Kiss of the Bees

Davy shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m saying. All I know is, that scream was the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

“She never called us back tonight, did she?” Candace said thoughtfully.

Davy shook his head. “No,” he said. “She didn’t.”

“So let’s try again.” Ever practical, Candace sat up in bed, plucked the telephone receiver out of its cradle and handed it over to Davy. “It’s only a little after nine there,” she said matter-of-factly. “Maybe somebody will be home by now. What’s the number?” she said.

Grateful beyond measure that Candace hadn’t simply dismissed him as crazy, David Ladd held the phone to his ear while she dialed, then he waited while it rang. “The damned machine again,” he said finally, handing the receiver back to her. “Go ahead and hang up.”

“Leave another message,” Candace ordered. “Tell Lani or your parents, either one, to call you back as soon as they get home.”

Eventually the beep sounded in his ear. “Hi, Mom and Dad,” he said. “I’m still trying to get hold of Lani, but I guess nobody’s home. Give me a call. You already have the number. Bye.”

He put down the phone. Candace was looking up at him. “Better?” she said.

David nodded.

“Lie back down, then.”

He did as he was told. Moments later Candace snuggled close, her naked leg against his, her fingers brushing delicately across the hair of his chest.

“Whatever happened to Bone?” she asked. “I’ve read your mother’s book, but I don’t remember her saying what happened to the dog.”

“Poor old Oh’o,” Davy said. “I haven’t thought of him for years. When we first moved to Gates Pass he was my only friend and playmate. Nana Dahd always used to say that the first word I spoke was goks—dog—the day she brought him home as a gangly puppy.”

“What kind of dog was he?”

“A mutt, I’m sure. He looked a lot like an Irish wolfhound—he was that big, long-haired, and scraggly—but he could jump like a deer.”

“What was it you called him again?”

“Oh’o. In Papago . . . in Tohono O’othham . . . that means bone. And that’s what he was when Rita first brought him home, skin and bones. But he was a great dog.”

“What did he die of?”

“Old age, I guess. The year I turned thirteen. His kidneys gave out on him. My friend Brian Fellows and I carried him up the mountain behind the house and buried him among the rocks where the three of us all used to play hide-and-seek. Bone always loved being It.”

“I guess he really messed up the guy’s arm. His wrist, anyway.”

“Andrew Carlisle’s wrist?”

Candace nodded. “From what your mother said in the book, when you let him into the kitchen, he went after the guy tooth and nail.”

“He did?”

“Yup. He wrecked it. She talked about that in one of the scenes that takes place in the prison, about how when she saw him again after all those years, his face was all scarred up from the bacon grease. She talked about his arm then, too, about how he had to wear it in a sling.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” David Ladd said. “I never knew that before, or if I did, I’ve forgotten.”

Slowly, almost unthinkingly, Candace’s fingers began to stroke the inside of Davy’s thigh. “Stick with me, pal,” she said. “I’ll teach you everything I know.”

She seduced him then, because she thought he needed it. Because it was the middle of the night and because they were both awake and young and had the stamina to do it more than once a night. Afterward, as David Garrison Ladd drifted off into the first really restful sleep he’d had in weeks, he felt as though, for the first time in his life, he had made love.

12

You will remember, nawoj, that when I’itoi divided the water and saved his people, the Tohono O’othham, from the Bad People, some of the PaDaj O’othham escaped.

Now these Bad People lived in the south, and they were very lazy. They were too lazy to plant their own fields, so they came into the Land of the Desert People and tried to steal their crops—their wheat, corn, and beans, their pumpkins and melons.

The Tohono O’othham fought these Bad People and drove them away, but after a time, the beans and corn which the Bad People had stolen were all gone. The PaDaj O’othham were hungry again. They knew the Desert People were guarding their fields, so they decided to try a new way to steal the crops.

Near the village Gurli Put Vo—Dead Man’s Pond—which we now call San Miguel, the corn in the fields was ready to harvest. One morning Hawani—Crow—who was sitting in a tree, saw the Bad People coming up out of the ground and begin cutting the grain.

Crow was so astonished that he called out, “Caw, caw, caw!” This made the people who were living on the edge of the field look up. When they saw their crop disappearing into the ground, they cried out for help.

U’uwhig—the Birds—carried the call for help because the Desert People were always good to