When Dancing Quail's young charge went off to school, no one thought to send her. People forgot that Dancing Quail was little more than a child herself. By then, her grandmother was so frail that she needed someone with her most of the time. Dancing Quail was happy to be that someone.
She spent all her waking hours with Understanding Woman, caring for her and reaming whatever lessons her grandmother cared to teach.
Dancing Quail was fourteen and had passed her first menstruation with all due ceremony the summer Father John rode into her life. He had hair the color of autumn grass and funny red skin that sometimes peeled and flaked off in the hot sun.
Father John came to Ban Thak because the sisters at Topawa had sent him.
They worried that Alice Antone's orphaned daughter was growin up too much under her grandmother's pagan influence. The girl never came to church anymore, not even at Christmas and Easter. The sisters sent Father John in hopes that by offering the girl a cleaning job at the mission in Topawa, they might also coax her back into the fold.
Father John, fresh out of seminary, was an earnest young man on his first assignment. When he saw Rita with her long black hair flowing loose and glossy around her shoulders, when he saw her dancing brown eyes and bright white teeth against tawny skin, he thought her the loveliest, most exotic creature he had ever encountered. He was intrigued by the fact that, despite the heat, she didn't wear shoes.
When he rode into the village in his dusty, coughing touring car, she ran beside it barefoot, along with the other village children, laughing and making fun of him because they could run faster than he could drive.
He spoke to Understanding Woman that afternoon as best he could.
Unable to communicate in a common language, they were forced to call upon Dancing Quail to translate in her own inadequate English. She giggled as she did so.
Father John trotted out all his best arguments, including the one he thought would make the most difference. 'If you work at the mission,' he said, 'the sisters will pay you money so you can buy nice things for yourself and for your grandmother.'
'Where?' she asked. 'Where will I buy these things?
The trading post is far from here. I have no horse and no car.'
I could give you a ride sometimes,' he offered.
,No,' Dancing Quad said decisively. 'I will stay here.'
'What did he say?' Understanding Woman asked anxiously. There had been several exchanges during which Dancing Quail had translated nothing.
'He wants me to work- at the mission. I told him no. MY place is here with you.'
'Good,' Understanding Woman said, patting her young granddaughter's hand. 'It is better that you stay in Ban Thak.'
A Mormon missionary, dressed in a stiffly pressed white shirt and wearing a carefully knotted tie, brought word to Rebecca Tashquinth that her son, S-abamk, the Lucky One, was being held in the Pinal County jail in Florence and that he would most likely be charged with the brutal murder of Margaret Danielson. It was thought, the missionary reported dutifully, that the woman had been raped as well, but no one knew that for sure. Not yet.
Rebecca was well aware of the kinds of lawyers local judges appointed for Indian defendants, particularly those accused of serious crimes against Anglos. She didn't waste time on a useless trip to Florence.
The guards at the jail wouldn't have let her see her son anyway.
Instead, she got in the car and drove to Ahngam, Desert Broom Village, to speak to her father.
Eduardo Jose was a man of some standing in the community, a man with both livestock and a thriving bootleg-liquor business. Eduardo knew how to deal with Anglos. He had even hired himself an Anglo lawyer once to help him when the cops had caught him transporting illegal tequila across nonreservation land to the annual O'odam Tash celebration in Casa Grande.
If anyone could help her son in all this, Rebecca's father was the man who could do it.
Diana was still angry with Rita when she got to the hospital. She resented Davy's questions about his father, questions he had never asked before. She blamed Rita for bringing all that ancient history back to the foreground, but when she saw the old woman, seemingly shriveled in the bed and swathed in bandages, she forgot her anger.
Rita's sister, Juanita, was sitting by the bed when Diana entered the room, but she rose at once and went out into the hallway. Diana knew Juanita didn't like her, and she had long since ceased worrying about it. If Gary's parents didn't understand why she and Rita were inseparable, why should Rita's relatives do any better?
Rita opened her eyes when Diana stepped to the head of the bed and touched her good hand.
'How's Davy?' Rita asked.
'He's fine. He has a few stitches in his head, that's-' 'Is he here?
Can I see him?'
'The doctor won't let him come into the room. He's too young. You have to be sixteen.'
Rita reached for her water glass and took a tentative sip through the straw. 'Yesterday was the anniversary,' she said quietly. 'Davy went with me. He may ask questions.'
Diana laughed uneasily. 'He already has, Rita. - It's all right. I'm getting a lot closer to being able to answer them.'
'He'll want you to put up a cross. For his father, I mean.
A cross with a wreath and some candles.'
