Hour of the Hunter (18 page)

The highway patrol had cordoned off almost half the rest area, but a few tables were still available. He took his Thermos to one of those and settled down to watch the fun, which included several milling television cameramen, some reporters, and a few stray newspaper photographers.

"What's going on?" Andrew asked a man who came by lugging a huge television-equipment suitcase.

"An Indian killed a woman up there on the mountain," the guy said.

"They're just now bringing the body down."

An Indian? Carlisle thought. No kidding. They think an Indian did it?

He couldn't believe this stroke of luck. For the second time in as many chances, fate had handed over the perfect fall guy for something Carlisle himself had done, someone to take the blame. Sure, he'd gone to prison for Gina Antone, mostly because the cops thought he'd driven the truck that had inadvertently broken her neck. They had never suspected the real truth, not even that wise-ass of a detective, because if they had, it would have been a whole lot worse. Now, here he was again with somebody else all lined up to take the rap.

One thing did worry him a little. It hadn't taken long for the cops to find her. He hadn't expected them to work quite this fast, but he was prepared for it anyway. He was glad now that he'd taken the time to clean the bits of his flesh from under her fingernails. With something like that, you couldn't be too careful. His mentors in Florence had warned him not to underestimate cops. The crooked ones had a price-all you had to do was name it. Straight ones you had to look out for, the ones who were too dumb to take you up on it when you made them an offer they shouldn't refuse.

"Mom, if Rita dies, will we put a cross on the road where she wrecked the truck?"

They had just driven by the Kitt Peak turnoff on their way to Sells.

With all the emergency vehicles gone, there was no sign of the almost-fatal accident the previous afternoon.

"Probably," Diana answered, "but Rita isn't going to die. I talked to her sister this morning. She'll be fine."

"Does my daddy have a cross?"

The abrupt change of subject caused Diana to swing her eyes in her son's direction. The car almost veered off the road, but she caught it in time. "Why do you ask that?"

"Well, does he?"

"I suppose. At the cemetery. In Chicago."

"Have I ever been there?"

'No.

"Is that where he died?"

"No. Why are you asking all these questions?" Diana's answer was curt, her question exasperated.

"Did you know Rita puts a new wreath and a candle at the place where Gina died? She does that every year. Why don't we?"

"It's an Indian custom," Diana explained. "Papago custom. Your father wasn't a Papago."

"I thought you said I was going to turn into an Indian."

"I was kidding."

Davy fell silent for several miles, and his mother was relieved that the subject seemed closed., "Did you ever kill anything, Mom?" he asked at last. "Besides the snake, I mean."

Jesus! She had almost forgotten about the snake. It was two years now since the afternoon she was inside and heard Bone barking frantically out in the yard. Alarmed, she hurried out to check.

She found all three of them-boy, dog, and snake mutually trapped in the small area between the side of the house and the high patio wall. The rattlesnake, a fat four footer, had been caught out in the open sunning itself It's said that the first person can walk past a sleeping rattlesnake but a second one can't. Davy had walked past the drowsing snake unharmed and was now cornered on the rattler's far side. Bone, barking himself into a frenzy, was smart enough not to attempt darting past the now-coiled and angry snake.

Diana Ladd was usually scared witless of snakes. As a mother, this was her first experience in dealing with a life-or-death threat to her child. Instantly, she became a tigress defending her young.

"Don't move, Davy!" she ordered calmly, without raising her voice.

"Stand right there and don't you move!"

She raced back to the garage and returned with a hoe, the only weapon that fell readily to hand. She had a gun inside the house, a fully loaded Colt .45 Peacemaker, but she didn't trust herself with that, especially not with both Davy and the dog a few short feet away.

She had attacked the snake with savage fury and severed its head with two death-dealing blows. Only after it was over and Davy was safely cradled in her arms did she give way to the equally debilitating emotions of fear and relief.

"How come your face's all white, Mom?" Davy had asked. "You look funny. Your lips are white, and so's your skin."

"Well?" Davy prompted once more, jarring Diana out of her reverie.

"Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Ever kill anything besides the snake?"

"No," she said, "So help me God, I never did."

As the sun rose above her hospital room window, Rita's life passed by in drowsing review.

Traveling Sickness came to Ban Thak the year Dancing Quail was eight and again away at school. The sickness crept into the village with a returning soldier, and many people fell ill, including all of Dancing Quail's family, from her grandmother right down to little S-kehegaj.

Desperately ill herself, but somewhat less so than the others, Understanding Woman sent word to the outing matron asking that Dancing Quail be brought home from Phoenix to help. Understanding Woman also sent for a blind medicine man from Many Dogs village, a man whose name was S-ab Neid Pi Has, which means Looks At Nothing.

At fifteen, Looks At Nothing left home to work in AJo's copper mines.

Two years later, he was blinded by a severe blow to the head during a drunken brawl in Ajo's Indian encampment. The other Indian died.

Looks At Nothing, broken in body and spirit both, returned home to Many Dogs Village. The old medicine man there diagnosed his ailment as Whore-Sickness, which comes from succumbing to the enticing temptations of dreams, and which causes ailments of the eyes.

First Looks At Nothing was treated with ritual dolls.

When that didn't work, singers were called in who were good with Whore-Sickness. For four days, the singers smoked their sacred tobacco and sang their Whore-Sickness songs. When the singing was over, Looks At Nothing was still blind, but during the healing process he came to see that his life had a purpose. I'itoi had summoned him home, demanding that the young man turn his back on the white man's ways and return to the traditions of his father and grandfathers before him. In exchange, I'itoi promised, Looks At Nothing would become a powerful shaman.

By the time Understanding Woman summoned him to Ban Thak, Looks At Nothing, although still very young, was already reputed to be a good singer for curing Traveling Sickness. He came to Coyote Sitting, sang his songs, and smoked his tobacco, but unfortunately, he arrived too late.

Dancing Quail's parents died, but he did manage to cure both Understanding Woman and Little Pretty One. Looks was still there singing when Big Eddie Lopez, by the outing matron, brought Dancing Quail e from Phoenix.

Riding to Chuk Shon inside the train rather than on it, Dancing Quail was sick with grief With both her parents dead, what would happen if she had to live without her grandmother and her baby sister, too?

Soon, however, it was clear that Understanding Woman and Pretty One would recover. Dancing Quail was dispatched to pay Looks At Nothing his customary fee, which consisted of a finely woven medicine basket-medicine baskets were Understanding Woman's specialty-and a narrow-necked olla with several dogs representing Many Dogs Village carefully etched into the side.

Dancing Quail approached the medicine man shyly as he gathered up his remaining tobacco and placed it in the leather pouch fastened around his waist. At the sound of her footsteps, he stopped what he was doing.

"Who is it?" he asked, while his strange, sightless eyes stared far beyond her.

"Hejel Wi'ikam," she answered. "Orphaned Child. I have brought you your gifts."

Looks At Nothing motioned for her to sit beside him First she gave him the basket, then the olla. His sensitive fingers explored each surface and crevice. "Your grandmother does fine work," he said at last.

They sat together in silence for some time. "You are glad to be home?" he asked.

"I'm sorry about my parents," she said, "but I'm glad to be in Ban Thak. I do not like school or the people there.

Looks At Nothing reached out and took Dancing Quail's small hand in his, holding it for a long moment before nodding and allowing it to fall back into her lap.

"You will live in both worlds, little one," he said. "You will be a bridge, a puinthi."

Dancing Quail looked up at him anxiously, afraid he meant Big Eddie would take her right back to Phoenix, but Looks At Nothing reassured her. "'You will stay here for now. Understanding Woman will need your help with the fields and the baby."

"How do you know all this?" she asked.

He smiled down at her. "I have lost my sight, Hejel Wi'ikam," he said kindly, "but I have not lost my vision."

Fat Crack drove his tow truck south past Topawa on his fool's errand.

Rita had told him that Looks At Nothing still lived at Many Dogs Village across the border in Old Mexico.

The international border had been established by treaty between Mexico and the United States without either country acknowledging that their arbitrary decision effectively divided in half and disenfranchised the much older-nine thousand years older-Papago nation.

Because Many Dogs Village was on the Mexican side, Fat Crack would have to cross the border at The Gate-an unofficial and unpatrolled crossing point in the middle of the reservation. Once in Mexico, he would have to make his way to the village on foot, or perhaps one of the traders from the other side would offer him a ride.

Supposing Fat Crack did manage to find the object of his search, how would he bring the old man back to Rita's bedside in the Indian Health Service Hospital? According to Fat Crack's estimates, if Looks At Nothing were still alive, he would be well into his eighties. Such an old man might not be eager to travel.

The Gate was really nothing but a break in the six-strand border fence surrounded by flat open desert and dotted, on both sides, with the parked pickups of traders and customers alike. Owners of these trucks did a brisk business in bootleg liquor, tortillas, tamales, and goat cheese, with an occasional batch of pot thrown in for good measure.

Fat Crack approached one of the bootleggers and inquired how to find Looks At Nothing's house. The man pointed to a withered old man sitting in the shade of a mesquite tree.

"Why go all the way to his house?" the man asked derisively. "Why not see him here?"

Looks At Nothing sat under the tree with a narrow rolled bundle and a gnarled ironwood cane on the ground in front of him. As Fat Crack approached, the sightless old man scrambled agilely to his feet. "Have you come to take me to Hejel Wi'ikam?" he asked.

Fat Crack was taken aback. How did the old man know?

"Hejel Wi'ithag," he connected respectfully. "An old widow, not an orphaned child."

Looks At Nothing shook his head. "She was an orphan when I first knew her. She is an orphan still. Oi g hihm," he added. "Let's go."

Fat Crack helped the wiry old man climb up into the tow truck. How did Looks At Nothing know someone would come for him that day? Surely no one in Many Dogs owned a telephone, but the old man had appeared at The Gate fully prepared to travel.

Devout Christian Scientist that he was, Fat Crack was far too much of a pragmatist to deny, on religious grounds, that which is demonstrably obvious. Looks At Nothing, that cagey old shaman, would bear close watching.

Brandon Walker dreaded going home. He figured that after he'd spent the whole night AWOL, Louella would be ready to have his ears. He stopped in the kitchen long enough to hang his car keys on the pegboard and to pour himself a cup of coffee, steeling himself for the inevitable onslaught. Instead of being angry, however, when his frantic mother came looking for him, she was so relieved to see him that all she could do was blither.

"It's a piano, Brandon. Dear God in heaven, a Steinway!"

"Calm down. What are you talking about?"

"Toby. I worry about buying food sometimes, and here he goes and orders a piano. For his sister, the concert pianist, he told them.

His sister's been dead for thirty-five years, Brandon. What is Toby thinking or. What are we going to do?"

"Did the check clear?"

"No. Of course not. Do you know how much Steinways cost? The store called me and said there must be some mistake. I told them it was a mistake, all right."

"Where's Dad now?"

"Inside. Taking a nap. He said he was tired."

"Let's go, Mother," Brandon ordered. "Get your car."

This time he wasn't going to allow any argument.

"The car? Where are we going?"

"Downtown to the bank. We'll have to hurry. It's Saturday, and they're only open until noon. We're closing that checking account once and for all."

Louella promptly burst into tears. "How can we do that to your father, Brandon, after he's worked so hard all these years? It seems so ... so underhanded."

"How many Steinways do you want, Mom?" His position was unassailable.

"I'll go get my purse. Do you think he'll be all right here by himself if he wakes up?"

"He'll have to be. There's no one els- we can leave him with. We'll hurry, but we've both got to go to the bank."

It wasn't until he was left alone with the young deputy that Ernesto Tashquinth realized exactly how much trouble he was in. Come to think of it, the Pinal County homicide detective had been asking him some pretty funny questions: Why did he go up the mountain to check the spring in the first place? What was the woman's name again? How long had he known her? How well did he know her?

Ernesto tried to be helpful. He patiently answered the questions as best he could. The buzzards, he told them.

He had seen the circling buzzards, and he was afraid if something was dead up there, the smell might come down to the picnic-table area and get him in trouble with his boss.