Kiss of the Bees

Lani nodded again. It didn’t seem necessary to explain to this man that she was adopted and that her parents were Anglos. It was none of his business.

“I’ve tried going out to the reservation to paint several times,” he told her, “but the people seem to be really suspicious. If you’d consider posing for me, just for half an hour or so some morning, I’d give you this one for free.”

“For free? Really?”

“Sure.”

Lani didn’t have to think very long. “When would you like to do it?” she asked.

“Tomorrow morning?”

“That would work,” Lani said, “but I’d have to come by about half an hour earlier than this, otherwise I’ll be late for work.”

The man nodded. “That’s fine,” he said. “I’ll be here. And could I ask a favor?”

Lani, getting back on her bike, paused and gave him a questioning look. “What’s that?”

“Could you wear something that’s sort of . . . well, you know”—he shrugged uncomfortably—“something that looks Indian?”

Lani grinned. “How about the cowgirl shirt and hat I wore for rodeo last year? That’s what Indians all wear these days—cowboy clothes.”

“Whatever you decide,” the man said. “I’m sure it’ll be just fine.”

“I have to go,” she told him, putting one foot on the pedal and giving the bike a shove as she hopped on. “Or else I’ll be late today, too. See you tomorrow then.”

“Sure thing,” he called after her, waving again as she rode away.

Once Lani was out of sight, Mitch Johnson quickly began gathering up his material and stowing it back in the car. Soon the Subaru was headed back toward Gates Pass and toward the lookout spot up over the Walker house where he would spend the rest of the morning, watching and pretending to draw.

How was that, Andy? he asked himself as he unpacked his gear once more and started limping up the steep hillside. It worked just the way you always said it would. Like taking candy from a baby.

The dream that awakened David Ladd shortly before sunrise on the morning he was scheduled to leave his grandmother’s house in Evanston was the same dream that had been plaguing him and robbing him of sleep for weeks. It had come for the first time the night before he was to take his last law school exam—his final final as he thought of it—although he knew that the hurdle of passing the bar was still to come.

The recurring nightmare was one he’d had from time to time over the years, but the last time was so long ago that he had nearly forgotten it. In the dream he was standing alone in the dark—a terrible soul-numbing blackness without even the comfort of a single crack of light shining under the door.

He listened, waiting endlessly for what he knew must come—for the sound that would tell him the life-and- death battle had begun, but for a long time there was nothing at all from beyond that closed door but empty, breathless silence. Once there had been other living people trapped in the dark prison with him. Rita Antone had been there with him, as had the old priest, Father John. But they were both dead now—dead and gone—and Davy Ladd was truly alone.

Finally, from outside the terrible darkness, he heard a faint but familiar voice calling to him from his childhood. “Olhoni, Olhoni.”

Olhoni! Little Orphaned Calf—his secret Tohono O’othham name—a name David Ladd hadn’t heard spoken in years. Only Rita Antone—the beloved Indian godmother he had called Nana Dahd—and his sister Lani—had called him that. For years Nana Dahd had used Davy’s Indian name only when the two of them were alone and when there was no one else to hear. Later on she used it in the presence of Davy’s baby sister as well.

Once again Nana Dahd’s song flowed through the darkness, bolstering him, giving him courage:

“Listen to me, Little Olhoni.

Do not look at me, but do exactly as I say.”

David Ladd held his breath, straining to hear once again the comforting chanted words of the Tohono O’othham song Rita had sung that fateful day while the life-and-death battle between his mother and the strange bald-headed man had raged outside that closed and locked root cellar door. The man who had burst into their home earlier that afternoon was Mil-gahn— a white, but in the song Rita had used to summon I’itoi to help them, she had called Andrew Carlisle by the word Ohb. In the language of the Tohono O’othham— the Desert People—that single word means at once both Apache and enemy.

Nana Dahd’s war chant had cast a powerful spell, instilling a mysterious strength in Davy and in other members of the embattled household. That strength had been enough to save them all from the Ohb’s evil that awful day. Davy, Rita, the priest, Davy’s mother, and even the dog, Oh’o—Bone—had all been spared. At least, they had all lived. And at age six going on seven, Mil-gahn though he was, it had been easy for Davy Ladd to believe that I’itoi—Elder Brother—had interceded on their behalf; that the Spirit of Goodness had heard Nana Dahd’s desperate cry for help; that he had descended from his home on cloud-shrouded Baboquivari to help them vanquish their enemy.

Twenty years later, that was no longer quite so easy to accept. Even so, a grown-up David Ladd strained to listen and to gather strength from Rita’s familiar but almost forgotten words. She had chanted the song in soft- spoken, guttural Papago—a language the evil Ohb hadn’t been able to speak or understand. Back then Nana Dahd’s war song had served the dual purpose of summoning I’itoi to help them and also of telling a terrified little boy exactly what he had to do—what was expected of him.

But at the point where Rita’s song should have been rising to a crescendo, it dwindled away to nothing. And now, with Nana Dahd gone, Davy was once again alone in the dark—a helpless, terrified child listening from one side of a door while on the other his mother fought for her life against the evil Mil-gahn intruder.