The Dark Wind jlajc-5

by Tony Hillerman

  "Place looks empty," Chee said.

  "It almost is," Cowboy agreed.

  The plaza was small, houses on two sides of it in ruins. Chee noticed that the kiva, too, was in disrepair. The steps that led to its roof were rotted and broken, and the ladder that should have protruded from its rooftop entrance was missing. It was a small kiva, and low, its walls rising only some five feet above the dusty plaza earth. It seemed as dead as the men who had built it so long ago.

  "Well," Cowboy said. "Here we are." He stopped the car beside the kiva. Beyond it, one of the houses that still walled two sides of the plaza was occupied. The breeze blew smoke from its chimney toward them, and a small pile of coal stood beside its doorway. The door opened. A boy—perhaps ten or twelve—looked out at them. The boy was an albino.

  Cowboy left the car unlocked and walked through the blowing dust without waiting for Chee. He spoke to the boy at the door in Hopi, listened to his answer, thought about it, and spoke again. The boy disappeared inside.

  "He said Sawkatewa is working. He'd tell him he had visitors," Cowboy said.

  Chee nodded. He heard a thumping of thunder and glanced up at the cloud. Only its upper levels were red with sunset now. Below that, its color shaded from blue to almost black. While he looked at it, the black flashed with yellow, and flashed again. Internal lightning was illuminating it. They waited. Dust eddied in the plaza. The air was much cooler now. It smelled of rain. The sound of thunder reached them. This time it boomed, and boomed again.

  The boy reappeared. He looked at Chee through thick-lensed glasses and then at Cowboy, and spoke in Hopi.

  "In we go," Cowboy said.

  Taylor Sawkatewa was sitting on a small metal chair, winding yarn onto a spindle. He was looking at them, his bright black eyes curious. But his hands never stopped their quick, agile work. He spoke to Cowboy, and motioned toward a green plastic sofa which stood against the entrance wall, and then he examined Chee. He smiled and nodded.

  "He says sit down," Cowboy said.

  They sat on the green plastic. It was a small room, a little off square, the walls flaking whitewash. A kerosene lamp, its glass chimney sooty, cast a wavering yellow light.

  Sawkatewa spoke to both of them, smiling at Chee again. Chee smiled back.

  Then Cowboy spoke at length. The old man listened. His hands worked steadily, moving the gray-white wool from a skein in a cardboard beer carton beside his chair onto the long wooden spindle. His eyes left Cowboy and settled on Chee's face. He was a very old man, far beyond the point where curiosity can be interpreted as rudeness. Navajos, too, sometimes live to be very old and Chee's Slow Talking Dinee had its share of them.

  Cowboy completed his statement, paused, added a brief postscript, then turned to Chee.

  "I told him I would now tell you what I'd told him," Cowboy said. "And what I told him was who you are and that we are here because we are trying to find out something about the plane crash out in Wepo Wash."

  "I think you should tell him what happened in a lot of detail," Chee said. "Tell him that two men were killed in the airplane, and that two other men have been killed because of what the airplane carried. And tell him that it would help us a lot if someone had been there and had seen what happened and could tell us what he saw." Chee kept his eyes on Sawkatewa as he said this. The old man was listening intently, smiling slightly. He understands a little English, Chee decided. Maybe he understands more than a little.

  Cowboy spoke in Hopi. Sawkatewa listened. He had the round head and the broad fine nose of many Hopis, and a long jaw, made longer by his toothlessness. His cheeks and his chin wrinkled around his sunken mouth, but his skin, like his eyes, looked ageless and his hair, cut in the bangs of the traditional Hopi male, was still mostly black. While he listened, his fingers worked the yarn, limber as eels.

  Cowboy finished his translation. The old man waited a polite moment, and then he spoke to Cowboy in rapid Hopi, finished speaking, and laughed.

  Cowboy made a gesture of denial. Sawkatewa spoke again, laughed again. Cowboy responded at length in Hopi. Then he looked at Chee.

  "He says you must think that he is old and foolish. He says that he has heard that somebody is breaking the windmill out there and that we are looking for the one who broke it to put him in jail. He says that you wish to trick him into saying that he was by the windmill on that night."

  "What did you tell him?" Chee asked.

  "I denied it."

  "But how?" Chee asked. "Tell me everything you told him."

  Cowboy frowned. "I told him we didn't think he broke the windmill. I said we thought some Navajos broke it because they were angry at having to leave Hopi land."

  "Please tell Taylor Sawkatewa that we wish to withdraw that denial," Chee said, looking directly into Sawkatewa's eyes as he said it. "Tell him that we do not deny that we think he might be the man who broke the windmill."

  "Man," Cowboy said. "You're crazy. What are you driving at?"

  "Tell him," Chee said.

  Cowboy shrugged. He spoke to Sawkatewa in Hopi. Sawkatewa looked surprised, and interested. For the first time his fingers left off their nimble work. Sawkatewa folded his hands in his lap. He turned and spoke into the darkness of the adjoining room, where the albino boy was standing.

  "What did he say?" Chee asked.

  "He told the boy to make us some coffee," Cowboy said.

  "Now tell him that I am studying to be a yat-aalii among my people and that I study under an old man, a man who like himself is a hosteen much respected by his people. Tell him that this old uncle of mine has taught me respect for the power of the Hopis and for all that they have been taught by their Holy People about bringing the rain and keeping the world from being destroyed. Tell him that when I was a child I would come with my uncle to First Mesa so that our prayers could be joined with those of the Hopis at the ceremonials. Tell him that."

  Cowboy put it into Hopi. Sawkatewa listened, his eyes shifting from Cowboy to Chee. He sat motionless. Then he nodded.

  "Tell him that my uncle taught me that in many ways the Dinee and the Hopi are very, very different. We are taught by our Holy People, by Changing Woman, and by the Talking God how we must live and the things we must do to keep ourselves in beauty with the world around us. But we were not taught how to call the rain clouds. We cannot draw the blessing of water out of the sky as the Hopis have been taught to do. We do not have this great power that the Hopis were given and we respect the Hopis for it and honor them."

  Cowboy repeated it. The sound of thunder came through the roof, close now. A sharp, cracking explosion followed by rumbling echoes. Good timing, Chee thought. The old man nodded again.

  "My uncle told me that the Hopis have power because they were taught a way to do things, but they will lose that power if they do them wrong." Chee continued: "That is why we say we do not know whether a Hopi or a Navajo is breaking the windmill. A Navajo might do it because he was angry." Chee paused, raised a hand slightly, palm forward, making sure that the old man noticed the emphasis. "But a Hopi might do it because that windmill is kahopi." It was one of perhaps a dozen Hopi words Chee had picked up so far. It meant something like "anti-Hopi," or the reverse-positive of Hopi values.

  Cowboy translated. This time Sawkatewa responded at some length, his eyes shifting from Cowboy to Chee and back again.

  "What are you leading up to with all this?" Cowboy asked. "You think this old man sabotaged the windmill?"

  "What'd he say?" Chee asked.

  "He said that the Hopis are a prayerful people. He said many of them have gone the wrong way, and follow the ways the white men teach, and try to let the Tribal Council run things instead of the way we were taught when we emerged from the underworld. But he said that the prayers are working again tonight. He said the cloud will bring water blessings to the Hopis tonight."

  "Tell him I said that we Navajos share in this blessing, and are thankful."

  Cowboy repeated it. The boy came in and put a
white coffee mug on the floor beside the old man. He handed Cowboy a Styrofoam cup and Chee a Ronald McDonald softdrink glass. The light of the kerosene lamp gave his waxy white skin a yellow cast and reflected off the thick lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses. He disappeared through the doorway without speaking.

  The old man was speaking again.

  Cowboy looked into his cup, cleared his throat. "He said that even if he had been there, he was told that the plane crashed at night. He asks how could anyone see anything?"

  "Maybe he couldn't," Chee said.

  "But you think he was there?"

  "I know he was there," Chee said. "I'd bet my life on it."

  Cowboy looked at Chee, waiting. The boy returned with a steaming aluminum pan. He poured coffee from it into the old man's mug, and Cowboy's Styrofoam cup, and Chee's McDonald's glass.

  "Tell him," Chee said, looking directly at Sawkatewa, "that my uncle taught me that certain things are forbidden. He taught me that the Navajos and the Hopis agree on certain things and that one of those is that we must respect our mother earth. Like the Hopis, we have places which bring us blessings and are sacred. Places where we collect the things we need for our medicine bundles."

  Chee turned to Cowboy. "Tell him that. Then I will go on."

  Cowboy translated. The old man sipped his coffee, listening. Chee sipped his. It was instant coffee, boiled in water which tasted a little of gypsum and a little of rust from the barrel in which it was stored. Cowboy finished. Again there was a rumble of thunder and suddenly the pounding of hail on the roof over their heads. The old man smiled. The albino, leaning in the doorway now, smiled too. The hail converted itself quickly into rain—heavy, hard-falling drops, but not quite as noisy. Chee raised his voice slightly. "There is a place near the windmill where the earth has blessed the Hopis with water. And the Hopis have repaid the blessing by giving the spirit of the earth there pahos. That has been done for a long, long time. But then people did a kahopi thing. They drilled a well in the earth and drained away the water from the sacred place. And the spirit of the spring stopped providing water. And then he refused the offering of the pahos. When it was offered, the spirit knocked it down. Now, we Navajos, too, are peaceful people. Not as peaceful as the Hopis, perhaps, but peaceful. But even so, my uncle taught me that we must protect our sacred places. If this had been a shrine of the Navajos, if this had been a shrine left for me to protect, then I would protect it." Chee nodded. Cowboy translated. Sawkatewa sipped his coffee again.

  "There are higher laws than the white man's law," Chee said.

  Sawkatewa nodded, without waiting for Cowboy to translate. He spoke to the boy, who disappeared into the darkness and returned in a moment with three cigarets. He handed one to each of them, took the chimney off the lamp and passed it around to give each of them a light from the wick. Sawkatewa inhaled hugely and let a plume of smoke emerge from the corner of his mouth. Chee puffed lightly. He didn't want a cigaret. The dampness of the rain had flooded into the room, filling it with the smell of water, the ozone of the lightning, the aroma of dampened dust, sage, and the thousand other desert things which release perfume when raindrops strike them. But this smoke had ceremonial meaning somehow. Chee would not alienate the old man. He would smoke skunk cabbage rather than break this mood.

  Finally Sawkatewa stood up. He put the cigaret aside. He held his hands before him, palms down, about waist level, and he began speaking. He spoke for almost five minutes.

  "I won't translate all of it now," Cowboy said. "He went all the way back to the time when the Hopi emerged into this world through the sipapuni and found that Masaw had been appointed guardian of this world. And he tells how Masaw let each of the kinds of peoples pick their way of life, and how the Navajo picked the long ear of soft corn for the easy life and the Hopi picked the short, hard ear so that they would always have hard times but would always endure. And then he tells about how Masaw formed each of the clans, and how the Water Clan was formed, and how the Fog Clan split off from the Water, and all that. I'm not going to translate all that. His point is—"

  "If you don't translate for about three or four minutes, he's going to know you're cheating," Chee said. "Go ahead and translate. What's the rush?"

  So Cowboy translated. Chee heard of the migrations to the end of the continent in the west, and the end of the continent to the east, and the frozen door of the earth to the north, and the other end of the earth to the south. He told how the Fog Clan had left its footprints in the form of abandoned stone villages and cliff dwellings in all directions, and how it had come to make its alliance with the animal people, and how the animal people had joined the clan, and taught them the ceremony to perform so that people could keep their animal hearts as well as their human hearts and change back and forth by passing through the magic hoop. He told how the Fog Clan had finally completed its great cycle of migrations and come to Oraibi and asked the Bear Clan for a village site, and land to grow its corn, and hunting grounds where it could collect the eagles it needed for its ceremonials. He told how the kikmongwi at Oraibi had at first refused, but had agreed when the clan had offered to add its Ya Ya ceremonial to the religion of the Hopis. Cowboy stopped finally, and sipped the last of his coffee.

  "I'm getting hoarse," he said. "And that's about it anyway. At the end he said, yes, there are higher laws than the white man's. He said the law of the white man is of no concern to a Hopi. He said for a Hopi, or a Navajo, to involve himself in the affairs of white men is not good. He said that even if he did not believe this, it was dark when the plane crashed. He said he cannot see in the dark."

  "Did he say exactly that? That he can't see in the dark?"

  Cowboy looked surprised. "Well," he said. "Let's see. He said why do you think he could see in the dark?"

  Chee thought about it. The gusting wind drove the rain against the windowpane and whined around the roof corners.

  "Tell him that what he says is good. It is not good for a Navajo or a Hopi to involve himself in white affairs. But tell him that this time there is no choice for us. Navajos and Hopis have been involved. You and I. And tell him that if he will tell us what he saw, we will tell him something that will be useful for keeping the shrine."

  "We will?" Cowboy said. "What?"

  "Go ahead and translate," Chee said. "And also say this. Say I think he can see in the dark because my uncle taught me that it is one of the gifts you receive when you step through the hoop of the Ya Ya. Like the animals, your eyes know no darkness."

  Cowboy looked doubtful. "I'm not sure I want to tell him that."

  "Tell him," Chee said.

  Cowboy translated. Chee noticed the albino listening at the doorway. The albino looked nervous. But Sawkatewa smiled.

  He spoke.

  "He says what can you tell him? He's calling your bluff."

  He'd won! Chee felt exultance. There'd been no bargaining now. The agreement had been reached.

  "Tell him I said that I know it is very hard to break the windmill. The first time was easy. The bolts come loose and the windmill is pulled over and it takes a long time to undo the damage. The second time it was easy again. An iron bar stuck into the gearbox. The third time it was not so bad. The pump rod is bent and it destroys itself. But now the bolts cannot be removed, and the gearbox is protected, and soon the pump rod will be protected, too. Next time it will be very hard to damage the windmill. Ask him if that is not true."

  Cowboy translated. Taylor Sawkatewa simply stared at Chee, waiting.

  "If I were the guardian of the shrine," Chee said, "or if I owed a favor to the guardian of the shrine, as I will when he tells me what he saw when the plane crashed, I would buy a sack of cement. I would haul the sack of cement to the windmill and I would leave it there along with a sack full of sand and a tub full of water and a little plastic funnel. If I was the man who owed the favor, I would leave all that there and drive away. And if I was the guardian of the shrine, I would mix up the cement and sand and water into a p
aste a little thinner than the dough one makes for piki bread and I would pour a little through the funnel down into the windmill shaft, and I would then wait a few minutes for it to dry, and then I would pour a little more, and I would do that until all the cement was in the well, and the well was sealed up solid as a rock."

  Cowboy's face was incredulous. "I'm not going to tell him that," he said.

  "Why not?" Chee asked.

  Sawkatewa said something in Hopi. Cowboy responded tersely.

  "He got some of it," Cowboy said. "Why not? Because, God damn it, just think about it a minute."

  "Who's going to know but us?" Chee asked. "You like that windmill?"

  Cowboy shrugged.

  "Then tell him."

  Cowboy translated. Sawkatewa listened intently, his eyes on Chee.

  Then he spoke three words.

  "He wants to know when."

  "Tell him I want to buy the cement away from the reservation—maybe in Cameron or Flagstaff. Tell him it will be at the windmill two nights from now."

  Cowboy told him. The old man's hands rediscovered the wool and the spindle in the beer carton and resumed their work. Cowboy and Chee waited. The old man didn't speak until he had filled the spindle. Then he spoke for a long time.

  "He said it is true he can see pretty good in the dark, but not as good as when he was a boy. He said he heard someone driving up Wepo Wash and he went down there to see what was happening. When he got there a man was putting out a row of lanterns on the sand, with another man holding a gun on him. When this was finished, the man who had put out the lanterns sat beside the car and the other man stood there, still pointing the gun." Cowboy stopped abruptly, asked a question, and got an answer.