Kiss of the Bees

“So what is it about the book?” he asked. “Is there something wrong with it? Did she leave something out or put too much in? Diana’s usually very good with research, but everybody screws up now and then. What’s the scoop, Fat Crack? Tell me.”

“Andrew Carlisle’s coming back,” Gabe said slowly.

Walker started involuntarily but then caught himself. “The hell he is, unless you’re talking about some kind of instant replay of the Second Coming. Andrew Philip Carlisle is dead. He died a month and a half ago. In prison. Of AIDS.”

“I know,” Gabe replied. “I saw that in the paper. I’m not saying he’s coming back himself. Maybe he’s sending someone else.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know. To get even?”

Brandon leaned back in his chair. Most Anglos would have simply laughed the suggestions aside. Gabe was relieved that Brandon, at least, seemed to be giving the idea serious consideration.

“Most crooks talk about getting revenge, but very few ever do,” he said finally. “Either in person or otherwise.”

“He did before,” Gabe said.

That statement brooked no argument. Brandon nodded. “So what do we do about it?”

For an answer, Gabe pulled Looks At Nothing’s deerskin pouch out of his pocket. “Remember this?” he asked, opening it and removing both a cigarette and the lighter.

A single glimpse of that worn, fringed pouch threw Brandon Walker into a sea of remembrance. He waited in silence as Gabe lit one of the hand-rolled cigarettes. And once he smelled a whiff of the acrid smoke, that, too, brought back a flood of memories.

The last time Brandon had seen the pouch was the night after Davy Ladd’s Tohono O’othham baptism. Back then the customs of the Desert People had been new and strange. The old medicine man, with help in translation from both Fat Crack and the old priest, had patiently explained some of the belief systems surrounding sickness, both Traveling Sickness—Oimmedtham Mumkithag —and Staying Sickness—Kkahchim Mumkithag.

According to the medicine man, traveling sicknesses were contagious diseases like measles, mumps, or chicken pox. They moved from person to person and from place to place, affecting everyone, Indian and Anglo alike. Traveling sicknesses could be treated by medicine men, but they also responded to the efforts of doctors, nurses, and Anglo hospitals.

Staying sicknesses, on the other hand, were believed to affect only Indians and could be cured only by medicine men. Both physical and spiritual in nature, staying sicknesses resulted from someone breaking a taboo or coming in contact with a dangerous object. By virtue of being an unbaptized baby, Davy himself had become the dangerous object that had attracted the attentions of the Ohb-infected Andrew Carlisle. As a cop investigating a case, Brandon had been little more than an amused outsider as he observed Diana Ladd complying with the requirements of Looks At Nothing’s ritual cure.

The prescription had included seeing to it that Davy Ladd was baptized according to both Indian and Anglo custom. Father John, a frail old priest from San Xavier Mission, had fulfilled the Mil-gahn part of the bargain by baptizing Davy into the Catholic Church of Diana Ladd’s Anglo upbringing. Looks At Nothing, aided by ceremonial singers, had baptized Davy according to the ritual of the Tohono O’othham. In the process the boy was given a new name. Among the Tohono O’othham Davy Ladd became Edagith Gogk Je’e—One With Two Mothers.

“But I thought you told me staying sicknesses only affect Indians,” Brandon had objected.

“Don’t you see?” Looks At Nothing returned. “Davy is not just an Anglo child. He has been raised by Rita as a child of her heart. Therefore he is Tohono O’othham as well. That’s why two baptisms are necessary, Anglo and Indian both.”

“I see,” Brandon had said back then. Now, after years living under the same roof with Rita, Davy, and Lani, Brandon understood far more about Staying Sickness than he ever would have thought possible. For instance, Eagle Sickness comes from killing an eagle and can result in head lice or itchy hands. Owl Sickness comes from succumbing to a dream in which a ghost appears, and can result in fits or trances, dizziness, and “heart shaking.” Coyote Sickness comes from killing a coyote or eating a melon a coyote has bitten into. That one can cause both itching and diarrhea in babies. Whenever one of the kids had come down with a case of diarrhea, Rita was always convinced Coyote Sickness was at fault.

Now, though, sitting in the kitchen of the house at Gates Pass, Brandon Walker smelled the smoke and was transported back to that long ago council around the hood of Fat Crack’s bright red tow truck. It was at the feast after the ceremony, after Rita and Diana and Davy Ladd had all eaten the ritual gruel of white clay and crushed owl feathers. There had been four men in all—Looks At Nothing, Father John, Fat Crack, and Brandon Walker—who had gathered in that informal circle.

Brandon remembered how Looks At Nothing had pulled out his frayed leather pouch and how he had carefully removed one of his homemade cigarettes. Brandon had watched in fascination as the blind man once again used his Zippo lighter and unerringly ignited the roll of paper and tobacco. Before that, Brandon had been exposed only once to the Tohono O’othham custom of the Peace Smoke, one accomplished with the use of cigarettes rather than with the ceremonial pipes used by other Indian tribes. He knew, for example, that when the burning cigarette was handed to him, he was expected to take a drag, say “Nawoj”— which means friend or friendly gift—and then pass it along to the next man in the circle.

It had seemed to Brandon at the time that the cigarette was being passed in honor of Davy’s successful baptism, but that wasn’t true. The circle around the truck had a wholly separate purpose.

Only when the cigarette had gone all the way around the circle—from medicine man to priest, from tow truck driver to detective and back at last to Looks At Nothing—did Brandon Walker learn the rest.

“He is a good boy,” Looks At Nothing had said quietly, clearly referring to Davy. “But I am worried about one thing. He has too many mothers and not enough fathers.”

Not enough fathers? Brandon had thought to himself, standing there leaning on a tow truck fender. What the hell is that supposed to mean? And what does it have to do with me?