Kiss the Bees

2

Now in that long ago time the earth-jeweth-was not yet firm and still as it is today. It was shaking and quivering all the time. That made it hard for the four to travel. So Earth Medicine Man-Jeweth Mahkai-threw himself down and stopped the shaking of the earth. And that was the first land.

But the land was floating around in separate pieces. So Earth Medicine Man called to the Spider Men.Totkihhud O'othham came out of the floating ground and went all over the world spinning their webs and tying the pieces of earth together. And that is how we have it today-land and water.

ThenI'itoi wanted to find the center of the earth. So he sent Coyote toward the south and Big Black Beetle to the north. He said they must go as fast and as far as they could and then return to him.

Bitokoi — Big Black Beetle-was back quite a while beforeBan — Coyote-returned. In this wayI'itoi knew that he had not yet found the center of the earth.

Then Spirit of Goodness tookBitokoi andBan a little farther south and sent them off once more. Again Big Black Beetle came back before Coyote, so I'itoi moved still farther toward the south.

On the fourth tryBitokoi and Coyote came back toI'itoi at exactly the same time. In that way Elder Brother knew he was exactly in the center of the world. Because the Spirit of Goodness should be the center of all things, this was whereI'itoi wished to be.

And this center of all things where Elder Brother lives is calledTohono O'othham Jeweth, which means Land of the Desert People.

Mitch Johnson waited on the hill, watching and sketching, until Brandon Walker went inside around ten-thirty. By then he had several interesting thumbnail drawings-color studies-that he'd be able to produce if anyone ever questioned his reason for being there.

"You see, Mitch," Andy had told him years ago, "you always have to have some logical and defensible reason for being where you are and for doing whatever it is that you're supposedly doing. It's a kind of protective coloration, and it works the same way that the patterns on a rattlesnake's back allow it to blend into the rocks and shadows of the land it inhabits.

"The mask that allowed me to do that was writing. Writing takes research, you see. Calling something research gave me a ticket into places most people never have an opportunity to go. Drawing can do the same for you. You're lucky in that you have some innate ability, although, if I were you, I'd use some of the excess time we both seem to have at the moment to improve on those skills. You'll be surprised how doing so will stand you in good stead."

That was advice Mitch Johnson had been happy to follow, and he had carried it far beyond the scope of Andy's somewhat limited vision. Claiming to be an artist had made it possible to park his RV-a cumbersome and nearly new Bounder-on a patch of desert just off Coleman Road within miles of where Andrew Carlisle had estimated it would most likely be needed. The rancher he had made arrangements with had been more than happy to have six months' rent in advance and in cash, with the only stipulation being that Mitch keep the gate closed and locked.

"No problem," Mitch had told the guy. "I'm looking for privacy. Keeping the gate locked will be as much of a favor to me as it is for you."

And so, Mitch Johnson-after sorting through his catalog of fake IDs-took up residence on an electricity-equipped corner of the Lazy 4 Ranch under the name of M. Vega, artist. He was there, he told his landlord, to paint the same scenes over and over, in all their tiny variations through the changing seasons of the year.

The Bounder had been parked on the ranch for two months now. Long enough for locals to accept that he was there. He worried sometimes that he might possibly run into someone who had known him before, in that old life, so he mostly stayed away from the trading post and did all his shopping-including buying periodic canisters of butane-at stores on the far northeast side of town.

And that's where he headed that particular morning-to Tucson. If he was going to have company for a day or two, he needed to have plenty of supplies laid in-extra food and water both.

"It's a good plan, Mitch," Andy had told him. "My part is to make sure you have everything you need to pull it off and to get away afterward. Yours is to follow that plan and make it work."

When Andy's voice came to him out of the blue like that, so clearly and purposefully, it was hard to remember the man was dead. It took Mitch back to countless nighttime conversations when their quiet voices had flowed back and forth in the noisy privacy of their prison cell. That was when and where they had first crafted the plan and where they had refined it.

And now, putting that long-awaited plan into action, Mitch Johnson felt honor-bound to do it right. The emotional turmoil about to be visited upon Brandon and Diana Walker's complacent lives would make a fitting memorial for Andy Carlisle, the only real friend Mitch had ever had. It would mean far more than any marble slab Mitch might have had erected in a cemetery.

Sitting up on the mountain, watching Brandon Walker labor over his wood, Mitch wished it would be possible to burn it up, to turn all that carefully stacked wood into a spectacularly blazing inferno. But even as the thought passed through his mind, Mitch dismissed it. Doing that would be too much like firing a warning shot across a ship's bow.

Brandon Walker deserved no such advance notice from Mitch Johnson, and Diana Ladd wouldn't be getting one from Andy, either. One day their lives would be going along swimmingly, and the next day everything would turn to shit. That was one of the basic realities of life-something that happened to everyone sooner or later.

The last time Mitch saw Andrew Carlisle had been some eight months earlier. The man was too weak to walk by then, so the guard had brought him back to the cell in a wheelchair.

"Here's some company for you, Johnson," the guard said, opening the barred door and shoving the chair into the cell. "We've got so many cases of flu in the infirmary right now, the doc thought he might be better off here than there. Can you handle it?"

"It's not exactly news," Mitch told the guard. "Of course I can handle it."

The guard had left the wheelchair just inside the door. Mitch had pushed it over next to the bunk and lifted Carlisle out of the chair and onto the narrow bed. Illness had ravaged his body so there was very little left of him. He couldn't have weighed more than a hundred and twenty pounds.

"I hear you're getting out," Carlisle croaked. "Congratulations."

Mitch shook his head. It was difficult for him to speak. He hadn't expected that he and Andy would become friends, but over the years they had. Now he felt a sudden sense of grief at the prospect of losing that friend not just to Mitch's own release, but also to death. Andrew Carlisle was clearly a dying man.

"When do you leave?" Andy asked.

"Tomorrow," Mitch said. "I'm sorry," he added. "Sorry to leave you alone after all this time."

"Oh, no," Andy told him. "Don't be sorry about leaving. I'll be out, too, before very long. They gave me two consecutive life sentences, but I'm going to fool the bastards. I'm only going to serve one."

Mitch laughed at that. One of the things he had always enjoyed was Andy's black humor.

"As for leaving me alone," Andy added cheerfully, "I spend so much time in the infirmary anymore that it hardly matters. Besides, the sooner I go, the sooner you'll be able to get our little job done and get on with your own life."

They were both quiet for a long time after that. Mitch was thinking about Andy's veiled reference to his trust fund monies. Maybe Andy was, too. Andrew Carlisle was the one who broke the silence.

"You will keep your end of the bargain, won't you, Mitch?" The voice was soft and pleading. The two men had lived side by side, sharing the same cell, for seven and a half years. In all that time, through years of terrible illness and unremitting pain, Mitch Johnson had never heard the man beg.

"Yes, Andy," Mitch answered quietly. "I gave you my word, and I intend to keep it."

"Thank you," Andrew Carlisle said. "So will I."

Mitch Johnson had known from the beginning that Andrew Carlisle was HIV positive, since that day in 1988 when Warden Clint Howell had called him into his office, sat him down in a chair, and offered him a cup of coffee. Inmates didn't usually merit that kind of hospitality, but Johnson had brains enough not to question it aloud.

"We've got a little problem here," Howell said, leaning back in his chair.

More than one, Mitch thought, but again he said nothing. "It's one I think maybe you can help us with," Howell continued.

The indiscriminate use of the words "we" and "us" reminded Mitch of his first grade teacher, Mrs. Wiggins, back home in El Paso, Texas.

"What's that?" Mitch asked, keeping his tone interested but properly deferential.

"One of our inmates has just been diagnosed HIV positive," Howell told him. "He wants you to be his cellmate."

"Like hell he does!" Mitch returned. "I'm not going anywhere near him."

"Please, Johnson," Howell pleaded. "Hear me out. He's specifically asked for you, but only if you're willing."

"Well, I'm not. Can I go now?"

"No, you can't. We're too overcrowded here for him to be left in a cell by himself, and if I put more than one HIV-positive prisoner in the same cell, then those damned bleeding-heart lawyers will be all over me like flies on shit. Cruel and unusual punishment and all that crap."

"What about cruel and unusual punishment for me?" Johnson asked.

"Do me a favor," Howell said. "Talk to him here in my office. I'll have him brought in, and the two of you can discuss the situation. After that, you decide. Wait right here."

Moments later, a guard led Andrew Carlisle into the room. Johnson had never met him before, but as soon as he saw the blind man with his one bad arm in a permanent sling, he knew who it was. Andrew Carlisle was legendary in Florence for being the best jailhouse lawyer in the joint. Other people had to look up the points of law and read them to him aloud, but when it came to writing up paperwork, no one could top him.

"Hello, Mr. Johnson," Carlisle said, as the door closed behind the departing guard.

"I won't do it," Mitch said. "Go fuck yourself."

"We're not here to discuss sexual gratification, Mr. Johnson. I asked for you specifically because I have a business proposition which I believe will be of some interest to you. I believe I can offer you something that you want."

"What's that?" Mitch Johnson asked.

"An education, for one thing," Andrew Carlisle answered calmly. "And revenge, for another."

"Revenge?"

"Against Sheriff Brandon Walker and his wife, Diana."

A brief silence followed that statement. Mitch was taken aback. He hadn't made a secret of his long-simmering hatred of Brandon Walker. The case against Mitch Johnson had been built by Walker while he was still an ambitious homicide detective in the Pima County Sheriff's Department. Sending Mitch Johnson to prison had made Walker's reputation in the local Hispanic community.

For twenty-some years Sheriff Jack DuShane's political machine had called the shots. Anglos killed Mexicans and Indians with relative impunity. The way cases were investigated dictated how they were prosecuted as well. More often than not, Anglos-especially ones who could afford to pay the freight-got off or were charged with reduced offenses. Non-Anglos usually couldn't afford the bribes.

The tide had started to turn with Andrew Carlisle's second trial. Everybody knew by then that the former professor had gotten away with murdering the drunk Indian girl, but there was nothing anyone could do about it. Except maybe use him as an example. A year later, when DuShane tried to intervene on Mitch Johnson's behalf, Walker had blown the whistle on all of it. In the process of shipping Mitch Johnson off to prison for fifteen years to life, Walker had won himself a reputation as a crusading and even-handed lawman. When the next election came around, he won office in a landslide, collecting an astonishing eighty percent of the county's non-Anglo vote in the process.

"Who told you about that?" Mitch asked finally.

Carlisle smiled. "I make it my business to know what goes on in this place. I've been keeping track of you for years, for as long as you've been here. From everything I've been able to learn about you, I'd say you're a very smart man-smart enough to know a good deal when you see one."

"What kind of a deal?"

"I may be a prisoner here," Carlisle said, "but I'm also relatively well off. I inherited my father's entire estate, you see. And since I'm not using any of the money-interest or principal-it's accruing at an amazing rate. I can show you the figures if you want. When I die, I can either leave the whole thing to charity or I can leave it to you."

"Why would you give any of it to me?"

"Because I think you'll agree to my terms."

"Which are?"

"Number one, that you agree to be my cellmate for the remainder of whatever time we both have here together."

"And number two?"

"You become my star pupil. I'm a teacher, you see, not only by training, but also by virtue of personal preference. I have a good deal of knowledge that I would like to impart to someone before I die, a philosophical legacy in addition to the monetary one. Then, once I've taught you what I know, you go out into the world and use that knowledge on the two people who are responsible for sending us both here."

"What exactly do you mean?"

Carlisle sighed. "Don't be obtuse, Mr. Johnson. Brandon Walker and his wife, Diana. Walker cost you your wife, your son, and your standing in the community. The woman who is now Walker's wife, Diana Ladd Walker, is responsible for the loss of both my sight and the use of one of my arms. Once I was locked up in here, I eventually contracted AIDS, so before long, she'll be costing me my life as well. I don't see how it could be any clearer than that. I want them to suffer, in the same way you and I are suffering."

"You want me to kill them?"

"Oh, no, Mr. Johnson. Not at all. I firmly believe that between the two of us, we'll be able to devise something much better than that, something far more imaginative."

"What's number three?"

"There is no number three, Mr. Johnson. Only numbers one and two. What do you think, or would you like to see some of the accounting figures before you make your decision? I can show you what's involved right now, although there's no way to tell how much money there will be in the long run. Obviously we have no idea how long this will take, do we?"

Again there was a long silence. "This is on the level?" Mitch asked finally.

"Absolutely," Carlisle answered. "I could hardly be more serious."

"That's all?"

"Yes."

"Then, Mr. Carlisle," Mitch Johnson said, "you've got yourself a deal."

What had started out way back then as a straight business deal had become for Mitch both a point of honor and pride. By the time he completed the project it would seem to all the world that Andrew Carlisle had somehow returned from the grave to wreak his revenge on the people who had destroyed him. It would give Andy the kind of immortality he had always craved in life.

In the meantime, Mitch Johnson would be left alone, free to walk off into the sunset and disappear. That kind of heroic image appealed to Mitch. It was one of the time-honored icons of the Old West.

He had no difficulty casting himself in the mold of one of those old-fashioned hired guns. None of them would ever have turned their backs on a friend in need, regardless of whether that needy friend happened to be dead or alive.

Neither would Mitch Johnson. After all, a promise is a promise unless, as in this case, it turned into a mission.

Gabe Ortiz, tribal chairman of the Tohono O'othham Nation, left Sells early in the morning for an all-day meeting with the Pima County Board of Supervisors. At issue was the county's most recent set of requirements designed to delay the next scheduled expansion of the tribe's booming casino. Gabe's appearance would be more ceremonial than anything, since most of the actual arguing would be handled by Delia Chavez Cachora, the recently appointed tribal attorney.

Gabe's main responsibility would be to sit there looking attentive and interested, which might prove difficult in view of the fact that he'd had so little sleep the night before. It was times like this when the countervailing pressures of being both tribal chairman and medicine man proved to be almost more than he could handle.

Before the blind medicine man, S-ab Neid Pi Has — Looks At Nothing-had died, years earlier, the canny old shaman had taught Gabe "Fat Crack" Ortiz a number of important things, including the meaning of those particular words, medicine man- mahkai. Looks At Nothing had explained the obligations involved as well.

As a confirmed Christian Scientist, Gabe initially had been prepared to pass off most of what the old man said as superstitious nonsense. As the months went by, however, Looks At Nothing had taught Fat Crack to listen to the voice inside himself, to pay attention, and then to act on the resulting knowledge.

It was through using what Looks At Nothing taught him that Gabe's business and political ambitions had prospered. Most of the time the guidance that came to him was in the form of a gentle nudge, but in the case of Diana Ladd's book, it had been more like the blow of a hammer.

Wanda had bought him a copy of Shadow of Death at a book-signing in town. Diana had autographed it, wishing Gabe a happy birthday in her personalized inscription. And then Wanda had taken the gift-wrapped book home and kept it put away until Gabe's sixty-fifth birthday.

She had given it to him at a small family birthday party at their daughter's home in Tucson. As soon as Gabe held the book in his hand, even before he unwrapped it, he knew something was wrong. Something evil seemed to pulsate from inside the gaily wrapped package. Breaking the ribbon and tearing off the paper, a sense of dread seemed to fill the whole room, blurring the smiling faces of his children and grandchildren, obscuring Wanda's loving, watchful eyes.

"Diana signed it for you," Wanda said.

Gabe fumbled the book open to the title page and read the words that were written there in vivid red ink. "Gabe," the inscription said. "Happy Birthday. Here's a piece of our mutual history. I hope you enjoy it. Diana Ladd Walker."

"Do you like it?" Wanda asked.

"Yes." Gabe managed a weak smile, but as soon as possible, he put the book down. When the party was over and as he and Wanda were getting ready to leave, the grandkids had gathered up the presents and what was left of the birthday cake for Wanda and Gabe to take back home to Sells with them. Five-year-old Rita, the baby, had come racing to the door carrying the book. Afraid that whatever evil lurked in the book might somehow infect her, Gabe had reached down and snatched it from her hand.

Tears welled in her eyes. "I only wanted to carry it," she pouted. "I wouldn't drop it or anything. I like books."

"I know, baby," he said, bending over and giving the child a hug. "But this one is very special. Let me carry it, okay?"

"Okay," she sniffed. "Can I carry your hat then?"

For an answer, Gabe had put his huge black Stetson on her head. It had engulfed the child, falling down over her eyes, covering everything down to her lips, which suddenly burst into a wide grin.

"I can't see anything," she said.

"That's all right," Gabe had said, reaching out and taking her hand. "I'll lead you to the car."

"What's wrong?" Wanda asked, once they were in the Ford. "You got mad at Rita for just touching the book."

"I wasn't mad," Gabe returned, although his protest was useless. After all their years together, Wanda knew him far too well for him to be able to get away with lying.

"It's the book," he said. "It's dangerous. I didn't want her near it."

"How can a book be dangerous?" Wanda asked. "Rita's just a little girl. She can't even read."

Gabe did not want to argue. "It just is," he said.

"So what are you going to do?" Wanda asked. "Take the book to some other medicine man and have him shake a few feathers at it?"

With that, Wanda had squeezed her broad form against the door on the far side of the car. She had sat there with her arms crossed, staring out the window in moody silence as they started the sixty-mile drive back to Sells. It wasn't a good way to end a birthday party.

Looks At Nothing had taught Gabe Ortiz the importance of understanding something before taking any action. And so, in the week following the party, he had read the book, Shadow of Death, from cover to cover. It was slow going. In order to read it he had to hold it, and doing that necessitated overcoming his own revulsion. It reminded him of that long-ago day, when, as a curious child, he had reached into his Aunt Rita's medicine basket and touched the ancient scalp bundle she kept there.

Ni-thahthRita had warned him then about the dangers of Enemy Sickness. Told him that by not showing proper respect for a scalp bundle he could bring down a curse on her-as the scalp bundle's owner-or on some member of her family. She had told him how Enemy Sickness caused terrible pains in the belly or blood in the urine, and how only a medicine man trained in the art of war chants could cure a patient suffering from that kind of illness.

It was late when Fat Crack finally finished reading. Wanda had long since fallen asleep but Gabe knew sleep would be impossible for him. He had stolen outside, and sat there on a chair in their ocotillo-walled, dirt-floored ramada. It was early summer. June. The month the Tohono O'othham call Hahshani Bahithag Mashath — saguaro-ripening month. Although daytime temperatures in the parched Arizona desert had already spiraled into triple digits, the nighttime air was chilly. But that long Thursday night, it was more than temperature that made Gabe Ortiz shiver.

It was true, he had known much of the story. In the late sixties, his cousin, Gina Antone, his Aunt Rita's only grandchild, had been murdered by a man named Andrew Carlisle. Diana Ladd, then a teacher on the reservation, had been instrumental in seeing that the killer, a once well-respected professor of creative writing at the university, had been sent to prison for the murder. Six years later, when the killer got out and came back to Tucson seeking revenge, he had come within minutes of killing both women-Diana Ladd and Rita Antone-and Diana's son, Davy, as well.

That much of the story Gabe already knew. The rest of it-Andrew Carlisle's childhood and Diana's, the various twists of fate that had put their two separate lives on a collision course-were things Fat Crack Ortiz learned only as he read Diana's book. Knowing those details as well as the background on Andrew Carlisle's other victims made Fat Crack feel worse instead of better. Nothing he read, including the knowledge that Andrew Carlisle had died of AIDS in the state penitentiary at Florence a few months earlier, did anything to dispel his terrible sense of foreboding about the book and the pain and suffering connected with it.

Gabe Ortiz was a practical man, given to down-to-earth logic. For an hour or more he approached the problem of the book's danger through the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy. When, at the end of several hours of consideration, he had made no progress, he walked back into the house. Careful not to disturb Wanda, he opened the bottom drawer of an old wooden teacher's desk he had salvaged from the school district trash heap. Inside one of the drawers he found Looks At Nothing's buckskin medicine pouch-the fringed huashomi — the old medicine man had worn until the day he died.

In the years since a frail Looks At Nothing had bequeathed the pouch to Gabe, he had kept it stocked with sacred tobacco, picking it at the proper time, drying, storing, and rolling it in the proper way. Gabe had carefully followed the sacred traditions of the Peace Smoke, using it sparingly but to good effect, all the while hoping that one or the other of his two sons would show some interest in learning what the medicine man had left in Gabe's care and keeping. Unfortunately, his two boys, Richard and Leo, nearly middle-aged now, were far more interested in running their tow-truck/auto repair business and playing the guitar than they were in anything else.

Back outside, seated on a white plastic chair rather than on the ground, as the wiry Looks At Nothing would have done, Gabe examined the contents of the bag-the medicine man's World War II vintage Zippo lighter and the cigarettes themselves. He had thought that he would light one of them and blow the smoke over the book, performing as he did so the sacred act of wustana, of blowing smoke with the hope of illuminating something. But sitting there, he realized that what was needed for wustana was a living, breathing patient. Here he had only an object, the book itself.

Rather than waste the sacred smoke, Fat Crack Ortiz decided to try blowing from his heart instead. He remembered Looks At Nothing telling him once that the process was so simple that even an old woman could do it.

Holding the book in his hands, he began the chant, repeating the verses four times just as he had been taught.

I am blowing now to see what it is that lives here,

What breathing thing lies hidden in this book.

There is a spirit in here that sickens those around it,

That is a danger to those around it.

I want to see this strength so I will know what kind of thing it is.

So I will know how to draw it out of where it is hiding

And how to send it away to that other place,

The place where the strength belongs.

As Gabe did so, as he sang the words of the kuadk — observing the form and rhythms of the age-old chant of discernment-he began to figure it out. As time passed, he began to see the pattern. Without quite knowing how, he suddenly understood.

The evil Ohb — Fat Crack's Aunt Rita's enemy-was back. The wicked Mil-gahn man who, twenty-one years earlier, had somehow become a modern-day reincarnation of an ancient tribal enemy, was coming once again. Somehow the dreaded Apache was about to step out of the pages of Diana Ladd Walker's book and reenter their lives.

Gabe remembered reading in a newspaper article several months earlier that Andrew Carlisle was dead. That meant that if he was not coming in person, certainly the strength of the Ohb was coming, bringing danger to all of those people still alive who had once been connected with Diana Ladd and with Rita Antone-the woman Gabe called Ni-thahth, his mother's elder sister-in that other, long-ago battle. The fact that Carlisle was dead meant nothing. His spirit was still alive, still restless, and still bent on revenge.

Time passed. When Gabe at last emerged from his self-induced trance, the stars were growing pale in a slowly graying sky. Stiffly, Gabe Ortiz eased his cramped body out of the uncomfortable plastic chair. Before going back into the house to grab a few hours of sleep, he limped out to where the cars were parked and put both Looks At Nothing's deerskin pouch and Diana Ladd's offending book in the glove compartment of the tribal chairman's Ford sedan.

Once, long ago, when Looks At Nothing had first told him that Gabe had the power to be a great shaman, Gabe had teased the Gohhim O'othham — Old Man. He had laughed off the medicine man's prediction that one day Fat Crack, too, would be a great mahkai — a medicine man with a tow truck. That idea had struck him as too funny, especially since it came from a man who clung stubbornly to the old ways and who looked down on all things Anglo-with the single notable exception of that aging Zippo lighter.

Looks At Nothing had much preferred walking to riding in a truck. Gabe wondered now what the old shaman would say if he knew his deerskin pouch and sacred tobacco would be riding to town the next day in a two-year-old Crown Victoria. Looks At Nothing would probably think it was funny, Gabe thought, and so did he.

A few minutes later, still chuckling, he eased himself into bed. As he did so, Wanda stirred beside him.

"It's late," she complained. "You've been up all night."

"Yes," Gabe said, rolling his heavy body next to hers, and resting one of his hands on her shoulder. "But at least now I can sleep."

The sentence ended with a contented snore. Within minutes, Wanda fell asleep once more as well.

Lani had told the man that she would be late for work if she arrived any later than seven. That wasn't entirely true. The first two hours she spent at the museum each day, from seven to nine, were strictly voluntary. She went around on the meandering paths, armed with a trash bag and sharp-pronged stick, picking up the garbage that had been left behind by the previous day's visitors.

During those two hours, doing mindless work, she was able to watch the animals from time to time and simply to be there with them. Working by herself, without the necessity of talking with anyone else, she remembered the times she had come here with Nana Dahdand with her brother Davy.

Nana Dahd. Dahd itself implies nothing more than the somewhat distant relationship of godmother, but for Davy and Lani both, Rita Antone had been much more than that. Diana Ladd Walker may have owned the official title of "Mother" in the family, but she had come in only a distant second behind the Indian woman who had actually filled the role.

Ambitious and forever concentrating on her work, there was a part of Diana Ladd Walker that was always separate from both her children. While Diana labored over first a typewriter and later a computer, the child-rearing joys and responsibilities had fallen mainly on Rita's capable and loving shoulders.

By the time Lani appeared on the scene, Davy was already eleven years old and Rita's health was becoming precarious. Had Davy not been there to pitch in and help out, no doubt it would have been impossible for Nana Dahd to look after a busily curious toddler. In a symbiotic relationship that made outsiders wonder, the three of them-the old woman, the boy, and the baby-had made do.

Long after most males his age would have forsaken the company of women, Davy stayed around. He, more than anyone, understood what it was Nana Dahd was trying to do, and he was willing to help. Whenever he wasn't in school, he spent most of his waking hours helping the woman who had once been his baby-sitter care for his little sister.

When the three of them were alone together in Rita's apartment-with the old woman in her wheelchair and with Lani on her lap while Davy did his homework at the kitchen table-it seemed as though they existed in a carefully preserved bubble that was somehow outside the confines of regular time and space.

In that room they had spoken, laughed, and joked together, speaking solely in the softly guttural language of the Tohono O'othham. It was there Lani learned that Nana Dahd's childhood name had been E Waila Kakaichu, which means Dancing Quail. Rita Antone's dancing days were long since over, but Lani's were only beginning. The child danced constantly. Her favorite game consisted of standing in the middle of the room, twirling and pretending to be siwuliki — whirlwind. She would spin around and around until finally, losing her balance, she would fall laughing to the floor.

Just as Rita had given Davy his Indian name of Olhoni — Little Orphaned Calf-Nana Dahd gave Lani a special Indian name as well, one that was known only to the three of them. In the privacy of Rita's apartment, the Tohono O'othham child with the Mil-gahn name of Dolores Lanita Walker became Mualig Siakam. Rita told Lani that the words mualig siakam meant Forever Spinning.

There in Nana Dahd' s room, working one stitch at a time, Rita taught Davy and Lani how to make baskets. Davy had been at it much longer, but Lani's tiny and surprisingly agile fingers soon surpassed her elder brother's clumsier efforts. When that happened, Davy Ladd gave up and stopped making baskets altogether.

Rita taught Davy and Lani the old stories and the medicinal lore Rita had learned from her own grandmother, from Oks Amichuda — Understanding Woman. Had Rita been physically able, she would have taken her charges out into the desert to show them the plants and animals she wanted them to understand. Instead, the three of them spent hours almost every weekend at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, with Davy pushing Nana Dahd' s chair along the gently graded paths and with Lani perched on the old woman's lap.

For Rita, every display in the museum was part of her comprehensive classroom. As they went from one exhibit to another, Rita would point out the various plants and tell what each was good for and when it should be picked. And on those long afternoons, if it was still wintertime, so the snakes and lizards were unable to hear and swallow the storyteller's luck, Rita would tell stories.

Each animal and plant came with its own traditional lore. Patiently, Nana Dahd told them all. Some tales explained the how of creation, like the spiders stitching together the floating pieces of earth. Others helped explain animal behavior, like the stories about how I'itoi taught the birds to build their nests or how he taught the gophers to dig their burrows underground. There were stories that did the same thing for plants, like the one about the courageous old woman who went south to rescue her grandson from the warlike Yaquis and was rewarded by being turned into the beautiful plant, the night-blooming cereus. And there were some, like the stories of how Cottontail and Quail both tricked Coyote, that were just for fun.

As the children learned the various stories, Rita had encouraged them to observe the behavior of the animals involved and to consider how the story and the animal's natural inclination came together to form the basis of the story. What was observable and what was told combined to help the children learn to make sense of their world, just as those same stories had for the Tohono O'othham for thousands of years.

Rita-her person, her stories, and her patient teaching-had formed the center of Lani Walker's existence from the moment the child first came to Gates Pass, from the time before she had any conscious memory. When Rita Antone died, the day before Lani's seventh birthday, a part of the child had died as well, but there on the paths of the museum the summer of her sixteenth year-wandering alone among the plants and animals that had populated Nana Dahd' s stories-Lani was able to recapture those fading strains of stories from her childhood and breathe life into them anew.

And each day at nine o'clock, when she finished up with one shift and had an hour to wait before the next one started, she would make sure she was near the door to the hummingbird enclosure. For it was there, of all the places in the museum, where she felt closest to Nana Dahd. This was where she and Davy had been with Rita on the day Lani Walker first remembered hearing Rita mention the story of Kulani O'oks — the great Medicine Woman of the Tohono O'othham.

"Kulani,"Lani had repeated, running the name over her tongue. "It sounds like my Mil-gahn name."

And Rita's warm brown face had beamed down at her in a way that told Lani she had just learned something important. Nana Dahd nodded. "That is why, at the time of your adoption, I asked your parents to make Lani part of your English name. Kulani O'oks and Mualig Siakam are two different names for the same person. And now that you are old enough to understand that, it is time that you heard that story as well."

Whenever Lani Walker sat in the hummingbird enclosure, all those stories seemed to flow together. Kulani O'oks and Mualig Siakam were one and the same, and so were Dolores Lanita Walker and Clemencia Escalante.

Four different people and four different names, but then Nana Dahd had always taught that all things in nature go in fours.

Fat Crack and Wanda Ortiz, Rita Antone's nephew and his wife, had stopped by the Walker home in Gates Pass on their way home from Tucson that warm September day. Wanda Ortiz, after years of staying at home with three kids, had gone off to school and earned a degree in social work from the University of Arizona. Her case load focused on "at risk" children on the reservation, and she had ridden into town earlier that day in an ambulance, along with one of her young charges.

"It's too bad," Wanda said, visiting easily with her husband's wheelchair-bound aunt in Diana Walker's spacious, basket-lined living room. "She has ant bites all over her body. The doctor says she may not make it."

At seventy-one, Rita Antone could no longer walk, having lost her left leg-from the knee down-to diabetes. She spent her days mostly in the converted cook shack out behind Diana and Brandon Walker's house. The words "cook shack" hardly applied any longer. The place was cozy and snug. It had been recently renovated, making the whole thing-including a once tiny bathroom-wheelchair-accessible. Evenings Rita spent in the company of Diana and Brandon Walker or with Davy Ladd, the long-legged eleven-year-old she still sometimes called her little Olhoni.

On that particular evening, Brandon had been out investigating a homicide case for the Pima County Sheriff's Department. Diana excused herself to go make coffee for the unexpected guests while Davy lay sprawled on the floor, doodling in a notebook and listening to the grown-ups talk rather than doing his homework. Rita sat nearby with her owij- her awl-and the beginnings of a basket in hand. She frowned in concentration as a long strand of bear grass tried to escape its yucca bindings.

"Ant bites?" Rita asked.

Wanda Ortiz nodded. "She was staying with her great-grandmother down in Nolic. Her father's in jail and her mother ran off last spring. Over the summer, the other kids helped look after the little girl, but they're all back in school now. Yesterday afternoon, the grandmother fell asleep and the baby got out. She wandered into an ant bed, but her grandmother is so deaf, she didn't hear the baby screaming. The other kids from the village found her in the afternoon, after they came home on the bus.

"Someone brought her into the hospital at Sells last night, but she's still so sick that this morning they transferred her to TMC. I came along to handle the paperwork. By the time I finished, the ambulance had already left, so Gabe came to get me."

"How old is the baby?" Rita asked.

"Fifteen months," Wanda answered.

"And what will happen to her?"

"We'll try to find another relative to take her, I guess. If not…" Wanda Ortiz let the remainder of the sentence trail away unspoken.

"If not what?" Rita asked sharply. It was a tone of voice Davy had seldom heard Nana Dahd use. He looked up from his drawing, wondering what was wrong.

Wanda shrugged. "There's an orphanage up in Phoenix that takes children. If nobody else wants her, she might go there."

"Whose orphanage?" As Rita asked the question, she pushed the awl into the rough beginning of her new basket and set her basket-making materials aside.

"What do you mean, whose orphanage?" Wanda asked.

"Who runs it?" Rita asked.

"It's church-run," Wanda replied. "Baptist, I think. It's very nice. They only take Indian children there, not just Tohono O'othham children, but ones from lots of different tribes."

"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 want 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?"