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"I'm going to answer that the Navajo way," Chee said, and laughed. "That means
you have to be patient, because it's very roundabout. It's all about culture."
"I don't want to talk about culture," she said.
"For convenience, let's call our hit-and-run driver Gorman. Let's say he's a
widower. Doesn't drink much, usually. We'll follow the script in the radio
tape but give him more of a personality. He's a hard worker. All the good
things. Something comes along to be celebrated. His birthday, maybe. His
friends take him out to a bar off the reservation. Driving home he hits this
pedestrian. Like in the tape, he hears something and backs up. But he's drunk.
He doesn't see anybody. So he drives away. Now I'm a member of the Navajo
Tribal Police, also deputized by a couple of the counties in Arizona and New
Mexico, sworn to uphold the law. My boss wants me to catch this guy. So one
day I catch him. What do I do?"
"Is that the question?" Janet said, surprised. "That's what you want to ask
me?"
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"That starts it," he said.
"Well, it's not pleasant, but it's not too hard either. You just think about
why you have laws.
Society puts a penalty on driving drunk because it kills people. It puts a
penalty for leaving the scene of an injury accident for pretty much the same
reason. So what you do is arrest this guy who broke those laws and present the
evidence in court, and the court finds he was guilty. And then the judge
weighs the circumstances. First offense, solid citizen, special circumstances.
It seems unlikely that the crime will be repeated. And so forth. So the judge
sentences him to maybe a year, maybe two years, and then probation for another
eight years or so." She studied him. "You agree?"
"That was phase one," Chee said. "I'm going to make it harder for you now.
We'll give this guy some social value. Let's say he is taking care of a
disabled kid. Maybe a grandchild whose parents have dropped him on our Gorman
while they do their thing. Maybe a broken family. Father took off, mother a
drunk. You make your own plot. Now what do you do?"
"Come on, Jim," she said. "Why not make him a biologist? He's about to unlock
the secret of the AIDS virus. But he can't leave his laboratory even for one
minute to be arrested or his test tubes will all dry up and his cultures will
die. It doesn't change the basic principle. Society passes laws to ensure
justice. The guy broke the society's laws. Justice is required."
"Okay," Chee said. "Now we get to the next phase. More complicated. We'll say
this bird is a Navajo and the guy he killed was a Navajo."
"What's the difference?" Janet asked. "He violated the laws of the Navajo
Nation, too. If you have justice, it spells out the punishment in advance. It
tells you if you do this harm to society, then society does this harm to you.
We'll lock you up, for example. Or fine you. The idea is prevention."
"Right," Chee said. "Now we enter phase two of this problem."
"We just finished phase two," Janet said. "But it's better than talking about
culture."
"Okay, now for phase three," Chee said. "We're dealing with justice. Just
retribution. That's a religious concept, really. We'll say the tribal cop is
sort of religious. He honors his people's traditional ways. He has been taught
another notion of justice. He was a big boy before he heard about 'make the
punishment fit the crime' or 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' Instead
of that he was hearing of retribution in another way. If you damage somebody,
you sit down with their family and figure out how much damage and make it
good. That way you restore hozho. You've got harmony again between two
families. Not too much difference from the standard American justice. But now
it gets different. If somebody harms you out of meanness-say you get in a bar
fight and he cuts you, or he keeps cutting your fences, or stealing your
sheep-then he's the one who's out of hozho. You aren't taught he should be
punished. He should be cured. Gotten back in balance with what's around him.
Made beautiful again-" He glanced at her. She was looking straight ahead,
apparently listening.
"Beautiful on the inside, of course. Back in harmony. So this hypothetical
cop, that's the way he's been raised. Not to put any value on punishment, but
to put a lot of value on curing. So now what are you going to do if you're
this cop?"
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Chee waited for an answer.
Janet looked at him, raised her hand. "I want to think about this one," she
said. "Time out."
They were driving past the Bisti Badlands now, looking into the edge of a
wilderness where eons of time had uncovered alternating layers of gray shale,
pink sandstone, yellow caliche, and black streaks of coal. Wind and water had
played with these varied levels of hardness and carved out a weird tableau of
gigantic shapes-toadstools and barrels, gargoyle heads, rows of fat babies,
the raw material for the most frantic imaginations.
"Wow," Janet said. "This country is always ready to surprise you."
"Okay. Time back in," Chee said. "What's the answer?"
"If this is hypothetical, it's just partly hypothetical," she said. "You agree
with Leaphorn. You think you can find him and you're getting ready for it."
"Either way, what's the answer?"
"It's hard to apply normal city-street law-school solutions where you're
looking at this," Janet said.
"Maybe the landscape is part of the answer," Chee said. "Maybe it makes the
answer a little different."
"Yes," she said. "I see what you mean." She looked at him a while, her face
sad. "Maybe the hypothetical cop would have to quit being a policeman," she
said.
Chee made a left turn onto the dirt road which led, if you followed it long
enough, across the southernmost boundary of the Navajo Agricultural Industries
project, and if you followed it ten miles more, and made the proper turns, to
the house where Clement Hoski lived.
"I've thought about that. It's one solution."
"What's another one?"
He didn't answer for a while. "I'll show you," he said.
He stopped at the same place he'd parked before, and glanced at his watch. It
was a little too early for the school bus. As before, Clement Hoski's green
pickup truck was not visible- either away somewhere or parked behind the
house.
"What are we doing here?" Janet asked. "And I'll bet I know the answer. Your
hit-and-runner lives right there. And you want me to see he's a real, live
fellow human with all sorts of good traits." Janet's tone said she wasn't
happy about this. "You're forgetting my job. Right now I have about seven or
eight clients who are genuine humans, and I like them even though they robbed
somebody, or cut somebody. You have to believe in justice or you get out of
the business."
"I don't disagree. The question is bilagaani justice, or Navajo justice. Or
maybe it's, Do you try for punishment or do you try for hozho?"
Janet looked at him, and then straight ahead out the windshield, her face
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