Our story so far: Real-estate agent Kate Brown rushes to Black Shadow Gallery on Canyon Road after a frantic call from her friend and gallery owner Gloria Singleton. Kate finds her unconscious on the portal steps. When Gloria awakens, she tells of a mysterious man in black and homeless woman dead in the corner of the portal — but there’s no longer any trace of them. Kate and Gloria enter the gallery to discover a prized painting is missing. Customers arrive at the same time a bullet whizzes by Kate, killing the customer instantly.

Joe “Crow” Sanchez took aim at the woman milling about near the art gallery. One moment she was in view, the next out. Very flighty, that woman, he thought. But I have time.

Huddled next to the gray-green of a huge clump of chamisa and juniper, Joe willed himself to become invisible, but still wondered if someone could see him all dressed in black. It was not a color that blended in easily in the winter months.

He took off his cowboy hat and chucked it at his feet. The shiny “pawn” coins would reflect too much sunlight. He peered down the canyon expanse, squinting his eyes at the sun. No, he thought, it was a good spot. Good to have searched it out beforehand. Happy to have Coyote lead him to it. The spot was high enough to be away from the rush of the street, but close enough for a good get-away. The bushes, yellowed grasses and dead piñons helped camouflage him. Perhaps the black clothes would look like a shadow of a tree. He wanted to believe that. And he wanted to believe that he would be as swift as Brother Coyote afterward.

He took aim through the scope again, zeroing in on the gallery, and then the front portal where the two had been talking. He could see into the shop through the large street-front window, but the women had not made it that far. He was anxious, wanting to squeeze the trigger quickly, wanting to get it over with, but at the same time he savored the wait, the uncertainty. It was power, he thought, and ego. Power and ego: the two driving forces in his pitiful life. But that was his old life gnawing at him: He must clear his mind, like a hunter, not let doubt grasp him again.

The noise would be loud, he thought, but it could sound like a backfire. And amid the rush to save the woman, he would be up Canyon Road and safely in the van. Claudia would be there with the painting. It would be so easy. They would look at each other and laugh.

This time the woman would be in view, he thought as he pulled the rifle to his shoulder. He took aim, but the two women kept moving back and forth, one in front of the other, and then the one was holding the other. That’s not how it was supposed to be, he thought. The sun was shining brightly now, warming up to greet the day, rising higher, making everyone feel safe. He narrowed his vision for the shot, but the sun’s reflection on the rifle barrel hurt his eye, made things too bright. Snow blindness, he thought.

He shut his eyes tightly, could still feel the bright of the sun exploding in his mind’s darkness. That was how it was then, when he was growing up, before they made him leave. It was always bright and sunny, especially in winter. The sun would reflect off the snow and if you looked too closely, you would go blind. Be careful, that was what his uncle had told him. And still it happened. Nana had said it was fate; she said the same thing when they came to take him away.

Joe kept his eyes shut, waiting for the vision to return. He could see his village, Kivalina, and remembered the smells of the tundra, the white wasteland of Arctic winter. He did not know his father then, and his mother had died, but he had vague memories of her warmth. His father had been Diné; his mother’s people Inupiaq. There was no happiness in the union.

He lived with his grandparents and was taught in the Old Ways, but there was much talk that he did not belong. It was an old, broken record, Nana had said, and there was nothing one could do about it. He remembered the clapboard house, the red-chipped paint, the fish house in front, the dog team chained up and howling, always barking. They killed puppies; Grandfather had said, “Don’t go near them.”
That spring, he had been old enough to go on a whale hunt with Uncle and his friends. Grandfather had said, “We’ll see.”

One day, Uncle’s friends had climbed upon their sod house and peered out at the Arctic Ocean. There was no wind, they had said, it was a good day for hunting. Joe knew it was an honor to go along, he could almost taste the muktuk, feel the happiness in the village.

The snow-goers had carried the tents and umiaks, the sealskin covered boats, to the ice holes out near Point Hope, or what Uncle had called Tikigaq. They set up camp and waited for days for a whale, peering into the deep waters, looking at the ice cakes floating free. One day, Uncle took him on a snow-go to show him the polar-bear skins drying on racks, not far from the camp.

“The bears are after the same things we are,” Uncle had said, pointing to a bleached-out skull from the last season. “But if we are in the way, they will take us too. That is why we must shoot first and make sure the aim is true.”

The next day a bowhead whale poked its head up from the deep and the men were ready with the harpoons. The harpoons were like rifles and the sounds of the shooting spears echoed in that quiet landscape. He had felt sorry for the whale, but the men had no time for reflection. They pulled the whale onto the ice and began to slice into its blubber.

That night they feasted on “whale roast” and the men drank whiskey and laughed about their lives in the Lower 48. Some men had lived in Los Angeles, where they were often mistaken for Japanese, they said. One man told of washing clothes at a Laundromat on Pearl Harbor Day. An old man had wanted to hit him.

“I told him, ‘I don’t think there were any Eskimo kamikaze pilots that day,’ ” he said, laughing and sipping more whiskey from the bottle. “But that old man still wanted to hit me.”

The whale roast was the best thing he had ever eaten, Joe remembered, especially, as the drunken men joked, when you ate it with Grey Poupon. They let him sip whiskey. Was he now one of them, he wondered?

The next morning, the men were tired and crabby. They started to break camp, but some were sick and wanted to wait. Uncle was angry and pulled Joe to the snow-go. The sun was so bright, Joe remembered, and the snow so white. He had looked in the sun, then, too, and was blinded. “Careful,” Uncle had said, turning to him, but it was too late. Joe heard only the terrifying growl of the polar bear. When he opened his eyes, red blood had replaced the white terrain.

Joe ran to the overturned umiak, thinking he would be safe. The bear’s noises startled the hunting buddies into action, and the sounds of gunfire quickly filled the air. But the bear was swift and fled behind ragged mountainous ice shards.
His uncle’s buddies had found Joe crouched under the umiak and pulled him back to the snow-go. They packed Uncle with him on the sled, and filled the remaining space with tents and supplies. Joe could not speak and his eyes still burned.

Nana and Grandfather would not look at him when he was brought back to the village. They saw him as a bad omen. After the funeral potlatch they told him he would be returned to his father’s people. He was soon on a plane to New Mexico and delivered to strangers that knew his father. But his father never came for him, and the people grew tired of the quiet boy. Joe found himself in an orphanage.

Abandoned, he believed the only way to save himself was to adopt his animal totem, the crow, as his true personae. Clever Crow would have stopped the bear from killing Uncle, would have poked his eyes out, could peer at the sun. Now Joe had a rifle, a modern crow on the lookout for bears. He had already killed one bear near Pecos, trying to save that crazy woman. It was only later that he realized he had killed the wrong beast.

Joe struggled to bring himself back to the present. He still had his job to finish. He opened his eyes and put the gallery back into vision. The woman would be a clear shot now, he thought. He watched as she came closer to the window; a moment was all that he needed.

He saw something different in the store, movement from the front of the gallery. He tensed his trigger finger, ready to strike the woman down. A form was moving behind her; he saw a brown shape, a huge figure gesturing toward the woman. It looked as if a furry head was making its way to pounce, claws ready to strike. Maybe he had been wrong, he thought as he pulled the trigger, maybe this time he really could kill the bear that had destroyed his childhood and haunted his dreams. White or brown, he thought, bears are all the same.

Joe felt the kick of the rifle in his shoulder, he heard the shot shatter the window and make its mark. There was commotion in that little gallery; there was blood on the bear’s face.

The woman could wait, Joe thought. Right now, he wanted to see Claudia. He wanted to smile.

Tutquin, Uncle, he thought, as he scrambled down the hillside. Peace.

Help write this story

This mystery story had its genesis at the Tony Hillerman Writing Conference: Focus on Mystery held in November in Albuquerque. The first chapter was written at a workshop led by Taos author Sean Murphy. Murphy suggested words, emotions or events, which were incorporated into a writing exercise.

In that spirit, drop a line or e-mail about what you might want to see in the story and I’ll see what I can do with them. You can reach me at bswan@sfnewmexican.com or send ideas c/o The NewMexican, 1368 Cerrillos Road, Santa Fe, NM 87505.

To read the first two chapters, check our Web site at:
www.freenewmexican.com/mystery

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