Excerpt of Sacred Clowns by Tony Hillerman

Chapter One

At first, Officer Jim Chee had felt foolish sitting on the
roof of the house of some total stranger. But that
uneasiness had soon faded. Now this vantage point on the
roof had come to seem one of Cowboy Dashee's rare good
ideas. Chee could see almost everywhere from here. The
drummers directly beneath the tips of his freshly shined
boots, the column of masked dancers just entering the
plaza to his left, the crowd of spectators jammed along
the walls of the buildings, the sales booths lining the
narrow streets beyond, he looked down on all of it. And
out over the flat crowded roofs of Tano Pueblo, he could
rest his eyes on the ragged row of cottonwoods along the
river, golden today with autumn, or upon the blue
mountains blocking the horizon, or the greentan-silver
patchwork of farm fields the Tanoans irrigated.

It was an excellent perch from which to witness the Tanoan
kachina dance—for duty as well as pleasure. Especially
with the warm, jeans-clad thigh of Janet Pete pressed
against him. If Delmar Kanitewa was present, Chee would be
likely to see him. If the boy didn't show up, then there
was no better place from which to watch the ceremonial.
Such mystical rituals had always fascinated Chee. Since
boyhood Chee had wanted to follow Hosteen Frank Sam Nakai.
In the Navajo family structure Nakai was Chee's "Little
Father," his mother's elder brother. Nakai was a shaman of
the highest order. He was a hataalii—what the whites
called a singer, or medicine man. He was respected for his
knowledge of the traditional religion and of the curing
ways the Holy People had taught to keep humankind in
harmony with the reality thatsurrounds us all. Nakai
worked along that narrow line that separates flesh and
spirit. Since boyhood, that had interested Chee.

"On the roof is where they like visitors to sit when
they're having a kachina dance," Dashee had said. "It gets
you tourists out from underfoot. Unless you fall off,
there's a lot less chance you'll do something stupid and
mess up

the ceremony. And it leaves room around the dance ground
for the Tano people. They need to exchange gifts with the
kachinas. Things like that."

Dashee was a sworn deputy sheriff of Apache County,
Arizona, a Hopi of his people's ancient Side Corn Clan,
and Jim Chee's closest friend. But he could also be a pain
in the butt.

"But what if I spot the kid?" Chee had asked. "Is he going
to wait while I climb down?"

"Why not? He won't know you're looking for him." Cowboy
had then leaned against Janet Pete and confided in a stage
whisper, "The boy'll think Detective Chee would be over
there in Thoreau working on that big homicide. "

"You know," Asher Davis said, "I'll bet I know that guy.
There was a teacher at that Saint Bonaventure School—one
of those volunteers—who called me a time or two to see if
I could get a good price for something some old-timer had
to sell. One time it was a little silver pollen container—
looked late nineteenth century—and some jerk in Farmington
had offered this old man two dollars for it. I got him two
hundred and fifty. I wonder if that was the teacher who
got killed."

"His name was Dorsey," Chee said, sounding slightly
grouchy. He didn't know Davis and wasn't sure he'd like
him. But maybe that was just the mood he was in.

"Dorsey," Davis said. "That's him."

"See?" Cowboy said. "Officer Chee keeps up on those
serious crimes. And he also has time to write letters to
the editor telling the Tano council what to do with its
old uranium mines."

Chee had been ignoring Dashee's needling all morning. At
first it had been based on the letter, published in that
morning's edition of the Navajo Times. In it, Chee had
opposed a proposal to use the open pit of the abandoned
Jacks Wild Mine as a toxic waste dump. He had called
it "symbolic of the contempt felt for tribal lands." But
then they had heard of the homicide on the car radio. A
school shop teacher at Thoreau had been hit fatally on the
head. Some materials were reported missing and no suspect
had been identified. It was a pretty good murder by
reservation standards. Certainly it was more dignified
than this assignment. It had happened yesterday, on Chee's
day off. Still, Lieutenant Leaphorn might have assigned
him to work on it. Or at least mentioned it. But he
hadn't, and that burned a little.

What burned more was Janet. Janet had encouraged Cowboy's
needling with amused grins and occasional chuckles.

But now, warmed by her praise of his letter, Chee was
willing to forgive all that—even to feel better about
Cowboy. He had to concede that he had started the exchange
by kidding Cowboy about the Hopi tendency to grow wide,
instead of high. And he had to concede that what Cowboy
had said about the roof was true enough. If Kanitewa was
down there In the crowd watching his pueblo celebrate this
autumn feast day, the boy would be feeling secure among
family and friends. But, on the other hand, kids who run
away from boarding school know someone will be coming
after them.

Chee had been just such a kid himself, once. That feeling
of fear, of being hunted, was one he could never forget.
You can't relax even when, as in Chee's case, the hunt was
brief and there was little time for the fear to build. The
man from the boarding school had been parked out of sight
behind the sheep pens, waiting, when Chee had walked up to
his mother's hogan. Seeing him had been almost a relief.