Kiss of the Bees (50 page)

Conflicting geography was one thing. What about when he started dealing in the crossed wires of personalities? There had been no particular need to tell Candace much about being raised by Rita Antone, who in turn had been raised by her own grandmother, Understanding Woman. Over time Davy had mentioned a few things, of course, but only the simple, straightforward parts, not any of what Richard Waverly, Candace’s father, would derisively call the woo-woo stuff.

Davy had never mentioned Looks At Nothing’s Peace Smoke, for instance. He hadn’t told Candace or any of her family how the blind old medicine man from his childhood would light his foul-smelling wild tobacco with a flame sparked by his faithful Zippo lighter. He hadn’t told them about Looks At Nothing’s spooky way of knowing things before they happened or of the blind man telling others what he had “seen” in his divining crystals.

How would Candace and her family react to a discussion of medicine men and divining crystals—and medicine baskets, for that matter? Or try scalp bundles on for size. The one from Rita’s medicine basket—an
Ohb
scalp bundle, no doubt—was the main reason Rita’s medicine basket was still sitting in his parents’ safety deposit box eleven years after Rita’s death.

Davy was sure now that the scalp bundle had been the primary reason Rita had insisted that it be kept out of Lani’s hands until she was old enough to handle it with proper respect. Davy cringed at the idea of sitting down and trying to explain to Richard Waverly how improper handling of a scalp-bundle could bring on a bout of Enemy Sickness, the best cure for which was a medicine man singing scalp-bundle songs at night.

Old Man Waverly will just love that one, Davy thought.

And yet, those things—which he could imagine Candace and her family not quite understanding—were far too much a part of Davy’s life and experience for him to dismiss them. The stories about
I’itoi
and Earth Medicine Man were as deeply woven into Davy’s background as
Aesop’s Fables
and the Brothers Grimm were into Candace’s. How would somebody raised on watered-down versions of
Little Red Riding Hood
and
Cinderella
respond to having her son or daughter hear about how
I’itoi
chopped the head off the monster Eagleman’s baby?

Almost without realizing what he was doing, Davy reached into his pocket and pulled out Father John’s rosary. At age twenty-seven, David Ladd closed his eyes and saw in his mind’s eye those three aged adults who had played such important roles in his childhood—Rita, Looks At Nothing, and Father John. They were all so very different and yet, despite those differences, they had drawn a healing circle of love around him—a little half-orphaned Anglo boy—and held him safe inside it.

How had they done that? And if, from the vantage point of being that well-loved child, Davy himself couldn’t answer that question, how in God’s name would he ever be able to explain it to anyone else, including Candace Waverly?

By then the beads were laid out across his palm. He began slowly, one bead at a time, silently moving his lips as he recited the words. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

Halfway through the process, probably somewhere over Colorado, someone tapped on his right arm. Startled, he looked up. The lady next to him was smiling a benignly cheery smile.

“I know just how you feel,” she said. “I used to be afraid of flying, too, young man. But they have classes for that kind of thing these days. I took one at Pima Community College a few years back. You might look into taking one yourself. Those classes don’t cost very much, and they help. They really do.”

Blushing furiously, Davy dropped Father John’s
losalo
back into his pocket. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll try to look into it as soon as I have a chance.”

Leaving the hospital, Fat Crack Ortiz stopped by the Walker house in Gates Pass long enough to see that no one was home. After that he headed the Crown Victoria toward Sells. No doubt the dance was still going strong, but he didn’t even pause at the Little Tucson turnoff. Instead, he drove on home.

When he had warned Brandon Walker of danger the day before, it hadn’t occurred to him that the danger in question, the evil emanating from Diana’s book, might fall on Lani. He had expected Diana herself to be the target, never Lani.

Once he reached the house, he was grateful to discover that Wanda still wasn’t home. Although she tolerated his medicine-man status, she certainly wasn’t thrilled by it. Gabe went straight to the wooden desk and retrieved Looks At Nothing’s medicine pouch. Then he went outside. Using a stick of mesquite, he stood in the middle of the dirt-floored patio and used the stick to draw a circle around himself. Then he eased himself down on the hard ground in exactly the way the old blind medicine man would have prescribed.

With the porch light providing the only light, he opened the pouch and took out a rolled cigarette made from
wiw
—wild tobacco—that Fat Crack had carefully gathered and rolled into the ceremonial cigarettes. Digging further, he located Looks At Nothing’s old Zippo lighter, which had become almost as much a part of the
duajida
—the nighttime divination ceremony—as the billowing smoke itself. Then, opening a second, smaller bag made of some soft, chamois-like material, Fat Crack peered inside at the crystals he knew were there.

In all the years Fat Crack Ortiz had been in possession of the medicine pouch, he had seldom touched the crystals or taken them out of their protective bag. But if any occasion called for the use of Looks At Nothing’s most powerful medicine, this was it. Lani Walker was in danger. The old medicine man had been dead long before Rita Antone’s ant-kissed child had been born. Nonetheless, his influence, even from the grave, had directed almost every aspect of Lani’s young life, from her unusual adoption to the things she had been taught by the people who had been placed in charge of caring for her.

The responsibility of caring for the child had been left to a number of people, but Looks At Nothing’s medicine pouch had been entrusted to Fat Crack alone. The treasured pouch had come to him with the understanding that the Medicine Man with the Tow Truck would save it for Looks At Nothing’s real successor. For a time, while the children were young, Fat Crack had fooled himself into believing that the mantle would fall to one or the other of his own two sons—to either Richard or Leo. And then, when Rita had insisted on taking Clemencia Escalante to raise, she had told her nephew that perhaps the ant-marked baby was the one Looks At Nothing had told them about. Over the years, Fat Crack had come to believe that was true.

Carefully, patiently, Fat Crack unknotted the drawstring that held the chamois bag closed. Holding out an upturned hand, he dumped the collection of crystals into his palm. There were four of them in all. As soon as Fat Crack saw the four of them winking back the reflected glow of the porch light, he had to smile. Four crystals made sense. After all, as everyone knows, all things in nature go in fours.

Arranging them side by side, Fat Crack laid the crystals and the cigarette and lighter out on the spread leather surface of the pouch, then he reached into his hip pocket and pulled out his wallet. Carefully he thumbed through the school pictures of his own children and grandchildren until he found the one Lani had given him the year before at Christmas.

He lit the cigarette and let the smoke swirl around him in the late-night breeze. There was no one sitting in the circle with him, but Fat Crack raised the cigarette and blew a puff of smoke in each of the four directions, just as Looks At Nothing had taught him, saying
“Nawoj”
as he did so.

While the cigarette still glowed in his fingertips, Fat Crack lifted up the first crystal and held it over Lani’s picture. Nothing happened. It was the same with the second crystal and with the third as well.

The sky was gradually lightening in the east and Fat Crack was already thinking how foolish he must look sitting there on the ground when he picked up the fourth crystal and held it over the picture. What happened then was something he could never explain. It simply was. The picture on the paper changed ever so slightly until something else superimposed itself over Lani’s smiling face.

At first Fat Crack thought he was seeing the head of a rattlesnake, its jaws open wide to swallow something, its fangs fully exposed. This was not a snake’s head. It was, in fact, a snake’s skull—
ko’oi koshwa
. Then, as Fat Crack leaned down to examine the picture more closely, he realized the picture underneath the skull seemed changed as well. In the slowly eddying smoke, he saw that Lani’s eyes were missing. Instead of eyes smiling back at him, there were only empty sockets.

The message from the divining crystals was clear. If Lani Walker wasn’t already dead, she soon would be.

Fat Crack’s hands shook as he carefully returned the crystals and lighter to the medicine pouch. He was just closing it and trying to decide what to do with this newfound, awful knowledge when the headlights from Richard Ortiz’s tow truck flashed across the yard. With an agility that surprised Fat Crack even as he did it, he heaved his hefty frame up off the ground and hurried toward the truck. He reached the rider’s door just as Wanda climbed out and turned to tell Richard good-bye.

“
Oi g hihm
,” Fat Crack said to his son, hoisting himself up into the seat Wanda had just vacated. Literally translated,
oi g hihm
means “Let’s walk.” In the everyday language of the reservation, however, it means “Let’s get in the pickup and go.”

“Where are you going?” Wanda demanded, catching the door before Gabe had a chance to close it.

“To Rattlesnake Skull Charco,” he said. “Call Brandon Walker and tell him to meet me there. Tell him that’s where we’ll find Lani. Tell him to hurry before it’s too late.”

“What’s wrong with Lani?” Wanda Ortiz asked in alarm. “Is she hurt, sick? What’s going on?”

“She’s been kidnapped,” Fat Crack answered without hesitation. “I believe she’s been taken by someone connected to the evil
Ohb
. If we don’t find her soon, that person is going to kill her, if he hasn’t already.”

Wanda nodded and stepped back from the truck. “I’ll call the Walkers right away,” she said.

Richard Ortiz shifted the tow truck into reverse. “We’re not talking more of that old medicine-man nonsense, are we?” he asked dubiously.

This was no time for a philosophical discussion. “Shut up and drive, Baby,” Fat Crack told his son. “And while you’re at it, put the flashers on.”

“You think it’s that serious?”

“You bet,” Fat Crack told him. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

Quentin had come back to the cavern, picked up the second load of pottery, and had gone to carry it back down the mountain. Soon he would be back for the third and last load. Lani knew that was when Mitch Johnson would make his move. That was when he would kill them.

But even with death looming closer, Lani no longer felt frightened. The whispered words of Nana
Dahd’
s war chant were helping Lani to remain calm in the face of whatever was to come. And the pot was helping her as well. Still undetected by either Quentin or Mitch, it lay nestled between her legs. Stroking the cool, hard clay seemed to offer as much comfort as Nana
Dahd’
s song. The presence of the pot seemed to take up where the people-hair basket had left off.

Across the darkened cave, Mitch Johnson was talking, his voice droning on and on, as much to himself as to Lani. When she finally started paying attention, he was talking about Quentin’s reaction to the drug. “Scopolamine’s interesting stuff, isn’t it? Sort of like a combination of drug and hypnosis. I guess those guys down in Colombia aren’t so stupid after all.”

“That’s what you used on us?” Lani asked.

“Andy claimed that scopolamine poisoning makes ’em hot as hell, red as a beet, mad as a hatter, and blind as a bat.”

In that throwaway remark Lani almost missed the crucial name—Andy. Her heart lurched inside her chest. All night long she had been forging spiritual links between this man and the evil
Ohb
. Now, though, for the first time, there was some outside confirmation that connections between Andrew Carlisle of old and this new evil
Ohb
did exist. Lani had to know for sure.

“Who’s Andy?” she asked, swallowing an entirely new lump of fear that rose dangerously in her throat.

“Did you say ‘Who’s Andy?’ ” Mitch Johnson asked in mock disbelief. “You mean here you are, smart enough to go to University High School, but you’re not smart enough to figure all this out for yourself?”

“Who’s Andy?” Lani repeated.

“A friend of mine,” Mitch Johnson told her. “It turns out he was a friend of your mother’s as well. If you’ve read your mother’s book, then you know a whole lot about him. His name was Carlisle. Andrew Philip Carlisle. Ever heard of him?”

Sitting there in the dark, Lani’s body was covered by another wave of gooseflesh. She felt sick to her stomach. It was true, then. She was shut up in the darkened cave with a man named Mitch Johnson, but she was there with Andrew Carlisle as well, with the vengeful spirit of the evil
Ohb
who had raped and tortured her mother.

“That’s why you burned me, isn’t it?” she said. Her voice seemed very small. In the emptiness of the darkened cave, it was hardly more than a whisper. “You did it for him.”

“So maybe you aren’t so dumb after all. This way your mother is bound to make the connection, but there won’t be any tooth impressions for someone to take to court the way there were with Andy.”

Andy. It was hard for her to comprehend that word. How could a person who was “Andy” to Mitch Johnson also be Andrew Carlisle, the monster who had frequented the stories of Lani Walker’s childhood? She had spent long winter evenings, snuggled in Rita’s lap, hearing the story again and again. Lani had loved hearing how two women, the priest, the boy, and the dog had overcome the wicked
Mil-gahn
man. Again and again Nana
Dahd
had told the powerful tale of how
I’itoi
had helped them defeat the enemy who was, at the same time, both Apachelike and not-Apache.