Hour of the Hunter

little boy. They fed him and took care of him.

One day, when he was old enough, the little boy took four drinking gourds and went searching for his mother. First he met Eagle. “Have you seen my mother?” the little boy asked.

“Give me one of your drinking gourds, and I will tell you where to find your mother.” The boy gave Eagle a gourd, and he said, “Go toward those mountains. There you will find her.”

The boy walked until he neared the mountains. There, he met Crow. “Have you seen my mother?” he asked.

“Give me one of your drinking gourds, and I will tell you where to find your mother.” The boy gave Crow a gourd, and he said, “Climb these mountains, and you will find her.”

The boy climbed in the hot sun until he reached the top of the mountains. There, he met Hawk. “Have you seen my mother?” he asked.

“Give me one of your drinking gourds, and I will tell you where to find your mother.” The boy gave Hawk a gourd, and he said, “Your mother is at the bottom of these mountains. Go there, and you will find her.”

The boy walked until he reached the bottom of the mountains. There, he met Mourning Dove. “Have you seen my mother?” he asked.

“Give me your drinking gourd, and I will tell you where to find her.” The boy gave Mourning Dove his last gourd, and he said, “Your mother is on the other side of this valley. Go there, and you will find her.”

The boy walked until he met some children playing. “Have you seen my mother?” he asked.

“Yes,” the children said. “She is down on the field playing hockey.”

“Go tell her that her son is here and that I want to see her.” The children went to the woman and told her, but she was busy playing hockey and wouldn’t come. When the children came back and told the little boy, he was very sad.

“Since my mother will not come to me, I will find a tarantula hole and go live there.” He found a tarantula hole and started to go in it. Just then his mother came, but the boy was already disappearing into the ground. The mother tried to pull him back, but it was too late. The only thing left to see was a single bright feather that the little boy had worn in his hair.

The mother was very sad, and she began to cry. Ban, Coyote, was passing by, and he heard her. He went to see what the noise was all about. She told him that her son had just been buried in the tarantula’s hole, and she asked Coyote to dig the child out.

When Coyote began to dig, he found that the little boy was not far underground. Coyote was hungry with all his work, and he didn’t see why he should take the child to a mother who had never done anything but play field hockey, so Coyote ate the little boy. When the bones were picked clean, Coyote gave them to the mother along with the bright feather. “Someone has eaten your child,” he said. “This is all I could find.”

The woman was even sadder. She kept the feather, but she asked Coyote to bury the bones of her child once more. That night she watered the ground over the bones with her tears, and in four days a green thing began to grow out of the place where the bones were buried. It was a’alichum hahshani or Baby Saguaro, the first giant cactus in the whole world. And that is the story of The Woman Who Loved Field Hockey.

As they neared Three Points, Rita Antone shifted down into second. The rickety ’56 GMC creaked and shuddered. Like the woman who was its owner, the twenty-year-old truck was showing signs of age. Despite a serious miss in the engine, Rita had every confidence it would limp along out to Sells and back to town with no problem, but she planned to stop by the gas station and talk to her sister’s boy about it.

Rita still thought of Gabe Ortiz by his boyhood name of Gihg Tahpani, or Fat Crack, but her nephew hardly qualified as a boy anymore. He was middle-aged now, a well-respected reservation businessman, with flecks of gray leaching through his straight black hair. It was Gabe’s faithful mechanical ministrations that kept the old Jimmy running.

Rita knew that when Fat Crack looked at the truck, he would wipe his hands on a grease rag, shake his head sadly, and scold her because the front end was out of alignment and the tires were nearly bald, but Rita would tell him as she always did, “No tires, not now, not this time.”

More than once, Diana Ladd had offered to replace the truck or fix it, but Rita always declined. She had bought it new and kept it all those years. She didn’t drive it much anymore, only a few times a year when she went out to gather the raw materials for her baskets-devil’s claw from the reservation or bear grass and yucca from Benson. Then there were the anniversary trips, like this one, but because Diana Ladd didn’t want to talk about that, Rita usually disguised her real intentions by saying she was going to a feast or taking her newest crop of baskets up to the top of Ioligam, the mountain Anglos called Kitt Peak, to be sold in the observatory gift shop there.

Rita was determined to drive the old truck until one or the other of them stopped dead. If the truck happened to go first, she would leave it wherever it died, parked on the side of the road if necessary.

Three Points Trading Post at Robles Junction was thirty miles west of Tucson on Highway 86, the main road leading out to the reservation. The trading post’s primary claim to fame was its undisputed reputation for selling more beer on a weekly basis than all of Davis Monthan Air Force Base combined.

Charley Raymond, the most recent Anglo owner, hurried to the pumps as Rita stopped the truck. “What do you want?” he asked.

Deliberately, Rita eased her heavy frame out of the driver’s seat. “Five dollars’ worth of regular,” she said and went inside, with Davy trailing happily along behind.

Once inside the store, Davy made a dash for the refrigerator and grabbed his favorite treat-a carton of chocolate milk. Rita went to the cooler and withdrew a single can of Coors. She didn’t drink much, but the day’s real task promised to be hard, thirsty work, and she would need a beer when she finished. A single beer would be welcome. It would also be enough.

Leaving the cooler, Rita steered Davy firmly past a beckoning display of Twinkies and led him to a shelf laden with plastic memorial wreaths and votive candles. He watched curiously while she selected a wreath of bright pink roses.

“This one?” she asked, holding it up for his inspection.

“It’s pretty,” he said with a puzzled frown, “but, Nana, why are we getting flowers?”

Shaking her head, Rita didn’t answer. Instead, she took the wreath, one tall, glass-enclosed candle with a picture of the Virgin Mary on the outside, and the can of Coors, then she threaded her way through the narrow aisles up to the cash register. From behind the counter, Daisy Raymond, a narrow-faced Anglo woman, eyed Rita suspiciously.

Buying the trading post had been Charley’s idea, not Daisy’s. She hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with it, but Charley had convinced her that running the store for a few years was a good way to finish bankrolling their retirement. Now, months later, she reluctantly agreed he was right. In beer sales alone, the place was a gold mine.

The problem was, Daisy Raymond didn’t like Indians. Never had. She stood trapped behind the cash register day after day taking Indian money and trying, unsuccessfully, to conceal her dislike behind a barrage of inane chatter. Being around Daisy Raymond made Rita draw back inside herself.

“Nice day out there, isn’t it,” Daisy said. “Real hot for so early in the year.”

“Five dollars’ of gas,” Rita replied, refusing to be drawn into a conversation about the weather. She placed her other selections on the checkout counter. When all the purchases were rung up and totaled on the old-fashioned cash register, Rita painstakingly counted out the exact change from her purse. People running trading posts no longer routinely cheated Indians, but Rita was careful about it all the same, especially with people like Daisy Raymond.

“Need any matches for the candle?” Daisy asked.

Rita nodded.

“How come you people use so many wreaths and candles?” Daisy asked. Rita shrugged. When the Indian woman made no reply, Daisy continued on her own. She was accustomed to carrying on these one-sided