Sacred Clowns by Tony Hillerman Read Free Book Online

example, she asked them to promise to let her know as soon as they found the boy. She didn’t have a telephone but they could call the Senas just three houses down.
    Blizzard drove directly back to the access road and headed the patrol car back toward the highway.
    “You think we ought to go to Sayesva’s place?” Chee suggested. “See if we can find whatever it was the kid brought for him?”
    Blizzard steered around the worst of the bumps. “Tell me how that helps you find the kid,” he said, staring straight ahead. “It won’t, so I’ll take care of finding the package.”
    Chee considered that answer. “But not now?”
    “Later,” Blizzard said.
    “When I’m not around?”
    “Like you explained to me. Sayesva’s not Navajo Police business. It wouldn’t be nice to get you in trouble with your lieutenant.”
    Chee let it ride. Leaphorn would ask him what was in the package and he would tell the lieutenant why he didn’t know, and about Blizzard. Maybe that would spare him working with Blizzard in the future.
    “Wonder why the lady wouldn’t tell us what the kid brought home?” Blizzard asked. The tone, for Blizzard, was friendly. “Did that strike you as funny?”
    “No,” Chee said. “She didn’t tell us because she didn’t know.”
    Blizzard gave him a sideways glance. “Man, what are you talking about? You don’t know women, if you say that. Or you don’t know mamas.”
    Chee said, “Well . . .” and then dropped it. Why try to instruct this knucklehead in the Pueblo culture? The patrol car rattled off the gravel road, onto the asphalt toward Albuquerque. Chee let his imagination wander. He saw himself scouting for the Seventh Cavalry, shooting Cheyennes. The satisfaction in that fantasy lasted a few miles. He rehearsed his report to Leaphorn. He thought about Janet Pete. He thought about how the tip of her short-cut hair curled against her neck. He thought about the funny way she had of letting a smile start, letting him get a glimpse of it, and then suppressing it—pretending she hadn’t appreciated his humor. He thought about her legs and hips in those tight jeans on the ladder above him at the Tano ceremonial. He thought about her kissing him, enthusiastically, and then catching his hand when . . .
    “Why do you say she didn’t know?” Blizzard asked, frowning at the windshield. “You know these people better than I do. I’m a city boy. My daddy worked for the post office in Chicago. I don’t know a damn thing about this kind of Indians.”
    “There’s a lot I don’t know, too,” Chee said. “Haven’t been around Tanos much.”
    “Come on.” Blizzard was grinning at him. “I been here just two months. I need help.”
    So do I, Chee thought, and you’ve been a pain in the butt. But, brother cop, brother Indian.
    “Well,” Chee said. “In most pueblos Delmar would be old enough to be initiated. He’d belong to one of the religious fraternities and he’d have religious duties. The way I understand it, you keep the secrets of your fraternity—your kiva— because only the people who have to know these secrets to perform their duties are supposed to know them. If uninitiated people know them, it dilutes the power. Waters it down. So I guess Delmar was probably a member of Sayesva’s kiva. And whatever he brought his uncle was in some way religious. His mother wouldn’t ask about it because you just don’t ask about such things. And he wouldn’t tell her if she did ask. And if he had told her, she damn sure wouldn’t tell us.”
    “Interesting,” Blizzard said. “Is it that way with you Navajos?”
    “No,” Chee said. “Our religion is family business. Traditionally, the more who show up at a curing ceremonial and take part the better. Except for some of the clans that live next to Pueblo tribes. Some of them picked up the Pueblo idea.”
    But even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t totally true. The hataalii kept their secrets. He had been a student of