crept into the village with a returning soldier, and many people fell ill, including all of Dancing Quail's family, from her grandmother right down to little S-kehegaj.
Desperately ill herself, but somewhat less so than the others, Understanding Woman sent word to the outing matron asking that Dancing Quail be brought home from Phoenix to help. Understanding Woman also sent for a blind medicine man from Many Dogs village, a man whose name was S-ab Neid Pi Has, which means Looks At Nothing.
At fifteen, Looks At Nothing left home to work in AJo's copper mines.
Two years later, he was blinded by a severe blow to the head during a drunken brawl in Ajo's Indian encampment. The other Indian died.
Looks At Nothing, broken in body and spirit both, returned home to Many Dogs Village. The old medicine man there diagnosed his ailment as Whore-Sickness, which comes from succumbing to the enticing temptations of dreams, and which causes ailments of the eyes.
First Looks At Nothing was treated with ritual dolls.
When that didn't work, singers were called in who were good with Whore-Sickness. For four days, the singers smoked their sacred tobacco and sang their Whore-Sickness songs. When the singing was over, Looks At Nothing was still blind, but during the healing process he came to see that his life had a purpose. I'itoi had summoned him home, demanding that the young man turn his back on the white man's ways and return to the traditions of his father and grandfathers before him. In exchange, I'itoi promised, Looks At Nothing would become a powerful shaman.
By the time Understanding Woman summoned him to Ban Thak, Looks At Nothing, although still very young, was already reputed to be a good singer for curing Traveling Sickness. He came to Coyote Sitting, sang his songs, and smoked his tobacco, but unfortunately, he arrived too late.
Dancing Quail's parents died, but he did manage to cure both Understanding Woman and Little Pretty One. Looks was still there singing when Big Eddie Lopez, by the outing matron, brought Dancing Quail e from Phoenix.
Riding to Chuk Shon inside the train rather than on it, Dancing Quail was sick with grief With both her parents dead, what would happen if she had to live without her grandmother and her baby sister, too?
Soon, however, it was clear that Understanding Woman and Pretty One would recover. Dancing Quail was dispatched to pay Looks At Nothing his customary fee, which consisted of a finely woven medicine basket-medicine baskets were Understanding Woman's specialty-and a narrow-necked olla with several dogs representing Many Dogs Village carefully etched into the side.
Dancing Quail approached the medicine man shyly as he gathered up his remaining tobacco and placed it in the leather pouch fastened around his waist. At the sound of her footsteps, he stopped what he was doing.
'Who is it?' he asked, while his strange, sightless eyes stared far beyond her.
'Hejel Wi'ikam,' she answered. 'Orphaned Child. I have brought you your gifts.'
Looks At Nothing motioned for her to sit beside him First she gave him the basket, then the olla. His sensitive fingers explored each surface and crevice. 'Your grandmother does fine work,' he said at last.
They sat together in silence for some time. 'You are glad to be home?' he asked.
'I'm sorry about my parents,' she said, 'but I'm glad to be in Ban Thak. I do not like school or the people there.
Looks At Nothing reached out and took Dancing Quail's small hand in his, holding it for a long moment before nodding and allowing it to fall back into her lap.
'You will live in both worlds, little one,' he said. 'You will be a bridge, a puinthi.'
Dancing Quail looked up at him anxiously, afraid he meant Big Eddie would take her right back to Phoenix, but Looks At Nothing reassured her. ''You will stay here for now. Understanding Woman will need your help with the fields and the baby.'
'How do you know all this?' she asked.
He smiled down at her. 'I have lost my sight, Hejel Wi'ikam,' he said kindly, 'but I have not lost my vision.'
Fat Crack drove his tow truck south past Topawa on his fool's errand.
Rita had told him that Looks At Nothing still lived at Many Dogs Village across the border in Old Mexico.
The international border had been established by treaty between Mexico and the United States without either country acknowledging that their arbitrary decision effectively divided in half and disenfranchised the much older- nine thousand years older-Papago nation.
Because Many Dogs Village was on the Mexican side, Fat Crack would have to cross the border at The Gate-an unofficial and unpatrolled crossing point in the middle of the reservation. Once in Mexico, he would have to make his way to the village on foot, or perhaps one of the traders from the other side would offer him a ride.
Supposing Fat Crack did manage to find the object of his search, how would he bring the old man back to Rita's bedside in the Indian Health Service Hospital? According to Fat Crack's estimates, if Looks At Nothing were still alive, he would be well into his eighties. Such an old man might not be eager to travel.
The Gate was really nothing but a break in the six-strand border fence surrounded by flat open desert and dotted, on both sides, with the parked pickups of traders and customers alike. Owners of these trucks did a brisk business in bootleg liquor, tortillas, tamales, and goat cheese, with an occasional batch of pot thrown in for good measure.
Fat Crack approached one of the bootleggers and inquired how to find Looks At Nothing's house. The man pointed to a withered old man sitting in the shade of a mesquite tree.
'Why go all the way to his house?' the man asked derisively. 'Why not see him here?'
Looks At Nothing sat under the tree with a narrow rolled bundle and a gnarled ironwood cane on the ground in front of him. As Fat Crack approached, the sightless old man scrambled agilely to his feet. 'Have you come to take
