“Sure. I’m at the hospital now, but they won’t let me see him.”
Bernie shook off the gloom left in Lona’s wake and focused on driving. Cameron lay a few minutes ahead and a longer delay wouldn’t add much to Chee’s irritation with her. She’d stop and go into the gallery for a minute to see if they still had that rug of Mama’s. If so, she’d take a picture. Mama enjoyed seeing where her rugs had gone. She said it must be like learning how the grandchildren were doing; grandchildren of whom she had none.
Bernie parked and called Leaphorn again. The case was weighing on her. Too many loose ends, too many disconnects. She listened to the phone ring and wondered what the Lieutenant had come up with about Rick. She wondered why Robert was so fond of By. Probably something as simple as an adult male paying attention to him, something, according to Robert anyway, that Palmer never did.
She left a message on his home machine. Then she called his cell and could tell by how quickly it went to voice mail that he’d turned it off. She left the same message, with a touch of worry in her voice. She decided the rug would wait for another day and headed on to Tuba City.
21
Joe Leaphorn felt better than he had in months.
He had gotten up early, dressed, and headed right to his office. He reviewed notes he’d made the night before and added some new ideas. After a while he smelled the distinctive and wonderful aroma of fresh coffee, closed his computer, took his cane, and walked to the kitchen.
“You’re up early,” Louisa said. “Like old times.”
He opened the cabinet door, took down his favorite cup, put it on the counter, and carefully poured it half full of coffee, as he’d done for years. Even if it was bitter, old, too strong, or otherwise vile, he wanted his coffee hot. And since his injury, the shaking in his hands would have created problems with a full cup.
Louisa mainly drank tea, but she always had coffee in the morning. Like many tea drinkers, she made the coffee weak, but he didn’t mind. It was still coffee.
The weekly Navajo Times arrived that morning, and Louisa had placed the newspaper by his bowl and spoon. He wasn’t crazy about oatmeal, but he knew it was better for him than the fried eggs he loved and ordered at the Navajo Inn. There it sat, the same meal that greeted him every morning except for when he went to the inn for those breakfast brainstorming sessions with the police honchos. Louisa served it up grayish white, bland but abundant. She offered a pitcher of skim milk, honey, and little bowls of walnuts and chewy raisins that made it palatable, but far from delicious.
“Can I have some of the paper?” She stirred the nuts and raisins into her bowl. “I’ll let you know what’s going on this weekend.”
It was a recurring joke between them. She’d say something like, “Look, the Rolling Stones are playing at the Flowing Water Casino. Let’s go.”
And he’d say, “Who? Never heard of them,” and then, “Not tonight, dear.”
He handed her everything except the front section. Reading the paper challenged him. Not counting some letters to the editor and an occasional column by the reigning Miss Navajo—part of whose job was to promote the use of the Native language—the paper was written in English. He used it to exercise his brain, translating the headlines, looking at the pictures, and then, if the story seemed interesting or unusual, laboring to understand it.
The first page’s big news concerned the ongoing scandal with the Environmental Protection Agency over wastewater from abandoned mines that had contaminated the Navajo Nation’s precious water. He glanced at it, and then at the story about a grant for schools in Crownpoint and another about the resignation of a tribal department head after some political squabbling.
At the bottom of the page he saw a color photograph of a group of mostly white people with a few Indians, all waving protest signs. The article concerned the Grand Canyon development mediation. The people looked cold. In the background he noticed a round-faced Hopi officer whom he knew he had met. Ah yes, Cowboy Dashee.
A smaller picture showed a man in a white shirt and Pendleton jacket. He focused on reading the caption, which named the man, Aza Palmer, and mentioned that a trip to visit the proposed development site near the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers would be part of the mediation experience.
Leaphorn stirred the honey, walnuts, and raisins into the oatmeal, added milk, and took a bite. Same as always. Unfortunately. When Emma shared this table, they ate whatever she found in the refrigerator for breakfast—leftover beans warmed up in the skillet with a tortilla, fruit her relatives had given them, toast, lunch meat—always with coffee. On special days Emma made blue corn mush and fried it for a special treat. She’d laugh if she burned it and serve it anyway because they’d both grown up wasting nothing. He ate what she offered, burned or otherwise, with gratitude for her smile. Would he ever get over missing her?
He tried another spoonful of oatmeal. Something about the smaller picture tickled his brain. He stared at it again.
Louisa glanced over to see what had captured his interest. “Good article?”
“Ya.”
“I thought that Grand Canyon development idea died long ago.”
He tapped the story with his index finger. “No.”
He wondered what memory, what connection that he couldn’t quite access, the image of Aza Palmer in the photograph triggered.
She said, “I’ve been reading about blood sugar and how adding a bit more protein helps keep things regulated, like the way we put nuts in the oatmeal. You’re lucky not to have diabetes, you know. So many Diné suffer from that. We bilagaanas, too.”
“Ya.” He straightened up in his chair. Another piece of the Horseman puzzle slipped into place. He finished the last of the oatmeal and reached for his cane. “Die-bees,” he said. “Tanks.”
“Diabetes?” She raised an eyebrow. “Did that help you figure out what you’ve been worrying over?”
He nodded. Then he offered her a thumbs-up. Emma had never cared about the details of his work, only worried that he might get hurt. Louisa liked puzzles.