Read Online Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 01] by jpg] The Blessing Way (v1) [html - Free Book Online Page B

after the foreign war when the young men had come back from the Marines. He was afraid he might have forgotten how to do it. But it had worked out just right. The arroyo sand he had poured out on the hogan floor for the base was a little darker than he liked but he had known it was going to work all right when he poured out the colored sand to make the Encircling Guardian. He had made it in a square as his father had taught him, with the east side open to keep from trapping in any of the Holy People. The Guardian's head was at the north end, with his two arms inward, and his feet were at the south end. His body was four alternating lines of red and yellow sand, and at the opening Sandoval had drawn the elaborate figure of Thunder, wearing the three crooked arrows in his headdress and carrying the crooked arrows under his wings.
    "Put Thunder there when you sing for a witching," his father had told him. "His lightning kills the witches."
    Sandoval repaired the Corn Beetle deftly, sifting colored sand through his fingers to reform the lines where Tsosie's hands and knees had pressed. He added a tiny sprinkle of black sand to the single feather in the headdress of Big Fly.
    Sandoval stood up then and looked into the pot where he had brewed the medicine. The water was still steaming and the juniper leaves he had mixed into it had turned the solution milky. It looked about right but Sandoval thought it would have been better if he had had a waterproof basket so it could have been done the old way. The People are losing too many of the old ways, Sandoval thought, and he thought it again when he had to tell Tsosie how to sit on the feet of Big Fly, and even had to remind him to face the east. When Sandoval was a boy learning the ways from his father, his father had not had to tell people how to sit. They knew.
    Sandoval sang then the chant of the Big Fly, and how he had come to The People to tell them that Black God and the warriors were returning victorious from their war against the Taos Pueblo and how the two girls had been sent by the people to carry food to the war band. This was the last chant before the vomiting and Sandoval was glad of that. It was the second day of the Enemy Way. His voice was hoarse and he was tired and there was still much to be done, much ritual to be completed before this man was free of the witch trouble. His daughter had been right and he should have listened to her. He was eighty-one (or eighty-two by the white man's way of counting) and loaded with too many years to conduct a three-day Sing like an Enemy Way.
    Sandoval dipped the ceremonial gourd into the pot, filling it with the hot, milky fluid, and handed the gourd to Tsosie.
    "Drink all of it," he ordered, thinking you shouldn't have to tell a man that. And, while Tsosie drank, he sang the last two chants. He refilled the gourd and handed it to Agnes Tsosie and then to the two sons. Let the others get their own, Sandoval thought, and he ducked past the double curtains hung over the hogan doorway to see if the time was right.
    Outside the air was cool, almost cold after the closeness of the hogan. The eastern horizon was turning from red to yellow and Sandoval saw it was about the right time. He pulled back the curtains and called to Tsosie.
    "Go out there behind the brush shelter," he ordered, "and remember that to make it right you want to vomit out the witching just as you can see the top rim of the sun coming up." When Tsosie came past the curtain, Sandoval handed him a chicken feather.
    "Just when the sun is first coming up," Sandoval reminded him. "If the medicine isn't working, stick that feather down your throat."
    Sandoval sat on the ground and leaned back on the wall of the hogan, relishing the coolness. He would have about thirty minutes before the vomiting was finished and then one more chant to sing while Tsosie and his family were rubbing the juniper stew on their bodies. Then it would be time for the people from the Stick Receivers