but no matter what he did, the ball of dough remained just that-a stubborn ball of dough.
Davy hurried to his place at the bare wooden table, while Bone settled comfortably at his feet. Rita placed a mound of thick red chili on the popovers, folded them over, and brought them to the table on plates.
In the center of the table sat a small bowl piled high with cooked broccoli. While Davy wrinkled his nose in disgust, Nana Dahd ladled a spoonful of broccoli onto his plate next to the steaming popover.
'You know I hate broccoli,' he said, reaching at once for the popover.
Rita was unmoved. 'Eat your vegetables,' she said.
Davy nodded, but as soon as Rita turned her back, he slipped the broccoli under the table to a waiting and appreciative Bone. The dog liked everything-including broccoli.
It is said that long ago there was a woman who loved to play Toka, which the Mil-gahn, the whites, call field hockey. She loved it so much that she never wanted to do anything else. Even after her child was born, she would leave the baby alone all day long to go play hockey. One day she went away and didn't come back. The women in the village felt sorry for the baby, a 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'alichurn 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
