The Shape Shifter Part 13

"Look to the south," Leaphorn said, gesturing to the mountain dominating that horizon with enough early winter snowpack to provide a glittering reflection of afternoon sunlight. "The map you have calls it Mount Taylor; it's fifty miles from here, and there is absolutely n.o.body between us and that mountain."

Vang considered that. "It looks so close."

"It's an old volcano," Leaphorn said, finding himself lapsing into his habit of becoming a tour director anytime he was driving with anyone unfamiliar with his territory. "Biggest mountain in this part of the reservation. Eleven thousand three hundred and something feet high. It has a lot of historical and religious significance for us. In our people's origin story, it was built by First Man when the Navajos first got here. It's one of our four sacred mountains. Four mountains that mark the boundaries of our land. We have several names for that one. The Navajo ceremonial name is tsoodzil, tsoodzil, and the formal t.i.tle is and the formal t.i.tle is dootl'izhiidzii, dootl'izhiidzii, which translates to 'Turquoise Mountain.' And then on the map it's named after General Zachary Taylor, and we also call it 'Mother of Rains' because the west winds pile clouds on top of it and then drive out over the prairie." which translates to 'Turquoise Mountain.' And then on the map it's named after General Zachary Taylor, and we also call it 'Mother of Rains' because the west winds pile clouds on top of it and then drive out over the prairie."

Leaphorn noticed Vang had been trying to suppress a grin. Recognized what might be an opportunity to get closer to this man. To understand him. To be understood.

"You're smiling," Leaphorn said. "What?"

"The way you say those two Navajo names," he said, grinning again. "Our Hmong language has words like that. You have to make funny sounds when you say them."

"Some of our words don't fit well with the white man's alphabet," Leaphorn said. "And since your people originated in China-well, at least a lot of anthropologists believe you did, and there's pretty good evidence that was your point of origin, too. So it wouldn't surprise me if we had some connections way back in time. How about your tribe's stories of how it originated?"

Vang looked surprised. Raised his eyebrows. Said, "I don't anything know about that. About what you mean."

"I mean like what we call 'origin stories.' For example, in the Judeo-Christian culture-the Europe-based white culture-in that one G.o.d created the universe in a series of six days, and then said we should rest on the seventh one." Leaphorn summarized the rest and mentioned the Garden of Eden.

"Adam and Eve," Vang said. "I've heard about that." He smiled, touched his side. "And that's why we have one less rib on one side of our chest."

Leaphorn paused, glanced at Vang, his facial expression a question. Vang nodded. Yes. He was interested.

"Well, Navajo tradition, at least the way I was taught it in my clan, doesn't give us such a clear statement of the creating power, or the sequences of how it happened. We believe we first existed in a series of previous worlds, but not exactly as flesh and blood humans. We were more like concepts, sort of the notion of what we would eventually be. Anyway, in our first world we do evil things and the Creator destroys it, and we escape into a second world. These early humans..." Leaphorn paused again, studying Vang. "Am I getting too confusing?"

"Go on," Vang said.

"Let's call this early version of humans prehumans," Leaphorn said. "Anyway, bad conduct again, and the second world was destroyed, and they escaped into the third world. Now our origin stories get more detailed. We learn how the prehumans were separated into the s.e.xes; men and women. Men doing the hunting and fishing and being the warriors, and the women raising families. The selfish, mean, greedy behavior was going on again, and the Creator repeated the process. The way my clan teaches the story, a sort of super-version of Coyote kidnapped the baby of another of these primal beings-one we call Water Monster-and he was so enraged he produced a terrible flood and drowned the third world as punishment. So we climbed up through a hollow reed and escaped into this world."

Leaphorn gestured at the landscape they were driving through, the eroded slopes of the b.u.t.te they were pa.s.sing, the distant mountain ridges, the high, dry, semidesert landscape of rabbit brush, snakeweed, bunchgra.s.s, and juniper and, above it all, a scattering of puffy clouds decorating the clear deep blue of the high country sky.

"Our Fourth World," Leaphorn said. "We call it Glittering World."

He glanced at Vang, who was staring out the windshield.

It was a longer statement than Leaphorn had intended, but Vang's expression showed he was interested. Maybe even intensely interested.

"You have any questions?" Leaphorn asked.

"Oh, yes," Vang said. "You climbed up to here-" Vang indicated "here" with a wave of his hand at the landscape. "Climbed up a hollow reed?"

"Well, as I understand it, we weren't really humans yet. But they had human characteristics. The same tendency to push and shove, try to get on top, try to get out in front, and they still had to get revenge, for example, if someone hurt them. The habits that always got them into trouble. I guess you could just call it selfishness. Being greedy."

Vang considered this. Nodded. "All the bad things that were the reason the Creating Spirit punished them for. The reasons the Creator made the flood. To destroy all that. That's what it means?"

"I think so," Leaphorn said. "That's all that seems to make any sense, anyway. In any of these various religions, the Creator seems to have started mankind, to have given humans a bunch of lessons on how to live the good life, be happy, stay happy by loving your neighbors, feeding the poor, not being selfish. Not chasing after fame, fortune, three car garages, all that. But he didn't make us slaves. He gave us a way to tell good from evil, but he also gave us free will. You know. Do you want to get rich, or do you want have a good life. It's our choice."

"I think our people got created a lot like that, too. But I never really had much chance to hear our stories. And I don't think the Hmong ever had much chance to get rich." He sighed. "Didn't even have any chance to teach their children about all that."

Vang's voice faded into a sort of sadness when he said that, and he looked down at his hands.

Something like me, Leaphorn was thinking. Tommy Vang sitting there beside him was another product of childhood interrupted. Vang's by war. Joe Leaphorn's by that old a.s.similation policy of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. By the school buses that hauled Indian kids away to boarding schools. Away from our hogans where the old people would have been teaching us all the ancestor stories-of the first, second, and third worlds. The buses brought them home when summer came, of course, to help with the herding, and their other duties, but the summer was the time tradition allowed for another set of stories, about hunting, relations with the animal worlds. The origin stories could be told only in the cold times, during the season when the thunder sleeps, when it was quiet, and the snow kept them in the hogans, and there was nothing to distract them, nothing to keep the children from listening, and thinking, and understanding.

And thus, Leaphorn was thinking, the a.s.similation program had cost much of this generation the heart and soul of the Navajo system of values. And this led him to another thought. Why younger, much more modern Officer Jim Chee, who had been born late enough to escape a.s.similation, was much better tuned to the Navajo Way than he was. Why Jim Chee still believed he could be both a policeman enforcing most belagaana belagaana laws and a shaman conducting the ceremonies that cured people who violated Navajo cultural rules and restored them to harmony. laws and a shaman conducting the ceremonies that cured people who violated Navajo cultural rules and restored them to harmony.

"Why don't you tell me what you remember," Leaphorn said. "When I was a lot younger and a student, I studied anthropology at the university. I learned just a little, very, very little, about the cultures of your part of the world. Didn't your Creator have an emissary, sort of an amba.s.sador, who he sent down to sort of govern humanity?"

"Ah, yes," Vang said, looking delighted. "How you know about that?"

"Mostly just from books," Leaphorn said. "We used one called"-Leaphorn paused, probing his memory-"I think it was Hmong, A History of a People Hmong, A History of a People."

"Did it tell about Hua Tai?"

"I have to think," Leaphorn said, noticing that Vang's att.i.tude had changed abruptly. His patient, enduring lethargy had converted into enthusiasm.

"As I remember it," Leaphorn said, "Hua Tai was the G.o.d who created the world and the people. But most of the little bit we learned was about his lieutenant. I think 'Harshoes,' or something like that. I sort of thought of him as being like Mohammed. You know, the prophet who represented G.o.d to the Arabian world."

"You say his name 'Yer Shua,'" Vang said, p.r.o.nouncing the syllables very slowly and repeating them. "I have heard about Mohammed. They talk about him some on the television news. About the war in Iraq. But Yer Shua was different, I think. He was part G.o.d and part man, I think. I remember they told about him being a farmer like the rest of the Hmong people, and raising pigs and having a whole lot of wives. And he was the one who tried to take care of the Hmong people. I mean he tried to protect them."

"We Navajos have what we call yei, yei," Leaphorn said. "Powerful, like spirits, but good. And the belagaana belagaana-white people-they have...well it depends on whether they're Christian, or Jewish, or what. Anyway, their bad supernatural beings are devils, or witches, or some other names. Good ones are angels."

They crossed the Continental Divide on Navajo Route 9 as Leaphorn was covering this side of theology, and now the Torreon ridge rose about six miles ahead, and beyond it Torreon arroyo and Torreon itself, with its chapter house and maybe, Leaphorn guessed, something like 150 residents scattered around the valley. Above it all, rising like a great sunlit thumb against a background of scattered clouds some thirty miles to the southeast, was Cabezon Peak. The thoughts Leaphorn had been forming jelled into a sudden decision. He slowed, pulled the vehicle off to the side where a ranch entry road had widened the shoulder.

"There's Torreon," he told Vang, pointing at the scattered buildings far ahead. "Before we get there, let's talk about what we're doing there." He released his seat belt and opened the car door.

"Talk?" Vang said. "What we talk about?"

"I want to hear some more about what you've been telling me about the Hmong, for one thing," Leaphorn said. "And if you're interested, I'll tell you more about the Dineh and about our traditional relationship with G.o.d and the spirits. And then we ought to plan what we're going to do about finding Mr. Delonie. And we should stretch our legs a little. I'm getting old, and I get stiff."

"Sure," Vang said.

Leaphorn got out, stretched, leaned against the fender, admired the view, planning his tactics. Vang joined him, glanced at Leaphorn inquiringly, and leaned against the car door.

"Not many people," Leaphorn said. "A few down below, then miles and miles and miles in every direction, no sign of people." He pointed down the road toward the village. "'Torreon' means tower, and when that little valley was first occupied by people, they built one out of stones because enemies kept attacking them."

Vang considered that. "Like what they say about Hmong. Everywhere we went people attacked us." He glanced at Leaphorn, a wry smile. "We even had a G.o.d like that. His name was Nau Yong, and they called him 'the Savage One' because what he liked to do was capture lots of Hmong people, and tear them apart and drink their blood." Vang grimaced. "Like he was a great tiger in the forest. They said he was the chief of all the bad spirits. Sort of like their king."

Leaphorn considered this. "Did he live on top of a mountain?" Leaphorn asked.

Vang looked surprised. "How did you know?"

"Maybe I read it somewhere," Leaphorn said. "But that's usually how it worked."

He pointed toward the south, where Mount Taylor's crest was visible against the horizon. "That's our Sacred Mountain of the South, our boundary marker. According to my clan's traditions, it was the home of a supernatural named 'Ye-iitsoh.' He was our version of your, ah, Nau Yong. Sort of in charge of all the vestiges of greed, hatred, malice, selfishness, cruelty, and so forth. The way our origin worked, our First Man spirit when he was escaping the flood that forced us to move up here, he sent a diving bird back into the water to recover what he called his 'way to make money.' In other words, it contained everything that caused the greed and selfishness."

Leaphorn was watching Tommy Vang's expression through every word of this.

"Do you understand?" he asked.

"Sure," Vang said. He threw out his hands. "Everybody fighting everybody else to collect more money, bigger car, bigger house, get famous on television. Get to the top of that mountain yourself. Step on the Hmong people. Climb over them."

Leaphorn chuckled. "That's the general idea."

"I heard that you Navajo say the way to find witches, anybody evil, is to look for people who have more than they need and their kinfolks are hungry."

Leaphorn nodded. "And also according to our origin story, two good yei yei decided to go around this glittering world and eliminate all the bad decided to go around this glittering world and eliminate all the bad yei yei to make this place safe for regular humans, like you and me, to live here. They killed the Ye-iitsoh up on the mountain, cut his head off." to make this place safe for regular humans, like you and me, to live here. They killed the Ye-iitsoh up on the mountain, cut his head off."

Leaphorn pointed at Cabezon Peak. "That's his head," he said. "It rolled all the way down there and turned into stone. And Ye-iitsoh's blood flowed down the other side of the mountain and dried into all the back lava flow along the highway around Grants."

"So I guess everybody has this idea about evil. Pretty much alike," Vang said.

"And people who fight evil, too," Leaphorn said. "Sometimes that's got to be policemen."

Vang looked at him. "Like you?"

Leaphorn considered that. "Maybe like both of us," he said. "I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions."

"Oh," Vang said. And thought for a moment. "What do I know?"

"First, when Mr. Delos brought you from Asia, you came to San Francisco, right?"

"Yes. We stayed in a hotel there."

"What year was that?"

"Year?" He shook his head.

"Then how old were you?"

"I was ten. Or maybe eleven. Mr. Delos had to buy me some new clothes because I had gotten a little bigger."

"And what did you do at the hotel?"

"A woman came in every day. A Chinese woman. And she would help me some with learning better English. Like we would watch the children's program on television, and she would help explain. And then she started teaching me how to cook, and how to iron shirts, and how to keep everything neat and clean. Things like that. And sometimes she would take me out in a taxicab and show me the city. And every evening we would sort of plan a dinner if Mr. Delos was going to be home, and she would teach me how to cook it. And then I would put out the plates and the silver, and she would go." Vang looked at Leaphorn, smiling. "That was fun. And good, good food."

"She didn't stay at night."

"No. No. Just daytime. Five days a week. That was for maybe the first year. Then Mr. Delos thought I was ready to go to cooking school and I would spend my daytimes at a sort of restaurant-bakery and food store. The boss there was from Manila. A nice man, and he knew something about Hmong people, but the other language he spoke was sometimes Spanish and sometimes a sort of tribal speech. From his island, I think."

"Were you still living in the hotel?"

"Oh, no. We moved into an apartment building. Close enough so I could walk down to where I was working."

"And what was Mr. Delos doing?"

"He was gone away most of the time. Sometimes people would come there to see him, and Mr. Delos would tell me to plan a meal for them, buy the wine, all that. I would put flowers on the table. Make everything nice. Put on this sort of ap.r.o.n and white cap he bought for me, and be the waiter. I enjoyed that."

"Gone most of the time?" Leaphorn said. "For days, or weeks, or months? Do you know where?"

"Usually just a few days, but sometimes for a long time. Once for more than a month. I think that time, he had gone to Phoenix, and another time he was in San Diego, and once it was Albuquerque."

"Did he always tell you where he was going?"

"No, but usually, after he had taught me how to do it, he was having me arrange the trip for him." Vang was smiling again. "He said I was his butler-valet. Like the man in the hotel lobbies who does all the arranging for you."

"You called the travel agencies, worked out the schedule, bought the tickets, everything?"

"Sure," Vang said. "Mr. Delos always had me call the same agency. There was a woman there. Mrs. Jackson. Always first cla.s.s. And she knew all about where he liked to sit, that he liked late flights. If he wanted to have a car waiting for him. All those sort of things."

"You just gave her the credit card number? Or what?"

"Yes. Well, no. She had the number. She say: 'Mr. Vang, do I just put this on his regular business card.' And then she would e-mail the paper to get him on the airplane and I would print it out for him."

"Overseas flights, too. Or was he making any of them?"

"Yes. Not many though. One to Mexico City. One to Manila. One to London, but I think he had me cancel that."

"She handled the visas, too. "

"Sure," Vang said. "Very nice lady."

Leaphorn nodded, thinking of the benefits of the very rich.

"Sometimes there would be two tickets. Because he would take me along to take care of things for him if he was staying several days."

Leaphorn was silent a moment, considering that.

"She handled your visa for you when you needed one? Tommy, did Mr. Delos get you naturalized. As an American citizen, I mean. Were you sworn in and all that?"

"Oh yes," Tommy Vang said. "That was exciting. It was when I was twenty-one years old. The same day I registered so I could vote."

"Several years before that-I'd say when you were about fifteen or sixteen-was Mr. Delos away for a long period of time? Maybe as long as a year?"

"Oh, it was longer than that," Tommy Vang said. "For about five years, he was gone most of the time. Sometimes he'd call about the mail, or messages. And then he would call and tell me to meet him at the airport, and he'd be home for maybe a week and then he'd have to leave again."

"You just stayed at the apartment?"

"And worked for Mr. Martinez, at his bakery, restaurant place." He produced a wry sounding laugh. "Not good times. I watched television, and went for walks, and worked a lot. n.o.body to talk to. Spent some time at the library trying to learn something about what had happened to the Hmong people."

"And thinking about going home?"

"No money," Tommy Vang said. "Sometimes I tried to talk to Mr. Delos about that, but he would just say when everything was finished here, he would take me back himself."

"He never paid you any salary?"

"He said it was just like he was my daddy. He gave me my clothes, my home, my food, everything I need. Had me taught things. Just like I was his son."

Leaphorn looked at Tommy. Yes, that statement seemed serious. It also seemed terrible.

"Time to get moving again," he said. "Mr. Delonie will be getting home from wherever he works about now. Time to get back on the road. Get down to Torreon and find out where he lives."