Kiss the Bees

5

They say it happened long ago that the weather grew very hot-the hottest year the Tohono O'othham had ever known. And all this happened in the hottest part of that year.

For many weeks the Indians and the animals had looked at the sky, hoping to find one cloud that would show them thatChewagi O'othham- Cloud Man-was still alive. There was not a cloud.

The water holes had been dry for a long time. The Desert People had gone far away to find water. The coyotes had followed the Indians. The wolves and foxes had gone into the mountains. All the birds had left. EvenKakaichu- Quail-who seldom leaves his own land, was forced to go away.

Gohhim Chuk- Lame Jackrabbit-had found a little shade. It was not much, just enough to keep him from burning. The tips of his ears and his tail were already burned black. And that,nawoj, is why that particular kind of jackrabbit-chuk chuhwi- is marked that same way, even today.

AsGohhim Chuk- Lame Jackrabbit-lay panting in his little bit of shade, he was wondering how he would manage the few days' journey to a cooler place. Then he sawNuhwi- Buzzard-flying over him.

Now it is the law of the desert to live and let live, that one should only kill in self-defense or to keep from starving. The animals forget this law sometimes when their stomachs are full and when there is plenty of water, but when the earth burns and when everyone is in danger, the law is always remembered. So Lame Jackrabbit did not run away when he saw Buzzard circling down over him. Buzzard knew the law of the desert as well as Lame Jackrabbit did.

Nuhwi flew in circles, lower and lower. When he was low enough, he called to Lame Jackrabbit. "I have seen something very odd back in the desert," Nuhwi said. When he was high up over the part of the desert which was burned bare, he told Lame Jackrabbit, he saw on the ground a black place that seemed to be in motion. He had circled down hoping it was water. But it was only a great crowd of Ali-chu'uchum O'othham, the Little People.

As you know,nawoj, my friend, the Little People are the bees and flies and insects of all kinds. Buzzard said these Little People were swarming around something on the ground. He saidNuhwi andGohhim Chuk must carry the news together because it might help someone. It is also the law of the desert that you must always help anyone in trouble.

Lame Jackrabbit agreed that what Buzzard had seen was very strange. Little People usually leave early when the water goes away. Lame Jackrabbit said he would carry the news.

But Gohhim Chuk, whose ears and tail were burned black, being lame, could not travel very well. So he found Coyote and told him whatNuhwi- Buzzard-had seen.

Ban- Coyote-was puzzled too. He said he would carry the message on to theTohono O'othham- the Desert People.

It was still dark when Lani's alarm buzzed in her ear. She turned it off quickly and then hurried into the bathroom to shower. Standing in front of the steamy mirror, she used a brush and hair dryer to style her shoulder-length hair. How long would it take, she wondered, for her hair to grow back out to the length it had been back in eighth grade, before she had cut it?

From first grade on, Lani Walker and Jessica Carpenter had been good friends. By the time they reached Maxwell Junior High, the two girls made a striking pair. Lani's jet-black waist-length hair and bronze complexion were in sharp contrast to Jessie's equally long white-blond hair and fair skin. Because they were always together, some of the other kids teasingly called them twins.

Their entry into eighth grade came at a time when Lani Walker needed a faithful ally. For one thing, Rita was gone. She had been dead for years, but Lani still missed her. When coping with the surprising changes in her own body or when faced with difficulties at home or in school, Lani still longed for the comfort of Nana Dahd's patient guidance. And there were difficulties at home. In fact, the whole Walker household seemed to be in a state of constant upheaval. Things had started going bad when her older stepbrother, Quentin, had been sent to prison as a result of a fatality drunk-driving accident.

Lani had been too young to realize all that was happening when Tommy disappeared, but she had watched her grim-faced parents deal with the first Quentin crisis. She had been at the far end of the living room working on a basket the night after Quentin Walker was sentenced for the drunk-driving conviction. Brandon had come into the house, shambled over to the couch, slumped down on it, and buried his face in his hands.

"Five years," he had groaned. "On the one hand it seems like a long time and yet it's nothing. He killed three people, for God's sake! How can a five-year sentence make up for that, especially when he'll probably be out in three?"

"That's what the law says," Diana returned, but Brandon remained unconvinced and uncomforted.

"Judge Davis could have given him more if he had wanted to. I can't help thinking that it's because I'm the sheriff…"

"Brandon, you have to let go of that," Diana said. "First you blame yourself for Quentin being a drunk, and now you're taking responsibility for the judge's sentence. Quentin did what he did and so did the judge. Neither one of those results has anything at all to do with you."

Lani had put her basket aside and hurried over to the couch, where she snuggled up next to her father. "It's not your fault, Daddy," she said confidently, taking one of his hands in both of hers. "You didn't do it."

"See there?" Diana had smiled. "If Lani's smart enough to see it at her age, what's the matter with you?"

"Stubborn, maybe?" Brandon had returned with a weak smile of his own.

"Not stubborn maybe," Diana answered. "Stubborn for sure."

So the family had weathered that crisis in fairly good shape. The next one, when it came, was far worse. As near as Lani could tell, it all started about the time the letter arrived from a man named Andrew Carlisle, the same person Nana Dahd had always referred to as the evil Ohb. Within months, Diana was working on a book project with Andrew Carlisle while Brandon stalked in and out of the house in wounded silence.

Lani was hard-pressed to understand how the very mention of Carlisle's name was able to cause a fight, but from a teenager's point of view, that wasn't all bad. The growing wedge between her parents allowed Lani Walker to play both ends against the middle. She was able to get away with things her older brother Davy never could have.

It was during the summer when Lani turned thirteen that the next scandal surfaced concerning Quentin Walker. Still imprisoned at Florence, he was the subject of a new investigation. He was suspected of being involved in a complex protection racket that had its origins inside the prison walls. By the time school started at the end of the summer, a sharp-eyed defense attorney had gotten Quentin off on a technicality, but all of Tucson was abuzz with speculation about Brandon Walker's possible involvement with his son's plot.

The whole mess was just surfacing in the media the week Lani Walker started eighth grade. At home the inflammatory newspaper headlines and television news broadcasts were easy to ignore. All Lani had to do was to skip reading the paper or turn off the TV. At school that strategy didn't work.

"Your father's a crook." Danny Jenkins, the chief bully of Maxwell Junior High, whispered in Lani's ear as the yellow school bus rumbled down the road. "You wait and see. Before long, he'll end up in prison, too, just like his son."

Lani had turned to face her tormentor. Red-haired, rednecked, and pugnacious, Danny had made Lani's life miserable from the moment he had first shown up in Tucson two years earlier after moving there from Mobile, Alabama.

"No, he won't!" Lani hissed furiously.

"Will, too."

"Prove it."

"Why should I? It says so on TV. That means it's true, doesn't it?"

"No, it doesn't, s-koshwa — stupid," she spat back at him. "It just means you're too dumb to turn off the set."

"Wait a minute. What did you call me?"

"Nothing," she muttered.

She turned away, thinking that if she ignored him, that would be the end of it. Instead, he grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked it hard enough that the back of her head bounced off the top of the seat. Tears sprang to her eyes.

"Leave her alone, Danny," Jessica Carpenter ordered. "You're hurting her."

"She called me a name-some shitty Indian name. I want to know what it was."

Lani, with her head pulled tight against the back of the seat, clamped her lips shut. But just because Lani stayed quiet, didn't mean Jessica Carpenter would.

"I'm telling," Jessica yelled. "Driver, driver! Danny Jenkins is pulling Lani's hair."

The driver didn't bother looking over her shoulder. "Knock it off, Danny," she said. "Stop it right now or you're walking."

"But she called me a name," Danny protested. "It sounded bad. Koshi something."

"I don't care what she called you. I said knock it off."

Danny had let go of Lani's hair, but that still wasn't the end of it. "Why don't you go back to the reservation, squaw," he snarled after her as they stepped off the bus. "Why don't you go back to where you belong?"

She turned on him, eyes flashing. "Why don't you?" she demanded. "The Indians were here first."

Nobody liked Danny Jenkins much, although over time his flailing fists had earned him a certain grudging respect. But now, the kids who overheard Lani's retort laughed and applauded.

"You really told him," Jessica said approvingly later on their way to class. "He's such a jerk."

Going home that afternoon, Lani and Jessica chose seats as far from Danny as possible, but after the bus pulled out of the parking lot, he bribed the girl sitting behind Lani to trade places. When Lani and Jessica got off the bus twenty minutes later, they found that a huge wad of bubblegum had been plastered into Lani's hair.

They went into the bathroom at Jessica's house. For an hour, the two of them struggled to comb out the gum, but combing didn't work.

"It's just getting worse," Jessica said finally, giving up. "Let's call your mother. Maybe she'll know what to do."

Lani shook her head. "Mom and Dad have enough to worry about right now. Bring me the scissors."

"Scissors," Jessie echoed. "What are you going to do?"

"Cut it off."

"You can't do that," Jessie protested. "Your hair's so long and pretty…"

"Yes, I can," Lani told her friend determinedly. "And I will. It's my hair."

In the end Jessica helped wield the scissors. She cut the hair off in what was supposed to be a straight line, right at the base of Lani's neck.

"How does it look?" Lani asked as Jessica stepped back to eye her handiwork.

Jessie made a face. "Not that good," she admitted. "It's still a little crooked."

"That's all right," Lani said. "It'll grow out."

"So will mine," Jessie said, handing Lani the scissors.

For a moment, Lani didn't understand. "What do you mean?"

"Cut mine, too. People tease us about being twins. This way, we still will be."

"But what will your mother say?" Lani asked.

"The same thing yours does," Jessica returned.

Fifteen minutes later, Jessie Carpenter's hair was the same ragged length as Lani's. Before they left the bathroom, Lani gathered up all the cuttings into a plastic trash bag. Instead of putting the bag in the garbage, however, she loaded it into her backpack along with her books.

"What are you doing?" Jessica asked.

"I'm going to take it home and use it to make a basket."

"Really? Out of hair?"

Lani nodded. "Nana Dahd showed me once how to make horsehair baskets. This will be an o'othham wopo hashda — people-hair basket."

Hair had been the main topic of conversation that night at both the Walker household and at the Carpenters' just up the road.

"Whatever happened to your hair?" Brandon Walker demanded. "It looks like you got it caught in the paper cutter at school."

"It was too long," Lani answered quietly. "I decided to cut it off. Jessie cut hers, too."

"You cut it yourself?"

Lani shrugged. "Jessie cut mine and I cut hers."

Silenced by a reproving look from Diana, Brandon shook his head and let the subject drop, subsiding into a gloomy silence.

The next day was Saturday. With the enthusiastic approval of Rochelle Carpenter, Jessie's mother, Diana collected both girls and took them to her beauty shop in town to repair the damage.

"You both look much better now," Diana had told them on the way back home. "What I don't understand is why, if you both wanted haircuts, you didn't say something in the first place instead of cutting it off yourselves."

Jessie kept quiet, waiting to see how Lani would answer. "We just decided to, that's all," she said.

Since Lani didn't explain anything more about the fight on the bus, neither did Jessie. As for Diana, she was so accustomed to the vagaries of teenagers that she let the matter drop.

Several weeks later, Lani emerged from her bedroom carrying a small flat disk of a basket about the size of a silver dollar. Diana Ladd had spent thirty years on and around the reservation. Over those years she had become something of an expert on Tohono O'othham basketry and she recognized that her daughter, Rita Antone's star pupil, was especially skilled. As soon as Diana saw this new miniature basket, she immediately recognized the quality of the workmanship in the delicate pale-yellow Papago maze set against a jet-black background.

"I didn't know you ever made baskets like this," Diana said, examining the piece. "Where did you get the horsehair?"

"It's not horsehair," Lani answered. "It's made from Jessie's hair and from mine. I'm making two of them, one for each of us to wear. I'm going to give Jessie hers for her birthday."

Diana looked at her daughter. "Is that why you cut your hair, to make the baskets?"

Lani laughed and shook her head. "No," she said, "I'm making the baskets because we cut our hair."

"Oh," Diana said, although she still wasn't entirely sure what Lani meant.

It was another month before Jessie's maze was finished as well. Each of the baskets had a tiny golden safety pin fastened to the back side. Lani strung a leather thong through each of the pins, tied her necklace around her neck, and then went to Jessica's house carrying the other basket in a tiny white jeweler's box she had begged from Diana.

"It's beautiful," Jessie said, staring down at the necklace. "What does it mean?"

"It means that we're friends," Lani answered. "I made the two baskets just alike so we can still be twins whenever we wear them."

"I know that we're friends," Jessie giggled. "But the design. What does that mean?"

"It's a sacred symbol," Lani explained. "The man in the maze is I'itoi — Elder Brother. He comes from the center of the earth. The maze spreads out from the center in each of the four directions."

In the years since then, the black-and-gold disk had become something of a talisman for Lani Walker. She called it her kushpo ho'oma — her hair charm. The original leather thong had been replaced several times over. Now when she wore it, the basket dangled from a slender gold chain Lani's parents had given her on the occasion of her sixteenth birthday.

The people-hair charm served as a reminder that some people were good and some were bad. Lani didn't wear it every day, only on special occasions-only when she needed to. There were times when she was nervous or worried about something-as on the day she went to the museum to apply for the job, for instance-that she made sure the necklace went with her.

Having the basket dangling around her neck seemed to give her luck. Every once in a while, she would run her fingertips across the finely woven face of the maze. Just touching the smooth texture seemed to calm her somehow. In a way Lani couldn't quite explain, the tiny basket made her feel more secure-almost as if it summoned Nana Dahd 's spirit back and brought the old basket maker close to her once more.

Coming out of the bathroom with her hair sleek and dry, Lani looked at the clothing she had laid out on a chair the night before-the lushly flowered Western shirt with pearl-covered snaps, a fairly new pair of jeans, shiny boots, and a fawn-colored cowboy hat. Walking past the chair, Lani went to her dresser and opened her jewelry box. She smiled as the first few bars of "When You Wish Upon a Star" tinkled into the room.

Taking her treasured maze necklace from its place of honor, she fastened it around her throat.

Mr. Vega-that was the name the artist had signed in the bottom right-hand corner of the sketch, (M. Vega)-had asked her to wear something Indian. Of all the things Lani Walker owned, her o'othham wopo hashda — people-hair basket-was more purely "Indian" than anything else.

Mr. Vega might not know that, but Lani did, and that's what counted.

David Ladd was still reeling from the effects of yet another panic attack that Saturday morning as he finished packing his things into his new Jeep Cherokee for the long road trip back to Arizona. Even though it was a bald-faced lie, he had told his grandmother, Astrid Ladd, that he wanted to get an early start that morning.

As expected, Astrid came out of the main house to watch the loading process. She stood in the driveway between the main house and the carriage house, leaning on her cane and shaking her head as he closed the rear hatch on his carefully packed load.

"All done?"

Davy nodded. "I should probably hit the road pretty soon."

"This early?" Astrid objected. "You can't do that. I wanted to take you to the club one last time before you go. Not only that, if you're going to be driving all that way by yourself, it's important for you to keep up your strength. You should start out with a decent breakfast under your belt."

What David knew but didn't mention to Astrid right then was that on the first day of his trip he would be driving only as far as downtown Chicago. There, just off North Michigan Avenue on Pearson, he and Candace Waverly-his girlfriend of six months' standing-planned to spend their farewell night ensconced in a deluxe suite at the Ritz Carlton. It was a graduation gift from Candace to Davy, compliments of the Gold AmEx card Richard Waverly provided for his darling daughter.

"Sure, Grandma," David said, accepting his grandmother's invitation gracefully, as he had known in advance that he would. "I suppose I can stay long enough to have breakfast," he added.

Evanston, the town, is dry. Evanston, the golf club-across the line in Skokie-is definitely wet. That was the other thing David Ladd was both smart and discreet enough not to mention. The reason Astrid Ladd wanted to have breakfast at the golf club-which she did several times a week-had less to do with the quality of the food than it did with the inevitable Bloody Mary or two that would accompany her order of eggs Benedict.

At seventy-eight, Astrid Ladd was old enough to still observe the strictures against solitary drinking. According to her long-held beliefs, only problem drinkers drank alone. Astrid and her late husband, Garrison Walther Ladd II, had been part of the fashionable drinking set their whole married life. Living in a dry town, they had done their drinking at home, in other people's homes or in private clubs. David's grandfather had been dead for five years now. He had hemorrhaged to death, dying as a result of esophageal varices which were most likely related to all those years of social drinking.

With her husband and best tippling buddy gone, Astrid Ladd still wanted to drink, but she was terrified of being caught in the very unladylike trap of drinking alone. As a consequence, she spent her days plotting a vigorously active social calendar that usually involved suckering some poor unsuspecting chump into driving her out to the club early for her daily ration of grog. Later on, she would prevail on somebody else to chauffeur her home.

On this hazy, and already hot summer morning in early June, David Ladd drove both ways. Leaving behind his upstairs carriage house apartment with its magnificent view of Lake Michigan, he pulled up to the side entrance of his grandmother's oversized mansion in Astrid's aging but equally oversized 1988 DeVille. She came out onto the porch and stood waiting, leaning heavily on her cane, while David hustled out of the car and helped her into the rider's side.

"I can't believe you're done with school already," Astrid said as he eased her into the leather seat. "Three whole years! The time just flew by, didn't it? I'm going to miss you desperately, Davy. You don't know how much."

Actually, Davy did know. The drafty old house was far too big for Astrid. In fact, most of the upstairs and part of the ground floor had been closed off for years, since long before Davy appeared on the scene. Several times during his sojourn at Northwestern, David Ladd had hinted to his grandmother that maybe it was time for her to consider unloading the family home. He suggested that she might enjoy moving into a more reasonably sized condo, one that didn't require nearly as much upkeep. Astrid had dismissed the idea out of hand, and after the second rejection Davy hadn't mentioned it again.

"And I'm going to miss that lovely Candace," Astrid continued. "I probably shouldn't, but I can't help thinking of her as a granddaughter."

That wasn't news. Astrid Ladd had never been one to keep her feelings or opinions to herself. Her unbridled enthusiasm for Candace Waverly-of the Oak Park Waverlys, as Astrid was fond of adding when introducing Candace and Davy to one of her upscale friends-was also well known.

"I'm going to miss her, too," David managed.

"How much?"

"What do you mean, how much?"

"You know what I mean," Astrid said slyly. "Are you or are you not going to give her a ring before you leave town?"

Astrid Ladd had promised her grandson a free ride at Northwestern's law school if he wanted to go there to study. That "free ride" had included everything-tuition, books, living expenses, food, a place to stay, laundry privileges, and even a car-but it had been far from free. The cost had come in terms of three years spent living his life under Astrid Ladd's watchful scrutiny, under her eye, ear, and thumb. Astrid's far too conscientious mothering as well as Chicago's uncompromising weather-summer and winter both-were the main reasons David Ladd was anxious to go back home to Arizona.

Candace Waverly was the single reason he wanted to stay in Chicago.

"No, Grandma," he said. "No ring. We're not ready for that yet."

"But you told me that you're… what did you call it?"

"Going out," David supplied. "But that doesn't mean we're serious."

"I wish it did," Astrid said wistfully. "Because I'm willing to help, you know."

Davy kept his eyes on the road. "Grandma," he said patiently, "you already put me through law school. And you just gave me a Jeep Grand Cherokee for graduation. How much more help could you be?"

"You'd be surprised, Davy," Astrid Ladd said determinedly. "There are one or two more things I could do."

"Grandma, believe me, you've done enough."

They turned off Sheridan Road onto Dempster. Astrid waited until they stopped for a light. "Hold out your hand," she commanded.

Sighing, David Ladd obeyed. With a deft twist, Astrid removed a knuckle-sized diamond ring from her finger and dropped it into the palm of her grandson's hand. "You could give Candace this," she said.

"That's your engagement ring, Grandma," Davy protested. "I can't take that." He tried returning it to her. Astrid took it, but instead of keeping it, she leaned over and dropped it into his shirt pocket.

"Why not?" she returned. "Who else is there? You're my grandson and my only living heir. Who else would I leave it to but you? That's why I don't want to sell the house, either. I plan to give it to you and Candace as a wedding present, you see."

Her voice broke. She sounded close to tears. With a lump in his own throat, David almost drove the DeVille into a passing truck. "You can't be serious, Grandma," he protested.

"I'm serious as can be, Davy. If you pass the bar in Illinois and go into practice, in five years, you'll make partner, especially with Richard Waverly's connections. You and Candace will need an address like mine to help establish your place in the community. You'll need to fix it up some, decorate it to suit you and all that, but that'll be a lot less expensive than buying new."

"Grandmother," David Ladd said carefully, wanting to be firm, but not wanting to hurt her feelings. "I don't want to practice law here. I want to go home, to Arizona."

Astrid tossed her head. "I can't imagine why," she said crossly. "I don't know how regular people can tolerate living in that godforsaken place. I remember when your grandfather Garrison and I went out there for your father's memorial service-it wasn't even a funeral, mind you. It was so ungodly hot. I don't know when I've ever been more miserable."

It would have been simple to talk about the weather. David Ladd was an expert on that. He had suffered more from both heat and cold during his three years in Illinois than he could ever remember enduring in the desert back home. Although this was only the second week of June, Chicago was already soldiering through the first real heat wave of summer.

During the previous week, afternoon daytime temperatures had hovered in the mid-nineties with humidity much the same-mid-nineties. And although the humidity was that high, the weather forecasts held no hope of rain or relief. Davy was looking forward to Arizona. At least there, the heat was honest. When the summer rainstorms came, evening temperatures could drop as much as twenty degrees in a matter of minutes. In Chicago, the sweltering, smothering heat never let up. And rain, when it came, seemed to make things worse, not better.

At that moment, however, David Ladd couldn't afford the luxury of a digression into weather. His grandmother had issued a serious challenge, one that had to be met head-on.

"It's a wonderful offer, Grandma," he said at last. "It really is, and it's a wonderful house. But I can't see myself living there."

"You can't?" She sounded shocked. "Why not?"

"Because it wouldn't ever be really mine," David answered. "I wouldn't feel like I had earned it."

"That's not it," Astrid said sharply. "It's because of your mother, isn't it? Diana has always resented me, and now she's turned you against me, too."

"That's not true, Grandmother. Not at all."

David turned into the club entrance and then stopped at the front door to let Astrid out. The place wasn't all that full, so there were plenty of parking places. Even so, by the time he made it into the dining room, Astrid had already finished her first Bloody Mary and had started on the second.

David Ladd sighed. For a farewell celebration, it was not an auspicious beginning.

Lani Walker left a note for her parents on the kitchen table. "Have fun at the banquet. Remember, Jess and I are going to that dueling bands concert at the Community Center tonight. Her parents are giving us a ride both to and from. I shouldn't be too late, but don't wake me for breakfast. Tomorrow's my day off."

The Tucson Mountains loomed in deep shadows against a rosy sky when Lani rode her bike up to Mr. Vega's parking place. She had worried overnight that maybe he wouldn't show up, but he was there with his easel already set up by the time she braked the mountain bike next to his station wagon.

"Nice hat," he said. "And nice shirt, too, but you're right. Those clothes make you look more like a cowgirl than an Indian."

"Hardly anybody wears feathers anymore," Lani told him. "And most of the people who go around in leather ride motorcycles."

"Point taken," he said, with a mock salute. "I think maybe I'll have you sit over here on this rock with the saguaro in the background. By the way, do you want anything to drink before we get started? I brought along orange juice just in case you didn't have time for breakfast."

Lani took off her hat and smoothed her windblown hair. "Some orange juice would be great," she said. She settled onto the rock and tried to get comfortable while he brought her a glass of juice.

"What do I need to do?" she asked.

"Relax and try to look natural," he said.

"That's a lot easier said than done," Lani said, taking a long drink of the juice, hoping it would settle her nerves. "I don't like having my picture taken, either. That might be part of what was wrong with the kids you tried to draw out on the reservation. When the white man first came west and tried taking pictures of Indians, people believed that the photographer would somehow end up capturing their spirits."

"No kidding." Mr. Vega was busily sketching with a stick of charcoal now, pausing every few moments and studying Lani's face. "And you're saying that some people out on the reservation still believe that's true?"

"Probably some of them do," she said.

Lani had no idea how much time passed. She was aware of a sudden buzzing in her head, like the angry hum of thousands of bees. Her first thought was that she was dreaming, that something had brought to mind the old story of Mualig Siakam.

"Mr. Vega," she said, reaching out to steady herself as the mountains around her spun in a dizzying circle.

"What's the matter?" he asked. Mr. Vega left his easel and walked toward her.

"I don't know," she said. "I feel strange, like I can't sit up, like I'm going to fall over. And hot, too."

"Here," he said, reaching out to her. "Let me help you."

The last thing Lani felt was Mr. Vega's arms closing tightly around her and lifting her off the ground. Weaker than she could ever remember feeling in her life, Lani let her head drop heavily against his chest.

"I don't know what's the matter with me," she mumbled. "I'm so tired, so sleepy."

"You're okay," Mr. Vega said soothingly as he carried her toward the back of the Subaru. "You close your eyes and relax now, Lani. Everything's going to be just fine."

He knows my name, Lani thought. How come he knows my name? Did I tell him?

She couldn't remember telling him, but she must have. How else would he have known?

Thirsty as hell, Manny Chavez woke up under a mesquite tree. Fighting his way through an alcohol-induced fog, he sat up and tried to figure out where he was. He remembered stopping off at the trading post at Three Points sometime after dark. He had gone there with a terrible thirst and the remains of his paycheck. Now the sun was high overhead, but the thirst remained.

The rockbound walls of Baboquivari rose up out of the desert far to the south while Kitt Peak was directly at his back a few miles away across the desert. From the looks of the mountain looming over him, Manny figured he was probably somewhere off Coleman Road.

Frowning, he tried to remember how he had come to be there. He had ridden to Three Points with his son, Eddie, and some of Eddie's friends. They had bought some beer-several cases-and some Big Red fortified wine-and then they had gone off somewhere in the desert, off the reservation rather than on it, to drink it in peace. Now that Delia, Manny's daughter, had returned to the reservation, Manny could no longer afford to be picked up by Law and Order. Delia had come to the jail and bailed him out once, but Manny's pride still writhed in shame at the name she had called him.

"Nawmk!" she had spat at him. "Drunkard!"

Delia had been away from the reservation for so long that he was surprised she still remembered any of the language. But that particular word was probably indelibly printed in Delia's brain, imprinted there by Ellie, Delia's mother.

Feeling a lump under him, Manny rolled over and was relieved to find that a pint bottle-still half-full-lingered in his hip pocket. He unscrewed the top and took a long swig, hoping that the wine would help clear his head. It didn't, but at least it did help slake his thirst. Struggling to his feet, he walked out to a small clearing where mounds of empty cans and bottles as well as the deep impressions of tire tracks told him where Eddie's truck had been parked.

Unfortunately, it wasn't there anymore. For some reason, Eddie and his friends had taken off, leaving Manny alone. In the early morning cool, the desert was very still. Far to the north, he could hear the occasional whine of rubber tires on pavement. From the sounds of distant vehicles speeding by, it probably meant the highway wasn't all that far, especially not as the crow flies. Striking out across the low-lying desert, Manny headed for Highway 86.

Once he hit that, someone was bound to pick him up and give him a ride back home to Sells. There he'd be able to find Eddie and ask him why he had taken off and left Manny there alone. It wasn't a nice thing for a son to do to his father, even if the father did happen to be drunk.

Quentin Walker woke up fairly early that Saturday morning, hung over as hell and in a state of blind panic. What if someone had broken into his rented room overnight and stolen the money? Or worse, what if the money didn't exist at all? What if it was a figment of his imagination-a drunken delusion of some kind? Thinking about it, though, Quentin didn't believe he had been that drunk when Mitch Johnson showed up in the bar looking for him.

And it turned out the money was there after all, still hidden in the toe of his mud-spattered work boots, exactly where Quentin had left it before going to bed. He took the bills out and examined them again. One by one he held them up to the light from the grimy bedroom window. There was nothing about the bills that smacked of counterfeit. The vertical, copy-proof strip was there-the one feds had announced they were putting in bills to counter the counterfeiters.

Quentin's inspection proved that the bills were real enough, but they also posed a real dilemma. Existing from paycheck to paycheck as he did, Quentin Walker had no bank account. Somebody who dressed and looked the way he did couldn't very well walk into the nearest Wells Fargo bank branch and make a five-thousand-dollar deposit with five bills. If somebody like him turned up in a bank with that kind of money, the teller was bound to notice and remember. While he was there or after he left, people would wonder and ask questions. Pretty soon, his parole officer would be asking questions, too.

On a week-to-week basis, Quenton cashed his paychecks in the bars he frequented-usually ones in his immediate neighborhood-places he could walk to. Quentin had lost both his pickup truck and his driver's license in the aftermath of that damned DWI accident that had landed him in the state prison.

Cashing a paycheck was one thing, but nobody in a bar was going to fork over change for a thousand-dollar bill. Besides, even if they had that kind of cash in a safe, changing the money in a bar in that marginal neighborhood was far too risky. Somebody might see what was going on and decide to relieve him of the cash the moment he stepped back outside. Quentin Walker knew too well that not all bartenders were honest.

Unable to decide how to proceed, Quentin stood for some time holding the bills in his hand. Finally he stuffed them into his pocket and then moved from the tiny bedroom of his furnished apartment to the equally tiny kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and took out the remainder of the loaf of bread that he kept there to protect it from marauding cockroaches. There were only two slices of bread left in the loaf. His first instinct was to throw them out. He had the two dried crusts in his hand and was ready to drop them in the garbage when he realized what a mistake that would be. The slices of bread themselves were the makings of the perfect hiding place.

Quentin took the bills out of his pocket and placed them between the two slices of bread, folding them small enough so no pieces of paper showed on the outside of the bread. Then he put his freshly assembled money sandwich back inside the plastic bread bag. Convinced that his hiding place was absolutely brilliant, he shoved the plastic bag into the small frost-filled freezer compartment of his refrigerator and shut the door.

Enormously pleased with himself, Quentin left the apartment, locked the door, and then walked as far as the McDonald's on the other side of the freeway. There, he splurged on breakfast. He treated himself to coffee, orange juice, and two Egg McMuffins.

Over breakfast, Quentin's worries about taking Mitch Johnson to the cave surfaced once again with a vengeance. If he had still owned his truck, it wouldn't have been a problem. He could simply have driven out to the cave well in advance and checked things out for himself. If there was a problem, he could take care of it…

The answer came to him like a bolt out of the blue. He could buy a car. One of the major roadblocks to buying a car had always been a chronic lack of money. In order to buy a car on time-in order to get a loan-it was necessary to show proof of insurance. Without it, no bank in the universe would even let him drive an uninsured car off the lot. With his driving record, car insurance was something else Quentin Walker didn't have and wasn't likely to get.

But now he had the money-as much or even more than he would need-to buy a car. And if he was paying cash for something like that, the people at the dealership probably wouldn't even blink at the thousand-dollar bills, as long as the total amount was less than the ten-thousand-dollar limit that would cause all kinds of scrutiny.

With growing excitement Quentin paged through the automotive section of an abandoned Arizona Sun he grabbed off a neighboring table. He wanted to find something that would be rugged enough to suit his needs and cheap enough to fit his budget. He circled three that seemed like possibilities-an '87 Suzuki Samurai soft-top, a rebuilt 1980 Ford Bronco, and a '77 GMC Suburban-all of them in the thirty-five-hundred range. That would just about do it-use up his little windfall, leave him some change, and get him some wheels all at the same time.

By the time he headed back to his apartment to shower, the day had taken on a whole new promise. He was finally going to have something to show for all his years of struggle. And if he ever ran into either of his so-called brothers again-Davy Ladd or Brian Fellows-he would tell them both to go piss up a rope.

Diana was lying awake in bed when she heard the side gate open and close as Lani mounted her bike and left for work. Glancing at the bedside clock, Diana was surprised by how early it was-just barely five-thirty. Why was Lani leaving for work so early when her volunteer shift didn't start until seven?

Next to her, Brandon seemed to be sleeping peacefully for a change, so Diana was careful not to wake him as she crept out of bed herself. Wrapping a robe around her, she padded silently down the tiled hallway, through the living room, and into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. She found Lani's note on the kitchen table.

Diana read it and tossed it back on the table. She didn't remember any discussion about Lani's going to a concert. That meant Lani had asked her father for permission rather than her mother. But then why wouldn't she? Despite Brandon's tough-guy act and protestations to the contrary, the girl had had him buffaloed from the very beginning.

"Being foster parents is one thing," he had told his wife the night before Clemencia Escalante was due to arrive at their house after being released from Tucson Medical Center. "Obviously the poor little kid needs help, and I don't mind pitching in. But just because Rita managed to bend the rules enough to have Clemencia placed with us on a foster child basis doesn't mean it's going to lead to a permanent adoption. It won't, you know. It'll never fly."

"But Rita wants her," Diana said.

"Regardless of what Rita wants, she's seventy years old right this minute," Brandon pointed out, taking refuge in what seemed to him to be obvious logic. "And considering it was neglect from an elderly grandparent that sent the poor little tyke to the hospital in the first place, nobody in the child welfare system is going to approve of Rita as an adoptive parent."

"I wasn't talking about Rita adopting her," Diana said quietly. "I was talking about us."

Brandon dropped his newspaper. "Us?" he echoed.

Diana nodded. "It's the only way Rita will ever be able to have her."

"But Diana," Brandon argued. "How long do you think Rita will be around? She already has health problems. In the long run, that little girl will end up being our sole responsibility."

"So?" Diana answered with a shrug. "Is that such an awful prospect?"

Brandon frowned. "That depends. With your work and my work, and with the three kids we already have, it seems to me that our lives are complicated enough. Why add another child into the mix?"

"We have yours, and we have mine," Diana returned quietly. "We don't have any that are ours-yours and mine together."

"A toddler?" Brandon said. He shook his head, but Diana could see he was weakening. "Are you sure you could stand having one of those underfoot again?"

Diana smiled. "I think I could stand it. I can tell you that I much prefer toddlers to teenagers."

"In case you haven't noticed, most toddlers turn into teenagers eventually."

"But there are a few good years before that happens."

"A few," Brandon conceded.

"And Rita says she'll handle most of the child-care duties. She really wants this little girl, Brandon. It's all she's talked about for days-about how much she could teach her. It's as though she wants to pour everything into Clemencia that she was never able to share with her own granddaughter."

"Diana, replacing one child with another doesn't work. It isn't healthy."

For the space of several minutes, Diana was silent. "Living your life with a hole in it isn't healthy, either," she said finally. "Garrison Ladd and Andrew Carlisle put that hole in Rita's life, Brandon. Maybe you don't feel any responsibility for Gina Antone's death, but I do. And now I have an opportunity to do something about it."

"And it's something you really want to do? Something you want us to do?"

"Yes."

Again there was a long period of silence. "I guess we'll have to see," he said finally. "I'll bet it doesn't matter one way or the other what we decide because I still don't think the tribal court will go for it."

"But we can try?"

"Diana," he said, "you do whatever you want. I'll back you either way."

Brandon made a point to come home from work early the next afternoon when Wanda Ortiz arrived with Clemencia. Diana went to answer the door, leaving Brandon and Rita in the living room. Brandon was sitting on the couch and Rita was in her wheelchair when Wanda carried the screaming child into the room.

"She's been crying ever since we left the hospital," Wanda said apologetically, setting the weeping child down in the middle of the room. "Too many strangers, I guess."

Clemencia Escalante looked awful. Most of her woefully thin body was covered with scabs from hundreds of ant bites. A few of those had become infected and were still bandaged. She stood in the middle of the room, sobbing, with fat tears dripping off her chin and falling onto the floor. She turned in a circle, looking from one unfamiliar face to another. When her eyes finally settled on Rita, she stopped.

" Ihab-here," Rita crooned softly, crooking her finger. "Come here, little one."

Still crying but with her attention now riveted on Rita's kind but wrinkled face, Clemencia took a tentative step forward.

"Come here," Rita said again.

Suddenly the room was deathly quiet. For a moment Diana thought that the child was simply pausing long enough to catch her breath and that another ear-splitting shriek would soon follow. Instead, Clemencia suddenly darted across the room, throwing herself toward Rita with so much force that the wheelchair rocked back and forth on its braked wheels. Without another sound, Clemencia clambered into Rita's lap, burying her face in the swell of the old woman's ample breasts. There the child settled in, clinging desperately to the folds of Rita's dress with two tiny knotted fists.

Shaking his head in wonder, Brandon Walker looked from the now silent child to his wife. "Well," he said with a shrug, squinting so the tears in his eyes didn't show too much. "It looks as though I don't stand a chance, do I?"

And he didn't. From that moment on, the child named Clemencia Escalante who would one day be known as Dolores Lanita Walker owned Brandon Walker's heart and soul.