Authors: J. A. Jance
They were in the hummingbird enclosure when Nana
Dahd
began telling the story of the other
Mualig Siakam
, the abandoned woman who would eventually become
Kulani O’oks
—the great medicine woman of the
Tohono O’othham
. As Nana
Dahd
began telling the tale, one of the schoolchildren—a little girl only a year or two older than Lani—slipped away from the group she was with and stopped to listen. Drawn by the magic of a story told in her own language, she stood transfixed and wide-eyed beside Nana
Dahd’
s wheelchair as the tale unfolded. Rita had only gotten as far as the part where Coyote came crying to the two men for help when a shrill-voiced
Mil-gahn
teacher, her face distorted by anger, came marching back to retrieve the little girl.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the teacher shouted. Her loud voice sent the brightly colored hummingbirds scattering in all directions. “We’re supposed to leave soon,” the woman continued. “What would have happened if we had lost you and you missed the bus? How would you have gotten back home?”
Instead of turning to follow the teacher, the child reached out and took hold of Nana
Dahd’
s chair, firmly attaching herself to the arm of it and showing that she didn’t want to leave. “I want to hear the rest of the story,” the little girl whispered in Rita’s ear. “I want to hear about
Mualig Siakam
.”
“Well?” the teacher demanded impatiently. “Are you coming or not? You must keep up with the others.”
As the woman grasped the child by the shoulder, Nana
Dahd
stopped in mid-story and glanced up at the woman’s outraged face. “You’d better go,” she warned the little girl in
Tohono O’othham.
But the little girl deftly dodged away from the teacher’s reaching hand. “Are you
Nihu’uli?”
she asked, taking one of Rita’s parchmentlike hands into her own small brown one. “Are you my grandmother?”
Lani never forgot the wonderfully happy smile that suffused Nana
Dahd’
s worn face as she pressed her other hand on top of that unknown child’s tiny one.
“Are you?” the little girl persisted just as the teacher’s fingers closed determinedly on her shoulder and pulled her away. With a vicious shake, the woman started back up the trail, dragging the resisting child after her and glaring over her shoulder at the old woman who had so inconveniently waylaid her charge.
Rita glanced from Davy’s face to Lani’s. “
Heu’u—
Yes,” she called after the child in
Tohono O’othham.
“
Ni-mohsi
. You are my grandchild, my daughter’s child.”
Confused, Lani frowned. “But I didn’t think you had any daughters,” she objected.
“I didn’t used to, but I do now.” Rita laughed. She gathered Lani in her arms and held her close. “Now I seem to have several.”
The dream ended. Lani tried to waken, but she was too tired, her eyelids too heavy to lift. She seemed to be in her bed, but when she tried to move her arms, they wouldn’t budge, either. And then, since there was nothing else to do, she simply allowed herself to drift back to sleep.
Breakfast took time. It was almost eleven by the time David was actually ready to leave the house. Predictably, his leave-taking was a tearful, maudlin affair. Yes, Astrid Ladd was genuinely sorry to see him go, but she was also half-lit from the three stiff drinks she had downed with breakfast.
David knew his grandmother drank too much, but he didn’t hassle her about it. Had she been as falling down drunk as some of the Indians hanging around the trading post at Three Points, David Ladd still wouldn’t have mentioned it. Over the years, Rita Antone had schooled her
Olhoni
in the niceties of proper behavior. Among the
Tohono O’othham
, young people were taught to respect their elders, not to question or criticize them. If Astrid Ladd wanted to stay smashed much of the time, that was her business, not his.
“Promise me that you’ll come back and see me,” Astrid said, with her lower lip trembling.
“Of course I will, Grandma.”
“At Christmas?”
“I don’t know.”
“Next summer then?”
“Maybe.”
Astrid shook her head hopelessly and began to cry in earnest. “See there? I’ll probably never lay eyes on you again.”
“You will, Grandma,” he promised. “Please don’t cry. I have to go.”
She was still weeping and waving from the porch when David turned left onto Sheridan and headed south. He didn’t go far—only as far as the parking lot of Calvary Cemetery, where both David Ladd’s father and grandfather were buried. He rummaged in the backseat and brought out the two small wreaths of fresh flowers he had bought two days ago and kept in the refrigerator of his apartment until that morning.
Knowing the route to the Ladd family plot, he easily threaded his way through the trackless forest of ornate headstones and mausoleums. He didn’t much like this cemetery. It was too big, too green, too gaudy, and full of huge chunks of marble and granite. Davy had grown up attending funerals on the parched earth and among the simple white wooden crosses of reservation cemeteries. The first funeral he actually remembered was Father John’s.
A
Mil-gahn
and a Jesuit priest, Father John was in his eighties and already retired when Davy first met him. He had been there, in the house at Gates Pass and imprisoned in the root cellar along with Rita and Davy, on the day of the battle with the evil
Ohb
. Father John had died a little more than a year later.
In all the hubbub of preparation for Diana Ladd’s wedding to Brandon Walker, no one had noticed how badly Father John was failing. And that was exactly as he had intended. The aged priest had agreed to perform the ceremony, and he used all his strength to ensure that nothing marred the joy of the happy young couple on their wedding day. Of all the people gathered at San Xavier for the morning ceremony, only Rita had sensed what performing the ceremony was costing the old priest in terms of physical exertion and vitality.
Honoring his silence, she too, had kept quiet about it—at least to most of the bridal party. But not to Davy.
“Watch out for Father John,
Olhoni,
” Nana
Dahd
murmured as she straightened the boy’s tie and smoothed his tuxedo in preparation to Davy’s walking his mother down the aisle. “If he looks too tired, come and get me right away.”
The admonition puzzled Davy. “Is Father John sick?”
“He’s old,” Rita answered. “He’s an old, old man.”
“Is he going to die?” Davy asked.
“We’re all going to die sometime,” she had answered.
“Even you?”
She smiled. “Even me.”
But Father John had made it through the wedding mass with flying colors. He died three days later, while Brandon and Diana Walker were still in Mazatlán on their honeymoon. The frantic barking of Davy’s dog, Bone, had awakened Davy in the middle of the night.
Keeping the dog with him for protection as he peered out through a front window, Davy saw a man climbing out of a big black car parked in the driveway. As soon as the man stepped up onto the porch, Davy recognized Father Damien, the young priest from San Xavier.
Even Davy knew that having a priest come to the house in the middle of the night could not mean good news. He hurried to the door. “What’s wrong?” he demanded through the still-closed door as the priest’s finger moved toward the button on the bell.
“I’m looking for someone named Rita Antone,” Father Damien said hesitantly, as though he wasn’t quite sure whether or not his information was correct. “Does she live here?”
“What is it, Davy?” Rita asked, materializing silently out of the darkness at the back of the house.
“It’s Father Damien,” Davy answered. “He’s looking for you.”
Nana
Dahd
unlocked the dead bolt and opened the door. “I’m Rita,” she said.
The priest looked relieved. “It’s Father John, Mrs. Antone,” he said apologetically. “I’m sorry to bother you at this hour of the night, but he’s very ill. He’s asking for you.”
Rita nodded. “Get dressed right away, Davy,” she said. “We must hurry.”
They left the house a few minutes later. There was never any question of Davy’s staying at the house by himself. Ever since Andrew Carlisle had burst into the house on that summer afternoon, there had been an unspoken understanding between Rita and Diana that Davy was not to be left alone. On their way to town, Rita rode in the front seat with the priest while Davy huddled in the back.
“Where is he?” Nana
Dahd
asked.
“He was at Saint Mary’s,” the priest answered. “In the intensive care unit, but this afternoon he made them let him out. He’s back at the rectory.”
At the mission, Rita took Davy by the hand and dragged him with her as Father Damien led the way. They found Father John sitting propped up on a mound of pillows in a small, cell-like room. He lifted one feeble hand in greeting. On the white chenille bedspread where his hand had rested lay Father John’s rosary—his
losalo
—with its black shiny beads and olive wood crucifix.
Davy Ladd was an Anglo—a
Mil-gahn
—but he had been properly raised—brought up in the Indian way. He melted quietly into the background while Rita sank down on the hard-backed chair beside the dying man’s bed. Out of sight in the shadowy far corner of the room, Davy sat cross-legged and listened to the murmured conversation, hanging on every mysterious word.
“Thank you for coming, Dancing Quail,” Father John whispered. His voice was very weak. He wheezed when he spoke. The air rustled in his throat like winter wind whispering through sun-dried grass.
“You should have called,” Rita chided gently. “I would have come sooner.”
Father John shook his head. “They wouldn’t let me. I was in intensive care. Only relatives . . .”
Rita nodded and then waited patiently, letting Father John rest awhile before he continued. “I wanted to ask your forgiveness,” he said. “Please.”
“I forgave you long ago,” she returned. “When you agreed to help us with the evil
Ohb,
I forgave you then.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you so much.”
There was another long period of silence. Nodding, Davy almost drifted off to sleep before Father John’s voice startled him awake once more.
“Please tell me about your son,” the old man said quietly. “The one who disappeared in Korea. His name was Gordon, I believe. Was that the child? Was he my son?”
Rita shook her head. There was a small reading lamp on the table beside Father John’s bed. The dim light from that caught the two tracks of tears meandering down Rita’s broad wrinkled cheeks.
“No,” she answered. “I lost that baby in California. When I was real sick, a bad doctor took the baby from me before it was time.”
There was a sharp intake of breath from the man on the bed, followed by a fit of coughing. “A boy or a girl?” Father John asked at last when he could speak once more.
“I don’t know,” Rita said. “I never saw it. They put me to sleep. When I woke up, the baby was gone.”
“When I heard about the murder, I assumed Gina was . . .”
Again Rita shook her head. “No. Gina was my husband Gordon’s granddaughter, not yours. Gordon took care of me when I was sick in California that time when I lost the baby. If it hadn’t been for him, I would have died, too. Gordon was a good man. He was a good husband who gave me a good son.”
“Gordon Antone.” Father John said the name carefully, as if testing the feel of the words on his lips. “Someone else I must pray for.”
“Rest now,” Rita said. “Try to get some sleep.”
Instead Father John reached out, picked up the rosary, and then dropped it into the palm of Rita’s hand before closing her fingers over it.
“Keep this for me,” he urged. “I have used it to pray for you every day for all these years. I won’t need it any longer.”
Without a word, Rita slipped the beads and crucifix into her pocket. Father John drifted off to sleep then. Eventually, so did Davy. When he awakened the next morning, the room was chilly, but Davy himself was warm. Overnight someone had put a pillow under his head and had covered him with a blanket. Rita, with her chin resting on her collarbone, still sat stolidly in the chair beside Father John’s bed, dozing. She woke up a few minutes later. The priest did not.
At age seven, this was Davy Ladd’s first personal experience with death. He had thought it would be scary, but somehow it wasn’t. He knew instinctively that in the room that night he had shared something beautiful with those two people, something important, although it would be years before he finally figured out exactly what it was.
In the three years David Ladd had been in Chicago, he had come to Calvary Cemetery often in hopes of establishing some kind of connection between himself and the names etched into the marble monuments of the Ladd family plot. The worldly remains of Garrison Walther Ladd II and III lay on either side of a headstone bearing his grandmother’s name. The only difference between Astrid’s grave marker and the other two was the lack of a date.
Respectfully, David put the wreath on his grandfather’s grave first. He had come to Chicago several times to visit his grandparents, first as a youngster and later as a teenager, flying out by himself over holidays along with all those other children being shuttled between custodial and non-custodial parents during school vacations. The flight attendants who had been designated to transfer him from plane to plane or from plane to the Ladds had always assumed that Davy was the product of a cross-country divorce. And some of the time he had gone along with that fiction, making up stories about where his father lived and what he did for a living. That was easier and far more fun than telling people the truth—that his father was dead.
Finished with his grandfather’s grave, David turned to his father’s. Breakfast with Astrid had lessened the impact of the latest visitation of the recurring dream. Vivid and disturbing, it had come to him every night for over a week now. Each time it came, he awakened the moment he saw his sister’s lifeless body in the middle of the kitchen floor. And when his eyes opened, his body would launch off, sweating and trembling, into yet another panic attack.