Hour of the Hunter

disapprovingly. This was a day of mourning, a day of national tragedy, as citizens of the country, regardless of political leanings, began to come to grips with the bloody drama playing itself out in Dallas. It was not a time for levity, but Diana laughed anyway.

Kennedy was dead, Johnson was president, and Diana Lee Cooper was falling in love.

Rita slept, and so did most of the Indian children, stacked like so much cordwood on the sweltering, screened-in wooden porch of the outing matron’s red brick home. The children had been there for varying lengths of time, from several days to only one or two, while Big Eddie completed his annual boarding-school roundup. The children from Coyote Sitting were the last to arrive. They lay in a miserable huddle at the far end of the long room.

As before, it was noisy in Chuk Shon, far too noisy for Dancing Quail to sleep. Just then another huge wainomi-kalit rumbled down the metal tracks a few blocks away. The whole house shook, and Dancing Quail did, too. She shivered and clutched her grandmother’s precious medicine basket close to her chest. The sound terrified her. The other children had told her that the monster was called a train and that the next night they would travel to Phoenix riding on that huge, noisy beast.

To calm herself, she slipped her fingers inside the basket. On the way to Chuk Shon, Dancing Quail had examined each of the precious items in Understanding Woman’s basket. For the Tohono O’odham, four is a powerful number, and there were four things in the basket-a single eagle feather, a shell Understanding Woman’s dead husband had brought back from his first salt-trading trip to the sea, a jagged piece of pottery with the sign of the turtle etched into the smooth clay, and half a round rock that looked like a broken egg.

The outside shell of the rock was rough and gray, but inside it was alive with beautifully colored cubes. The cubes reminded Dancing Quail of the sun setting behind dark summer rain clouds that sometimes wrapped themselves around Ioligam.

Now, as the iron beast’s whistle once more screeched through the night, Dancing Quail’s groping fingers closed tightly around the rock. She held it and willed herself not to cry. Gradually, a feeling of calm settled over her. Somehow she knew that this mysterious rock was the most important gift in Understanding Woman’s basket. Nothing on the coarse gray outside hinted at the beautiful secret concealed within. That was her grandmother’s secret message for her-to be like the magic rock, tough on the outside but with her spirit hidden safely inside.

No matter what the stern, tall woman with her fiery red hair said, no matter what strange name the Mil-gahn woman called her, Dancing Quail would still be Dancing Quail.

With the geode clutched tightly in her fingers, the child drifted into a fitful sleep.

“Look,” Brandon said, as they sped around the long curve at Brawley Wash just before Three Points. “Why go all the way out to the house for your car? You’ll have to drive on into town by yourself. I’d be happy to drive you to the hospital and bring you back home afterward.”

“You’ve done enough already,” Diana responded. “More than you should have.”

But Brandon Walker didn’t want the evening to be over, didn’t want to go home to the house where his father, who didn’t have a brain tumor and who didn’t have anything definite wrong with him that the doctors could point to, sometimes didn’t recognize his own son’s face.

“The boy’s asleep,” Brandon continued. “If you change cars, you’ll wake him up.”

“I’ll have to wake him up in half an hour anyway. That’s what the doctor said.”

“By then we’ll already be at the hospital. Besides, you must be worn out.”

Diana surprised herself by not arguing or insisting. “All right,” she said, leaning back in the car and closing her eyes. It felt good to have someone else handling things for a change, to have someone taking care of her. That hadn’t happened to her for a long time, not since her mother died.

With her daughter away at school, Iona Dade Cooper avoided telling anyone she was sick. Once Diana found out about it, Iona brushed aside all alarmed entreaties that she go someplace besides La Grande for tests, that she utilize one of the big-city hospitals in Spokane or Portland with their big-city specialists.

“Too expensive,” Iona declared firmly. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to be that far away from your father.”

Diana had bitten back any number of angry comments. As usual, her father was a bent reed, not strong enough for anyone else to lean on. Max Cooper had refused to come to the little community hospital in La Grande the night before his wife’s exploratory surgery, claiming that being around hospitals made him nervous.

“Well, stay here then!” Diana had flared at him. “For God’s sake, don’t go out of your way!”

In the old days, Max would have backhanded his daughter for that remark, but not with Gary, his brand-new son-in-law, standing there gaping.

“I have an idea, Mr. Cooper,” Gary Ladd said soothingly, stepping into the fray.

Max loved the fact that his son-in-law insisted on calling him “Mr. Cooper.” No one in Joseph accorded the Garbage Man that kind of respect.

“Diana can go down to La Grande to be with Iona tonight, and I’ll stay here. That way, neither one of you will be alone.”

Max nodded. “I appreciate that, Gary. I really do.”

So Diana spent the night in the hospital with her mother, sitting on a straight-backed chair near the bed, talking because her mother was too frightened to sleep despite the doctor-ordered sleeping pills.

“You’ll look after your father when I’m gone, won’t you, Diana?” Iona asked.

“Don’t talk that way, Mom. It’s going to be fine. You’ll see.”

But Iona knew otherwise. “He’ll need someone to take care of the bills. No matter what happens, as soon as you get back to Joseph, go down to the bank and have Ed Gentry put you on as a signer on both the checking and savings accounts.”

“That’s crazy, and you know it. Daddy’ll never agree to having me as a signer on his bank account.”

“He’ll have to,” Iona replied. “He’ll need someone to write the checks for him.”

“Write the checks?” Diana echoed stupidly.

“Your father doesn’t know how to read or write, Diana,” Iona explained. “He never learned. He never wanted you or anyone else to know, but if something happens to me, if I die, he’s going to need someone to look after him.”

Diana was dumbstruck. “Daddy can’t read?”

“I tried to teach him years ago when we first got married, before you were born, but the letters were always jumbled and funny. He couldn’t do it.”

“If he can’t read, how did he keep his job all these years?”

“He’s always been able to do math in his head, so nobody ever knew. When there were receipts that had to be written up or reports of some kind, I always handled those.”

“Will he lose his job?”

Iona nodded. “Probably, and the house, too. I’m worried about what will happen to him.”

“I’ll take care of him,” Diana promised. “I don’t know how, but I will.”

Iona lapsed into silence. For a while, Diana thought maybe her mother had fallen asleep. Diana sat there stunned, still grappling with the sudden knowledge that her father was illiterate.

She remembered his angry tirade when she had told him she was going to go to the University of Oregon to learn how to be a writer.

“A writer!” he had roared. “You, a writer?”

“Why not?” she had spat back at him, daring him to hit her but knowing that he wouldn’t because the rodeo was just days away. Max Cooper couldn’t afford to give his daughter a black eye just before the Chief Joseph Days Parade and Rodeo.

“I’ll tell you why not. You’re a woman, that’s why not.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Was Shakespeare a woman?” he demanded. “Were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John women? I’ll say not. They were all men, every last one of them, and let me tell you, sister, they’re good enough for me!”

She remembered the conversation word for word, and all the time that lying bastard had been berating her about how good Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were, he couldn’t read a one of them. Sitting there in the darkened