Every once in a while, the smallest splinter of doubt might worm its way into her consciousness, but she ruthlessly plucked it out. Gary was working hard, she told herself. The stack of typewritten pages on his desk grew steadily taller, offering mute testimony about work on his manuscript. Besides, Diana had interests enough of her own to keep her occupied.
There weren't any Indians living in Joseph, Oregon, when Diana was growing up. The Nez Perce had long since been exiled from their ancestral lands to the wilds of Oklahoma and back to a reservation in Idaho, but Diana had learned something about them in her reading, had discovered in books things about Chief Joseph and his loyal band of followers that would have given her father apoplexy. After all, to Max Cooper's unenlightened way of thinking, the only good Indian was still a dead Indian.
So the job teaching school on the Papago was good for Diana in more ways than one. It supported them while Gary was in school, it gave them a place to live, and it provided another avenue of attack in her unrelenting rebellion against her father. She threw herself into her work with all the enthusiasm and energy she could muster. If she was going to be a teacher for the time being, she'd be the best damned teacher the reservation had ever seen.
While doing that, she was also, unwittingly, giving Gary Ladd more and more rope-enough rope to hang himself, enough rope to destroy them both.
'Gary,' she had pleaded finally. 'For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!'
It was early afternoon the following Friday, a full week after he'd stayed out until broad daylight after the dance at San Pedro.
'I can't,' he whimpered, 'I don't know what to do.'
She went to him then, held him and comforted him as she would have a small lost child or a wounded animal.
She couldn't believe those frightened, despairing words came from the lips of the man she loved, from the mouth of Garrison Walther Ladd, III, someone who always had a ready answer for everything.
It had been a terrible week for Diana, a debilitating, virtually sleepless week. She alternated between bouts of fury and bleak despair over what was wrong with her husband, all the while battling her own recalcitrant body, which seemed determined to throw off every morsel of food she attempted to put in her mouth.
Gary spent the week in front of the TV set, watching everything from news to soap operas to game shows with almost catatonic concentration.
He ate a bite or two of the food she brought him and sipped the iced tea or coffee, but he barely spoke to her, barely moved. With every passing moment, her sense of foreboding grew more overpowering, until she wanted to scream at the very sight of him.
Once, while he slept, she went out and examined the pickup in minute detail, looking for a clue as to what might have happened. She dreaded finding evidence that he had been in an accident, maybe a hit-and-run, but the combat scars on the Ford's battered body were all old, rusted-over wounds. In a way, finding nothing made Diana feel worse.
What was the matter? she asked herself.
What had panicked her otherwise self-assured husband to the point that he couldn't leave the house?
On Tuesday morning, Andrew Carlisle called to find out why Gary had missed class the previous day. Diana put her husband on the phone despite his desperately signaled hand motions to the contrary. He stammered some lame excuse about food poisoning that didn't sound at all plausible to Diana and probably not to Andrew Carlisle, either.
Gary promised faithfully that he'd be in class the next day, but Wednesday came and went without him moving from the couch other than to visit the bathroom.
On Thursday evening, Andrew Carlisle himself showed up at the door.
Diana was surprised to see him, amazed that he'd go so far out of his way in an attempt to talk Gary out of his stupor. She didn't like Andrew Carlisle, but she grudgingly gave the man credit. She wasn't privy to the conversation that passed between them, but she was grateful that Gary seemed in much better spirits after Carlisle left.
'What did he tell you?' she asked curiously, after the professor drove away.
'Mat all creative people go through black periods like this,' Gary told her. 'He says it's nothing unusual. It'll pass.'
On Saturday morning, Diana went to the Store for groceries. The trading post on top of the hill was abuzz with talk about the murder and the now identified victim, Gina Antone. Diana bought a newspaper and read the ugly story for herself She was shocked to discover the victim was the granddaughter of someone she knew.
Diana worked at the school and so did Rita Antone-Diana as a classroom teacher and Rita as a cook in the cafeteria, although the two women were only slightly acquainted. Rita was known for striking terror in the hearts of children who came to the garbage cans to dump their lunch trays without first having tried at least one bite of everything on their plate.
Rita, standing guard over the garbage cans like a pugnacious bulldog and waving a huge rubber spatula for emphasis, would order them, 'Eat your vegetables.' Usually, the frightened Indian kids complied without a murmur. So did a few cowed Anglo teachers.
By the time Diana got back to Topawa with both the groceries and the newspaper, it was almost noon. She was in the kitchen fixing lunch when Gary turned away from the television cartoons and picked up the paper.
She saw his face go ashen. The knuckles on his hands turned white.
He let the paper fall to the floor and began sobbing into his hands.
She went to him. Kneeling on the floor in front of him, she begged him to tell her what was wrong.
For a long time, he sat weeping with his face buried on her shoulder.
The paper lay faceup on the floor with the headlines screaming at her.
Without his saying a word, she knew. Terror and revulsion took over.
