“Me’akam Mad,” he replied.
Diana Ladd knew some Papago, but not nearly as much as Davy. This she didn’t recognize at all. “What does that mean?”
“Killer’s Child,” Davy whispered.
Instantly, Diana was outraged. “Who called you that?”
“Some of the Indian ladies. At the hospital. They thought I didn’t understand.”
Not trusting her ability to speak, Diana got up and paced to the window. She stared out at a star-studded sky over the jagged black shadow of mountain. Even with the cooler running, the house was warm, but she felt suddenly chilled.
“Is it true?” Davy insisted. “Did my father kill somebody?”
“Yes,” Diana answered at last, abandoning all pretense. Davy had to be told.
“Who?”
“Her name was Gina, Gina Antone.”
“Rita’s granddaughter?”
Diana nodded. “Yes.”
“But Rita loves us. Why would she if. .”
Diana turned decisively from the window. “Davy, listen to me. Your father was there when Gina died, but he didn’t do it, and he didn’t remember anything that happened. He fell asleep, and when he woke up, she was dead. Another man was there with them-a friend of your father’s, a man named Andrew Carlisle. He tried to put all the blame on your father.”
“What happened to him?”
“The other man? To Carlisle?” Davy nodded. “He went to jail, finally. The state prison. Rita and I saw to it.”
“But he didn’t die?”
“No.”
“People still think my father did it.”
“Probably. He wasn’t alive to defend himself.”
“And the other man was?”
“Yes, and he hired expensive lawyers. He was an Anglo, a well-known one, a teacher from the university, and the dead girl was only an Indian. Everybody acted as though it didn’t matter if an Indian got killed, as though she weren’t important. With your father dead, it was a terrible time for me, but it was worse for Rita. She didn’t have anyone to help her, so I did-with the police, with Detective Walker and the prosecutor. If I hadn’t been there, Carlisle never would have gone to jail.”
Most of Diana Ladd’s impassioned explanation fell on deaf ears. Davy plucked out only one solid fact from the raging torrent of words. “Detective Walker? The man who was here this morning? The one who took me for my stitches?”
“Yes.”
“He knew about my father, too?”
“Yes.”
Abruptly, Davy flopped over on his side, turning away from her and facing the wall. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”
“But, Davy. .”
“I’m going to sleep.”
Drained and rejected, Diana started to leave the room, but Davy called to her before the door closed. “Mom?”
“What?”
“How come everybody knew about my father but me?”
The hurt and betrayal in Davy’s voice squeezed her heart. “It was a terrible thing,” she told him. “You weren’t old enough to understand.”
“I’m old enough now,” he muttered fiercely into his pillow when the door clicked shut. “I am too.”
But he wasn’t. Not really. He lay awake for a long time after his mother left him, trying to understand why his father would have wanted to be dead so soon, why he hadn’t wanted to wait around long enough to meet his own son.
Davy wished he could have asked him. He really wanted to know.
Looks At Nothing was gone, leaving Rita alone with her memories of that long ago, fateful summer. Homesick, Understanding Woman had wanted to return to Ban Thak. It was too hot in Burnt Dog Village. She longed to be in Coyote Sitting where it was cool and where she would be among old friends for the coming rain dance. Hearing this, Father John generously offered a ride. They would leave one day and return the next. Surely, the nuns could spare Rita for that long.
When the big day came, Dancing Quail was excited to be going home for the first time since she had moved to Topawa earlier that spring. She wore new clothes, which she had purchased from the trading post with her own money. She looked forward to seeing other girls her age, to being included as one of them.
By now Dancing Quail had ridden in Father John’s touring car more than once. She was totally at ease. While Understanding Woman drowsed peacefully in the backseat, Rita chattered away in her much-improved English, pointing out the various sights along the way, telling Father John the Papago words for mountains and rocks, plants and animals, and reciting some of the traditional stories that went along with them.
Father John had offered a ride, but he wasn’t pleased to be going to the rain dance, and he didn’t much like the stories, either. On a professional basis, he disapproved of the annual midsummer rain dances, thinking them little more than orgies where people got so drunk on ceremonial cactus wine that they vomited into the dirt. Ancestral Papago wisdom dictated this was necessary to summon back Cloud Man and Wind Man who brought with them summer rains, the lifeblood of the desert. Father John thought otherwise.
When he first arrived on the reservation, the priest’s initial impulse had been to preach fiery sermons and forbid his parishioners’ attendance at the dances altogether, but Father Mark, his superior, had counseled otherwise. He said the church would be better served if Father John attended the various dances in person, putting in goodwill appearances at each. He advised the younger man to do what he could to keep his flock in line, but not to turn the dances into forbidden fruit. After all, Father Mark explained, forbidden or not, the Papagos would go anyway.
Dutifully, Father John attended, but he didn’t think it did any good. He was beginning to realize that the Papagos were an exceedingly stubborn lot and almost totally impervious to the influence of outsiders. They listened politely enough. As succeeding waves of Anglo missionaries washed across their austere corner of the world, the
Father John suspected that Papago acceptance of any external religion, his included, was only skin deep. The Bible with its Old and New Testaments got layered in among all the other traditional stories, ones about I’itoi and Elder Brother. In this regard, his young charge Rita was no different from the others. She listened attentively during weekly catechism sessions, answering questions dutifully and well, but he worried that just beneath the surface of Dancing Quail’s shiny Catholic veneer lurked an undisturbed bedrock of pagan beliefs.
“What are you going to do at the dance?” he asked. At sixteen, Rita seemed much too young to sit in the circle and drink the cactus wine. He worried about that as well.
She laughed and tossed her head. “I think I’ll find myself a husband. Did you know that during a rain dance the woman may choose? The rest of the time, the men do the choosing.”
“I hope you choose well,” Father John said seriously.
He had seen several instances of unwise choices. Young women with their newfound jobs and independence were finding partners for themselves rather than following the old ways and letting their families do the negotiating. As a result, there was a growing problem with out-of-wedlock pregnancies. In addition, there were more and more cases where young fathers simply walked away from familial responsibilities.
“Maybe I’ll choose you,” Rita said with a mischievous smile.
Father John flushed. Dancing Quail always laughed at him when his ears turned red like that.
