'How could you let them get away with-' 'There was nothing I could do,' he answered lamely. 'I didn't have a choice.'
'We all have choices,' she'd returned icily.
Drawing herself stiffly erect, she marched away from him, walking with the awkward dignity of the profoundly pregnant. She went straight to the bench and helped the old Indian lady to her feet. The two women walked past him, the younger carefully leading the elder, as though the old woman were blind or crippled or both.
And Brandon Walker, left alone in the midst of a milling crowd, looked after them and wondered what he could have done differently. Of course, that was years ago now. He was no longer as green, as naive.
He knew now that Diana Ladd had probably been right all along. There were things he could have done, arms he could have twisted, debts he could have called that might have made a difference.
A golden sliver of moon peeked over the jagged-toothed canyon as he drove the winding road to Gates Pass. He had no delusions that Diana Ladd would appreciate his coming to find her and tell her the news.
Hearing about the accident from someone she knew, even someone she didn't like, would be less hurtful than hearing it from a complete stranger.
In his gut, he understood that, but Brandon Walker wasn't looking forward to the meeting. He knew Diana Ladd hadn't forgiven him for what had happened, and that was no surprise. He hadn't forgiven himself.
At that time, long ago, Rattlesnake's bite had no poison.
The children laughed at him and played with him and tossed him in the air. Sometimes, for a joke, they would pull out all his teeth. This made Ko'oi, Rattlesnake, very unhappy.
One day Ko'oi went crying to First Born. 'The children are always teasing me and making me miserable.
Please change me so I can go live somewhere else and be happy.'
First Born had already changed many of the animals, so Rattlesnake, pulled out all his teeth, and threw them They fell in the desert, and overnight grew into the mountains we call Ko'oi Tahtami, or Rattlesnake's Tooth.
In the morning, First Born gathered up a few small, sharp rocks from these mountains and threw them into some water. They grew sharp and white and long, just the way rattlesnake teeth are today. First Born gave them to Rattlesnake and said to him, 'Here. Now the children will no longer torment you, but from this day on, you will have no friends.
You must crawl on your belly and live alone. If anything comes near you, you must bite it and kill it.'
And that, nawoj, my Friend, is the story of how Ko'oi, Rattlesnake, got his teeth.
In a lifetime of serial matrimony, Myrna Louise Spaulding had worked her way through a list of last names far too numerous to remember.
Like overly zealous Chicago voters, she cast her ballot in favor of marriage, voting early and often. She always married for love, never for money. She always divorced for the same reason--4me love--which may have been true at the time but never lasted long. Myrna Louise wasn't a risk-taker. She never slipped one wedding band off her much-used ring finger without having a pretty good replacement prospect lined up and waiting in the wings.
Her son, Andrew Carlisle, found his mother's peculiar penchant disturbing at first, humorous later, and ultimately boring. In his opinion, if Myrna Louise had been any good at the game, she would have seen to it that she picked up a few good pieces of change here and there along the way.
But no. With one minor exception, she always targeted bums and the'er-do-wells who were far worse off mentally and financially than she was.
Her last husband, Jake Spaulding-who also happened to be her late husband-had managed to roll over and die before the divorce was final.
Much to her stepchildren's dismay, Jake died without first revising his Will. He left Myrna Louise in sole possession of the little family house on Weber Drive.
As a neighborhood, Weber Drive didn't have much to recommend it, unless you liked the multicolored jack-in- the-box on the corner, but the house constituted a roof over Myrna Louise's head for a change. On her meager pension and with the widow's mite she had lucked into after Jake Spaulding's timely death, she figured she'd barely be able to cover both taxes and utilities.
A bit down-at- the-heels, Weber Drive still managed to be respectable enough, and even a bit self-righteous. Myrna Louise had made tentative overtures of friendship toward some of the neighbors. She was determined to fit in here, to really belong someplace at last. Her son's unexpected arrival was a definite fly in the ointment. Those very same neighbors might well puff the welcome mat right out from under the mother of an ex-con.
'Why, what in the world are you doing here?' a stunned Myrna Louise demanded, covering her dismay as best she could when the opened door revealed her son waiting on her doorstep.
'I came to see my mama,' he said with a smile. 'I thought you'd be glad to see me after all this time.'
'Oh, I am. Of course I am. Come in. Come in here right now. But why didn't you let me know you were coming?'
'Because I didn't know, not for sure, anyway. They like to keep people guessing until the very last minute. It makes for better control.'
She dragged Andrew into the living room and stood looking fuzzily up at him. Myrna Louise should have taken to wearing glasses years before, but she usually couldn't afford it, and besides, she was far too vain.
A driver's license might have forced her into glasses earlier, but she'd never owned a car, not until now. Jake's car was still out in the garage.
She planned to sell it if money ever got really tight.
'So are you out on parole, or what?' she asked petulantly.
'I'm out period, Mama. Free as a bird.'
