“He probably won’t be the first deaf president” she mused aloud. “He's an artist. But he'll be in the best galleries.”
LaMarche and Estrella laughed.
It was going to be all right!
37 - The Cry-Dance
From the turnoff onto Coyote Spur leading to Charlie Garcia's house, Bo could see the flames. Vapor trails of leaping orange that turned to smoke and climbed skyward. As LaMarche eased the rental car to a halt near the collection of parked vehicles, shapes of dancers were visible. A circle of people, bundled against the cold, shuffling in a circle counterclockwise around the fire. An old man's voice, chanting in a language Bo had never heard. Hypnotic, the voice tones rising at the end of each phrase and then beginning again. Over and over. A sad, peaceful sound.
As Estrella carried the curious child from the car's backseat and Bo pulled on the leather jacket she'd worn in the tunnel, a figure broke from the circle of dancers and approached.
Charlie Garcia in a plaid wool jacket and feather-banded hat.
“It is an honor that you have come,” he addressed Bo formally. “This is my grandmother's cry-dance, the Paiute way of releasing the spirit of one who has gone. My grandmother hid on the truck, to stay with you and the boy, to defend you. She knew she would die; she had known for a long time. This was the task of her spirit, and she performed it well. Her story, your story, will be told by our children to their children. Because of this, you and the boy are invited to dance with us.”
Bo felt a surge of warmth, of light within her that drew her toward the fire.
“Thank you,” she said simply, and took the child now called Willy from Estrella's arms and set him on the ground beside her.
“Dance,” she signed for him, circling two fingers downward over her open left palm. “We—dance.”
Charlie escorted them toward the fire-lit circle where one somber face after another nodded acknowledgment. The dancers, every other one a man, a woman, a boy, a girl, made room in the circle for Bo and the child. He caught on to the shuffling step easily, and watched the fire as he danced. Bo felt self-conscious at first, but relaxed when she realized no one was watching anymore. They were all lost in the dance, the sonorous, repetitive chant.
From time to time, someone would cry, or make a yipping sound that rose with the smoke into moonlit skies. Across the circle Bo saw Maria and Joe Bigger Fox who would have driven to Lone Pine that morning after hearing of Annie's death. Like many of the dancers, they held in their hands items of clothing. At one point Joe sang the yipping cry, and he and Maria threw the things they held into the fire.
Annie's clothes, Bo realized. Maria and Joe had cared for Annie in her old age, given her a place of dignity in a trailer on the reservation above San Diego. Now they were releasing that responsibility with Annie's spirit, into another realm. But what would Bo release?
A tug at her jacket revealed a young girl, a budding teenager with flowers braided in her dark hair.
“I am Paintbrush,” the girl whispered proudly, “great-granddaughter of Sees the Dark, who died to save you. Here.” She placed something, a skirt, in Bo's hand, and backed away. A full corduroy skirt like one Bo had worn in junior high school. Stained now, with Annie Garcia's blood.
Bo held the garment against her stomach and wept. Beside her a small, frizzy head bobbed and lurched in the slow rhythm of the dance. And the chant wound its way through her, endlessly repeating, until her feet, the others, the fire, the ground, were one thing in a moment with no beginning and no end. Just there, outside of time.
Laurie was in that moment, Bo sensed. Peaceful and fond as a night breeze.
Somehow, it was over.
“Aiyee-ip!” The sound rose up and escaped Bo's lips without her awareness as she threw Annie's garment into the fire.
It was over.
Taking the child's hand, she turned to walk slowly away from the fire, toward Estrella and Andrew LaMarche.
A deaf child would live, and so would she.
It was, really, over.
About the Author
Abigail Padgett, a former court investigator in San Diego, is the author of nine novels. She is avidly interested in advocacy for the mentally ill, desert preservation and Native American cultures. Child of Silence was the first to feature a sleuth living with manic depression.
Child of Silence (Bo Bradley Mysteries, Book One) Page 18
