by J. A. Jance
“But who’s in charge?” Rita insisted. “Indians or Anglos?”
“Anglos, of course,” Wanda said, “although they do have Indians on staff.”
Diana walked back into the living room carrying a tray. “Indians on staff where?” she asked as she distributed cups of coffee. In view of the fact that Rita Antone made her home with a Mil-gahn family, Wanda Ortiz was a little mystified at Rita’s obvious opposition to the idea of Indian children being raised by Anglos. After all, Rita had raised Davy Ladd, hadn’t she?
“Running an orphanage for Indians,” Wanda Ortiz told Diana. “We were talking about the little girl I brought to TMC this morning. Once she’s released, if we can’t find a suitable relative to take care of her, she may end up in a Baptist orphanage up in Phoenix. They’re really very good with children.”
“Do they teach basket-making up there?” Rita asked, peering at her nephew’s wife. “And in the wintertime, do they sit around and tell I’itoi stories, or do they watch TV?”
“Ni-thahth,” Gabe objected, smiling and respectfully addressing his aunt in the formal Tohono O’othham manner used when referring to one’s mother’s older sister. “The children out on the reservation watch television, and those are kids who still live at home with their parents.”
“Someone should be teaching them the stories,” Rita insisted stubbornly. “Someone who still remembers how to tell them.”
After that, the old woman lapsed into a moody silence. By then Rita Antone and Diana Ladd had lived together for almost a dozen years. Diana knew from the expression on the old woman’s face that Rita was upset, and she quickly went about turning the conversation to less difficult topics. She wouldn’t have mentioned it again, but once Gabe and Wanda left for Sells and after Davy had headed off to bed, Rita herself brought it up.
“That baby is Hejel Wi i’thag,” Rita Antone said softly. “She is Left Alone, just like me.” Orphaned as a young child and then left widowed and with her only son dead in early middle age, Rita had been called Hejel Wi i’thag almost her whole life.
“And if they take her to that orphanage in Phoenix,” Rita continued fiercely, “she will come back a Baptist, not Tohono O’othham. She will be an outsider her whole life, again just like me.”
Diana could see that her friend was haunted by the specter of what might happen to this abandoned but unknown and unnamed child. “Don’t worry,” Diana said, hoping to comfort her. “Wanda said she was looking for someone—a blood relative—to take the baby. I’m sure she’ll find someone who’ll do it.”
Rita Antone shook her grizzled head. “I don’t think so,” she said.
A week later, Fat Crack Ortiz was surprised when his Aunt Rita, who usually avoided using telephones, called him at his auto-repair shop at Sells.
“Where is she?” Rita asked without preamble.
“Where’s who?” he asked.
“The baby. The one who was kissed by Ali-chu’uchum O’othham—by the Little People, by the ants and wasps and bees.”
“It was ants, Ni-thahth,” Fat Crack answered. “And she’s still in the hospital in Tucson. She’s supposed to get out tomorrow or the next day.”
“Who is going to take her?” Rita asked.
“I’m not sure,” Gabe hedged, even though he knew full well that Wanda’s search for a suitable guardian for the child had so far come to nothing.
Rita correctly interpreted Fat Crack’s evasiveness. “I want her,” Rita said flatly. “Give her to me.”
“But, Ni-thahth,” Gabe objected. “After what already happened to that little girl, no one is going to be willing to hand her over to you.”
“Why?” Rita asked. “Because I’m too old?”
“Yes.” Fat Crack’s answer was reluctant but truthful. “I suppose that’s it. Once the tribal judge sees your age, she isn’t going to look at anything else.”
Rita refused to take no for an answer. “Give her to Diana, then,” she countered. “She and Brandon Walker are young enough to take her, but I would still be here to teach her the things she needs to know.”
Gabe hesitated to say what he knew to be true. “You don’t understand. Diana and Brandon are Anglos, Rita. Mil-gahn. They’re good friends of mine as well as friends of yours, but times have changed. No one does that anymore.”
“Does what?”
“Approves those kinds of adoptions—adoptions outside the tribe.”
“You mean Anglos can’t adopt Tohono O’othham children anymore?”
“That’s right,” Gabe said. “And it’s not just here. Tribal courts from all over the country are doing the same thing. They say that being adopted by someone outside a tribe is bad for Indian children, that they don’t learn their language or their culture.”
There was a long silence on the telephone line. For a moment or two Fat Crack wondered if perhaps something had gone wrong with the connection. “Even the tribal judge will see that living in a Baptist orphanage would be worse than living with us,” Rita said at last. After that she said nothing more.
Through the expanding silence in the earpiece Fat Crack understood that, from sixty miles away, he had been thoroughly outmaneuvered by his aunt. Anglo or not, living with the Walkers was probably far preferable to living in a group home.
“I’ll talk to Wanda,” he agreed at last. “But that’s all I’ll do—talk. I’m not making any promises.”
Mitch Johnson drove to Smith’s, a grocery store on the corner of Swan and Grant. Once there, he stood in the soft-drink aisle wondering what he should buy. With one hand in the pocket of his jacket, he held one of the several vials of scopolamine between his fingers—as if for luck—while he tried to decide what to do.
What do girls that age like to drink early in the morning? he wondered. Sodas, most likely. He chose several different kinds—a six-pack of each. Maybe some kind of juice. He put two containers into his basket, one orange and one apple. And then, for good measure, he threw in a couple of cartons of chocolate milk as well. Andy had warned him against using something hot, like coffee or tea, for instance, for fear that the boiling hot liquid might somehow lessen the drug’s impact.
And it did have an impact. Mitch Johnson knew that from personal experience.
One day in August of the previous year, Andrew Carlisle had returned from another brief stay in the prison infirmary holding a small glass container in his hand.
“What’s that?” Mitch had asked, thinking it was probably some new kind of medicine that would be used to treat Andrew Carlisle’s constantly increasing catalog of ailments.
“I’ve been wondering all this time exactly how you’d manage to make off with the girl. I think I’ve found the answer.” Andy handed the glass with its colorless liquid contents over to Mitch. He opened it and took a sniff. It was odorless as well as colorless.
“I still don’t know what it is,” he said.
“Remember that article you were reading to me from the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago? The one about the Burundianga Cocktail?”
“That’s what the drug dealers down in Colombia used to relieve that diplomat of his papers and his money?”
Carlisle smiled. “That’s the one,” he said. “And here it is.”
Over the years, Andy had clearly demonstrated to Mitch that sufficient sums of money available outside the prison could account for any amount of illegal contraband inside.
“Where did you get it?” Mitch asked.
“I have my sources,” Andy answered. “And you’ll find plenty of it with your supplies once you’re on the outside. It isn’t a controlled substance, so there were no questions asked. But it made sense to me to make a single large buy rather than a series of small ones.”
“But how exactly does it work, and how much do I use?”
“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it,” Andy had replied. “There may be a certain amount of trial and error involved. You should use enough that she’s tractable, but you don’t wa
nt to use so much that she loses consciousness or even dies as a result of an overdose.”
“You’re saying we should do a dry run?” Mitch asked.
“Several dry runs might be better than just one.”
Mitch thought about that for a moment. Andy’s health was so frail that he certainly couldn’t risk taking anything out of the ordinary.
“I guess I’d better be the guinea pig then,” Mitch said. “No telling what a shot of this stuff would do to you.”
Andy nodded. “We won’t give you that much,” he said reassuringly. “Just enough to give you a little buzz so you’ll know exactly what it feels like.”
“When should we do it?”
“This afternoon. You’ll have a soda break with a little added kick.”
That afternoon, at three o’clock, Mitch Johnson had served himself up a glass of scopolamine-laced Pepsi. They used only half the contents of that one-ounce bottle. From Mitch’s point of view, it seemed as though nothing at all happened. He didn’t feel any particular loss of control. He remembered climbing up on the upper bunk and lying there, feeling hot and a little flushed, waiting for the effects of the drug to hit him. The next thing he noticed was how everything around him seemed to shrink. Mitch himself grew huge, while a guard walking the corridor looked like a tiny dwarf. When Mitch came to himself again, he was eating breakfast.
“What happened to dinner?” he asked Andy irritably. “Did something happen and they skipped it?”
“You ate it,” Andrew Carlisle told him.
“The hell I did. I lay down here on the bed just a little while ago . . .” Mitch stopped short. “You mean dinner came and went, the whole night passed, and I don’t remember any of it?”
“That’s right,” Andy said. “This stuff packs a hell of a wallop, doesn’t it? Since the girl is physically so much smaller than you are, you’ll have to be careful not to give her too much. It makes you realize why some of those scopolamine-based cold medicines caution against using mechanical equipment, doesn’t it?”
They had been silent for some time after that. Mitch Johnson was stunned. Fifteen hours of his life had disappeared, leaving him no conscious memory of them.
“Did I do or say anything stupid while I was out of it?”
“Not stupid,” Andy replied. “I found it interesting rather than stupid.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve always wondered whether or not those three wetbacks were the first ones. And it turns out they weren’t.”
Mitch shoved his tray aside. “What the hell do you mean?”
“You know what I mean, Mitch. I’m talking about the girl. The ‘gook,’ I believe you called her. The one you raped and then blew to pieces with your AR-sixteen.”
Mitch Johnson paled. “I never told anyone about that,” he whispered hoarsely. “Not anyone at all.”
“Well,” Carlisle said with a shrug. “Now you’ve told me, but don’t worry. After all, what are a few secrets between friends?”
3
After I’itoi found the center of the world, he began making men out of mud. Ban—Coyote—was standing there watching. I’itoi told Ban that he could help.
Coyote worked with his back to I’itoi. As he made his men, he was laughing. Because the Spirit of Mischief is always with him, Coyote laughs at everything.
After a while I’itoi—the Spirit of Goodness—finished making his mud men and turned to see why Coyote was laughing. He found that Ban had made all his men with only one leg. But still Coyote continued to laugh.
At last, when they had made enough mud men, I’itoi told Coyote to listen to see which of all the mud men would be the first to speak.
Ban waited and listened, but nothing happened. Finally he went to I’itoi and said, “The mud men are not talking.”
But I’itoi said, “Go back and listen again. Since the Spirit of Mischief is in your men, surely they will be the first to speak.”
And this was true. The first of the spirits to speak in the mud men was the Spirit of Mischief. For this reason, these men became the Ohb, the Apaches—the enemy. According to the legends of the Desert People, the Ohb have always been mean and full of mischief, just the way Coyote made them.
When all the mud men were alive, I’itoi gathered them together and showed them where each tribe should live. The Apaches went to the mountains toward the east. The Hopis went north. The Yaquis went south. But the Tohono O’othham—the Desert People—were told to stay in that place which is the center of things. And that is where they are today, nawoj, my friend, close to Baboquivari, I’itoi’s cloud-veiled mountain.
And all this happened on the First Day.
At four o’clock in the afternoon, Gabe Ortiz climbed into his oven-hot Crown Victoria, turned on the air-conditioning, and sat there letting the hot air blow-dry the sweat on his skin. He loosened his bola tie and tossed his Stetson into the backseat, then he leaned back and closed his eyes, waiting for the car to cool.
All the back-and-forth hassling was enough to make Gabe long for the old days, before the election, when most of his contacts with the whites, the Mil-gahn, had been when he towed their disabled cars or motor homes out of the sand along Highway 86 and into Tucson or Casa Grande for repairs.
Why was it that Anglo bureaucrats seemed to have no other purpose in life than seeing that things didn’t happen? Delia Chavez Cachora was a fighter when it came to battling the guys in suits, but even she, with her Washington D.C.-bureaucrat experience, had been unable to move the county road-improvement process off dead center. Unless traffic patterns to the tribal casino could be improved, further expansion of the facility, along with expansion of the casino’s money-making capability, was impossible.
Delia was bright and tough—a skilled negotiator whose verbal assertiveness belied her Tohono O’othham heritage. Those traits, along with her D. C. experience, were what had drawn Gabe Ortiz to her during their first interview. He was the one who had championed her application over those of several equally qualified male applicants. But the very skills that made Delia an asset as tribal attorney and helped her forward tribal business when it came to dealing with Anglo bureaucracies seemed to be working against her when it came to dealing with her fellow Tohono O’othham.
Gabe had heard it said that Delia Chavez Cachora sounded and acted so much like a Mil-gahn at times that she wasn’t really “Indian” enough. She was doing the proper things—living with her aunt out at Little Tucson was certainly a step in the right direction—but Gabe knew she would need additional help. He had developed a plan to address that particular problem. Delia just didn’t know about it yet, although he’d have to tell her soon.
Davy Ladd was a young man, an Anglo who had been raised by Gabe Ortiz’s Aunt Rita. A recent law school graduate, Davy was due back in Tucson sometime in the next few days. By the time he arrived, Delia would have to know that Gabe had hired Davy to spend the summer months and maybe more time beyond that working as an intern in the tribal attorney’s office.
Gabe thought it would be interesting to see how Delia Chavez Cachora dealt with an Anglo who spoke her supposedly native tongue far better than she did. Not only that, Gabe was looking forward to getting to know the grown-up version of his late Aunt Rita’s Little Olhoni.
Next to his ear, someone tapped on the window. Gabe opened his eyes and sat up. Delia herself was standing next to his car, a concerned frown on her face. “Are you all right?” she asked when he rolled down the window.
“Just resting my eyes,” he said.
“I was afraid you were sick.”
Gabe shook his head. “Tired,” he said with a smile. “Tired but not sick.”
“Are you going straight home?” she asked. “We could stop and get something to drink.”
“No, thanks,” he said. “You go on ahead. I have to visit with someone on the way.”
“All right,” she said. “See you Monday.”
As she walked away from the car, Gabe noticed sh
e was stripping off her watch and putting it in her purse. When Gabe had asked her about it, she had told him that on weekends she tried to live on Indian time; tried to do without clocks and all the other trappings of the Anglo world, including, presumably, the evils of air conditioning, he thought as she drove past him a few minutes later with all the windows of her turbo Saab wide open.
Gabe put the now reasonably cool Ford in gear and backed out of his parking place. Instead of heading for Ajo Way and the road back to Sells, he headed north to Speedway and then west toward Gates Pass and the home of his friends, Brandon and Diana Walker.
It wasn’t a trip Gabe was looking forward to because he didn’t know what he was going to say. However, he knew he would have to say something. It was his responsibility.
“Brandon?”
Over the noise of the chain saw, Brandon hadn’t heard the car stop outside the front of the house, nor had he noticed Gabe Ortiz materialize silently behind him. Startled by the unexpected voice, Brandon almost dropped the saw when he turned around to see who had spoken.
“Fat Crack!” he exclaimed, taking off his hat and wiping his face with the damp bandanna he wore tied around his forehead. “The way you came sneaking up behind me, it’s a wonder I didn’t cut off my leg. How the hell are you? What are you doing here? Would you like some iced tea or a beer?”
Now that he was tribal chairman, Fat Crack was a name Gabe Ortiz didn’t hear very often anymore, not outside the confines of his immediate family. The distinctive physiognomy that had given rise to his nickname was no longer quite so visible, especially not now when he often wore a sports jacket over his ample middle. The dress-up slacks, necessary attire for the office and for meetings in town, didn’t shift downward in quite the same fashion as his old Levi’s had. Still, he reached down and tugged self-consciously at his belt, just to be sure his pants weren’t hanging at half-mast.
“Iced tea sounds good,” Gabe said.
The two men walked into and through the yard and then on inside the house. With the book fresh in his mind, Gabe looked around the kitchen. It had been completely redesigned and upgraded since the night of Andrew Carlisle’s brutal attack. The wall between the root cellar, where Rita Antone and Davy Ladd had been imprisoned, had been knocked out, as had the wall between the kitchen and what had once been Rita’s private quarters. The greatly enlarged kitchen now included a small informal dining area. The cabinets were new and so were the appliances, but to Gabe’s heightened perceptions a ghost from that other room—the room from the book—still lingered almost palpably in the air. The damaged past permeated the room with evil in the same way the odor of a fire lingers among the ruins long after the flames themselves have been extinguished.
