Changing Woman (2 page)

“What’s inside, Charlie?” she yelled, taking off after him.

Abruptly, an enormous blast punched through the air like a clap of thunder. Ella was thrown facedown onto the parking lot, and a large chunk of torn sheet metal bounced across the pavement like a piece of cardboard
in the wind, coming to rest against the side of the building with a loud clang.

A wave of heat blew past Ella, and she stayed down a moment longer.

Ella stood up slowly, turning to look at the damage. The Dumpster had split open like a big, rectangular banana, and the cinder blocks in the wall had been scattered like so many children’s blocks. Charlie was still hugging the ground, his arms wrapped
around his head and neck for protection. The fire extinguisher he’d carried out with him was halfway out to the street, spinning like a top and spewing its white chemical everywhere.

“Charlie!” she yelled. “You okay?”

“I think so. But my arm hurts, and my chest... it feels tight.”

“Did you get hit by flying debris?” Ella started moving toward her Jeep to call the fire department as well as
a rescue unit. Charlie’s face was the color of ashes and, remembering her impression that he was stressed out already, it seemed like a wise course of action.

“No, but I’m feeling . . .” He groaned and clutched his chest, then lay back down on the asphalt.

“Charlie?” Ella ran the rest of the way to her Jeep, and grabbed her handheld off the seat. Requesting the
EMTs and fire department, she
hurried back to where Charlie was lying.

“Is Charlie going to be okay?” Mary Lou Bitsillie, a waitress and an old friend of Ella’s, asked, running up to join her. “He has a bad heart.”

Charlie had already lost consciousness. Ella crouched down beside him, and reached for the cook’s pulse. His wrist was so thin she could tell immediately that his heart had stopped. She placed her head down on
his chest, but couldn’t hear any heart sounds.

“I’m going to have to give him CPR, Mary Lou. Can you help me out?” Ella scrambled around, scooting up close so she could bring pressure on his chest directly.

“We’ve all had the first-aid course. I’ll do the breathing part,” Mary Lou said with a nod.

Ella leaned over and began the pressure immediately, working with Mary Lou, who gave him mouth-to-mouth
in a steady cycle. Someone came up behind them and placed a coat over Charlie, and one over Mary Lou’s shoulders. Ella already had a jacket on.

Ella glanced around, hoping to see or hear the emergency units, absently noting a half dozen restaurant employees and patrons standing outside near the side door, watching the column of black smoke and flames rising from the shattered Dumpster. “Come
on, Charlie, give us a heartbeat,” she whispered.

At that precise moment, she heard the soft click and whir of an automatic camera. Some tourist had just taken her photo. Looking up, she saw that another had a video camera and was alternately filming the burning Dumpster, then their efforts with Charlie like some amateur Hitchcock. The story and photos would be all over the Rez in a matter of
hours, and on the ten o’clock news for sure. Anything that made the Rez cops look like they were losing the battle against vandalism always traveled at the speed of light.

Then Charlie coughed, and opened his eyes, and Ella didn’t care about the cameras anymore.

Yesterday’s “garbage bomb” and Charlie’s near-death had made the evening news, even on Albuquerque TV, and more video had aired of the burning Dumpster and shattered cinder-block wall than of Ella’s and Mary Lou’s success with Charlie. For some reason any event with fire footage usually made the lead story on the TV news. The photo that had run in the newspaper, unfortunately, was one showing
her lying flat on her face with the burning trash in the background.

Since the incident, she’d received thanks from Charlie and his family, but she’d also received four calls from the news people about the bomb. It would take a while before things died down.

Now, alone in her bedroom, Ella sat at the small table that held her desktop computer and waited. She’d have to return to the police station
soon, but the only way her contact, “Coyote,” ever surfaced was through her Internet provider.

The bitterly cold January winds swept down the hillside behind her mother’s home, rattling dust and sand against the window. It was said that Wind carried news, but Wind had met its equal in this age of computers.

Coyote’s information so far had been as good as gold, though all she really knew about
him was that he was probably an undercover cop—federal, most likely. His knowledge of her background in the FBI and his use of certain terms all supported that theory.

Hearing a soft bell tone, she glanced down at the screen and saw the instant message box. Coyote was on
line. As she read the message, she reached over and hit the print command. The message would vanish from the screen the second
she logged off, and there would be no record of it anywhere. It was now or never.

Ella thought of the many times she’d tried to track down Coyote, despite his warnings not to try. She’d been discreet, but persistent. Yet, despite all the methods available to her, she’d turned up nothing.

“Shimá,
come eat,” Dawn said, using the Navajo word for “mother” her grandmother Rose had taught her. When
Ella didn’t stand up right away, Dawn crawled up onto Ella’s lap.

“Hi, sweetie.” Ella brushed a kiss on her daughter’s chubby little cheek as she typed a question for Coyote. If the past was any indication, unless she was fast, he’d log off before she even finished the sentence. “Go back to the kitchen and tell your
shimasání,
your grandmother, that I’ll be there in one minute.” Ella smiled as
her daughter scampered off. Rose wouldn’t allow Dawn to call her grandma. The Navajo equivalent was all she would accept.

Ella leaned back in her garage sale captain’s chair and read Coyote’s message again as she waited for his reply. His warnings were always unsettling, and this time was no exception.

The petty crimes all over the Rez are being engineered to make the cops and tribal government
look bad. They want politicians voted out and new people brought in who are more in favor of tribal gaming.

Ella stared at the clear-cut message. Coyote’s case was more involved than the happenings on the Navajo Nation. He was trying to find evidence against a group of Intertribal Native American activists he claimed were trying to gain control of gambling operations on tribal lands across the
nation. Coyote believed the
Dinetah
was their main target now.

But without more evidence she couldn’t do a thing. The question she’d typed was the same as always. What proof could he give her so she could act? But he hadn’t answered her and, now, he was off-line.

Ella took the printout and placed it in an unlabeled file folder along with the rest. Sensing that someone had come into her room,
Ella turned and smiled as she saw her mother standing inside the doorway.

“Since your daughter’s father canceled his visit again, I think we should eat now. You’ll have to leave for the station before long.”

Ella nodded. Rose Destea, her mother, was in her sixties and her once raven hair was now a dozen shades of gray and white. She’d slowed down some in the past few years, but she was still
a force to be reckoned with and had a stubborn streak a mile long.

Rose came up behind her and read the message on the computer screen. ““‘Coyote,’” huh? That’s not a Navajo writing you. Must be an Anglo trying to sound like an Indian.”

Ella shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t really know. But, Mom, this is confidential police business, so you can’t tell anyone. Only Big Ed knows about Coyote, and that’s
because he’s my boss and the chief of police.”

“I won’t say anything, daughter. But I’m still very worried. You could have been killed by that bomb yesterday.”

“I know. The police force is doing its best, but the situation is a lot more complicated than it appears at first glance.”

“Yes, I know. I read enough of that message to know that there’s more to what’s happening than has been made public,”
Rose answered.

“The bottom line is that we really aren’t sure what we’re dealing with yet.”

“Just remember that you have to be more careful these days. You can’t afford to take as many chances as you did before. You now have a daughter who needs you.”

Ella could hear Dawn playing with Two, the family dog, out in the living room. The pair had become fast friends. “She’s changed everything for
me, Mom, but I’m still a cop. I have a duty to the tribe. But it’s because of her that I wear a vest practically all the time, even in summer when it’s sweltering.”

“I wish you would find another line of work.”

“Mom, we should all be grateful I have a job that’s secure. A lot of our people are scrambling for work right now. If I wasn’t a cop, I’d probably be out looking frantically for a job
off the Rez, hoping to find something that paid me enough to be able to provide for our family.”

Rose sat on the edge of the bed, running her weathered hand over the hand-stitched quilt absently. “Times are especially hard for the
Dineh
right now. Last year’s dry winter, followed by a late frost and an even drier summer, wiped out a lot of the crops. When the weather does that to us, people and
their livestock go hungry. And, now, when money’s tightest and the tribe is least able to handle it, we get hit by another bad winter, the coldest we’ve had in years. Many of our people are having to choose between food and heat.”

Silence stretched out, but Ella waited to make sure that her mother had finished speaking before she said anything. Navajos seldom had rapid, overlapping conversations
like some other cultures did. Here, it was a sign of poor manners to speak before another was finished, and long, thoughtful pauses were not unusual.

“It’s been miserably cold,” Ella said at last, “but we still haven’t got much snow to show for it except for a little in the mountains. If we don’t get some moisture soon, we’ll have another dry growing season ahead.”

“I have a feeling it’s going
to go from bad to worse before it’s over,” Rose said, shaking her head. “Many of the businesses on the
Dinetah,
the tribal land, have already had to close their doors, and more will soon follow. There’s not much money for people to buy things
these days. Did I tell you that I saw Dezbah Nez the other day? Her son and his family have gone to Phoenix looking for jobs. They heard that some of our
people are finding work there in the fast-food places or cleaning offices at night It’s all minimum-wage jobs, but it’ll help them stay afloat with everyone working. It’s the ones who can’t or won’t leave the Rez that worry me the most. The only thing that’s abundant here now is hunger and cold. The tribal government has to wake up and try to do more to help our people.”

“How? There isn’t much
money in the tribal accounts either. The tribe applied for federal help, but things like that take forever. State and national politicians are slow to get involved since we don’t have enough votes to change any election results, or money to support their candidates.”

“We have to do
something.
Many of the older ones in the outlying areas won’t make it to spring without help. Did you hear that
Jim Joe is sick again? Their old woodstove has got a crack in the firebox, and he couldn’t fix it. It can’t be welded, either. With the temperature the way it has been...” She shook her head again. “And like many traditionalists, he won’t go to the hospital, even though he’s running a fever. He said that people the there and their
chindi
stay, ready to get anyone who’s still alive.”

Ella sighed.
The fear that the
chindi,
the evil in a man that remained earthbound after death, would contaminate and harm the living kept many of the old ones away from the hospitals. It was a decision that cost lives every year.

“His son should have taken him anyway,” Ella said flatly.

“And end up frightening his father to death?” Rose shook her head. “You forget how things are here.”

“No, Mom. I didn’t
forget. I’m
alní”
The word meant a person who walked the line between two cultures—a person who was constantly split in half.

“You are what you’ve chosen to be,” Rose said, then stood, smoothing out the quilt. “Come on, daughter. Let’s have dinner before you go back to work. I’ve fixed your favorite, mutton stew and fry bread.”

“I thought that was what I smelled coming from the kitchen. Stew
will really hit the spot tonight. I need something warm besides coffee inside me before I go out on patrol.”

The simple, traditional meal was especially tasty, or Ella was particularly hungry tonight. She really wasn’t sure which it was. As Ella hurried through dinner, her mother fed Dawn as she always did on the days Ella had to go back to work.

Ella looked at Dawn and sighed. These days her
cute, black-haired daughter with those big, sparkling eyes that could melt butter wore as much food as she actually ate. At the moment, her little hands were submerged in the bowl even as Rose fed her bite-sized pieces of stew.

“Don’t play with your food,” Ella told Dawn.

Rose glowered at her. She didn’t like Ella to correct Dawn while she was eating.

“Mom, she’s making a mess,” Ella said,
answering the unspoken criticism.

“You were worse at her age.”

It was her mother’s standard answer.

“Shizhé’é
come?” Dawn looked up, her chin dripping with broth.

“Not today. Your father was busy,” Ella said. “But he told me he’d come by as soon as he can.”

Rose shot Ella a look that spoke volumes.

Ella shook her head, and glanced away. She didn’t want Rose to ever say anything disparaging
about Kevin in front of her daughter. Kevin was, after all, Dawn’s father.

Ella finished her meal while Dawn chattered away, ignoring the rest of her stew.

“I want to play,
Shimasání”
Dawn said, sliding off
her grandmother’s lap and standing impatiently as Rose wiped her face and hands with a napkin.