“Grandfather, this is Ma’s patient Lev. Lev, this is my grandfather, Tocho.”
“Please sit,” Tocho says. “Keep standing around me and I’ll feel like I’m already dead.”
Lev sits with the others but scoots his plush chair slightly back, disturbed at how pasty the old man looks, his face drawn and his breathing ragged. Lev sees the family resemblance, and it unnerves him that this frail man probably looked like Wil sixty years ago. This man is dying for lack of a heart. It reminds Lev of the heart he might have provided someone. Did a person die because Lev kept his heart for himself? There’s still a part of him that wants to feel guilty for that, and it makes him angry.
Wil picks up his grandfather’s hand. “Uncle Pivane says he’ll bag a mountain lion tomorrow.”
“Always tomorrow with that one,” Tocho says. “And I suppose you’ll play for me tomorrow too?”
Wil reluctantly nods. Lev notices how he won’t meet the old man’s gaze. “I don’t have my guitar today. But yes, tomorrow for sure.”
Then Tocho wags a finger at Wil. “And no more talk of changing my guide to a pig.” He smiles hugely. “Not happ’nin’.”
Lev looks to Wil. “Pig?”
“Nova’s dad isn’t the only one who divorced his spirit-guide. My dad writes petitions to the Tribal Council all the time asking to switch people’s animal spirit-guides to something more . . . helpful. It’s no big deal.”
Tocho’s expression is mutinous. “Big deal to me. Lion chose me.” He turns weakly to Lev. “My grandson thinks I should change my spirit-guide to a pig, just so I can have a new heart quick and easy. What do you think?”
Wil throws Lev a forbidding look, but Una nods at Lev, giving him silent permission to voice an opinion. But how can he have an opinion? “This is all new to me,” Lev says. “I don’t think I would want an animal part . . . but sir, I think whatever lets you keep your dignity is the right thing to do.”
Wil’s frown is so severe, Lev backpedals.
“But on the other hand, a pig heart would be okay if it works. If I eat pork chops, I can’t object to you using its heart, can I?”
The old man starts to laugh-cough again.
“Uh . . . maybe I should wait outside.” Lev starts to get up, ready to make his escape, but Una stops him.
“You’ll do no such thing. It’s refreshing to hear an outsider’s view. Isn’t it, Wil?”
Wil considers it. “We can learn things from the outside, just as they can learn things from us. And if an old tradition ends your life before its time, then what good is it?” Then he turns to Lev, making him the mediator once more. “Not many mountain lions on the rez anymore, Lev. But there are plenty of pigs, mustangs, and sheep. It makes no sense to insist on a part from his animal spirit-guide. Choosing a different animal is simple logic. Shouldn’t a flush of logic beat a straight of tradition?”
Lev has no idea how to answer—and then he realizes he can fake his way out of this. “Neither,” he says. “In games of chance nobody wins but the house.”
A beat of silence, and Una throws her head back and laughs. “Definitely an owl,” she says.
Tocho locks his eyes on Wil. “I will hear you play tomorrow,” he says. “You will smooth the path of dying for me. You shame me by refusing. You shame yourself.”
“I will play for your healing only, Grandfather,” Wil says. “After you have a new heart.”
The old man stares stonily at his grandson, his earlier good humor gone. He turns toward the window, shutting them out. The visit is over.
•
“While your people focused on the business and science of unwinding, the tribal nations’ scientists worked on perfecting animal-to-human transplant technology,” Wil tells Lev on the way back to Wil’s cliff-side home. Una left Wil with a halfhearted kiss on the cheek and returned to the luthier workshop. Wil waited until she was gone before he retrieved his guitar. “We overcame organ rejection and other problems caused by interspecies transplant. The only thing we can’t use is animal brain tissue. Animals don’t think the way we do, and it just doesn’t take.”
“How come you didn’t share with our scientists?” Lev asks.
Wil looks at him as if it’s a stupid question. Maybe it is.
“We did. They weren’t interested,” Wil tells him. “In fact, your people condemned it as unethical, immoral, and just plain sick.”
Lev has to admit that a part of him—the part that was indoctrinated into a world where tithing and unwinding were accepted—agrees. Funny how morality, which always seems so black and white, can be influenced so completely by what you were raised to believe.
“Anyway,” Wil continues, “our legal powerhouse crafted an intricate set of laws, based on traditional belief systems, for using this technology. When ChanceFolk come of age, they take a vision quest and discover their spirit-guide, which can be anything from a bird to an insect to a larger animal. Of course, after the Council transplant laws came down, it was amazing how many kids, coached by their parents, came up with pig guides.”
Lev doesn’t quite get it until Wil explains that, aside from primates, pigs are biologically closest to humans. “Mountain lion is a worse case,” Wil says. “Endangered, vastly different biology than humans, and on top of it carnivores weren’t created to last as long as plant eaters so the hearts give out quickly.”
“So what’s your spirit-guide?” Lev asks.
Wil laughs. “I’m even more screwed if ever I need an organ. It was a crow that spoke to me.” And then he becomes silent for a moment. Pensive. The way he gets when he plays. “They call my music a gift but treat it like an obligation. I am shameful if I don’t use it the way they see fit.” He spits, leaving a dark spot on a boulder as they pass. “I would never accept a human part, little brother . . . but there are many things your world has to offer that I would take.”
“Like a cheering crowd?”
Wil considers it. “Like . . . being appreciated.”
4 • Wil
Wil knows he’s opened up too much to Lev. An AWOL is supposed to open up to them, to find solace in their acceptance, not the other way around. He vows to shutter his heart a little more securely.
The next day, Wil’s spooning out breakfast porridge for Lev and himself when his father calls. Ma takes the call in the study, expecting bad news, but then comes out to put it on speaker because it turns out to be the kind of news everyone should hear.
“We bagged a mountain lion a half hour out in today’s hunt,” Wil hears his father say. “Pivane is already harvesting his heart.”
Intense relief reverberates through the house. Even Lev, who met Grandfather only once, seems overjoyed.
“Wil, go now and tell your grandfather,” Ma says. “And be quick about it. For once, good news will travel faster than bad.”
Wil grabs his guitar and asks Lev to come along. He even takes Lev in the elevator rather than making him struggle down the ropes.
•
“You’re a stubborn man, Grandfather, but you finally got your lion heart!” he says, swinging his guitar around, ready to play some healing tunes even before the transplant.
“Stubbornness is a family trait,” the old man says flatly. Wil notices that his grandfather is looking at Lev, not because he’s giving Lev his attention but because he’s avoiding eye contact with Wil. It makes Wil uneasy.
“What’s wrong, Grandfather? I thought you’d be happy.”
“I would be, if the heart were mine.”
“Excuse me?”
Grandfather twitches a finger at the crowd around the other patient’s bed. Wil barely noticed them when he came in, so intent was he on giving Grandfather the news—but apparently the news had already reached him. The woman in the other bed is in her late twenties or early thirties. The family around her seems very happy in spite of her dire condition.