Walk in Beauty, Walk in Fear by Gregory Mcnamee "Step Into the Shoes of Him Who Lures the Enemy to Death." — from the Navajo Enemy Way

Walk in Beauty, Walk in Fear by Gregory McNamee "Step into the shoes of him who lures the enemy to death." — from the Navajo Enemy Way Talking God convert preached to the choir. by Tony Hillerman Hillerman's books enjoyed only cult New York: Harper & Row; status, devoured by an eager handful of 239 pp., $17.95 river-runners and desert rats — and even a few Navajo — in the high coun try of New Mexico and northern Ari n a windswept bluff high above zona. These readers spread the word to O the reddish-brown San Juan Riv anyone who would listen; in the late er, four states—Arizona, New Mexico, 1970's, one could hear Hillerman Utah, and Colorado—converge. Visi touted in Flagstaff bars and Albuquer tors to the area come to play a game of que sporting-good shops, but could twister at the Four Comers Monument, rarely find his novels in bookstores. contorting themselves so that each of With such a small audience Hiller their limbs touches a different state. man's first mystery, The Blessing Way Then, remarking upon the windswept, (1970), died a quick death; his second sandy desolation of the place, they book. The Fly on the Wall, was re hurry off to the greener ground of the maindered almost immediately after Rockies or the populous Grand Can its release. (Now that the genial yon. For most of them, there is not Hillerman, in his early 60's and retired much to see, not much reason to linger from teaching and journalism, has on this arid plateau. But to the Navajo made it to the big time, his entire body Indians who inhabit it, the Four Cor of work is in print.) But in the last few ners country, bounded by four sacred chanted landscape, among the fearful years, each of his books — standard mountains of abalone, white shell, tur living and the restless dead, novelist police procedural tempered by ethno quoise, and redstone, is a land of peer and former police-beat reporter Tony logical observation — has been re leased to wider and wider reception, less beauty, exalted in song and story as Hillerman has drawn the material for a first throughout the West, and lately "the center of the earth." nearly dozen popular mysteries pub east of the Hundredth Meridian. His The Dine Bike'yah, the Navajo na lished in the last twenty years — as well most recent novel. Talking God, has tion, is also a terrifying place, populat as the wherewithal of detective fiction. occupied a spot on the best-seller list of ed by millions of mischief-working Hillerman's fame came slowly. In the middle 1960's, he has said, he was The New York Times since its publica ghosts, by witches and were-animals; tion in the spring of 1989, clinching its for in death, the Navajo believe, one's inspired to write about the Dine — "the people," as the Navajo call author's nationwide reputation. Robert soul flies from the body, leaving be Redford, having bought film rights to hind not only the mortal shell but also themselves — after an incident in Chinle Wash, at the mouth of Canyon all the author's books, is now produc any good characteristics one may have ing The Dark Wind, due for release in had in life. Only the newborn and the de Chelly. While sitting on its banks, he heard a whistling sound that made 1990. But despite his newfound fame, very old are spared this fate; their souls Hillerman still thinks of his fans as a merely vanish into the void. The rest, him think of Kokopelli, the hump backed, flute-playing god of the prehis cadre of "desert rats and anthropolo victims of alcohol poisoning, of Kit gists." Carson's bullets, of ancient famines toric Anasazi who had occupied the and plagues, of poverty and despair country before the invading Navajo arrived from Canada in the 13 th cen and sickness, wander the land, tor he Blessing Way is vintage, even tury. The whistling turned out to have menting the living—who in turn prac archetypal Hillerman; in its pages been the tinkling of bells from a flock T tice a complex body of ritual to ward emerge the fictional patterns and one of sheep, the sound distorted by the off malevolent spirits, and who until of the two protagonists that Hillerman .weathered sandstone walls of the can has employed ever since. It spins the very recently were known to lynch yon. It was epiphany enough. "That suspected witches. From this en- tale of the seemingly supernatural day," Hillerman has written, "I decid murder of one Luis Horseman, a Gregory McNamee is the author of a ed I would try to communicate my Many Ruins Canyon Navajo on the forthcoming book of essays, The feelings for the Navajo and their sacred run from a "Navajo Wolf" — that is, a Return of Richard Nixon. He lives in land." warlock able to metamorphose into any Tucson. For the first few years, this gifted number of animals. Just which animal JANUARY 1990/33 LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED varies from one part of the Navajo kachinas.) And it introduces a theme is to bring what he can learn from the nation to another, an important fact he will develop in later novels: the alien world into his quest for the Nava that leads Joe Leaphorn, Hillerman's clash between living Native Americans jo ideal — hozro, or internal and exter Navajo detective hero, to conclude that and Anglo archaeologists, who, it is nal harmony with one's surroundings. the suspected wolf is in truth a well- widely held in Indian country, are When Leaphorn witnesses a death, he read "Los Angeles Navajo," raised off nothing more than glorified grave rob may unplug the telephone and take a the reservation and unaware of narrow bers. drink or two; when Chee sees the local custom. In the middle 1970's, Hillerman horrors of his time — for instance, Hillerman abandoned Navajo coun introduced a second Navajo policeman Navajo drunks "sprawled in Gallup try for his next book. The Fly on the hero, Sergeant Jim Chee, who figured alleys, frozen in the sagebrush beside Wall, a political thriller. However, in in his next three novels: The Ghost the road to Shiprock, mangled like Dance Hall of the Dead, Hillerman Way, The Dark Wind, and People of jackrabbits on the asphalt of US High returns his readers to the little-known Darkness. Like Leaphorn, Chee is way 666" — he goes to a medicine world of the Zuni people of eastern intensely curious about white people man for catharsis, for, as Changing New Mexico, who each year honor the —belagdana, from the Navajo approx- Woman taught the Dine, "returning to Shalako, a bird spirit who brings mes irnation for "American" — and their beauty require[s] a cure." sages from their gods. A neighboring odd customs; at the University of New Despite their fictive differences, Navajo boy, trained to play the cere Mexico, he had "studied anthropolo however, Leaphorn and Chee behave monial part of the Shalako, has disap gy, sociology, and American literature almost identically in the tales of their peared at Zuni Pueblo, and it is in class. Every waking moment he respective series; one senses that Leaphorn's task to find him among the, studied the way white men behaved. Hillerman introduced the second char thousands of visitors who have All four subjects fascinated him." But acter only to avoid wearing out streamed in to watch the week-long Chee, from a rural background, is Leaphorn's welcome. Nowhere is this rituals — among them, again, a Navajo more traditional than Leaphorn, also more clear than in Skinwalkers (1987), Wolf and an army of stoned hippies. trained in anthropology and literature Hillerman's first novel after a long Hillerman's tale touches on many in at Arizona State University; along with silence in the early and middle 1980's, teresting elements, among them being his academic courses, Chee has for in which Leaphorn and Chee are the ancient hatred of Navajo for Zuni. years studied to become a hatathali, a brought together for the first time. (Many traditionalists still believe that a singer of the Blessing Way and other Again, the subject is witchcraft. Zuni has to scalp a Navajo before purifying rites. Leaphorn is an assimi- Chee, who has been undergoing initia being admitted into the closed religious lationist, seemingly content to live in tion rites to become a shaman of his fraternities of the Shalako and its allied two worlds, white and red; Chee's aim clan, is ambushed while asleep in his hogan — the traditional octagonal hut •BRIEF MENTIONS of the Navajo, its door always facing east to the sunrise—by a shotgun- YES, LET'S: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS by Tom Disch wielding, unseen assailant. Investigat Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 112 pp., $8.95 (paper) ing the wreckage after the assault, Not yet 50 years old, Tom Disch has already had a remarkably varied career as a Chee stumbles upon a small bead of successful author of science fiction, theater critic of The Nation, and as a poet worked bone, the unmistakable weap who has managed to create interesting work in an age of dullness. His newest vol on of one bewitched, a "skinwalker," ume, Yes, Let's, is distinguished neither by its bulk nor by its range, but within who uses it to inject his or her "corpse his own special groove, Disch moves with the agility and force of a kick-boxer.

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