Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 03] by Listening Woman [txt] Page B

games,” he said. “If you want to see this man, you’re going to tell me about it.”
    “Oh, well,” she said. “What the hell?” And having decided to talk, she talked freely, enjoying the narration. She had met Tso in Rome. He had been sent there to complete his studies at the Vatican’s American College and at the Franciscan seminary outside the city.
    She had gone with her father and had met Tso through the brother of her college roommate, who was also about to be ordained. Having met him, she stayed behind when her father returned to Washington. “The bottom line is we’re going to get married. To skip a little, he came out here to see about his grandfather and I came out to join him.”
    You’ve skipped a lot, Leaphorn thought. You’ve skipped the part about seeing something you can’t have, and wanting it, and going after it. And the Navajo, a product of the hogan life, of the mission boarding school, and then of the seminary, seeing something he had never seen before, and not knowing how to handle it. It would have been strictly no contest, Leaphorn guessed. He remembered Tso’s rapt face staring up at the elevated bread, and felt unreasonably angry. He wanted to ask the girl how she had let Tso struggle this far off the hook. Instead he said, “He giving up being a priest?”
    “Yes,” she said. “Priests can’t marry.”
    “What brought him here?”
    “Oh, he got a letter from his grandfather, and then, as you know, his grandfather got killed. So he said he had to come and see about it.”
    “And what brings you here?” She glanced at him, eyes hostile. “He said to join him here.” Like hell he did, Leaphorn thought. He ran and you tracked him down. He started the carryall again and concentrated for a moment on steering. He doubted if he would learn anything more from Theodora Adams. Probably she and Tso were simply what they seemed to be. Rabbit and coyote. Probably Tso was simply a priest who had been inspired to escape from this woman by some instinct for self-preservation. To save what? Himself? His honor?
    His soul? And probably Theodora Adams was the woman who has everything pursuing the man made desirable because he is taboo. Or perhaps Father Tso . Goldrims. If he was, Theodora Adams’s role would be something more complex than sexual infatuation. But whatever her role, Leaphorn felt she was too tough and too shrewd to reveal more than she wanted to reveal. The carryall jolted and groaned over the sloping track beneath the mesa and rolled across the expanse of packed earth that served as the yard of Hosteen Tso.
    The girl was out of the vehicle before it stopped rolling, running toward the hogan shouting, “Bennie, Bennie.” She pulled open the plank door and disappeared inside. Leaphorn waited a moment, watching for the dog. There was no trace of it. He stepped out of the carryall as the girl emerged from the hogan. “You said he was here,” she said. She looked angry and disappointed. “He was,” Leaphorn said. “In fact, he is.” Tso had emerged from the screen of junipers west of the hogan and was walking slowly toward them, looking puzzled. The morning sun was in his eyes and he had not yet identified the girl. Then he did. He stopped, stunned. Theodora Adams noticed it, too. “Bennie,” she said. “I tried to stay away.”
    Her voice broke. “I just couldn’t.”
    “I see,” Tso said. His eyes were on her face. “Was it a good trip?” Theodora Adams laughed a shaky laugh. “Of course not,” she said. She took his hand. “It was awful.
    But it’s all right now.” Tso glanced over her shoulder at Leaphorn.
    “The policeman brought you,” he said. “You shouldn’t have come.”
    “I had to come,” she said. “Of course I’d come. You knew that.”
    Leaphorn was suddenly acutely embarrassed. “Father Tso,” he said.
    “I’m sorry. But I need to ask some questions. About your grandfather.”
    “Sure,” Tso said. “Not that I know much. I