcerned by this threat because the company was notoriously slow about everything. For example, his telephone was still listed under Alanzo Garcia, who had lived there many years and many occupants in the past. No hurry, said Davis. No rush. But when he got home a flatbed truck was parked by his wall. A utility man standing on it (wearing rubber boots and rubber gloves) was using a gardener’s limb lopper to quite literally cut off his power and phone service. Marie and I had no telephone and used the one at the post office now and then to see how Tony and Anne were faring. And week after week of never hearing a telephone ring—the delight of that, the joy of being free from that at last — crops up when I think back to that Mexican summer. After years of living on the end of a chain, the shackle was finally off. No more slavery. Free at last. Then I think of a night at La Casa del Inquistador. It was raining that night, and when it rained in San Miguel the power failed in celebration. Thus no one except Marie and me had come to the old, old House of the Inquisitor for dinner. The only illumination was candlelight and the musicians had no one to sing for but us. I had them sing “La Paloma Blanca,” the romantic song of the white dove, and Marie—whose Spanish was fine now—got them to sing the sad, sad songs of the Mexican Revolution. How good it is to be with the woman you love on such a rainy night.
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Back to the Dineh
While finishing The Fly on the Wall I had come to a couple of conclusions. It was pretty good, including two or three top-notch scenes, but it wasn’t likely to be heralded as the Big Book I’d intended. Second, the urge to go back to Officer Joe Leaphorn and the Dineh and do that right had persisted.
Joan Kahn’s demands for improvement of Fly were more modest than they had been for Blessing—mostly involving revision of the first chapter in which my hero was writing a political column crammed with names. She also wanted light cast into a couple of foggy corners and better motivation a time or two. But somehow this queen of mystery editors missed an awful boo-boo, and so did I, and so did the copy editor, and the book reviewers. Then one day with the book already out in paperback I ran into an old reporter friend from my Oklahoma City days whom I had used, thinly disguised, in the plot. Had he read it? Yep. What did he think of it? Okay, he said, but why did you have the hero going barefoot through those last chapters? What did he mean? Remember, he says, you have him remove his shoes and leave them atop that game department display so he won’t make any noise? Yes, I remembered. Then he escapes through a window, climbing out into the sleet storm and—
And now I remember. My hero never had a chance to recover the shoes. He walks blocks through the sleet to his lady friend’s house, calls a cab, visits the Democratic Party state chairman, etc., all in sock feet.
Alas, my books tend to be noted for glitches, where I have characters drive south when I meant north, for example, or change the name of characters in the middle of a chapter, etc. However, the only one I can think of that matches the barefoot-in-the-sleet business happened when one of the two Navajo police I use was interviewing a Vietnamese woman in Albuquerque. Other duties interrupted me. When I returned to the scene, I switched policemen right in the middle of the conversation. No one in the editing sequence noticed it but judging from the letters I’ve received, it confused a lot of readers.
Fly got generally good reviews, although one editor-reviewer noted that a reporter suffering all those bleeding-heart doubts my hero endured should “quit the newspaper business and become a college professor.” (Exactly what I had done.) No movie options this time, but Harper & Row upped the advance from the $3,500 paid for The Blessing Way to $4,000. If you’ve worked for United Press, small newspapers and a university, that’s a handsome raise.
Long before the above was happening I had Dance Hall of the Dead well launched. This one was going to be my apology to the generic American Indian for the mistakes I’d made in The Blessing Way. As far as tribal culture was concerned, this one was going to be just right.
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That Detour to Zuni
I’ve been asked (obviously by those who hadn’t read the book) how I came up with that Dance Hall of the Dead title. I found it somewhere in the thousands of pages of books, articles, and scholarly reports I’d read to carry out this project. One of these scholars had thus translated the Zuni words for the place where the good soul
s arrive in their afterlife and do their celebratory dancing. Since my plot concerned a neurotic Navajo boy who wanted to become a Zuni and go to their heaven it was a natural for the book. But why do all this research in re Zunis when I was already sort of semi-informed about the Navajo? Why not stick to them? Because one of the galling examples of the American ignorance of tribal cultures is the notion (pervading movies, television, and the media in general) that all Indians are alike. I set about to dent this ignorance by moving Leaphorn a hundred miles south to the Zuni Reservation. There he’d be hunting a Navajo youngster suspected of killing the Zuni boy, who was to be the personifier of the Little Fire God in the tribe’s most important religious ceremonial. I would force anyone trying to follow the plot to learn along with Leaphorn quite a bit about the kachina spirit world and the Zuni cultural system. One thing such folks would certainly learn is that Navajo and Zuni traditional religions, social/political structures, and values systems are no more similar than are those of traditional Buddhists and Presbyterians.
However, the difference that worried me the most was the matter of intruding into a very sacred zone of privacy. The Navajo relationship with the Creator, like those of Muslims, Jews, my fellow Christians, and most other religions, is public. But the Zunis and most of the so-called “kachina” religions of the pueblo tribes of New Mexico and Arizona operate on a philosophy that knowledge of religious rites by unbelievers dilutes their effectiveness. I am vastly oversimplifying this belief, and it varies among the pueblo tribes. In some, for example, brothers initiated into different groups responsible for the conduct of different ceremonials could not ethically exchange information. In some, having one’s photograph taken would weaken one’s religious power. In many, a polite person doesn’t ask questions relating to religious affairs.
Seldom Disappointed: A Memoir Page 27