Kiss of the Bees

have knocked the emotional pins out from under him. It was almost as though there had been a death in the family, and the grieving process had left him lost and directionless.

But to Diana’s way of thinking, the main problem with the Pulitzer and everything associated with it was that the accolades were all coming to Diana over Shadow of Death, a book Brandon Walker had opposed from the very beginning.

“Don’t bring all that stuff up again,” he had warned her on the day Andrew Carlisle’s letter had arrived from the Arizona State Prison. “Let sleeping dogs lie.”

But she hadn’t followed his advice. She had gone ahead and written the book anyway. And now, based on that, Diana Ladd Walker’s stock had shot way up in the world of publishing. Sandy Hawkins, Diana’s editor at Sterling, Moffit, and Dodd, was downright ecstatic. Requests for interviews and public appearances were flowing in. Meanwhile, Diana’s marriage was in the toilet.

She and Brandon had argued bitterly over the trip to New York, with him citing any number of plausible but nonetheless phony excuses for not going. He didn’t have a tux. With only one of them working, he couldn’t see squandering all that money on his airfare. He hated being locked up in an airplane seat without enough room for his long legs. Most of all, in his opinion, Lani shouldn’t be left home on her own, not with the end-of-school party season heating up.

“Why don’t you say what you mean?” an exasperated Diana had demanded finally when she tired of arguing. “Why don’t you just admit it? You don’t want to go.”

Brandon complied at once. “You’re right,” he had said. “I don’t want to go.”

“Fine!” Diana had stormed. “Suit yourself, but one of these days you’re going to have to get over it, Brandon. One of these days you’re going to have to realize that losing that election was not the end of the world.”

She regretted her outburst almost immediately, but she had retreated to her office without an apology while Brandon had made tracks for his damned woodpile. And two weeks later, when Diana Ladd Walker flew off to New York, she had done so alone, with the quarrel between them still unresolved. A month and a half later, his role as “author consort” was still a bone of contention.

When the invitation came for her to speak at the annual Friends of the Library banquet, there had been yet another firefight. This time, though, Diana had dug in her heels.

“Look,” she had told him. “I can see your not going to the faculty tea. If I could get out of that one myself, I would. But the library banquet is something for the whole community, the community that elected you to office for sixteen years. People expect you to be there. I expect you to be there. We’re married, Brandon. I don’t want to spend my life out in public as one of those married singles.”

“But I hate all that crap,” he argued. “I hate standing around with a drink in my hand, looking like a sap, and listening to some little old lady talk about something I’ve never heard of.”

“Get over it,” Diana had snapped back at him. “If you were tough enough to face down armed crooks in your day, you ought to be able to stand up to any little old lady in the land.”

Stepping out of the shower, Diana stood toweling her hair dry. Suddenly, out of nowhere, something her mother had told her once came back to her as clearly as if she had heard the words yesterday instead of thirty years earlier.

Iona Dade Cooper had been at home in Joseph, Oregon, dying of cancer. Diana, away at school at the University of Oregon in Eugene, had finally been forced to drop out temporarily to care for her. Diana had been sitting in the chair next to her mother’s bed telling of her secret ambition not only to marry Garrison Ladd but also to become a writer.

“You can’t have it all, you know,” Iona had said quietly. “If you try to do too much, something is bound to suffer.”

Standing in the bathroom thirty years later, Diana had to swallow a sudden lump in her throat. She remembered arguing the point with her mother back then, telling Iona passionately exactly how wrong she was.

“These are the sixties,” Diana had said with the absolute conviction of a know-it-all twenty-one-year-old. “Women are moving into their own now, Mother. Everything is possible, you’ll see.”

Iona Dade Cooper had died a few months later without seeing anything of the kind. And Diana, now several years older than her mother had lived to be, was forced to acknowledge that Iona’s assessment was one hundred percent accurate.

Mom, you were right, after all, Diana Cooper Ladd Walker admitted to herself. You really can’t have it all.

2

Now in that long ago time the earth—jeweth—was not yet firm and still as it is today. It was shaking and quivering all the time. That made it hard for the four to travel. So Earth Medicine Man —Jeweth Mahkai—threw himself down and stopped the shaking of the earth. And that was the first land.

But the land was floating around in separate pieces. So Earth Medicine Man called to the Spider Men. Totkihhud O’othham came out of the floating ground and went all over the world spinning their webs and tying the pieces of earth together. And that is how we have it today—land and water.

Then I’itoi wanted to find the center of the earth. So he sent Coyote toward the south and Big Black Beetle to the north. He said they must go as fast and as far as they could and then return to him.

Bitokoi—Big Black Beetle—was back quite a while before Ban—Coyote —returned. In this way I’itoi knew that he had not yet found the center of the earth.

Then Spirit of Goodness took Bitokoi and Ban a little farther south and sent them off once more. Again Big Black Beetle came back before Coyote, so I’itoi moved still farther toward the south.

On the fourth try Bitokoi and Coyote came back to I’itoi at exactly the same time. In that way Elder Brother knew he was exactly in the center of the world. Because the Spirit of Goodness should be the center of all things, this was where I’itoi wished to be.