'But Rita wants her,' Diana said.
'Regardless of what Rita wants, she's seventy years old right this minute,' Brandon pointed out, taking refuge in what seemed to him to be obvious logic. 'And considering it was neglect from an elderly grandparent that sent the poor little tyke to the hospital in the first place, nobody in the child welfare system is going to approve of Rita as an adoptive parent.'
'I wasn't talking about Rita adopting her,' Diana said quietly. 'I was talking about us.'
Brandon dropped his newspaper. 'Us?' he echoed.
Diana nodded. 'It's the only way Rita will ever be able to have her.'
'But Diana,' Brandon argued. 'How long do you think Rita will be around? She already has health problems. In the long run, that little girl will end up being our sole responsibility.'
'So?' Diana answered with a shrug. 'Is that such an awful prospect?'
Brandon frowned. 'That depends. With your work and my work, and with the three kids we already have, it seems to me that our lives are complicated enough. Why add another child into the mix?'
'We have yours, and we have mine,' Diana returned quietly. 'We don't have any that are ours-yours and mine together.'
'A toddler?' Brandon said. He shook his head, but Diana could see he was weakening. 'Are you sure you could stand having one of those underfoot again?'
Diana smiled. 'I think I could stand it. I can tell you that I much prefer toddlers to teenagers.'
'In case you haven't noticed, most toddlers turn into teenagers eventually.'
'But there are a few good years before that happens.'
'A few,' Brandon conceded.
'And Rita says she'll handle most of the child-care duties. She really wants this little girl, Brandon. It's all she's talked about for days-about how much she could teach her. It's as though she wants to pour everything into Clemencia that she was never able to share with her own granddaughter.'
'Diana, replacing one child with another doesn't work. It isn't healthy.'
For the space of several minutes, Diana was silent. 'Living your life with a hole in it isn't healthy, either,' she said finally. 'Garrison Ladd and Andrew Carlisle put that hole in Rita's life, Brandon. Maybe you don't feel any responsibility for Gina Antone's death, but I do. And now I have an opportunity to do something about it.'
'And it's something you really want to do? Something you want us to do?'
'Yes.'
Again there was a long period of silence. 'I guess we'll have to see,' he said finally. 'I'll bet it doesn't matter one way or the other what we decide because I still don't think the tribal court will go for it.'
'But we can try?'
'Diana,' he said, 'you do whatever you want. I'll back you either way.'
Brandon made a point to come home from work early the next afternoon when Wanda Ortiz arrived with Clemencia. Diana went to answer the door, leaving Brandon and Rita in the living room. Brandon was sitting on the couch and Rita was in her wheelchair when Wanda carried the screaming child into the room.
'She's been crying ever since we left the hospital,' Wanda said apologetically, setting the weeping child down in the middle of the room. 'Too many strangers, I guess.'
Clemencia Escalante looked awful. Most of her woefully thin body was covered with scabs from hundreds of ant bites. A few of those had become infected and were still bandaged. She stood in the middle of the room, sobbing, with fat tears dripping off her chin and falling onto the floor. She turned in a circle, looking from one unfamiliar face to another. When her eyes finally settled on Rita, she stopped.
' Ihab-here,' Rita crooned softly, crooking her finger. 'Come here, little one.'
Still crying but with her attention now riveted on Rita's kind but wrinkled face, Clemencia took a tentative step forward.
'Come here,' Rita said again.
Suddenly the room was deathly quiet. For a moment Diana thought that the child was simply pausing long enough to catch her breath and that another ear-splitting shriek would soon follow. Instead, Clemencia suddenly darted across the room, throwing herself toward Rita with so much force that the wheelchair rocked back and forth on its braked wheels. Without another sound, Clemencia clambered into Rita's lap, burying her face in the swell of the old woman's ample breasts. There the child settled in, clinging desperately to the folds of Rita's dress with two tiny knotted fists.
Shaking his head in wonder, Brandon Walker looked from the now silent child to his wife. 'Well,' he said with a shrug, squinting so the tears in his eyes didn't show too much. 'It looks as though I don't stand a chance, do I?'
And he didn't. From that moment on, the child named Clemencia Escalante who would one day be known as Dolores Lanita Walker owned Brandon Walker's heart and soul.
6
After traveling a long way, Coyote reached a village where there was a little water. While Ban was hunting for a drink, an old Indian saw him. Old Limping Man-this Gohhim O'othham-still talked the speech all I'itoi's people understood. So Coyote told him what Buzzard had seen in that part of the desert which was so badly burned.
Old Limping Man told the people of the village. That night the people held a council to decide what they should do. They feared that someone had been left behind in the burning desert.
In the morning,Gohhim O'othham and a young man started back over the desert with some water. They traveled only a little way after Tash — the sun-came up. Through the heat of the day they rested. When Sun went down in the west, they went on.
The first day there werekukui u'us — mesquite trees, but the trees had very few leaves, and those were very dry.
The next day it was hotter. There were no trees of any kind, onlyshegoi — greasewood bushes. The greasewood bushes were almost white from dryness.
The third day they found nothing but a few dry sticks ofmelhog — the ocotillo-and some prickly pears- nahkag.
The fourth day there seemed to be nothing left at all but rocks. And the rocks were very hot.
The two men did not drink the water which they carried. They mixed only a little of the water with theirhahki — a parched roasted wheat which theMil-gahn, the Whites, call pinole. This is the food of the Desert People when they are traveling. While they were mixing their pinole on the morning of the fourth day, Old Limping Man looked up and saw Coyote running toward them and calling for help.
The carpenter who had helped refit the Bounder had questioned why Mitch needed a complex trundle- bed/storage unit that would roll in and out of the locker under the regular bed. 'It's for my grandson,' Mitch had explained. 'He goes fishing with me sometimes, and he likes to sleep in the same kind of bed he has at home.'
'Oh,' the carpenter had grunted. The man had gone ahead and made the bed to specs, tiny four-posters and all, and now, for the first time, Mitch was going to get to use it. Leaving Lani Walker asleep on the bed above for a moment, he pulled the trundle bed out of the storage space and locked the four casters in place. Then, with the bed ready and waiting, Mitch turned his attention to the girl.
She was limp but pliable under his hands. Undressing her reminded him of undressing Mikey when he'd fall asleep on his way home from shopping or eating dinner in town. One arm at a time, he took off first her shirt and then the delicate white bra. The boots were harder. He had to grip her leg and pull in one direction with one hand and then pry off the boot with the other. On her feet were a pair of white socks. Mitch was glad to see that her toenails weren't painted. That would have spoiled it somehow in a way he never would have been able to explain. After the socks came the jeans and the chaste white panties. Only when she was completely naked, did he ease her down onto the lower bed.
Just as he had known it would be, that was a critical moment. He wanted her so badly right then that he could almost taste it. His own pants seemed ready to burst, but he knew better. That was the mistake Andy had made. Mitch Johnson was smart enough not to fall into the same trap.
