Tony Hillerman - Sacred Clowns

“It’s Janet,” the caller said. “I got the impression the other day at the Navajo Inn that you wanted to talk to me about something. Was I right?”

“Absolutely,” Chee said.

“So I have an idea. Remember you telling me about that old movie that used Navajos as extras, and they were supposed to be Cheyennes but they were talking Navajo, and saying all the wrong things? The one that they always bring back to that drive-in movie at Gallup? Sort of a campy deal, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show ?”

“Yeah,” Chee said. “ Cheyenne Autumn . A couple of my relatives are extras in it.”

“Well, it’s back again and I thought-”

But Blizzard was eavesdropping. He overheard. He entered the conversation. “ Cheyenne Autumn ,” he said. “Yeh!”

“Who was that?” Janet said. “You have company?”

“A BIA policeman. Harold Blizzard.”

“You told me about him,” Janet said. “He’s a Cheyenne himself, isn’t he? I bet he’d like to see that movie. Why don’t you ask him to come along?”

“I’m sure he’s already seen it.”

“No, I haven’t seen it,” Blizzard said, in a voice Chee felt was inappropriately loud. “I’ve heard about it, but I never have seen it.”

“He hasn’t seen it,” Janet said. “I heard him. Why don’t you bring him along? Don’t you think it would be fun to get a Cheyenne’s reaction?”

Chee didn’t think so. Janet didn’t know this Cheyenne. He glanced at Blizzard, sitting on the edge of his couch, looking expectant. “You wanna go?”

“Sure,” Blizzard said. “I’d love to go. If I won’t be in the way.”

“We can talk after the movie,” Janet said.

Of course. But they could have also talked during the movie. And talking about the movie during the movie – celebrating the small victory of The People over the white man that this John Ford classic represented – was the reason Navajos still came to see it, and the reason the owner of the Gallup Drive-In still brought it back. And besides talking during the movie, if things developed as Chee had hoped, there were things to do besides talk.

So here they were in Janet Pete’s Ford Escort, parked fifth row from the screen with pickup trucks on both sides of them, with Janet sitting beside him and Sergeant Harold Blizzard hulking over them in the backseat. But one might as well make the best of whatever fate was offering.

“Right in here,” Chee said. “Just a minute now. She’ll be the first girl you see doing the drumming. There she is. That’s Irma. My oldest sister.”

The scene was solemn. Three Navajos playing the roles of three Cheyenne shamans were about to pray to God that the U.S. government would keep its treaty promises – a naive concept, which bad drawn derisive hoots and horn honkings from the rows of pickup trucks and cars. A row of Cheyenne maidens were tapping methodically at drums, accompanying the chanted prayers.

“How about the song?” Blizzard asked. “Is that Navajo, too?”

Blizzard was leaning forward, chin on the seat back, his big ugly face between Janet and Chee.

“Sort of,” Chee said. “It’s a kind of modification of a song they sing at Girl Dances, but they slowed it down to make it sound solemn.” This was not the way Chee had intended this date with Janet Pete to turn out.

Richard Widmark, commanding the cavalry detachment in charge of keeping order at this powwow between government bureaucrats and the Cheyenne, was now establishing himself as pro-Indian by making derogatory remarks about the reservation where the government was penning the tribe. Since the landscape at which Widmark was pointing was actually the long line of salmon-colored cliffs behind the Iyanbito Chapter House just south of Gallup, this produced more horn honking and a derisive shout from somewhere.

And so it went. Scenes came in which somber-looking Cheyenne leaders responded to serious questions in somber-sounding Navajo. When converted back into English by the translator the answers made somber sense.

But they produced more happy bedlam among the audience, and prompted the “What did he really say?” question from either Janet or Blizzard – and often both. What he really said tended to have something to do with the size of the colonel’s penis, or some other earthy and humorous irrelevancy. Chee would sanitize this a bit or put the humor in the context of Navajo customs or taboos, or explain that the celebratory honking was merely noting the screen appearance of somebody’s kinfolks.

It was a long movie, but not long enough for Chee to come up with a plan that would have disposed of Blizzard. The most obvious solution was to simply drive by the Navajo Nation Inn, drop him off, and tell him you’d pick him up in the morning. But that was blown by the fact that Blizzard had left his briefcase at Chee’s place and the briefcase contained (as Blizzard had proudly told him) “everything you have to have if you get caught somewhere overnight.” Coming up with something better, such as sending Blizzard off to the snack bar at the projection center to buy another bucket of popcorn and driving off without him, was ruled out by Janet’s unexpected behavior. She seemed to have developed a liking for the man, laughing at his jokes, engaging him in discussions of their mutual childhoods as city Indians, quizzing him about what he knew about his tribe, and so forth.

And so, movie finally over, Janet drove them home. And there, with the car still rolling to a stop, Harold Blizzard did something to reestablish himself in Jim Chee’s esteem.

“Janet,” Blizzard said, “this has been a lot of fun, and I hope to see you again, but now I’m going to rush right in and get some sleep.” And he had the door open and was out even before he finished the sentence.

Janet turned off the engine. And the lights. Without a word they watched Blizzard disappear into Chee’s trailer.

“I like him,” Janet said.

Chee considered what had just happened. “Me, too,” he said. “And he was right. It was fun.”

“It was,” Janet said. “And it was sweet of you to bring him along.”

“It was, wasn’t it,” Chee said. “But why do you think so?”

“Because you wanted to talk to me.”

“Yep,” Chee said.

“About what?”

“Us.”

“Us?” Light from the autumn moon lit her face. She was smiling at him.

“We’ve been friends a long time,” Chee said.

“Two years, I guess. More than that. Ever since you were trying to nail that old man I was representing up at Farmington. Almost three years if you add in that time I was away at Washington.”

“I wasn’t trying to nail him,” Chee said. “I was looking for information.”

“And you tried to trick me?”

“I did trick you,” Chee said. “Remember? I found out what I needed to know.”

“I remember,” she said. “But now I think I’m ready to forgive you.”

And with that, Janet Pete leaned across, put her hand behind Chee’s head, pulled his face down, and kissed him, and sighed, and kissed him again.

It was quite a while later, although the moon was still illuminating Janet’s face, when she said, “No, Jim. No. Time to stop.”

“What?” he said. “Why?”

“Because,” she said. “I think we sort of stopped being just friends. So now we have to get better acquainted.”

“That’s just what we were doing,” Chee said.

“No,” Janet said, sitting up straight, buttoning buttons. “I tried that way once. It doesn’t work. It hurts too much if you’re wrong.”

“In Washington?”

“In Washington, and in law school.”

“Not this time,” Chee said. “This time you’re not wrong. It’s me. And you’re right.”