It was while switching in an incoming call for number thirty-four that he noticed the big Texan transferring something large and bulky from the van to the room. It had arms and legs and a funny-shaped head.
It couldn’t be, he told himself. A brief glimpse wasn’t enough to support anything but rank speculation. Still, he found it impossible to banish the image from his thoughts. Pondering, analyzing, he debated how best to proceed based on what he’d observed.
He’d seen it before. Not, as Ross Ed might have suspected, posed on the front of a tabloid beneath screaming absurdities, not on television or in a theater, but in multiple, reproducible form. It wasn’t one of his tribe’s more common kachinas, of which there were hundreds, but there was no mistaking the long, central snout and the planting stick held between the legs.
Kachina reproductions could be bought all over the Southwest. Most were churned out by factory-style operations, others were the product of long-established family businesses, and a few were the result of long hours and painstaking effort by truly talented artisans. The best were hand-carved and painted. Sizes varied from thumbnail collectibles to life-size dancers in full ceremonial regalia weighing over a hundred pounds. True collectors usually started with someone like Watermelon Man or Hoop Dancer, advancing gradually to the less common and more esoteric members of the Hopi pantheon.
What were these two blatantly non-Hopi doing with such a large, well-made, and rare representative of the sacred line? Where had they acquired it? He’d have to take a closer look.
On through the rest of the afternoon and into evening he checked travelers in and a very few our. As he did so he kept an eye on the big blue van.
It was around eight when the couple finally left the room, climbed into the van, and headed out. Dinnertime, he told himself. Clerking at the motel was a dead-end job, which he had occupied for several years now. Could it be that luck was about to break his way for a change?
He waited another ten minutes to make sure they’d gone for something to eat and hadn’t just run up to the drugstore or convenience station. With the desk quiet and curiosity consuming his insides, he took one of the passkeys, put out the “Back in Fifteen Minutes” sign, and headed with deliberate casualness down the concrete walkway. Number ten yielded willingly to his key and he stepped inside, making sure to shut the door firmly behind him. There wasn’t much to see: the usual female accessories neatly laid out next to the sink, towels still in place, the shower-tub unused. Even the remote for the TV hadn’t been disturbed. But both beds had been slept in.
The room was no suite and it didn’t take long to find the kachina. It was sitting up in the otherwise empty closet, facing out. Articulated kachinas were rare, but someone had obviously lavished a great deal of care on this one.
Turning on the light over the sink, he knelt for a better look. The figure seemed to have three eyes instead of two. He tried to remember if that fit the description for this particular kachina, but he wasn’t sure. When he was young he’d paid very little attention to the instructor.
The oddly keeled skull was different, too, as was the helmetlike headpiece. Certainly an extremely rare type of kachina and without a doubt very valuable. How could he gain possession? He could offer to buy it, of course, if only he’d had some money.
This was no cottonwood carving but a sculpture fashioned with careful deliberation from bits and pieces of multiple materials. Behind the protective glass the flesh of the face was extremely lifelike. Many traditional markings were missing, but perhaps whoever had made this hadn’t been given enough time to add the appropriate paint and final decorations. These were omissions easily remedied.
Decidedly odd, but still a wonderful and valuable piece, he concluded. One he had to have. Numerous possible explanations for the kachina’s disappearance sprang to mind. The simplest thing to do was declare it stolen and file a police report. Meanwhile he could take a couple of days off, drive over to Gallup, and quietly price his new acquisition. He knew the right dealers for such a surreptitious enterprise, having previously pulled similar scams with more pedestrian items such as the camera equipment and jewelry which guests unaccountably left unguarded in their rooms while they went out to eat, shop, or sightsee.
How much was it worth? Did the absent guests have any idea of its true value? He would follow his usual routine of donning cleaning gloves and trashing the room to make it look like a real burglary. On the end table between the beds was a cheap watch he could pocket to spice the scenario. Altogether the operation would take less than five minutes. Not was he motivated by any racial concerns. He was equally happy to steal from the occasional Indians who stayed at the motel while visiting friends or relatives.
Verily it was the strangest kachina. He didn’t know them all, having been shamefully inattentive during the relevant lectures in school, or when his grandfather had been talking. But what else could it be? It was no child’s toy, and in any case no children were traveling with the couple. The transparent faceplate, he’d decided, was an add-on to protect the delicate carving of the face, and could doubtless be removed for display purposes.
Certainly it was no more grotesque than several of the clown kachinas. Not that its appearance mattered, because he had no intention of taking it home and putting it up on a shelf in his ratty apartment. His intent was to turn it into ready cash as quickly as possible. If he was lucky he might get several hundred bucks for
Rising, he walked over to the window and eased the curtain aside. Still no sign of the van. He’d shove the sculpture into a motel laundry bag and stow it in one of several favorite and secure hiding places until the police finished their check of the premises. After the guests checked out, he’d head on over to Gallup. They’d file their report and leave. No one hung around Tuba City any longer than necessary. The attractions in the vicinity were impressive, but limited.
He considered how best to pick it up, wondering how securely the movable limbs were fastened to the body. Reaching under the right arm, he slipped his own hand around the back and lifted … pausing only long enough to adjust the breechcloth which barely covered his nether regions.
It was all he wore, except for the band around his head which kept his long hair out of his eyes. The deerskin strip was soaked through with his sweat.
Rising from his crouch, he drew his hand back from the kachina and turned to survey his surroundings. The high plateau of Third Mesa shimmered in the evening light. It had been a good day. They had suffered no serious casualties in beating off the attack by the strange white men who had come seeking to steal their possessions and souls. The crazy white man claimed to have been looking for something called the Seven Cities of Cibola and had stumbled into the land of the Hopi instead.
A voice hailed him and he moved to the edge of the plateau. Peering over the sheer drop, he saw that the hunting party which had gone out after the battle was now returning, making its patient way up the steps cut into the bare rock. One of the men had an antelope slung over his shoulders. His family and relatives would eat well tonight. Everyone would eat well. There were many reasons to celebrate. In addition to beating off the white men, the rains had been good this year. It was time to give thanks to the gods.
With the setting sun at his back he turned and headed for the village. Not even stupid white people who threw thunder and lightning from their fingers would dare to try scaling the towering cliffs of the mesa in the dark.
The women had the fires going already and their cheery glow pointed the way. His children would be waiting with wide eyes and baited breath to hear the details of the battle, while his wife would have begun preparation of the evening meal.
As he jogged along the trail which skirted the edge of the cliffs, he found his thoughts drifting back to the strange white people who had foolishly believed they could drive the Hopi from the sacred mesa. They had come searching for cities paved with gold and pots overflowing with jewels. Instead of talking like civilized people, they had indiscriminately thrown thunder and lightning. But the gods, and the great cliffs, had protected the village, and the invaders had been driven away with arrows and spears and stones. He didn’t think they’d return.
In his mind’s eye he saw them still, a thin line of bedraggled men and animals wending their way southward. They would find no gold in that land; nothing but relentless heat and searing death. Their hunger for the yellow metal he could not understand, not when there was game and water and com and squash to be had in plenty.
His children came running as soon as they espied his lithe form loping up the trail. He gathered them to him as he approached their apartment. Shumaqui, his beautiful wife, waited to greet him in the approved fashion. He was a lucky man, he knew. Not a leader of men or a shaman, but one whose modest abilities as a hunter and warrior were respected by others.
Lifting his youngest under her arms, he placed the laughing, giggling girl on his shoulders, where for a few moments she could lord it over her brothers. Tomorrow he would take them on the horse and ride into the trading post. He very much wanted to show his family the new machine the trader Williamson had just acquired.
It was called an aut’o’mobile, and it made as much noise as ten thousand chickens. Personally, he didn’t see the sense of it. In order to make it work, you had to feed it a special expensive drink. It smelled bad and didn’t always go where you wanted it to. Unlike a horse, it couldn’t find its own way home if you were lost, and its droppings were useless for fertilizing the fields. But it certainly was interesting to look at as it bounced and rattled its way down the road toward Flagstaff.
He thought that Williamson, who was a good and kindly man, might take the children for a ride around the trading post. If he would do that, John would give him one of the small silver-and-turquoise rings the white man seemed to prize so highly.
The big Packard ran smoothly as it carried him south toward the city. From there he would travel by bus to the training camp that had been set up near Phoenix. Many of his friends and relatives were already assembling in Flag, waiting for him and a few other laggards to join them before departing. Navajo, Hopi, Havasupai, Hualapai, Zuni: members of all the northern tribes had rushed to enlist.
Some of the elders had been less than enthusiastic. It was the white man’s war, they insisted. Why should they volunteer to fight people they did not know who lived in places they had never seen who had never caused them any harm?
Because despite the frequent prejudice they had to endure, the young men had replied, this was their land, even if they no longer had as much voice in its affairs and its running as had once belonged to them. Besides, were they not warriors, descendants of a long line of warriors? This was a chance to show what they could do, and certainly more exciting than anything else that had come alone in some time.
So along with innumerable cousins and uncles and friends, John, too, had signed up, not waiting to be drafted, wondering as the driver guided the Packard down the bumpy dirt road whether Germany in the summertime would be as hot as Arizona.
Except that he hadn’t wanted to fight, didn’t see what they were doing there, in the damnable stinking fetid hell of Southeast Asia. Only the support and similar skepticism of the friends he’d made helped him survive toward the end of his hitch. ’Nam was an equal-opportunity brutalizer that took no account of race, color, or creed.
How had he come to be in the steaming, hostile jungle, where branches became the muzzles of AK-47s and roots triggered mines that at the very least would blow your leg off? Far, far way, Gloria and the kids lingered over every letter he managed to send, sweating out his return.
One of the lucky ones, he was nearing the end of his tour of duty with his body intact and no visible scars. There were plenty of the latter, but they were all tucked away upstairs, where only he could see them. He knew they would never heal, but with luck he would be able to keep them from everyone but his patient and understanding wife.
When the children gathered outside the trailer he told them as much as he dared, much as his ancestors had told stories of their hunts and their wars. He was of a long line of warriors rich in tales of great triumphs and narrow escapes, of desperate survival and elaborate mythological wonders. All these tales he told, while the children regarded him raptly out of awestruck eyes as their parents sat nearby. Occasionally an elder would nod approvingly and John would continue, encouraged.
“They went this way.” He drew lines in the air with his hands. “And so we went that way. Into the swamp, holding our rifles over our heads, ignoring the leeches and the mosquitoes and the snakes. We did it to get behind them, and we did. They never knew what hit them.” His right arm completed a wide, sweeping movement.
To press firmly against the back of the kachina.
He did not blink but simply stared at those three vacant, lightly reflective, inhuman eyes. Very glad he was that they were not open, not gazing back at him, because if they were he was afraid they might see all the way to his soul, a component of himself of which he was not at the moment particularly proud. They were more eloquent in death than most eyes were in life.
