The next afternoon while Dancing Quail was busy with her endless dusting, she heard visitors being ushered into the convent. Soon Sister Mary Jane came looking for her. “Someone is waiting to see you, Rita.”
Dancing Quail was thunderstruck when she came to the arched doorway of the living room and found her grandmother sitting on the horsehair couch with Sister Veronica. Across a small table, in matching chairs, sat Father Mark from San Xavier and the BIA outing matron from Tucson; Dancing Quail stood transfixed for a moment, looking questioningly from face to face.
“Good afternoon, Rita,” Father Mark boomed heartily. “Come in and sit down.”
Dancing Quail slipped warily into the room. She made for a small footstool near Understanding Woman. When she sat down next to her grandmother, she looked to the old woman’s weathered face for answers, but Understanding Woman made no acknowledgement.
“We’re here about you and your baby,” Father Mark said brusquely.
Father Mark’s loud, forthright ways were often offensive to the politely soft-spoken Papagos who made up his flock. At this frontal attack, Rita’s features darkened with shame, but she made no attempt at denial.
“You must go away at once, of course,” he continued. “Your staying here is entirely out of the question. To that end, I have contacted Mrs. Manning here. Between us, we’ve made arrangements for you to have a position with a good family in Phoenix. Isn’t that right, Lucille?”
Over the years, the outing matron’s once-red hair had faded to a muddy gray, but Dancing Quail still remembered the withering look the woman had given her years before when the
Lucille Manning nodded. “They are a very respectable family in Phoenix. Under most circumstances, they wouldn’t consider taking someone in your. . in your condition. But Adele and Charles Clark are old friends of Father Mark’s. They’re also very interested in Indian basketry. When I told them you were a basket maker, they decided to make an exception.”
“I don’t understand. .” Rita began.
The priest cut her off. “Of course you do, girl! You’re not stupid. It would be very bad for Father John if you stayed here to have this baby. It would drive him out of the priesthood, destroy him completely, leave him to rot in hell. You wouldn’t want to do that, now would you?”
“No, but. .”
“And we’ve found a place where you can go. It’ll be a good job, one that pays more than the sisters can.”
“But what about my grandmother?” Dancing Quail asked. “What will happen to her?”
“I will go home,” Understanding Woman said, speaking for the first time. “I will go home to Ban Thak and wait to die.”
Father Mark told Rita to pack her things, that the outing matron would leave shortly to take her to Tucson and the train. The girl left the convent with Understanding Woman.
“Please,
Understanding Woman was adamant. “You must go,” she said firmly. “To lead a holy man or a priest away from his vows is very bad luck, for you and for him as well. You must go far away and never see him again.”
Without further argument, Dancing Quail gathered her things. This time she didn’t use a burden basket. The girls who worked in town said that burden baskets were old-fashioned and clumsy. One of the nuns had given her a cast-off leather case. Into this battered relic, she put her own meager possessions.
She was about to strap the case shut when Understanding Woman appeared at her side. “
Tentatively, Dancing Quail picked up Understanding Woman’s medicine basket, the last one the old woman ever made. She opened the top and peered inside. There were the things she remembered-a clay doll, another fragment of the same beautiful spirit rock, an arrowhead, and a hank of long black hair. Tears streamed down the young woman’s face as she replaced the lid and carefully wedged the basket in one corner of the case.
Because of Father John, her grandmother was sending Dancing Quail away, but with her blessing rather than without. The old woman’s puny medicine basket could offer only the slightest protection against the outside world, but it was far better than no protection at all. Besides, it was the only gift Understanding Woman had to give.
The two Indians left San Xavier and drove to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. Fat Crack had been here on business numerous times, and he knew his way around. He also understood the kind of treatment they could expect.
“I want to speak to Detective Walker,” he said, going up to the glass-enclosed cage that separated clerk from waiting room.
“He’s not in,” the clerk said.
“Can you call him?”
“He’s not on duty today.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“I’m telling you, he’s not in.”
“We’ll wait,” Fat Crack said, and showed Looks At Nothing to a chair. An hour later, they were still there.
Sheriff DuShane didn’t usually come in on weekends, but he had forgotten his golf clubs at the office, and he needed them now. He was surprised to find two Indians seated stolidly in the front waiting area. There were usually plenty of Indians in the cell-block, but not that many out front.
“What’s with the powwow in the lobby?” he asked.
The clerk shrugged. “Who knows? They want to talk to Walker. I told them plain as day that it’s his day off.”
“Like hell it is,” DuShane growled. “You call him and tell him to get in here to take care of it. I don’t need a bunch of Indians sitting around stinking up the place.”
“But he’s at the hospital with his father. .”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass where he is. You get him on the horn and tell him to take care of it. Brandon Walker’s in deep shit with me about now. He’d by God better not drag his heels.”
Brandon Walker was both mystified and relieved by the departmental phone call that summoned him from Tucson Medical Center. The relief came from having a legitimate reason to abandon his distracted mother who was still waiting for the appearance of the second-opinion doctor, a process that Brandon could neither stop nor speed up. He wondered why two reservation Indians would insist on seeing him this ragingly hot Sunday afternoon.
In the waiting room, he immediately recognized the younger of the two as the person looking after Davy Ladd in the hospital at Sells. The old man, blind and bent, leaning on a gnarled ironwood cane, was a complete stranger.
“Would you like to come back to my office?” Walker asked.
Fat Crack translated Brandon’s words. The old man shook his head emphatically, speaking rapidly in Papago.
“He wants to talk outside,” Fat Crack explained. “He wants to smoke.”
The crazy old coot could smoke in here where it’s cool, Brandon thought, but he shrugged his shoulders in compliance and followed the other two men outside into the ungodly heat. Fat Crack led them to a small patch of shade under a thriving mesquite tree. The old man sat cross-legged on the ground and opened the flap of a leather pouch that he wore around his waist. Removing a homemade cigarette, he started to light up. Brandon reached for his own cigarettes, but the younger man stopped him.
“Looks At Nothing would like you to join him,” Fat Crack said, sitting down next to the old man.
Obligingly, Walker left his package of filter-tips where they were. He squatted down close to the other two and waited. He tried unsuccessfully to estimate ages. The younger man was probably in his mid-to-late forties, but the older one’s sundried, weathered skin defied categorizing.
After deftly lighting his cigarette with a worn brass lighter, the old man puffed on it in absorbed concentration. He reminded Brandon of the aged Vietnamese villagers he had seen during the war, venerated old
