Kiss of the Bees

Candace might look delicate and ladylike, but in bed she was anything but, and in the six months since, David Ladd had found himself deeply in lust if not in love. He and Candace spent a good deal of time together—as much as possible, considering his course load. And because of Astrid Garrison’s prying eyes, most of their fun and games had happened in Candace’s chaste-appearing bedroom.

The sex had been great. The problem was, David Ladd still didn’t feel as though he was remotely in love. During the last few weeks, tension had been building as Candace Waverly dug in her heels over David’s stated plan of returning to Tucson to go to work.

“I don’t see why you’re taking this internship out on an Indian reservation,” she had pouted one day early in May as the two of them sat sipping late-evening lattes in downtown Evanston’s Starbucks.

With an important paper due in two days, this wasn’t exactly the time for Davy to work his way around such a complex issue. Candace already knew that David’s sixteen-year-old sister was adopted and that she was a full- blooded Native American. School-trained as a disciple of cultural diversity, Candace hadn’t batted an eyelash when David had given her that bit of information, but she had cautioned him that he maybe ought not mention it to her folks. Like the secret Christmas-party pizza, as well as some of the other things that went on in Candace’s upstairs bedroom—this was something Candace’s mother might be better off not knowing, and it made David Ladd wonder if the elder Waverlys of Oak Park might be somewhat bigoted when it came to dealing with Indians.

Maybe Candace was, too, for that matter, he thought as he grappled with how to make her understand exactly what the internship meant to him. Should he try to tell her about Nana Dahd? By working on the reservation he hoped, in some small way, to repay Rita Antone for all she had done for him, all she had meant to him, but the words to explain that refused to bubble to the surface.

“I’m smart,” he said at last, knowing it sounded limp and probably stupid as well. “I speak the language, and I think I can make a contribution.”

“You mean make a contribution like people do in the Peace Corps?”

It wasn’t at all like the Peace Corps, but David didn’t know where to begin explaining that, either. Peace Corps volunteers, armed with the very best intentions, went off and spent a few years of their lives ministering to the unfortunate before returning to their real homes, jobs, and lives. As far as David Ladd was concerned, the people on the Tohono O’othham, with all their history and tradition, were in his blood. They were a part of him. He had learned about them at Rita’s knee and in the teachings of both Looks At Nothing and Fat Crack. They were his real life far more than the years of exile in Evanston had ever been.

“But what kind of a job would the internship lead to?” Candace had continued. “Is there any kind of career path? And do they pay anything?”

At twenty-five, Candace was two years younger than David. She had a good job in Human Resources at her father’s firm—a job that probably paid far better than anything she could have found on her own with nothing more than a BS in psychology. Out of school for four years herself, she talked about someday returning to school for a graduate degree. In the meantime, she still lived at home and drove the bright red Integra her parents had given her for Christmas to replace the Ford Mustang convertible that had been her college-graduation present. The kind of grinding poverty that existed on the Tohono O’othham was so far outside the realm of Candace Waverly’s sheltered Oak Park existence that there was no basis for common ground. Had David Ladd attempted to explain it to her, she probably still wouldn’t have understood.

“The tribe doesn’t pay much,” David allowed with a short laugh. “And I doubt there’s much room for advancement.”

“But would you make enough to start a family?” she asked.

That sobered him instantly. “Probably not,” he said.

“Well then,” Candace continued in a tone that sounded as though there was no further basis for discussion. “Daddy will be glad to give you a job. I know because I already asked him. He’s always looking for smart young men.”

“But, Candace,” David had objected. “I don’t want to work in Chicago. I want to go home—to Tucson.”

“But what’s there?” she had shot back at him. “And what would I do for a job? Nobody knows me there.”

Behind them, the espresso machine had hissed a noisy cloud of steam into the air. The sound reminded David Ladd of quicksand pulling someone under. No doubt he should have made a clean break of it right then, but the paper was due and finals were bearing down on him and he didn’t want to provoke a confrontation.

“I’ll think about it,” he said. “I’ll think it over and let you know.”

“You goddamned gutless wonder,” he berated himself now, lying there on the bed in the darkened room at the Ritz Carlton.

Honesty’s the best policy.

Honesty’s the best policy. Growing up, those were words he’d heard early and often from his stepfather. He had been only seven the first time he had heard them spoken, but he remembered the incident as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.

“That old lady’s not just an Indian,” his stepbrother had shouted. “She’s a witch.”

From the very beginning, Quentin Walker was always able to get Davy’s goat, and there was nothing that drove the younger boy wild faster than someone saying bad things about Rita Antone.

“She is not.”

“Is to. And I can prove it.”

“How?”

“Look.”

Quentin pulled something black out of his pocket. As soon as Davy saw it, he recognized the scrap of black hair. He knew what it was and where it had come from.

In the bottom drawer of the dresser in her room, Nana Dahd kept her precious medicine basket. Rita had told Davy the story a hundred times about how her grandmother, Understanding Woman, had given Rita the basket to take with her when the tribal policeman carted her off to boarding school. Back then she had been a little girl named Dancing Quail. Davy had wept at the part of the story where, on the terrifying train trip between Tucson and Phoenix, clinging to the roof of the moving train, Dancing Quail had lost the precious spirit rock, a geode, that Understanding Woman had given her granddaughter to protect her on the journey. Not only was