The feast was well under way. In four days’ time, word had got around the reservation that Rita Antone’s luck had changed for the better. The ritual singing had been well attended, and the feast was a rousing success. The expense was more than Rita alone could have managed, but someone else was helping to defray the cost. Eduardo Jose, the bootlegger from Ahngam, whose grandson, Lucky One, had recently been released from the Pinal County Jail, was more than happy to help out.
Rita had spent two days sitting at Father John’s bedside at St. Mary’s Hospital. Now, she sat at the head of the long oilcloth-covered table in the feast house at Sells. Davy, his face still bearing telltale traces of red chili, sat on one side of her. Diana Ladd sat on the other.
Shyly, a girl of sixteen or seventeen sidled up to Rita’s chair, hanging back a moment before daring to say what she had come to say. “I remember you,” she said almost in a whisper. “You used to make us eat our vegetables.”
Instantly, Davy’s ears perked up. “Wait a minute. You, too? I thought I was the only one.”
Rita laughed. “No,” she said. “I try to get all children to do that. Gordon taught me to eat my vegetables when I was sick in California.”
“Gordon your son?” Davy asked.
“No. Gordon my husband. I was very sick, and he and Mrs. Bailey, the Mil-gahn lady he worked for, told me that if I ate all my vegetables, it would make me better, and it worked. I’m still here, aren’t I?”
They all laughed at that, even Diana.
In four days, that was the first time Davy had heard his mother laugh, so maybe now she would be all right, just like Detective Walker said. He had told Davy it would take time, that the ohb, Carlisle, had hurt her badly, but that if they were very careful of her, she would be okay.
The boy looked around, noticing for the first time that the men had all disappeared.
“Where’s Fat Crack?” he asked.
Rita shrugged. “Out by the truck, I guess.”
Davy promptly set off to find him.
The four men gathered in an informal group around the hood of Fat Crack’s tow truck. The medicine man tried to explain Whore Sickness to the detective. He told him it was Staying Sickness and not the bacon grease that had caused Andrew Carlisle’s blindness. This was all quite strange to Brandon Walker, although he tried to listen with an open mind.
No one was surprised when Looks At Nothing opened his leather pouch and pulled out one of his cigarettes. Walker watched with renewed amazement as once again the old man flicked open his Zippo lighter and unerringly lit the cigarette.
Upon hearing Brandon would be driving the boy and the two women out to the reservation for the baptism feast, Hank Maddern had warned his friend about not being sucked into some strange kind of peyote ritual. Brandon had quickly put Hank’s worries to rest.
“Believe me,” he said. “Tobacco is the only thing in that old man’s cigarettes, and it’s not very damn good tobacco, either.”
Looks At Nothing took a deep drag, said, “Nawoj,” and then passed it along to Father John. The priest had spent three full days in the hospital being treated for a concussion, but he had convinced the doctor that he had to be dismissed in time to go to a feast in Sells on Friday. The doctor had grumbled, but in the end he had let the old man have his way.
The cigarette passed from the priest to Fat Crack to the detective, and back, at last, to the medicine man. Far to the west, a thundercloud rose over the desert. Periodically, lightning lit up the cloud’s billowing interior, but the rains had not yet come. The California river toads still slept quietly in their hardened mud beds.
“He is a good boy,” Looks At Nothing said, “but I am worried about one thing.”
“What’s that?” Father John asked.
He was sure it would be some complaint that the other part of the bargain, the Mil-gahn baptism, was going too slowly, but he had only just got out of the hospital that very afternoon. Davy Ladd was scheduled to be baptized during the eleven o’clock mass at San Xavier the day after tomorrow. What more did the old man want?
But Looks At Nothing’s objection had nothing to do with that. “Edagith Gohk Je’e,” he said, calling Davy by his new Indian name. “One With Two Mothers, this boy, has too many mothers and not enough fathers.
“There are four of us,” Looks At Nothing continued, “and all nature goes in fours. Why could we not agree to be father to this fatherless boy, all four of us together? We each have things to teach, and we all have things to learn.”
As soon as Brandon heard the words, he knew Looks At Nothing was right. No matter how much Rita Antone and Diana Ladd loved Davy, they could not be his father. A lump caught in Brandon Walker’s throat as he listened. Fatherless himself for three days now, Brandon Walker felt for Davy Ladd almost as much as he hurt for himself.
It grew quiet in the circle. No one said aloud that he would or would not accept the assignment. That was a foregone conclusion. The decision had been made for them long before they were asked. Looks At Nothing had decreed it so, and that was the way it would be.
Davy himself came running up just then. “What are you guys doing?” he demanded. “I looked around the feast house, and you were all gone.”
“We were talking,” Brandon Walker said.
“What about?”
“You.”
“About me? What were you saying?”
“That somebody needs to take you into Tucson for a haircut,” Brandon said, affectionately ruffling Davy’s hair, but being careful about the stitches.
“You mean it?” Davy asked. “Honest? To a real barber?”
“That’s right,” Brandon Walker replied with a slight grin. “You see, Davy, mothers don’t give crew cuts. Barbers do.”