Kiss of the Bees

Brian sighed and headed back toward the charco. Brandon Walker was right. With Bill Forsythe’s administration, the people of Pima County had gotten something different, all right.

In spades.

From somewhere very far away, Lani heard what sounded like a siren. She opened her eyes. At least, she thought she opened her eyes, but she could see nothing. She tried to move her hands and feet. She could move them a little, but not much, and when she tried to raise her head, her face came into contact with something soft.

Where am I? she wondered. Why am I so hot?

Her body ached with the pain of spending hours locked in the same position. She seemed to be lying naked on something soft. And she could feel something silky touching her sides and the bare skin of her immovable legs and arms. A cool breeze wafted over her hot skin from somewhere, and there was a pillow propped under her head.

A pillow. “Maybe I’m dead,” she said aloud, but the sound was so dead that it was almost as though she hadn’t said a word. “Am I dead?” she asked.

The answer came from inside her rather than from anywhere outside.

If there’s cloth all around me, above and below and a pillow, too, she thought, I must be in a casket, just like Nana Dahd.

For weeks everyone, with the possible exception of Lani, had known that Rita Antone was living on borrowed time. The whole household knew it wouldn’t be long now. For days now, Wanda and Fat Crack Ortiz had stayed at the house in Gates Pass, keeping watch at Rita’s bedside night and day. When they slept, they did so taking turns in the spare bedroom.

Over the years there had been plenty of subtle criticism on the reservation about Rita Antone. The Indians had been upset with her for abandoning her people and her own family to go live in Tucson with a family of Whites. There had also been some pointed and mean-spirited criticism aimed at Rita’s family for letting her go. The gossips maintained that, although Diana Ladd Walker may have been glad enough to have Rita’s help while she was strong and healthy and could manage housekeeping and child-care chores, they expected that the Mil- gahn woman would be quick to send Rita back to the reservation once she was no longer useful, when, in the vernacular of the Tohono O’othham, she was only good for making baskets and nothing else.

Knowing that Rita must have been involved, ill will toward her had flourished anew among the Tohono O’othham in the wake of Brandon and Diana Walker’s unconventional adoption of Clemencia Escalante. Not that any of the Indian people on the reservation had been interested in adopting the child themselves. Everyone knew that the strange little girl had been singled out by I’itoi and his messengers, the Little People. Clemencia had been kissed by the ants in the same way the legendary Kulani O’oks had been kissed by the bees. Although there was some interest at the prospect of having a new and potentially powerful Medicine Woman in the tribe, no one—including Clemencia’s blood relatives—wanted the job of being parents to such a child.

By now, though, with Rita Antone bedridden and being lovingly cared for by both her Indian and Anglo families, the reservation naysayers and gossips had been silenced for good and all.

On that last day, a sleep-deprived Fat Crack came into the kitchen where Diana and Brandon were eating breakfast. Gabe helped himself to a cup of coffee and then tried to mash down his unruly hair. It was still standing straight up, just the way he had slept on it, slumped down in the chair next to Rita’s bed.

“She’s asking for Davy,” Fat Crack said. “Do you know where he is?”

Diana glanced at her watch. “Probably in class right now, but I don’t know which one or where.”

“Let me make a call to the registrar’s office over at the university,” Brandon had told them. “Once they tell us where he is, I’ll go there, pick him up, and bring him back home.”

Fat Crack nodded. “Good,” he said. “I don’t think there’s much time.”

Forty-five minutes later, Brandon Walker was waiting in the hall outside Davy’s Anthropology 101 class. As soon as Davy saw Brandon, he knew what was going on.

“How bad is it?” he asked.

“Pretty bad,” Brandon returned. “Fat Crack says we should come as soon as we can.”

They had hurried out to the car which, due to law-enforcement privilege, had been parked on the usually vehicle-free pedestrian mall.

“I hate this,” Davy said, settling into the seat, slamming his door, and then staring out the window.

“What do you hate?”

“Having old people for friends and having them die on me. First Father John, then Looks At Nothing, and now Rita.”

At age ninety-five, Looks At Nothing had avoided the threat of being placed in a hospital by simply walking off into the desert one hot summer’s day. They had found his desiccated body weeks later, baking in the hot sand of a desert wash not a thousand yards from his home.

“I’m sorry,” Brandon said, and meant it.

At the house, Davy had gone straight into Rita’s room. He had stayed there for only ten minutes or so. He had come out carrying Rita’s prized but aged medicine basket. His face was pale but he was dry-eyed. “I’m ready to go back now,” he said.

He and Brandon had set out in the car. “She gave me her basket,” Davy said a few minutes later.

“I know,” Brandon said. “I saw you carrying it.”

“But it’s not mine to keep,” Davy added.

Brandon Walker glanced at his stepson. His jaw was set, but now there were tears glimmering on his face. “I get to have Father John’s rosary and Rita’s son’s Purple Heart. Everything else goes to Lani. It isn’t fair!”

Brandon was tempted to point out that very little in life is fair, but he didn’t. “Why, then, did she give it to you