Keevama shook his head. “What a crazy man. My wife and the children left. She felt uncomfortable after what happened. I’m asking Officer Dashee to go with the delegates to the site tomorrow. It would be good to have those federal agents, the ones who went outside with you, inspect the bus before it leaves. We don’t want another explosion.”
Chee nodded in agreement. He wondered if it would surprise the feds to learn that Mr. Keevama had figured out who they were.
Keevama turned to Bernie, “I heard you were there when the bomb went off in Shiprock. Do they know who was responsible for that?”
“Not that I’ve heard. It’s still under investigation.”
Keevama rose. “I need to get home. I told my kids I’d bring them some cookies and I need to talk to them about what happened, make sure they’re not scared.”
Bernie rose, too. “I could use a cookie and some quiet myself. I’ll walk with you.”
Gradually, other delegates began to drift out. Chee looked fruitlessly for more bad behavior as he watched Palmer socialize. He wished the day had ended several hours ago.
Bernie took her cookies back to the motel room. When she went into the bathroom, she noticed the damp envelope next to the sink where Chee had left it. She opened it, planning to separate the money so it could dry. As she slipped out the limp hundreds she felt something fastened to one of the bills. She saw a yellow Post-it. Someone had printed on it in big block letters: “DOWN PAYMENT.”
24
Joe Leaphorn parked his truck a respectful distance from Mrs. Nez’s hogan and waited. Not much had changed.
“Are you sure this is the right house?”
“Ya.” He nodded in Louisa’s direction.
“I’m amazed that you could find it after all those years. You drove straight here.”
He hadn’t actually. He’d made a couple wrong turns that looped back to the road he wanted without his having to turn around. Louisa had been sleeping and hadn’t noticed.
He waited for the front door to open, but it didn’t. He saw no vehicles in the driveway either.
Louisa stretched in her seat. “Either nobody’s here or nobody wants to talk to you.”
Then, just as he had begun to consider leaving, a truck pulled up next to them with two women inside, an old one and an even older one who was driving.
The truck’s passenger cranked down her window, and Leaphorn lowered his. The warm air escaped quickly.
The woman driver leaned across the seat toward him and spoke in Navajo. “I remember you. I have been thinking about you after what happened to my grandson. Come inside and help us start the fire.” She moved her lips toward Louisa. “You come, too.”
Leaphorn was glad he kept some work gloves in the truck. It had been a long time, before his head injury, since he’d done much physical work. Splitting the firewood into burnable pieces got his blood moving. Louisa assisted with hauling it into the house, and they filled Mrs. Nez’s bins.
Mrs. Nez’s sister put the coffeepot on and then settled on the couch with what looked like a quilt under construction. When the coffee was ready, Mrs. Nez served them each a cup, already sugared. Louisa said she would sit by the fire with her book and let them talk. Leaphorn knew she’d want him to give her the details later.
Mrs. Nez opened the conversation in Navajo. “You still a policeman, or did you get too old?”
“I work now and then giving police officers advice and helping people with problems. Grandmother, do you remember how we met?”
She nodded. “You brought my grandson here to keep him safe when he was a little boy. You were kind to him.”
“There was another child at his mother’s place, a baby that cried a lot. When the ambulance took his mother to the hospital, they also took the baby with them. I could tell you had worries about him.”
“That one is dead now, too.” Mrs. Nez swallowed. “Gone a long time ago.”
Just as Butterfly’s notes had said.
Mrs. Nez stirred her coffee. “Why are you here?”
Leaphorn had anticipated the question. “The woman officer who talked to you about your grandson had some questions about what happened to him and she asked me to help. I knew you would be the best person to come to for the answers. I would like you to tell me about the one who died, how he grew up and what kind of a man he became. Because of my work as a policeman, I know he had some trouble.”
Mrs. Nez let the request and Leaphorn’s statement linger for several minutes, hanging in the air with the aroma of pi?on and juniper from the fire. She sat back in her chair. She was thinking, Leaphorn knew, and missing the young man who had shared her home and her life.
“Yes, that grandson had trouble his whole life but he was a good boy. I called him Zoom because when he was little he liked to push those little toys cars around and he’d make that zooooom sound. So cute and funny.” Her smile faded. “Zoom’s mother would drink and find mean men. The boy would come to me. Then she would stop for a while, and Zoom would live with her. She loved him, but she loved beer better. By the time that second son came, she was using drugs, even though she lied about it, and had more boyfriends. One of those men hit the little one. When the baby died, she sank down further with more men, more drugs, more beer. Mrs. Nez looked past Leaphorn, out the window toward the mountains. “When the baby died, Zoom changed. He felt guilty. He thought he should have saved him, even though he was still a little boy himself.
“Zoom lived here with me here for a while, and that was good. His uncle, the one we called Bizaadii helped him, taught him how to be a Navajo. But then those people who think they know everything said that my grandson should be back with his mother.”
Leaphorn knew she meant the child welfare workers.
“He met some bad boys. He starting drinking, not going to school much, stealing little things, They said he tried to drive off in someone else’s car. I knew he was going around in cars he didn’t buy. When he had no place to live, he asked if he could stay with me again. We had a ceremony for him. He stopped drinking and smoking naakai binát’oh. He wanted to become a good man.”
Naakai binát’oh, Mexican cigarettes, marijuana, was common on the reservation even in Leaphorn’s early days as a policeman. It was as easy to find on the rez as it was in the rest of America.
Mrs. Nez sipped her coffee. “I forgot something. When Bizaadii moved away after the baby died, that’s when Zoom started having problems.”
Mrs. Nez sipped her coffee and Leaphorn used the pause to ask a question.