The Shaman Laughs (8 page)

Arlo sensed a weak spot. "Policy only pays on death by natural cause. Terminal belly ache, lightning strikes, baseball-sized hail stones, predators, that kind of thing."

Gorman looked up quickly. "It was a pred—predabiter."

"What kind of predator? Mountain lion, bear?" Arlo grinned. "Sasquatch?"

"Don't know." Gorman shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Whatever it was didn't wait around for me." Or did it? The blood-chilling howl from the mesa top still rang in his ears.

Arlo chewed on his cigar, allowing Gorman time to sweat a bit. "You'll need some evidence. The insurance adjuster, maybe he'll think
you
killed the bull." He saw Gorman's massive fists clench. "Now don't get edgy. I didn't say / believed you'd try to cheat the insurance company, but you know how nit-picking these adjusters can be."

"You tell the adjuster it was a predabiter. Then he'll pay."

"Okay. Tell me what kind of animal killed your bull."

"Don't know for sure."

"There must have been signs, tracks. What the hell kind of Indian are you, Gorman, you can't tell from the signs…"

Gorman raised his big frame from the chair and leaned over the desk, waving his hand as if he might grab Arlo by the throat. "What the hell kind of Indian are
you
, Arlo, trying to cheat one of the People? You little thief, I ought to—"

Arlo backed his chair up against the wall. "Now calm down, I didn't mean to upset you, but I got to go by the rules. Have Doc Schaid examine the animal."

"I called the vet already; he's on his way to the canyon by now."

"If he says it's natural causes, we'll pay. I guarantee it. You have Arlo Nightbird's word."

Gorman grimaced. "I'd sooner have a bad case of the piles."

Arlo let the insult pass. There was a rumor that, in his youth, Gorman Sweetwater had killed a knife-wielding Apache with those huge hands. The cigar hobbled in Arlo's mouth as he talked. "Dammit, Gorman, you ought to retire from this cattle business anyway. Can't make any real money at it, not with the import quotas from Argentina going up every year. Before long, you'll likely have to move them bone-bags out of Spirit Canyon anyhow."

Gorman was stunned. "What do you mean? I've had an allotment in
Canon del Espiritu
for my whole life; my father had it, and my grandfather…"

Arlo hung his thumbs over his alligator-skin belt. "You read the
Drum
, you'd know I'm the new chairman of the Economic Development Board. We're going to shake the federal government's money tree. They need a temporary site to store radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants. We're going to propose using Spirit Canyon. Indian reservations are a natural; the state legislatures don't have much to say about what we do on our own land."

The rancher's doubtful expression annoyed the entrepreneur.

"Listen, Gorman, the Skull Valley Goshutes in Utah and the Mescalero Apache down in New Mexico got a big head start on us, but I think we got a good chance to beat them out with our canyon site. I've been working on the Phase One proposal for weeks now; it's only for fifty thousand, but there's big money for whoever finally gets the installation."

"I heard about it, but I don't see why my cattle couldn't stay in the canyon if that knuckler crap is as safe as they say it is."

Arlo took another sip from his small flask of bourbon, scratched his crotch, and belched. "Government rules say we have to keep domestic animals and people away from the site."

Gorman stared out the window at passing traffic. "The tribe wouldn't never allow the
matukach
to put garbage in the sacred canyon."

"Sacred bullshit. I'll tell you what's sacred. Greenbacks, deutsche marks, yen." Arlo rabbed a beautifully manicured finger against his thumb. "That's what pays the rent. Anyway, it's not like it'll hurt that useless old canyon. I hear they'll cover the waste with enough concrete to build a freeway from here to hell and gone. And it's only temporary. When Yucca Mountain is ready, they'll move it all over to Nevada."

"When would that happen?"

Arlo ducked his head. "Oh, not too long." Fifteen, maybe twenty years. Maybe never.

The rancher turned to leave. "You see I get paid for Big Ouray."

Arlo followed him to the outer office. "Hey, is that Ben-ita? She sure has filled out."

Gorman saw the leer on Arlo's piglike face. It had been a very bad day, and this was finally just too much. He wheeled on the smaller man. "You better get control of it, Arlo, before somebody snips it off." The rancher's hand made a cutting motion across his crotch.

Louise Marie LaForte, an elderly French Canadian who had stopped by to renew her fire insurance, watched through slit lids.

"
Oui
," she whispered to Herb Ecker, "a warning to take seriously."

Arlo raised his hands in apology. "Hey, I didn't mean nothin'…"

Ecker fumbled awkwardly with a sheaf of papers; he avoided looking at Benita.

The rancher, with his daughter leading the way, stomped toward the door.

Arlo's mouth dropped open. "Get a hold of yourself, old man, all I said was—"

Gorman slammed the door hard. The plastic sign listing the daily hours of the Nightbird Insurance Agency popped loose and clattered onto the floor.

Arlo watched Ecker replace the small sign on the door. "Hardnosed old bastard," he muttered.

Herb Ecker cleared his throat; he moved close to his boss.

"I'm about to take the mail to the post office. Is there anything you want before I leave?"

Arlo waved his cigar impatiently. "Yeah, you Kraut Boy Scout, I want you to take some friendly advice. Sell insurance on automobiles and houses. Move some term life whenever you get half a chance."

He glanced toward Louise Marie but didn't bother to lower his voice because any fool knew that all old people were half deaf. "Scare the old grannys into spending every penny they have on supplemental health insurance. But you sell one more policy on somebody's good-for-nothing livestock, and you can find yourself another job. I could replace you like that"—he attempted to snap his stubby fingers—"salesmen are a dime a half-dozen and overpriced at that." Arlo clamped his teeth, almost biting through the fat cigar. "Maybe you'd like to go back to Doc Schaid and clean up after the animals for minimum wage. I imagine he likes Krauts."

Herb's back stiffened; there was a momentary hint of defiance in his eye. "I am not German, Mr. Nightbird. I am Belgian."

Arlo leaned forward, his unblinking eyes like fried eggs, and shook his finger in the young man's face. "Wops, dagos, Krauts, Frogs," he rasped, "they're all the same European immigrant white trash to me."

Louise Marie LaForte momentarily forgot that she was pretending not to hear; the mouth-filling oath spilled out between her pursed lips. "
Cochon
… stinking little swine!"

Arlo slowly turned his head and focused his bloodshot little eyes on the old woman, who clamped a tiny hand over her mouth. Louise Marie was certain that she would live to regret this error.

And she would. But in a way that she could not have imagined.

Daisy Perika stretched out onto her bed. She imagined what Father Delfino Raes would say about what she was about to do, then pushed the St. Ignatius Catholic priest from her thoughts. The old woman relaxed for several minutes, then closed her eyes and remembered the rhythmic chant that was centuries old when the Pharaoh's astronomers still believed the earth to be flat. Over and over the words pulsated in her consciousness… a song sung by women in trances who had heard the whisper of the Spirit. After hearing, they had used sharp awls of fish bone to stitch the tough walrus hides together. Their men had stretched the walrus skin over skeletons of green birch to fashion the sturdy little boats. The First People had chanted the words to the rhythm of their whale bone oars as they rowed their tiny craft across the dark waves among the floating mountains of blue ice. To a land that was harsh and sweet, old and new. To a world that, for two hundred centuries, would belong to their sons and daughters. But the song, which was to pass through a thousand generations and a score of languages yet unborn, remained fresh and vital.

Now the shaman chanted the sacred psalm of the people who had heard the urgent voice of the Spirit:

That Great Mysterious One… listen it is he who whispers whispers to our women

We would stay here… ooh near the graves of our fathers in the arms of our mothers

But he whispers to us… listen he whispers to us

and we hear his voice

Now across the dark waters… away we go away forever

from the graves of our fathers

Under the face of the moon… see we go away forever

from the arms of our mothers

These cold winds carry us… far away like leaves

away like dead leaves

The old woman's throat was dry; Daisy licked her lips and swallowed. She waited for a moment and the words began to flow again, like sweet water from a spring of ages.

That Great Mysterious One… listen he calls us to this quest

a hard journey to a far land

To another world… away into a darkness

into a great darkness we go

We are now become… new children without fathers infants without mothers

We are now become… old grandfathers of tribes grandmothers of nations

Ve who were last… see we are now become the First People

Now the song was sung. Her whispered words were replaced by a thumping sound, in rhythm with the beating of her heart. It was like the hollow fump-fump call of the Lakota medicine drum, the rawhide relic that now hung on the wall in her kitchen. Since her second husband had died, there was no one to tap his palm on the drum, to aid Daisy's entry into the misty edges of Lowerworld. By necessity, the shaman had trained herself to hear what must be heard.

As the imaginary drum beat filled her consciousness, Daisy gradually lost awareness of her surroundings. The gray shadows in her bedroom were replaced by the familiar streaks of colored light and the heady odor of moist black earth, that rich soil found under the shadow of rotting pine logs. Daisy felt herself floating; then, without warning, she was falling. The shaman instinctively grasped for a handhold, but there was nothing solid in the dazzling array of flashing lights. She was under the branches of towering pon-derosas… then passing through the earth, along the roots of an ancient juniper in
Canon del Espiritu
. Her journey ended abruptly, the flashing lights were replaced with a flickering yellow glow. Firelight. She was in that place that other Utes whispered about in campfire stories—the subterranean abode of the
pitukupf
.

The dwarf seemed surprised at the sudden entry of this creature of Middle World into his subterranean domain. He was busy sewing up a tear in his green shirt. He paused from his chore, dropped the deerbone awl into a sandstone pot with a humpbacked red rabbit painted on the bottom. The little man pulled his pipe from under his badgerskin belt. Daisy watched silently as the
pitukupf
stuffed a wad of dried
kinnikinnik
into the clay bowl; the dwarf used the inner bark of the red willow when he had no real tobacco. She would remember to bring a gift of Flying Dutchman. He lit a splinter of dry pifion from a glowing ember on his hearth, and touched this to the pungent
kinnikinnik
.

When he was ready, the
pitukupf
nodded to indicate that his guest should sit on the floor by the fire. Daisy held her hands near the embers and relished in the warmth; her fingertips and toes always became terribly cold when she made these trips. The shaman wanted to ask the dwarf whether he had killed Gorman's prize bull, but hesitated.
If the pitukupf
had killed and castrated the bull, he would probably deny any knowledge of the deed. If the dwarf was innocent of the killing, he might be insulted by the implied accusation and become sullen. It was important to take just the right approach with this unpredictable creature. "My grandmother told me long ago: "The powerful
pitukupf
in
Canon del Es-piritu
, he knows everything.' " Her grandmother had actually said: "That grumpy
pitukupf
, the one who lives in the badger hole in the canyon, he
thinks
he knows everything." But the flattery was not wasted.

The little creature solemnly nodded his agreement with this accurate assessment of his knowledge of deep matters.

"Tell me, if you know," she continued cautiously, "who was it that killed my cousin's bull?"

The dwarf stuck his hand into a tiny stone pot of red ocher; he touched his bony thumb to Daisy's forehead and left a scarlet print. An eye to see with. He whispered into her ear, telling her that the bull had been visited by an evil presence, but that he, the
pitukupf
, could not help his human friend in this matter. The answer was not in Lowerworld, but waited for her in another place, much farther away. She could go there if she was invited, but, he told her with some bitterness, it was forever forbidden for the
pitukupf to
enter into that domain.

Daisy covered her eyes with her hand. If only Nahum Yacüti were here; the old shepherd might tell her how to get to this strange land where answers waited. "Ahhh… Nahum," she whispered, "this is very hard… what shall I do?"

First, there was a dizziness, followed by a sense of floating. Daisy felt a warmth enter her old body, then a tingling, as if many needles had pricked her skin. She opened her eyes and realized that she was no longer in the home of the dwarf. At first, there was only a vortex of pale green light; she fell into this whirlpool and tumbled like a leaf caught in a swift stream… until she was on a wide plain, knee-deep in moist grasses of every description. There was no path here; the eternal dew on the grasses wetted her skirt as she walked. She marveled at lovely flowers that were lavender and orange and white, with attending bees that buzzed and darted among the fragrant blossoms. The rich brown soil of the plain was visible between tufts of grass, and the ground was littered with beautiful stones of every shape and color; she picked up chips of mottled gray flint, pink quartz and mica-speckled granite. This great sea of grass seemed to go on forever under a cloudless sky whose amber light did not come from a sun. There seemed to be nothing here but grass and wild flowers. The shaman was wondering about this experience, as she often did. Were these strange journeys taking her to actual places? Or perhaps they were merely visits to dark lands in her mind. She was turning these thoughts over when she heard the rumble of thunder. But no… this was not thunder.