Hour of the Hunter

“Want to stop by the I-Hop for a cup of coffee?” he asked. “I don’t much feel like working, either.”

Diana wanted to point out that not wanting to work and not being able to were two entirely different things. “Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

He offered her a ride, but she insisted on bringing her bike. “The I-Hop puts me partway home,” she told him. “No point in having to come all the way back here.”

“You mean you live off campus and you don’t have a car?”

She nodded.

“Like I said before, you’re something else.”

The gurney wheeled Rita down the hallway from the recovery room. When the movement stopped, Dancing Quail was standing beside a wagon in the broad, dusty street. She watched fearfully as a strange-looking Mil-gahn woman-the outing matron-moved toward the children. She was tall and thin with short, bright-colored curls the color of red hawk’s tail. Indian hair was usually long and black and glossy, like a horse’s tail. Not only was the outing matron’s hair red, it was curly, too. She peered sternly down at the children through two round pieces of glass that somehow stayed perched on her nose.

Big Eddie ordered the children out of the wagon. One by one, they tumbled down, taking their small bundles of belongings with them. They lined up alongside the wagon and waited expectantly while the outing matron examined each of them in turn. The woman stopped in front of Dancing Quail and glared down in disapproval. Dancing Quail shook under the white woman’s fierce gaze. She stared at the ground, wondering what was the matter. What had she done wrong?

Beside her, some of the other children giggled and whispered. “Dancing Quail has no shoes,” one of them said.

Instantly, the woman shushed the speaker, but by then Dancing Quail, too, knew what was wrong. Looking up and down the line, she could see that from somewhere in their bundles, all the other children had managed to find shoes. They were scuffed and ragged, but of all the children, only Dancing Quail still stood with her bare toes poking holes in the soft, dusty ground.

The woman spoke sharply in a strange language.

“She wants to know your name,” Big Eddie said in Papago.

Dancing Quail swallowed hard. “E Waila Kakaichu,” she began, but the woman cut her off saying something Dancing Quail didn’t understand.

“Your papers at the agency say your name is Rita,” Big Eddie explained. “Here in Tucson and in Phoenix, that is your name.”

Dancing Quail swallowed hard and tried not to cry. She didn’t want another name. She liked her old name.

“Rita,” someone was saying. “Rita. Wake up.”

The old woman battled Effie Joaquin’s summons. She didn’t want to wake up. It would have been easier to stay where she was, back in that hot long-ago summer day with her toes warm and bare in the sandy dirt. Rita’s throat hurt. She felt sick. One arm wouldn’t move at all. It dangled uselessly above her head on some kind of rope and pulley.

“Wake up now. Would you like some ice?”

Effie held up a teaspoon filled with crushed ice and ladled some of it into Rita’s mouth. The cold slivers of ice felt good as they slithered down her parched throat.

“Davy. .” she whispered.

“He’s all right,” Effie assured her. “Dr. Rosemead is with him right now. So’s his mother. She just got here a few minutes ago. They’ll take him to a hospital in Tucson for stitches.”

“He’s not hurt bad?”

“No.” Effie smiled. “Not nearly as bad as you.”

Rita Antone breathed a huge sigh of relief. The pain it caused in her broken ribs brought tears to her eyes, but she didn’t care. Davy was all right. Olhoni was all right.

Dancing Quail’s long-ago tears, and Nana Dahd’s new ones, coursed in matching tracks down Rita Antone’s weathered cheeks.

When Dr. Rosemead took Diana and David Ladd into an examining room, Brandon Walker made his way to the pay phone in the corner. It was almost nine, but even so, he had to wait his turn before he could use the phone. There were two Indians in line ahead of him.

His mother’s answering voice was sharp and angry. He knew he was in trouble as soon as she picked up the phone.

“Hi, Mom,” he said brightly. “How’s it going?”

“Why did you take so long to call back?” Louella demanded.

“I couldn’t help it, Mom. I’m at work. We’ve been busy.”

“When will you be home?”

“That’s hard to say. I’m out at Sells right now.”

“Sells! Out on the reservation? Are those Indians busy killing one another again?”

“It’s a car accident,” he explained patiently. “I’m just helping out.”

“Well, it’s great that you have time to help those Indians. What about your parents?”

“That’s why I’m calling. What do you need?”

“Five checks are missing from the checkbook. I’ve asked your father what he did with them. He says he doesn’t know.”

“Is it possible that you wrote checks and forgot to write them down?”

Louella Walker’s response was as predictable as it was arch. “Certainly not! I don’t forget to write down checks. You know me better than that.”

“Maybe you should take my advice and close that account.”

Brandon and his mother had had several heated arguments about his parents’ joint checking account since the previous month, when it had been seriously overdrawn by several checks. Without consulting anyone else, Toby Walker had made a number of wild purchases, including an even dozen Radio Flyer wagons and two new couches and chairs. Sending back the couches and chairs had been easy. Returning wagons to a mail-order house had been far more difficult.

“You know I can’t do that,” Louella countered. “I couldn’t possibly do such a thing to your father.”

Then you’re going to have to suffer the consequences, Brandon felt like saying. Sometimes his mother seemed like a willful child-both his parents did-and he was losing patience.

“Write down the missing numbers,” he said. “We’ll call the bank in the morning and put a stop-payment on them.”

“But that’ll cost too much money.”

“Not as much as sending back another set of wagons.”

“All right,” she agreed reluctantly. “When will you be home?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Late probably.”

“Should I leave your dinner out on the counter?”

“No,” he told her. By the time he got home, Brandon Walker didn’t think he’d be hungry.

Andrew Carlisle waited until he thought his mother was asleep. Then, clad in Jake Spaulding’s red flannel robe, he tiptoed back down the short hallway to the cluttered bathroom. He rummaged through a drawer until he found what he needed-a pair of scissors as well as a razor and a new package of blades.

One careful handful at a time, he began cutting off his hair, shearing it off as close to his scalp as he could. He didn’t hear or see his mother come up to the open doorway. The option of leaving even a bathroom door open behind him was still a sensation worth savoring.

“Andrew,” Myrna Louise said with a frown. “What in the world are you doing?”

“Cutting my hair.”

“I can see that, but it’s terrible. It’s all clumpy.”