“Beautiful on the inside, of course. Back in harmony. So this hypothetical cop, that’s the way he’s been raised. Not to put any value on punishment, but to put a lot of value on curing. So now what are you going to do if you’re this cop?”

Chee waited for an answer.

Janet looked at him, raised her hand. “I want to think about this one,” she said. “Time out.”

They were driving past the Bisti Badlands now, looking into the edge of a wilderness where eons of time had uncovered alternating layers of gray shale, pink sandstone, yellow caliche, and black streaks of coal. Wind and water had played with these varied levels of hardness and carved out a weird tableau of gigantic shapes – toadstools and barrels, gargoyle heads, rows of fat babies, the raw material for the most frantic imaginations.

“Wow,” Janet said. “This country is always ready to surprise you.”

“Okay. Time back in,” Chee said. “What’s the answer?”

“If this is hypothetical, it’s just partly hypothetical,” she said. “You agree with Leaphorn. You think you can find him and you’re getting ready for it.”

“Either way, what’s the answer?”

“It’s hard to apply normal city-street law-school solutions where you’re looking at this,” Janet said.

“Maybe the landscape is part of the answer,” Chee said. “Maybe it makes the answer a little different.”

“Yes,” she said. “I see what you mean.” She looked at him a while, her face sad. “Maybe the hypothetical cop would have to quit being a policeman,” she said.

Chee made a left turn onto the dirt road which led, if you followed it long enough, across the southernmost boundary of the Navajo Agricultural Industries project, and if you followed it ten miles more, and made the proper turns, to the house where Clement Hoski lived.

“I’ve thought about that. It’s one solution.”

“What’s another one?”

He didn’t answer for a while. “I’ll show you,” he said.

He stopped at the same place he’d parked before, and glanced at his watch. It was a little too early for the school bus. As before, Clement Hoski’s green pickup truck was not visible – either away somewhere or parked behind the house.

“What are we doing here?” Janet asked. “And I’ll bet I know the answer. Your hit-and-runner lives right there. And you want me to see he’s a real, live fellow human with all sorts of good traits.” Janet’s tone said she wasn’t happy about this. “You’re forgetting my job. Right now I have about seven or eight clients who are genuine humans, and I like them even though they robbed somebody, or cut somebody. You have to believe in justice or you get out of the business.”

“I don’t disagree. The question is bilagaani justice, or Navajo justice. Or maybe it’s, Do you try for punishment or do you try for hozho?”

Janet looked at him, and then straight ahead out the windshield, her face grim. “We are about to talk about culture,” she said. “Let’s not. Let’s talk about where you’ve been the last couple of days. I get the impression the lieutenant was trying hard to find you. Aren’t you supposed to check out, and leave a number, and all that?”

“I was unhappy,” Chee said. “I had acted like a damn fool and I felt like I’d earned your contempt and all of a sudden I had to go someplace and see if I could find some wisdom, so I went to see Hosteen Frank Sam Nakai.”

“Your uncle,” she said. “Your teacher. The hataalii.”

“I think probably my former teacher,” Chee said. “I think I am considered sort of a semi-heretic.”

Janet was no longer staring out the windshield. She was looking at him. Concerned.

“Aw, Jim,” she said. “Really? I know you were close to your uncle. What happened?”

“Well, it got complicated. We had two other shamans involved – man and a woman, and an old, old, old woman who sort of represents the clan’s accumulated memory and wisdom. We talked for three or four hours and the upshot of it all is I don’t think I’m traditional enough to meet their standards.”

Janet looked stricken. “It was because of me, wasn’t it?”

“It was because of how you understand the Beauty Way,” Chee said. “This business of hozho. The way I understand it-” He paused. The way he understood hozho was hard to put into words. “I’ll use an example. Terrible drought, crops dead, sheep dying. Spring dried out. No water. The Hopi, or the Christian, maybe the Moslem, they pray for rain. The Navajo has the proper ceremony done to restore himself to harmony with the drought. You see what I mean. The system is designed to recognize what’s beyond human power to change, and then to change the human’s attitude to be content with the inevitable.”

“A lot like psychiatric therapy,” Janet said.

“Well, sort of,” Chee said. “Now another example. Now we are engulfed by, buried under, modern American materialism. The eight-hour day, the five-day week. But your curing ceremonials, most of them anyway, can only be performed in the ‘season when the thunder sleeps.’ The cold months. Not normal vacation times. And most of the most important ones are supposed to take seven or eight days. So I think the concept of hozho means you adjust the ceremonial system like you adjust everything else. You keep it in harmony with the inevitable.”

Chee’s passion on this subject was showing in his voice and Janet’s expression made him aware of it.

He made a wry face and shook his head. “Well, that’s why we Navajos have endured. Survived with our culture alive. This philosophy of hozho kept us alive. And some of the shamans I know, mostly the younger ones, they split a long ceremony over two weekends, so working people can take part. That’s the way I’d do it. And Hosteen Nakai knows it, and it’s poison to him, and the other two. They say done that way, the ceremony does more harm than good.”

“They won’t let me vote,” Janet said. “But I would agree with you. They sound like some fundamentalist Christians. Can’t see the metaphor in the gospel.”

Chee didn’t comment. The school bus was coming over the hill.

“You went up there to see about me, didn’t you? To find out if I was taboo?”

Chee nodded.

“What did you find out?”

“Just a second,” Chee said. “I want you to meet somebody.”

Ernie had climbed off the bus. He stood looking at Chee’s pickup, then walked toward them, grinning.

“Who?” Janet said.

“Ernie,” Chee said. “Ernie who is the greatest.” Ernie was standing at Janet’s window, looking at her and then at Chee.

“Hello,” he said. “I saw mister before. You came back, didn’t you? Now do you want to see Grandfather’s pickup truck?”

“Not today, Ernie,” Jim said. “But we want to talk to you a little.”

“It’s green,” Ernie said. “Real pretty.”

“Is that backpack full of your homework?” Janet asked.

“I have to draw pictures tonight,” Ernie said. “When Grandfather gets home from work, he helps me.”

“After he cooks supper?”

“After that. Now he lets me peel the potatoes. And he let me cook the oatmeal yesterday. And he lets me drive the truck.” Ernie turned away from the window and pointed at the dirt road which wandered toward infinity behind Clement Hoski’s place. “Down there,” Ernie said. “He keeps his foot on the gas but he lets me steer.”

“I’ll bet that’s fun,” Janet said.

Ernie laughed, his face contorted with delight. “Lots of fun,” he agreed.

“I brought something for your grandpa,” Chee said. He opened the glove box, took out a Quikprint sack, and extracted from it a bumper sticker. He unfolded it and showed it to Ernie.

“What does it say?”

“It says, ‘I have the world champion grandson,’” Chee said. “That’s you. You’re the grandson, and your grandpa knows you’re a champion.”

Ernie reached across Janet, took the sticker, and inspected it. “Grandfather’s teaching me to read,” Ernie said. “But I don’t do it yet.”

“It’s hard,” Janet said. “You really have to work at it.”