The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(61)

The door to the room was open and I followed Jessie inside. Olin was bending over Laurel, his palm outstretched.

“And this here they call the ‘Priest Killer,’” he was saying.

“Land’s sake! Don’t show her that!” Jessie snapped.

Olin was holding a figurine so tiny I couldn’t make it out from the doorway. Laurel was staring at it, her eyes wide.

“Can I touch it?” she asked.

“Olin!” Jessie growled.

Before Olin could reconsider, Laurel snatched up the figurine. It was impossibly small—two inches, if that. And she looked mesmerized.

“Is that a knife with blood on it?” she asked. “Is he holding somebody’s head?”

I drew closer. It was a stocky figure in a leather cape, loincloth and red moccasins. There were two red squares where his ears should be and an orange ruff around his neck. He had a black wolflike snout. In one hand he was clutching a decapitated head; in the other, a knife tipped with red.

“Why did he kill the priest?” Laurel asked.

“Well,” said Olin, “Indians didn’t much appreciate other folks sayin’ their ways was no good, tryin’ to make ’em follow theirs. So one day they up and went to war. Attacked a mission.”

“They didn’t want to believe in God?”

“They did believe—in the Great Spirit. Believed other things, too. In the Earth Mother, in balance and cycles to life. And spirits everywhere—not just in people, but in trees and animals and every God-made thing.”

Laurel looked thoughtful. “I like that.”

“Me, too,” said Olin.

“I think the oak tree outside has a spirit.”

“I often thought that myself.”

“Why do people fight over things like that?” she asked.

“It’d take a wiser man than me to figure it out. Till a man goes to his reward, he don’t know nothin’ for sure. Till then, arguin’ over it is like blind men arguin’ over the color blue.”

Gingerly, Laurel handed the figure back to Olin.

“Mommy,” she said, “look at these.”

She pressed her face against a display case filled with carved figures of every size—from miniatures like the Priest Killer to others topping two feet. All were made of cottonwood root. Some were very rough, very old. Others were large and resplendent, finely sanded and painted, dressed in real feathers, soft fur and leather. None looked anything like the knockoffs in those tourist shops in Wheeler.

Olin explained that the older, plainer carvings were Hopi—the pueblo tribe that originated the kachinas. The Zuni and Navajo had adopted them later.

By tradition, he said, there are hundreds of kachinas, each representing a supernatural being that protects, teaches, amuses or disciplines. They’re also messengers to the spirit world.

Just before spring, the kachinas leave their ancient home in the sacred mountains to live among the Hopi, to help with the hunt and the harvest. Then in midsummer they hold the Home-Going Dance before they return to their mountains.

Some appear in animal form, while others are mudheads, or clowns, with fantastical headpieces. Ogres teach children right from wrong. And still others, said Olin, aren’t strictly kachinas, but dancers. Many are revered for their virtues—their wisdom or healing, their skill as hunters or warriors. Some help the rains come.

Laurel found a tiny Warrior Mouse that Olin said saved a village from a hawk that was gobbling up all its precious chickens. The mouse taunted the hawk till it dived and impaled itself on a sharpened greasewood stick.

“What’s ‘impaled’?” Laurel asked.

“A fine thing to have to explain,” Jessie muttered, heading for the door. “Supper in fifteen minutes.”

She left just as Simon entered. “Impaled?” he murmured, so close that his breath brushed my ear and I could smell the Lifebuoy soap on his skin.

“Some story about a Warrior Mouse and a hawk,” I said.

He nodded.

“Well,” Olin began slowly, rubbing his chin, “when the hawk dove to the ground, that greasewood stick was stickin’ up just like a little spear, see? And the hawk, he flew smack into it before he even knew what happened.”

Laurel looked intrigued.

I pointed to a nearby figure. “What about this?”

Olin smiled. “Now, that’s right special—and not just to Hopis. He’s the Hummingbird.”