For centuries, water captured in these isolated charcos irrigated Indian fields and watered livestock.
'But why are we going to a charco, Nana Dahd? I thought we were going to a dance.'
Rita stopped the truck where a barbed-wire gate barred their way. 'To the charco first. Go open the gate,' she said.
Proud to be assigned such an important task, Davy did as he was told.
He stood to one side, holding the gate until Rita had driven through.
Once the gate was closed and he was back in the truck, they continued to follow the faint track, stopping at last just outside a shady grove of towering cottonwoods clustered around the man-made banks of an earthen water hole.
Hard-caked mud, baked shiny by an unrelenting sun and shot through with jagged cracks and the hoofprints of thirsty cattle, was all that remained from the previous summer's life-sustaining rainstorms. It was June and hot.
Both people and livestock hoped the rains would come again soon.
Davy looked around warily. For some reason he couldn't explain, he didn't like this place. 'Why are we stopping here?'
'We have work to do, Olhoni. Come. Bring the rake and shovel.'
Carrying the wreath and the candle with her, Nana Dahd slid heavily out of the pickup and trudged toward the base of the largest of the cottonwoods.
The rake and shovel, half again as tall as Davy himself, were unwieldy and difficult for a six-year-old to carry, but he struggled manfully with them, making his way without complaint over the rough track from the truck to where Nana Dahd stood staring down at the ground.
It wasn't until Davy reached her side that he saw what she was looking at-a shrine of sorts, although he didn't know to call it that. In the middle of a circular patch of barren ground stood a small wooden cross.
On it hung a faded plastic wreath, and before it sat a smoky glass vase that had once contained a candle. Both cross and glass were framed by a broken circle of smooth white river rocks.
'What is this, Nana Dahd?' Davy asked. 'A grave? Is this a cemetery?'
He looked up. Nana Dahd's usually impassive face was awash with emotion. A single tear glistened in the corner of her eye. In all his six years, Davy Ladd I had never before seen his beloved Nana Dahd cry.
Tears were precious and not to be spilled without good reason.
Something must be terribly wrong.
'Let's go,' he begged, reaching up and tugging at her hand. 'Let's leave this place. It's scary here.'
But Nana Dahd had no intention of leaving. His touch seemed to jar her out of her reverie. Patting his shoulder, she reached into the pocket of her apron and brought out a huge, wrinkled hanky. She blew her nose and wiped her red-rimmed eyes.
'I'm okay, Olhoni. We will leave, but after, not right now. First we work.'
Nana Dahd showed Davy how animals had scattered some of the white border stones into the brush. She directed him to find and rearrange as many as he could.
Meanwhile, she retrieved the hoe and began scraping the small circle clean of all encroaching blades of grass and weed. As soon as the clearing satisfied her, she carefully removed the faded wreath from the cross and replaced it with the new one.
It was summer, and the harsh early afternoon sun beat down on them as they worked. Davy rebuilt the stone circle as best he could. Rita nodded with approval as he moved the last piece of border into place.
'Good,' she said. 'Now for the candle.'
While Davy watched, she placed the new candle before the cross, bracing it around the base with a supporting bank of rocks and dirt.
'This is to keep the candle from falling over by accident,' she explained. 'It would be very bad if our candle started a range fire.
Finished at last, she knelt before the cross one last time and examined their handiwork. It was good. She motioned for Davy to join her.
'Light the candle, Olhoni,' she said gravely, handing him a book of matches.
Davy scratched his head in exasperation. How could grown-ups be so stupid? 'But, Nana Dahd,' he objected.
'It isn't even dark yet. Why do we need a candle?'
'The light is for the spirits, Olhoni,' she told him. 'It's not for us.'
Davy had used matches a few other times, but always in the house, never outside. It took three sputtering attempts before his small fingers managed to strike a match and keep it burning long enough to touch the flame to the wick of the candle. Nana Dahd watched patiently and without criticism, allowing the child to learn for himself of the need to shelter the match's faltering flame from unexpected breezes.
At last the wick caught fire. Davy glanced at Nana Dahd to see what he should do next. When she bowed her head, closed her eyes, and crossed herself, Davy did the same, listening in rapt silence while the old woman prayed.
To most Anglos that prayer, murmured softly in guttural Papago, would have been incomprehensible, but not to Davy, not to a child whose first spoken word, uttered almost five years earlier, had been a gleeful shout of 11gogs'-Papago for dog--on the day Nana Dahd brought home an ungainly, scrawny puppy. She called the pup 'Ohlo,' Papago for 'Bone.'
