Talking God Part 18

Chee could think of nothing to say. His head still ached. He wished with a fervent longing to be back in New Mexico. In his trailer under the cottonwood on the bank above the San Juan River. He would take two aspirin and sprawl out on his comfortable, narrow bed and finish reading A Yellow Raft on Blue Water A Yellow Raft on Blue Water. He'd left it opened to page 158. A hard place to stop.

"They said Henry Highhawk was dead," Janet Pete said in a small voice.

"Yes. The police think Santero killed him," Chee said. "It seems fairly obvious that it must have been Santero."

"Henry was a sweet man," Janet said. "He was a kind man." She paused. "He was, wasn't he, Jim? But if he was, how did they talk him into being a part of this-of this horrible bomb thing?"

"I don't think they did," Chee said. "We'll never know for sure, I guess. But I think they conned him, and used him. Probably they saw the story in the Post Post about Highhawk digging up the skeletons. They needed a way to kill the general and they had a way of knowing their target would be visiting the Smithsonian, so they went out and made friends with Henry." about Highhawk digging up the skeletons. They needed a way to kill the general and they had a way of knowing their target would be visiting the Smithsonian, so they went out and made friends with Henry."

"But that doesn't explain why he would help them."

"I think Highhawk thought Santero was sympathetic to what Henry was trying to do. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that planting the tape recorded message in the mask was dreamed up by the Santillanes bunch. Maybe they knew he'd need technical help with the timer on the tape recorder and all that."

"I'd like to think you're right," Janet said. "I'd like to think I wasn't a complete fool. Wanting to help him when he was helping to murder a lot of innocent people." But her tone was full of doubt.

"If I wasn't right-If you weren't they wouldn't have had to kill him," Chee said. "But they did kill him. Maybe he noticed something and caught on. Maybe they just couldn't leave him around to tell all to the police."

"Sure," Janet said. "I didn't think of that. I feel better. I guess I needed to keep believing Henry just wanted to do good."

"I think that's right," Chee said. "It took me a while, but I've decided that, too."

"What are you going to do now?"

"I have a flight this afternoon back to Albuquerque. Then I catch the Mesa Airlines flight to Farmington, and pick up my car and drive back to s.h.i.+prock," Chee said.

Janet Pete correctly read the tone of that.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I had no idea what I was getting you into. I never would have-"

Chee, a believer in the Navajo custom of never interrupting anyone, interrupted her.

"I wanted to come," he said. "I wanted to see you."

"Do you still want to see me? I'll come over and take you to the airport." A long pause. "If you really do have to go. You're on vacation, aren't you?"

"I'd like that," Chee said. "A ride to the airport."

So now he waited again. He was able now to think about what had happened yesterday. The B.C. police would probably catch Santero sooner or later. He found he had no interest in that. But he wondered what Leaphorn had done to keep Santero from pus.h.i.+ng the b.u.t.ton. Chee retraced it all in his memory. Handing the museum guard the ball of plastic explosive. ("Here. Be careful with this. It was a bomb. Give it to the cops.") He'd walked back to the STAFF ONLY STAFF ONLY elevator carrying Talking G.o.d's mask. He had pushed his way through the uproar of scurrying and shouting. He'd gotten off at the sixth floor and walked back to Highhawk's office. He'd emptied an a.s.sortment of leather, feathers, and bones out of a box beside Highhawk's chair. He placed the mask gently in the box and closed it. Then he searched the office, quickly and thoroughly, without finding what he wanted. That left two places to look. elevator carrying Talking G.o.d's mask. He had pushed his way through the uproar of scurrying and shouting. He'd gotten off at the sixth floor and walked back to Highhawk's office. He'd emptied an a.s.sortment of leather, feathers, and bones out of a box beside Highhawk's chair. He placed the mask gently in the box and closed it. Then he searched the office, quickly and thoroughly, without finding what he wanted. That left two places to look.

He picked up the replica mask Highhawk had made, laid it atop the box, and carried it down the elevator to the exhibit hall.

By then the spectators were gone and two D.C. policemen were guarding the corridor. He saw Rodney, and Rodney let him through. Rodney was holding the plastic explosive.

"What the h.e.l.l happened?" Rodney had asked. "Joe tells me this bomb was under the mask and you pulled it off. That right?"

"Yes," Chee said. He handed the replica to Rodney. "Here," he said. "Whoever did it sort of molded the plastic into the mask. Jammed it in."

Leaphorn was standing there, his face gray. "You all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine," Chee said. "But you don't look so hot."

On the floor between the Yeib.i.+.c.hai exhibit and the Incan display three men were sprawled in that totally careless att.i.tude that only the dead can manage. One of them matched Leaphorn's description of the little redhead with the shape of a weightlifter. Sooner or later he would wonder about what the redhead was doing here, and what had happened. When he did, he'd ask Leaphorn. Now it didn't seem to matter. And then the morgue crew began arriving. And more plainclothes cops, and men who had to be, by their costume, the feds.

Chee had not been in the mood for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He walked out of the Tenth Street entrance and around the building. He checked parked cars. A wrecker was hauling an old Chevy sedan away from the towaway fire zone, but Chee was looking for Highhawk's Ford Mustang. He finally found it in a staff parking lot.

It was locked. What he was looking for wasn't visible inside, and it was too large to fit under the seat and out of sight. If it wasn't in the car, he'd have to take a cab out to Highhawk's place and look for it there. But first he'd check the trunk. Locked, of course. Chee found a slab of broken concrete near the sidewalk. He slammed it down on the trunk lid, springing it open. There was a box inside, wrapped in an old pair of coveralls. Chee took off the lid and looked in. The fetish representing the Tano War Twin smiled its sinister, malicious smile up at him. He took Talking G.o.d's mask out of the box from Highhawk's office, packed it carefully in with the fetish, put the empty box in the trunk, and closed it.

Two young men, each holding a briefcase, were standing beside a nearby car watching him break into the Mustang. Chee nodded to them. "Had to get this fetish out," he said, and walked back to the Natural History Museum. He had left the box in the checkroom and went back to the exhibit.

There the FBI had taken over. Chee had unchecked his box and walked to his hotel.

Now, in his room, he was coming to terms with yesterday when the telephone rang again.

"Jim?"

It was Mary Landon's voice.

"Yes," he said. "It's me, Mary."

"You weren't hurt? On the news they said you weren't hurt."

"No. Not at all."

"I'm coming to Was.h.i.+ngton. To see you," she said. "I called you yesterday. At the police station in s.h.i.+prock. They said you were in Was.h.i.+ngton and told me your hotel. I was going to call you and come. And then last night-That was terrible."

Jim Chee was having trouble a.n.a.lyzing his emotions. They were turbulent, and mixed.

"Mary. Why do you want to see me?" He paused, wondering how to phrase it. "I got your letter," he said.

"That was why," she said. "I shouldn't have said that in a letter. It's the sort of thing that you say in person. That was wrong. It was stupid, too. I know how you feel. And how I feel."

"How do you feel about living on the reservation? About the reservation being home?"

"Oh, Jim," she said. "Let's not-" She left it unfinished.

"Not get into that? But that's always been our problem. I want you to come and live with me. You know how I am. My people are part of me. And you want me to come out to the world and live with you. And that's only fair. But I can't handle it."

A moment pa.s.sed before she spoke again, and her voice was a little different. "I wish I hadn't told you in a letter. That's all. That was cruel. I just didn't think. Or, I did think. I thought it would hurt too much to see you like that, and I would be all confused about it again. But I should have told you in person."

There was not much to say after that, and they said good-bye. Chee washed his face, and looked out his window into the window of the office across the narrow street. The man into whose office Chee's window looked was looking down at the pa.s.sing cars, still with his vest and tie neatly in place. The man and Chee were looking at each other when Janet Pete tapped at his half-opened door and came in.

He offered her the chair, and she took it.

"You don't look like you feel like doing a lot of talking," she said. "Would you like to just check out now, and drive on out to the airport?"

"No hurry," he said. She was not exactly a beautiful woman, he thought. She did not have the softness, the silkiness, the dark blue, pale yellow feminine beauty of Mary Landon. Instead she had a kind of strong, clean-cut dignity. A cla.s.sy gal. She was proud, and he identified with that. She had become his friend. He liked her. Or he thought he did. Certainly, he pitied her. And he was going to do something for her. What was happening to her here in Was.h.i.+ngton was nothing but miserable. He hated that.

"And before we go," Chee added, "there's something I want to give to you."

Chee got off the bed and unsnapped the suitcase. He took out the hotel laundry sack in which he'd wrapped it and extracted the fetish.

He handed it to her. "The Tano War G.o.d," he said. "One of the twins."

Janet Pete stared at it, and then at Chee. She made no move to accept it.

"I didn't think he should be so far away from home," Chee said. "He has a twin somewhere, and people who miss him. It seemed to me that the Smithsonian has plenty of other G.o.ds, stolen from other people, and they could keep the replica Highhawk made and get along without this one. I thought this one should go back to its kiva, or wherever the Tanos keep him."

"You want to give it to me?" Janet asked, still studying his face.

"That way he will get home," Chee said. "You can turn him over to John McDermott, and John gives him to what's-his-name-Eldon Tamana, wasn't it? That lawyer from Tano. And Tamana, he takes it home."

Janet Pete said nothing. She looked down at her hands, and then up at him again.

"Or," Chee added softly, "whatever you like."

Janet held out her hands. Chee laid the Twin War G.o.d in them.

"I guess we should go now," Chee said, and he relocked the suitcase. "I think I've been in this town long enough for a country boy Navajo."

Janet Pete was rewrapping the Twin War G.o.d in the laundry sack. "Me too," she said. "I have been here for months and months and months. So long it seems like a lifetime." She put her hand on Chee's sleeve.

"I will take this little fellow home myself," she said.

As Tony's home state paper the Oklahoma City Oklahoman Oklahoma City Oklahoman says, says, "Readers who have not discovered Hillerman should not waste one minute more."

Read on...

A chapter from Tony Hillerman's acclaimed autobiography, SELDOM DISAPPOINTED.

How to Get a Bronze Star Without Knowing Why Having read about what U.S. Army historians call the Battle for the High Vosges, I now have at least a vague idea of what we'd been doing that rainy autumn. Itterswiller and the portion of the High Vosges we had been pus.h.i.+ng through was held by the 716th Panzer Grenadier Division, an armored infantry unit provided with tanks, self-propelled artillery, and so forth. A grunt in the infantry is the absolute authority on the conduct of the war in a radius of about twenty yards in every direction from his foxhole, and absolutely ignorant of everything outside his line of vision. Standing on that ridge looking at Itterswiller through borrowed binoculars, I had no idea that our battalion was the point of the Seventh Army plan to drive through Saales Pa.s.s into the Rhineland, thereby cutting off four German divisions.

The thinking behind this strategy was that since this section of mountains had no roads to support tanks, artillery, and the trucks needed to haul such things as ammunition or food for soldiers the enemy would not expect such a maneuver. Thus the mountains would be, as the military historians phrase it, "lightly defended."

Which was how it worked. We had encountered mostly hasty roadblocks and delaying actions by units which, like us, had no armor or artillery support. Not many casualties except among the rifle squads, which got picked to be the point at the wrong time. And here we were, the First Battalion of the 410th Infantry, Charley Company on the ridge to the left, Baker Company across the narrow valley on the ridge to the right, looking out through the trees at the vineyards of Itterswiller and the Promised Land. Success! We had "enveloped" the 716th Panzer Grenadiers.

The way Barney and I and our friends at Sacred Heart played our war game, the 716th was supposed to pick up its marbles now and quit. It didn't. While defense of the mountains had been light, defense of Itterswiller was heavy. Luckily for us in Charley Company, Baker had got there first.

The table of organization of a German Panzer Grenadier Division shows it having two battalions of 105 mm howitzers, one battalion of 150 mm howitzers, plus an "ant.i.tank" battalion, which meant those awful high-velocity 88s. From where we sat on what we came to call Charley Hill most of these guns seemed to be established somewhere behind Itterswiller and most of them were blazing away at the hill that Baker Company was holding.

Judging from the small arms fire we'd been hearing across the little draw, Baker had run into much more serious opposition than we had on our side of the declivity. Their hill was wreathed in the smoke of exploding sh.e.l.ls while our patch of woods was receiving only a now-and-then round--just enough to add vigor to our foxhole digging--and we are experienced enough by now to dig them in the open, safer from the lethal "tree bursts." We hunker down and wait--knowing absolutely nothing about where we are, what we're doing there, or what happens next. Something bad had happened to Captain Neeley, the lieutenant leading our platoon. He had been wounded earlier and not replaced, and a sergeant was running things in our part of the war. We dig and wait and wonder what the h.e.l.l is going on.

That wonder is soon intensified by the sound of gunfire from the slopes behind us. Who is shooting at whom? Rumors fly. My old friend Bob Huckins walks up to my hole, cool as always. Bob is part of headquarters company, Captain Neeley's runner, and--in Army parlance--his dog robber. Huckins has been dispatched to our position with instructions from our platoon sergeant to pick up a volunteer and go back to company headquarters and find out what is happening. Specifically the sergeant wants to know why we are hearing that gunfire behind us as well as from up front. Huckins suggests I go along with him. Why not? The last sh.e.l.l had exploded in the trees about forty yards to the right--getting a little closer. Taking a walk rearward with Bob seems a good idea.

Huckins believes that company headquarters was in a large stone farmhouse and barn back in the narrow valley between and behind Baker and Charley hills--and Huckins knew an easy route. We walk down the ridge toward the rear, where a path angled down the slope to the house. It's a beautiful late afternoon, the sun slanting through the trees, the great granite boulders lining the ridge casting long shadows. A faint breeze brings us the noise of the sh.e.l.lfire hammering Baker Company and the occasional crash of a howitzer round exploding on Charley Company's position. But if you are young and healthy it takes little effort to convert that noise into nothing more troublesome than, for example, a bunch of trains coupling in a railroad yard. Thus, you make the war go away.

Alas, it doesn't stay away.

Huckins stops. Points. Two Germans are sitting on the ground in the cl.u.s.ter of boulders perhaps forty yards ahead, their backs against the stone. One has spread out a cloth on a rock and seems to be cutting a slice from a long, fat sausage. A backpack radio is on the ground beside them--its antennae extended. Huck and I edge discreetly out of sight. Back in Fort Benning, Huck had shot an almost perfect score on the rifle range. He is carrying an Ml. I am carrying a .45 caliber pistol, good to make fighter pilots and field grade officers feel like warriors but useless in combat beyond rock-throwing distance. We hold a whispered conference. Shoot them or take them prisoner? Either way we get their sausage. Huckins's time among the officers at headquarters had made him conscious of the importance of taking prisoners--especially when we have no idea what's going on. And neither one of us liked the idea of killing these picnickers. We will slip around behind them and make the capture. We begin this stealthy maneuver, rifle ready and pistol c.o.c.ked. We reach the chosen position. I look out from around the boulder. The radio is there but the men and the sausage are gone. Just then a bullet whacks into the boulder, spraying my face with bits of rock. Germans are coming up the path from the farmhouse. How many? No time to count since they are shooting at us.

Churchill's remark about the exhilaration of being shot at and missed proves true. We run. One of the two radiomen reappears now and shoots at us with his pistol but sprinters racing through trees and boulders are hard to hit. By the time we reach the Charley Company perimeter our friends have surmised that maybe they are surrounded. Their rifles and machine guns now swivel to the rear. In other words, at us. But they recognize our shouts, welcome us home, and await the arrival of the trouble we surely have drawn down upon us all.

Nothing happens. With twilight the German artillery calls it a day. Rumors spread--one being the obvious truth that while we are enveloping the 716th Panzer Grenadiers, they are enveloping us. Riflemen in foxholes down the hill send up word that they have been hearing the rumble of tanks in the valley behind us--extremely unpleasant news. We hear that all of the officers in Baker Company have been killed or wounded but that what's left of Baker is holding its hill. We hear that Lieutenant Boyle, our artillery forward observer, has crossed the defile to Baker Hill and taken command of what's left of Baker. We hear that Captain Neeley had been wounded and had been taken to the aid station at company headquarters. We hear that a German panzer unit has captured company headquarters, including our captain. Twilight deepens. We guess that the Germans whom Huck and I had surprised at their lunch were forward observers for the German artillery, directing the fire on Baker Hill. That seems logical and explains why we haven't been sh.e.l.led more heavily. What sane soldier would call down fire where long rounds would be hitting him? A rumor spread that we have been surrounded. It happens to be true but, being a born optimist, I scoff at it. The sergeant who has taken charge of our hill in the absence of any officers had long since had us arranged in a defensive perimeter. Then things get even weirder.

We hear a motorcycle puttering down the road from Itterswiller toward us. It stops, starts again, and rolls on below us toward our company headquarters farmhouse. Gene Halsey and George Rice, whose machine gun positions are on the slope above the road, send up word confirming that it was indeed a motorcyclist and they hadn't shot the fellow because they have no idea what's going on. That ignorance is short-lived. Again we hear the motorcycle, the sound of tanks, and shouting voices. The message is: "Don't shoot. We're prisoners." A column of our compadres is being marched down the road below us (s.h.i.+elding the tanks in the process) to spend the rest of the war as German POWs. Halsey, Rice, and the others dug in on the slope above the road can only watch--not that .30 caliber machine guns and rifles could dent tanks even if they'd been crazy enough to shoot.

We spend a nervous night. Dawn comes and the rumors thicken. Company headquarters had indeed been captured, or was it battalion headquarters? The German tanks and infantry we had bypa.s.sed in our rush through the mountains had surrounded the farm buildings behind us yesterday afternoon. They had captured the battalion medicos who were patching the wounded in the building, plus headquarters personnel, and the battalion's Intelligence and Reconnaissance platoon. Captain Neeley, in the process of having a leg wound patched, had jumped out of a window and escaped into the woods, sans shoes and trousers. The tanks rolling past us from the rear during the night were escorting prisoners, including the walking wounded, into Itterswiller.

Morning comes. Quiet. No artillery. Huckins shows up at my foxhole again. The sergeant is sending a little recon patrol into Itterswiller. The Germans have withdrawn, he tells us, pulled out of the village during the night. Those in charge just want to make sure. Come along, Huckins suggests.

Having written the above, I find myself stuck--staring at the computer screen and reexamining my memory. What happened next seems unlikely and irrational. How can I expect a reader to believe it when I can hardly credit it myself--and I was there doing it. I said okay, or something to that effect, and climbed out of the hole and went--more or less as a volunteer although I hate to admit it. More likely the platoon sergeant had added me to the list of volunteers and sent Huck to give me the bad news.

We were a staff sergeant and five riflemen from the second platoon, plus Huckins and me. We walk down the hill, well s.p.a.ced, strung out behind the sergeant, staying in cover as much as we can and aiming to hit the road below a vineyard--which allows us to move into the first buildings of the village without being sitting ducks until the last moment. Army Intelligence seems to have it right for once. No one is shooting at us. But as we walk past the vineyard, within twenty yards of the first building, we learn Army Intelligence is operating as usual.

I remember hearing engines being started in the village ahead and simultaneously a voice, just above and behind us, shouting something in German. A soldier is standing among the vines, pointing a rifle at us. A sentry, probably. He must have been sleeping or he would have seen us coming. Huckins shoots him and he tumbles down among the vines. We sprint toward the village. Two men rush out of the first building, looking surprised, see five or six rifles aimed at them and stop. One raises his hands high. The other jerks off his helmet and bounces it on the cobblestones, cursing. Here the entry road makes a ninety-degree turn to become the main street of Itterswiller. Pressed against a wall, I can hear more motors coming alive but I can't see what's going on. The squad leader sends the prisoners out across the open s.p.a.ce toward our company's position in the woods, tells them to go there and surrender again. Then he disappears around the corner. We spend a very tense few moments, fingers on triggers. The two soldiers we've bagged trot toward Charley Hill, hands atop heads and disappear among the trees. Did they ever get all the way to Charley Company to declare themselves prisoners of war? I never heard, never asked, and never cared. But I doubt it. The sergeant reappears with the happy news that the Germans (probably a rear guard at best) were going, going, gone.

The encounter at Itterswiller was over. But it needs a couple of footnotes--the first one to ill.u.s.trate the baffling irrationality of the military and the second to suggest that some levels of compa.s.sion survive in our species even in the heat of combat.

About six months after the affair I learned that I had been awarded a Bronze Star by the U.S. Army for "action on a daylight recon patrol on 29 November 1944." Since I was only a tagalong I presumed that everyone who went was awarded those five points toward going home, with maybe something higher for the sergeant. But I learned later that Huckins, the only one of us except for the sergeant who actually did anything, got no medal, so I presume the others didn't either. Why me? Who knows? Maybe names are drawn from a colonel's hat.

That's the irrational example. Here's the compa.s.sion.

One of the eighty casualties Baker Company suffered that day was John Walters, who'd been a friend of mine in basic training, and had become a BAR man in B Company. I located Walters, now a retired oil man living in Durango, and he told me his story. Baker Company had run into a stiff close-quarters firefight with dug-in German infantry on that infamous hill. Walters found himself engaged in a sort of one-on-one affair in the woods, his BAR against an MG42. Walters suffered a face wound. He remembers sitting against the trunk of a tree, sort of collecting himself, then becoming aware again and discovering that the top of the tree had been blown off, that three hours have pa.s.sed, and that he has a huge splinter sticking through his thigh muscle, the worst of a mult.i.tude of less important injuries. Walters hobbles toward the rear, meets Lieutenant Boyle, is put on a Jeep, and taken to the headquarters farm building. There the splinter is removed, various wounds are bandaged and Walters waits with other wounded in the bas.e.m.e.nt for what happens next. He remembers hearing tracked vehicles arriving, hoping they are U.S. tanks, hearing some shooting and shouting and then a call down the stairs.

"This is Lieutenant Remington," the caller shouts. "If there's anyone down there, come on up."

"It sounded like perfect American English," Walters told me. "We thought he was an American officer."