Authors: J. A. Jance
“But—”
“No more,” Rita said. “It’s time to go in.”
Molly Juan, the tribal judge, was a pug-faced, no-nonsense woman who spent several long minutes shuffling through the paperwork Wanda Ortiz handed her before raising her eyes to gaze at the people gathered in the courtroom.
“Both parents are willing to give up the child?” she asked at last.
Wanda Ortiz nodded. “Both have signed terminations of parental rights.”
“And there are no blood relatives interested in taking her?”
“Not at this time. If the Walkers’ petition to adopt her is denied, my office has made arrangements to place Clemencia in a facility in Phoenix.”
“Who is this then?” Molly Juan asked, nodding toward Rita.
“This is Mrs. Antone—Rita Antone—a widow and my husband’s aunt,” Wanda replied.
“And she has some interest in this matter?”
Ponderously, Rita Antone wheeled her chair until she sat facing the judge. “That is true,” Rita said. “I am
Hejel Wi i’thag
—Left Alone. My grandmother, my father’s mother, was
Oks Amichuda
, Understanding Woman. She was not a medicine woman, although she could have been. But she told me once, years ago, that I would find one, and that when I did, I should give her my medicine basket.
“Do you know the story of
Mualig Siakam
?”
Molly Juan nodded. “Of course, the woman who was saved by the Little People during the great famine.”
Brandon Walker leaned over to his wife. “What the hell does all this have to do with the price of tea in China?”
“Shhhh,” Diana returned.
“Clemencia has been kissed by the ants in the same way the first
Mualig Siakam
was kissed by the bees,” Rita continued. “Clemencia was starving and might have died if the ants had not bitten her and brought her to my attention. Some of her relatives are afraid to take her because they fear Ant Sickness. The Walkers are
Mil-gahn
, so Ant Sickness cannot hurt them. And I am old. I will die long before Ant Sickness can find me.
“The Walkers are asking for her because everyone knows that I am too old to care for her by myself, just as her own great-grandmother was. But I know that this is the child
Oks Amichuda
told me about—the very one.”
“And you think, that by keeping her with you, you can help her become a medicine woman?” Molly Juan asked.
Rita looked at Fat Crack. “She already is one,” Rita said. “She may not be old enough to understand that yet, and I will not tell her. It’s something she must learn for herself. But in the time I have left, I can teach her things that will be useful when the time comes for her to decide.”
Rita started to move away, but Judge Juan stopped her. “Supposing you die?” she asked pointedly. “What happens then? If Clemencia is living with a
Mil-gahn
family, who will be there to teach her?”
“The Walkers have a son,” Rita answered quietly. “His
Mil-gahn
name is David Ladd. His Indian name—the one Looks At Nothing gave him when he was baptized—is
Edagith Gogk Je’e
—One With Two Mothers.”
Molly Juan pushed her wire-framed glasses back up on her nose and peered closely at Rita. “I remember now. This is the Anglo boy who was baptized by an old medicine man years ago.”
Rita nodded. “Looks At Nothing and I both taught Davy Ladd things he would need to know, things he can teach Clemencia as she gets older even though the medicine man and I are gone.”
“How old is this boy now?”
“Twelve.”
“And he speaks
Tohono O’othham
?”
“Yes.”
“But what makes you think he would be willing to serve as a teacher and guide to this little girl?”
“I have lived with David Ladd since before he was born,” Rita said. “He is a child of my heart if not of my flesh. When he was baptized, his mother—Mrs. Walker here—and I ate the ceremonial gruel together. He is a good boy. If I ask him to do something, he will do it.”
That was when Judge Molly Juan finally turned to Diana and Brandon Walker. During the course of the proceedings, in an effort to keep the restless Clemencia quiet, Diana had handed the child over to Brandon. By the time the judge looked at them, Clemencia had grasped the tail of Brandon’s new silk tie in one tiny fist and was happily chewing on it and choking him with it at the same time.
“Sheriff Walker,” Molly Juan said, “it sounds as though your family is somewhat unusual. What do you think of all this?”
Still holding the child, Brandon got to his feet to address the judge. “Clemencia is just a baby, and she needs a home,” he said. “I hate to think about her being sent to an orphanage.”
“But what about the rest of it, Sheriff Walker? I know from the paperwork that your wife taught out here on the reservation for a number of years. She probably knows something about the
Tohono O’othham
and their culture and beliefs. What about you?”
Brandon looked down at the baby, who lay in his arms smiling up at him. For a moment he didn’t speak at all. Finally he looked back at the judge.
“On the night of my stepson’s second baptism,” he said slowly, “I stood outside the feast house and smoked the Peace Smoke with Looks At Nothing. That night he asked three of us—Father John from San Xavier Mission; Gabe Ortiz, Mrs. Antone’s nephew; and myself—along with him to serve as Davy’s four fathers. It seems to me this is much the same thing.
“If you let us have her, my wife and I will do everything in our power to see that she has the best of both worlds.”
Judge Juan nodded. “All right then, supposing I were to grant this petition on a temporary basis, pending final adoption proceedings, have you given any thought as to what you would call her?”
“Dolores Lanita—Lani for short,” Brandon answered at once. “Those would be her Anglo names. And her Indian name would be
Mualig Siakam
—Forever Spinning.”
“And her home village?” Judge Juan asked.
“
Ban Thak
—Coyote Sitting,” he answered. “That is Rita’s home village. It would be hers as well.”
“Be it so ordered,” Judge Juan said, whacking her desk with the gavel. “Next case.”
13
Then all the people near the village of Gurli Put Vo—Dead Man’s Pond—were told to come to a council so they could arrange for the protection of their fields. Everything that flies and all the animals came with the Indians to the council. And everybody promised to watch carefully so that the Bad People of the south should not again surprise them.
When
PaDaj O’othham
had eaten all the corn which they had stolen, they were soon hungry again. So they began once more to think of the nice fields of the Desert People. They began to wish they could steal the harvest, but they did not know how to accomplish this because, as you know, the Indians and their friends, the Flying People and all the animals, were on guard.
Then a wise old bad man told
PaDaj O’othham
what to do.
Now when the Desert People held that council to arrange for the protection of their fields, they were so excited that they called only the people who live aboveground. So this wise old bad man told
PaDaj O’othham
to call all the people who live under the ground:
Ko’owi
—the Snakes,
Nanakshel
—the Scorpions,
Hiani
—the Tarantulas,
Jewho
—the Gophers,
Chichdag
—the Gila Monsters, and
Chuk
—the Jackrabbits. The Bad People said they would give all these people who live under the ground good food and beautiful clothes if they would go through the ground to the fields of the Desert People and fight the
Tohono O’othham
while the Bad People stole the crops.
Chuk
—Jackrabbit—did not like this plan. The Indians had always been good to
Chuk,
and he did not want to fight them. But Jackrabbit did not know what to do.
Some bumblebees were sitting in a nearby tree.
Hu’udagi
—the Bumblebees—told
Chuk
to run with all his speed to the Desert People and tell them how
PaDaj O’othham
were planning to steal their harvest. The Bumblebees said they would tell
U’uwhig
—the Birds.
So Jackrabbit ran. He went in such a hurry that he took longer and longer jumps. As he jumped longer and longer, his legs grew longer and longer. That is why, my friend, even to this day, Jackrabbit’s legs are so much longer than the legs of his brother rabbit,
Tohbi
—the Cottontail.
Lani awakened in the dark. She was hot. Salt, leached from her sweat-stained shirt, had seeped into the raw wound on her breast. The smoldering pain from that was what had wakened her, and it seemed to expand with every breath, filling her eyes with tears. Her whole body was stiff. Her back ached from lying on what seemed to be uneven grooves in the floor beneath her.
While she had been asleep, she had been dreaming again, dreaming about Nana
Dahd
. In the dream Lani had been a child again. She and Rita had been walking together somewhere, walking and talking, although that was impossible. By the time Lani first knew Rita Antone, Nana
Dahd
was already confined to a wheelchair.
Lani emerged from Rita’s comforting presence in the dream, and she longed to return there, but this time when she wakened, she didn’t seem to emerge gradually. There was no lingering fog of confusion the way there had been before. She knew at once that she was a prisoner and that she had been drugged. Perhaps the man named Vega had given her a much smaller dose this time, or perhaps some of the effect had been evacuated out of her system—sweated out of her pores by the perspiration that soaked her clothing.
Lani felt around her, trying to assess the hot, dark cage in which she was imprisoned—a huge wooden crate from the feel of it. Her searching fingers reached out and touched sturdy walls a foot or so on either side of her. They refused to give or even so much as creak when she tried pushing against them. Then she pounded on the wood until her knuckles bled, but if anyone heard, no one came to her aid.
The darkness around her at first seemed absolute, but at last she noticed rays of yellow light penetrating the darkness. The light, as if from street lights, told her that it was still night. She was near a road. She could hear the muffled roar of traffic—the sounds of heavy trucks, anyway. Periodically the box shook with what had to be the earth-shaking rumble of a nearby passing train.
For a while Lani tried yelling for help, but the heavy wooden box swallowed the sound, locking the noise inside with her. Her shouting, like the pounding that had preceded it, brought no help. No one
would
come, she realized at last. Rescue, if it came at all, would have to come from inside, from Lani herself. Otherwise, she would simply lie in this overheated box until the heat got to her or until she died of thirst or starvation.
As she had done countless times in the past, she reached up to her throat to touch her
kushpo ho’oma
—her hair charm—only to discover it was missing. At first, when her fingertips touched only the naked gold chain, she thought she had lost the medallion and she was bereft. Seconds later, though, she remembered taking it off and putting it in her pocket—hiding it there in hopes of keeping it out of the hands of the evil man who had hurt her so badly.
It was still there in her pocket, exactly where she had hidden it. That reassured her. At least Vega hadn’t stripped off her clothes again, hadn’t discovered where she had hidden the charm, so perhaps, this time, he had left her alone.
She had no idea how long she had been asleep. From that moment early in the morning—some morning—when she sat down on the rock for him to begin sketching her until now could have been one day or several, for all she knew. For one thing, she had been out of it long enough for him to draw that second picture. Just thinking about that—about lying there naked in front of him all that time, for what must have been hours—made her wince with shame. And if Lani didn’t remember any of that, there might be other things the man had done to her that she didn’t remember, either.
She lay very still and tried to sense the condition of her body. Other than the damaged breast and what felt like a series of splinters in her back, she seemed to be intact. If he had raped her, she would feel it, wouldn’t she? There was a sudden feeling of relief that deserted her a moment later. Of course he hadn’t raped her. Not yet. That was why she was still here. That was what awaited her once he came back—that and more.
In that moment, Lani saw it all with appalling clarity. Of course Vega would return for her. He had no intention of her staying in the box forever until she died of heat prostration or thirst or starvation. He had locked her in the crate for a reason—so she would be available to him, helpless and waiting, when it was time for whatever came next.
Sooner or later, Vega would come back for her. Closing her eyes in the darkness, she saw him again, with an almost gleeful smile on his face, standing over her with the overheated tongs in his hand. Vega was a man who enjoyed inflicting pain. When he came back, Lani knew full well that he would hurt her again.
Had she been standing upright, that awful realization might have tumbled her to the ground. As a child Lani had heard the stories of
Ohbsgam Ho’ok
—Apachelike Monster—who lived around Rattlesnake Skull and who carried young girls away with him, never to be seen again. Vega was like
Ohbsgam Ho’ok
. They were different only in that Vega was real. He was a bully—strong and mean and powerful. Lani was alone and helpless.
“The best thing to do with a bully is to ignore him,” Davy had told Lani once. After yet another run-in with Danny Jenkins at school, she had turned to her older brother for advice.
“Those guys thrive on attention,” Davy had continued. “That’s usually all they want. If you treat ’em like they don’t exist, eventually they melt into the woodwork. The only way to get the best of them is to try to understand them, to figure out what their weaknesses are. Then, the next time they come after you, you’ll know what to do.”