country acknowledging that their arbitrary decision effectively divided in half and disenfranchised the much older- nine thousand years older-Papago nation.
Because Many Dogs Village was on the Mexican side, Fat Crack would have to cross the border at The Gate- an unofficial and unpatrolled crossing point in the middle of the reservation. Once in Mexico, he would have to make his way to the village on foot, or perhaps one of the traders from the other side would offer him a ride.
Supposing Fat Crack did manage to find the object of his search, how would he bring the old man back to Rita’s bedside in the Indian Health Service Hospital? According to Fat Crack’s estimates, if Looks At Nothing were still alive, he would be well into his eighties. Such an old man might not be eager to travel.
The Gate was really nothing but a break in the six-strand border fence surrounded by flat open desert and dotted, on both sides, with the parked pickups of traders and customers alike. Owners of these trucks did a brisk business in bootleg liquor, tortillas, tamales, and goat cheese, with an occasional batch of pot thrown in for good measure.
Fat Crack approached one of the bootleggers and inquired how to find Looks At Nothing’s house. The man pointed to a withered old man sitting in the shade of a mesquite tree.
“Why go all the way to his house?” the man asked derisively. “Why not see him here?”
Looks At Nothing sat under the tree with a narrow rolled bundle and a gnarled ironwood cane on the ground in front of him. As Fat Crack approached, the sightless old man scrambled agilely to his feet. “Have you come to take me to Hejel Wi’ikam?” he asked.
Fat Crack was taken aback. How did the old man know? “Hejel Wi’ithag,” he corrected respectfully. “An old widow, not an orphaned child.”
Looks At Nothing shook his head. “She was an orphan when I first knew her. She is an orphan still.
Fat Crack helped the wiry old man climb up into the tow truck. How did Looks At Nothing know someone would come for him that day? Surely no one in Many Dogs owned a telephone, but the old man had appeared at The Gate fully prepared to travel.
Devout Christian Scientist that he was, Fat Crack was far too much of a pragmatist to deny, on religious grounds, that which is demonstrably obvious. Looks At Nothing, that cagey old shaman, would bear close watching.
Brandon Walker dreaded going home. He figured that after he’d spent the whole night AWOL, Louella would be ready to have his ears. He stopped in the kitchen long enough to hang his car keys on the pegboard and to pour himself a cup of coffee, steeling himself for the inevitable onslaught. Instead of being angry, however, when his frantic mother came looking for him, she was so relieved to see him that all she could do was blither.
“It’s a piano, Brandon. Dear God in heaven, a Steinway!”
“Calm down. What are you talking about?”
“Toby. I worry about buying food sometimes, and here he goes and orders a piano. For his sister, the concert pianist, he told them. His sister’s been dead for thirty-five years, Brandon. What is Toby thinking of? What are we going to do?”
“Did the check clear?”
“No. Of course not. Do you know how much Steinways cost? The store called me and said there must be some mistake. I told them it was a mistake, all right.”
“Where’s Dad now?”
“Inside. Taking a nap. He said he was tired.”
“Let’s go, Mother,” Brandon ordered. “Get your car.” This time he wasn’t going to allow any argument.
“The car? Where are we going?”
“Downtown to the bank. We’ll have to hurry. It’s Saturday, and they’re only open until noon. We’re closing that checking account once and for all.”
Louella promptly burst into tears. “How can we do that to your father, Brandon, after he’s worked so hard all these years? It seems so. . so underhanded.”
“How many Steinways do you want, Mom?” His position was unassailable.
“I’ll go get my purse. Do you think he’ll be all right here by himself if he wakes up?”
“He’ll have to be. There’s no one else we can leave him with. We’ll hurry, but we’ve both got to go to the bank.”
It wasn’t until he was left alone with the young deputy that Ernesto Tashquinth realized exactly how much trouble he was in. Come to think of it, the Pinal County homicide detective had been asking him some pretty funny questions: Why did he go up the mountain to check the spring in the first place? What was the woman’s name again? How long had he known her? How well did he know her?
Ernesto tried to be helpful. He patiently answered the questions as best he could. The buzzards, he told them. He had seen the circling buzzards, and he was afraid if something was dead up there, the smell might come down to the picnic-table area and get him in trouble with his boss.
But now the detective had gone up the mountain to oversee the removal of the body, and Ernesto was left with a young hotshot deputy who couldn’t resist swaggering.
“How come you bit that poor lady’s boob off, Big Man? Do you know what happens to guys like you once you’re inside?”
Ernesto didn’t need the deputy to draw him any pictures. He remembered all too well a former schoolmate from Sacaton who, accused of raping a white woman, had turned up dead in a
“I want a lawyer,” Ernesto said quietly. “I don’t have to say anything more until I have a lawyer.”
“The judge will be only too happy to appoint you one, if you live that long,” the deputy told him with a leering grin. “He’ll do it by Monday or Tuesday at the latest, but it’s a long time between now and then, chief. If I were you, I’d be good-very, very good.”
They brought squares of Jell-O for lunch, and Juanita tried to feed them to her, but Rita shook her head and closed her eyes once more.
The next years passed happily for Dancing Quail, although no one called her that anymore. She became Understanding Woman’s
When Dancing Quail’s young charge went off to school, no one thought to send her. People forgot that Dancing Quail was little more than a child herself. By then, her grandmother was so frail that she needed someone with her most of the time. Dancing Quail was happy to be that someone. She spent all her waking hours with Understanding Woman, caring for her and learning whatever lessons her grandmother cared to teach.
Dancing Quail was fourteen and had passed her first menstruation with all due ceremony the summer Father John rode into her life. He had hair the color of autumn grass and funny red skin that sometimes peeled and flaked off in the hot sun.
Father John came to Ban Thak because the sisters at Topawa had sent him. They worried that Alice Antone’s orphaned daughter was growing up too much under her grandmother’s pagan influence. The girl never came to church anymore, not even at Christmas and Easter. The sisters sent Father John in hopes that by offering the girl a cleaning job at the mission in Topawa, they might also coax her back into the fold.
Father John, fresh out of seminary, was an earnest young man on his first assignment. When he saw Rita with her long black hair flowing loose and glossy around her shoulders, when he saw her dancing brown eyes and bright white teeth against tawny skin, he thought her the loveliest, most exotic creature he had ever encountered. He was intrigued by the fact that, despite the heat, she didn’t wear shoes. When he rode into the village in his dusty, coughing touring car, she ran beside it barefoot, along with the other village children, laughing and making fun of him because they could run faster than he could drive.
He spoke to Understanding Woman that afternoon as best he could. Unable to communicate in a common
