“This is just the top layer. When I finish with the scissors, I’m going to shave the rest of it off with a razor.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to be Yul Brynner when I grow up. Don’t all women think Yul Brynner is sexy?”
“I don’t. I don’t like bald men.”
“But you’ll still like me, won’t you, Mama?”
“I suppose,” she sighed.
He returned to the haircut while she continued to watch. “You know, I still have it,” she said musingly, almost dreamily.
“Have what?”
She hesitated before answering. “Your baby curl. From your very first haircut. I’ve kept it in my music box all these years. No matter where I’ve lived, I’ve always kept that curl with me.”
This revelation surprised Andrew Carlisle. “No shit,” he said.
“Why, Andrew!” Myrna Louise exclaimed indignantly. “You know better than to speak to your mother that way.”
“Sorry,” he returned. “After a while, you get used to not having a mother around.”
He hadn’t deliberately set out to hurt her feelings, but instantly her eyes filled with tears.
“You know I would have come to see you if I could have. Florence is so far away from here, and you know how I hate to ride buses. Besides, tickets cost so much.”
She was crying now, leaning against the doorjamb and sobbing brokenly.
Andrew went to her and took her in his arms. “It’s all right, Mama. I didn’t expect you to show up there. It was a terrible place. It would have given you nightmares.”
“It did anyway,” she responded. “I had nightmares the whole time you were gone.”
Chapter 6
This is detective Walker, Davy,” Diana Ladd said, introducing her son to Brandon when the session in the Indian Health Service examining room was finally over. “He’s giving us a ride back to Tucson.”
“Detective?” Davy asked. He looked warily up at Brandon Walker through long blond lashes. “Are you a real policeman?”
“Yes, I am.” The detective nodded. Little kids were usually dazzled once they understood they were talking to the genuine article. As far as children were concerned, detectives were something rare and wonderful who existed only in the exotic worlds of television or the comics.
“Not only that,” Walker added with a grin, “you’re going to get to ride back to Tucson in a real police car.”
David Ladd’s reaction was diametrically opposed to what Walker expected. The child scuttled away from both the detective and his mother, pausing only when he had planted himself firmly beside a bemused Dr. Rosemead, who was still standing in the doorway of the examining room.
“No,” Davy declared adamantly. “I don’t want to.”
“We have to,” his mother said. “You heard the doctor say you can’t stay here.”
Davy had listened while Dr. Rosemead explained why non-Indians couldn’t be treated by the Indian Health Service. The boy couldn’t understand why Big Toe Indians didn’t count since that’s what Rita said he was, but right then being a Big Toe Indian wasn’t his biggest worry. The alarming presence of a detective was.
“I’ll go in Rita’s truck,” Davy insisted. “I’ll go with my mom.”
“Rita’s truck is broken, remember?” Diana explained patiently. “And I didn’t bring my car.”
The boy glared up at the tall detective with the funny short red brush of mustache marching across his upper lip. “Are you going to take us to jail?” Davy asked.
“To jail? Of course not,” Brandon Walker answered. He wondered where Davy Ladd would have got such a strange idea.
Diana Ladd laughed outright. “Come on, Davy, don’t be silly. Detective Walker’s just going to give us a ride back home, then I’ll take you to the hospital in Tucson for stitches.”
Davy didn’t care about stitches. He remembered what the Indian women had said about him, speaking in Papago when they thought he didn’t understand. If it was true, if he really was Killer’s Child, then his mother must be a killer. This tall, scary detective was probably going to arrest her, take her away to jail, and keep her forever. If his mother went away, what would happen to him? Other kids had two parents. Davy didn’t. With his father dead and Nana
Davy stood his ground, shaking his head and refusing to budge. Diana lost all patience. “Come on,” she ordered. “Now! It’s late, and I’m tired. This has gone on long enough.”
She held out her hand. Rita had taught Davy never to disobey an adult’s direct command. One tiny, reluctant step at a time, he inched toward her outstretched hand.
Dr. Rosemead smiled and nodded. “Good,” he said. “I’m sure he’ll be fine, but if you’re worried about a possible concussion, Mrs. Ladd, you can always wake him up every hour or so for the next twenty-four, just to be on the safe side. We’ll call on ahead so the doctors at St. Mary’s are expecting you.”
Diana and Davy led the way to the car, but Brandon could see that the boy was hanging back. He was clearly frightened, although the detective couldn’t imagine why. It offended him for little kids to be afraid of cops. Didn’t they teach kids that policemen were their friends? Wasn’t there some project called Officer Friendly working in the schools these days?
As he opened the car door, the detective tried once more to smooth things over with the boy. “Do you want to sit in front?” he asked.
“No,” the boy asserted stubbornly, shying away from the detective’s outstretched hand. “I’ll ride in back.”
Myrna Louise couldn’t stand to stay there in the hallway and watch the entire hair-cutting process. It was too hard on her, brought back far too many painful memories. Even though Andrew was almost fifty-he would be in a few months since she had already turned sixty-five-she still thought of him as her little boy, her baby.
All her husbands had said she spoiled Andrew rotten, except the last one, Jake. He’d never met Andrew. They’d fallen in love and married and almost got divorced while Andrew was-away. That’s how she always thought of it-away. She never allowed herself to think about Andrew’s last seven years in anything other than the vaguest of terms.
On reflection, she supposed it was true-she had spoiled Andrew, whenever she got the chance. That was her one regret in life, that she had seen so little of him after she lost custody. She’d never forgiven her first mother-in- law for that, for encouraging Howie Carlisle to go to court to take her little boy away from her, to have her-Myrna Louise-declared an unfit mother. That was still a terrible blow even though the judge had softened it some by agreeing to let her see Andrew sometimes. When she had a decent place to stay, she’d been able to have him with her during the summers for as long as a month or so and maybe again around Thanksgiving or Christmas, but that was all. In her mind, she’d never functioned as a real mother.
Myrna Louise leaned back in her rocker and closed her eyes, remembering Andrew as he had been when he was little-so cute, so smart, so mischievous. “Full of the devil,” is what Howie used to call it.
Because of the tufts of soft gray hair spilling in a heap onto the bathroom floor, Myrna Louise recalled as if it were yesterday that long-ago time when Roger, her second husband, took her little boy to have his first haircut.
Roger was offended by Andrew’s headful of adorable blond curls. He insisted it was time the child have a real boy’s haircut, that the curls made him a sissy. Before the two of them left for the barbershop, Myrna Louise took her son aside and talked to him, telling him how he should behave.
“You mind your uncle Roger,” she said. “You do everything he tells you.”
“He’s not my uncle,” Andrew muttered stubbornly under his breath.
