MARCH 2015
They say it happened long ago, that Sun—Tash—came so close to Earth that it was very hot. The corn and wheat dried up, and so did all the other plants. Soon there was no water left. The Tohono O’odham, the Desert People, could make nothing grow. Soon even the food they had set aside dried up and had no taste.
The Indians held a council and decided to send Tokithhud—Spider—to deal with Sun.
Every morning when Sun travels from his home in the East to the West, he makes four jumps. Spider decided to make the same four jumps. At the end of the fourth jump, he spun a web. The web, tokithhud chuaggia, was so large that, the next day, when Tash made his fourth jump, the web caught him. Spider, hiding nearby, pulled his web so tightly around Sun’s legs that he fell over and hurt himself.
Sun was very angry. No one had ever hurt him before, and he could not believe that the people who had always loved him and sung to him would do such a terrible thing. And so he went away to his house in the East, leaving the Earth all dull and cloudy.
Soon it was very dark. The Desert People worried when Sun did not return. Their food was gone. They could not see to plant. At last the Tohono O’odham sent a message to some of the Little People, the ones who can see in the dark, and asked them what they should do. The Little People said they should divide time into four parts. In two parts they should light big fires so they could see to work in the fields. The other two parts, the ones without fires, would be for sleeping and resting.
But even though they tried this plan and worked very hard, the fires did not give enough light for the seeds to grow.
DR. LANI WALKER-PARDEE, an emergency physician at Sells Indian Hospital, believed in being prepared. The last three things she tucked into her backpack were a well-stocked first aid kit, followed by her somewhat frayed medicine basket and the new one she had made in hopes of giving it to Gabe. After fastening the pack shut she sat down on the edge of the bed, pulled on her hiking boots, and bent to lace them.
“I still don’t understand why you and Gabe have to do this,” her husband, Dan Pardee, grumbled. The Gabe in question was Lani’s godson, Gabe Ortiz. “It’s not safe for the two of you to be out there overnight. It’s just not.”
“I’ll have Gabe with me,” she said.
Dan hooted with laughter. “Gabe is thirteen. From what his dad tells me, the kid is next to useless these days. If you did get into some kind of confrontation, how much help do you think he’d be?”
Straightening up, Lani sighed and gazed at her husband with a look that was equal parts love and exasperation. “Whether he’s a help or not, I still have to do it,” Lani said. “I’m Gabe’s godmother. Helping out at a time like this is my duty. It’s expected. It’s what godmothers do. We’ll be fine.”
Despite her reassurances, Lani could see that Dan remained unconvinced. Theirs was a mixed but generally happy marriage. On occasion, however, things could become complicated, and this was one of those times.
Lani was born of the Tohono O’odham, the Desert People, who had lived for thousands of years hunting and gathering in the desert west of where Tucson is now. Daniel was Apache through and through. The Apache didn’t plant and grow. Instead, they traveled in marauding bands, stealing from others. It was no accident that in the language of the Tohono O’odham and in the languages of many other tribes as well, the word for “Apache” and the word for “enemy” were one and the same. On the Tohono O’odham reservation, Dan Pardee, a member of the Border Patrol, was a respected law enforcement officer, but behind his back and by people who didn’t know him well, he was often referred to as the Ohb—the Apache.
Lani attributed the fact that she and Dan—opposites in many ways—had met, fallen in love, and married to the behind-the-scenes workings of Ban—Coyote. Ban had a reputation for being a trickster—someone who loved practical jokes. The irony of Dan and Lani’s relationship, an American Indian take on Romeo and Juliet, was apparently one of those.
For years now, Daniel Pardee had worked as a member of the Shadow Wolves, a unit of the Border Patrol made up entirely of Native Americans who operated exclusively on the Tohono O’odham Nation, patrolling the areas where the international border with Mexico passed through tribal lands. Even though Dan was Apache, he was regarded with a good deal of trust on the reservation not only because of the respectful and honorable manner in which he did his job, but also by virtue of his being married to Lani, who, despite her relative youth, was a well-respected tribal elder.
“Look,” Dan argued. “I know how serious you are about your obligations as a godmother, and I understand that the location on Kitt Peak is the same place you went to when you were a girl. I also know that you stayed out there day and night by yourself for a number of days. But the world has changed since then, Lani. Things aren’t like they used to be. The desert around the base of Kitt Peak is a dangerous place now—a war zone.”
Lani sighed. “But that’s the whole problem. Ioligam is where we need to go.”
“You can call the mountain Ioligam all you like and claim it as a sacred place, but believe me, the smugglers who are out there—terrorists who are using observation posts, combat gear, encrypted radio transmitters, and AK-47s to protect the cartels’ drug shipments—don’t see it that way. Too many of the bad guys out prowling the desert night after night are armed to the teeth, and they don’t give a crap about the Tohono O’odham belief system. They shoot first and ask questions later. It’s not safe, Lani. You can’t go. I won’t let you.”
“Look,” Lani said, “with all the Anglos coming and going from Kitt Peak, it’s a lot more dangerous on the other side of Baboquivari and in the valley north of Ajo than it will be where we’re going. As for smugglers on foot? They’re more likely to stick to the lowlands. I doubt they’ll bother climbing partway up a mountain when they could just as easily go around it. Besides, it’s not a matter of your letting me do anything, Dan,” she reminded him gently. “That’s not how it works. Gabe’s parents asked me for help, and I have to give it to them. This is important. I simply have to go.”
Micah, Dan and Lani’s four-year-old son, had been sitting on the floor, happily playing with a set of giant Legos, ones his mother deemed safe to play with because they were too large to be swallowed. Now, sensing tension between his parents, he looked up from his solitary game and gave his mother a beseeching look with his striking azure eyes. “Can I go, too?” he asked.
Brandon Micah Walker-Pardee had been named after Lani’s Anglo adoptive father, Brandon Walker, and after Dan’s grandfather, a full-blooded Apache named Micah Duarte. Part Anglo and part Indian, the boy resembled neither of his parents and was instead a throwback to Dan’s Anglo father. Adam Pardee had been a reasonably good-looking Hollywood stuntman who had eventually murdered Dan’s mother in a frenzied act of domestic violence.
Smiling, Lani reached down, scooped up her dark-haired, blue-eyed boy, and hugged him close. “Most certainly not,” she told him. “You have to stay here and take care of Daddy while Mommy goes with Gabe. We’ll be sleeping outside. The ground will be hard and cold. You need to stay here and sleep in your bed where it’s warm.”
Lani understood that Gabe Ortiz was the real point of contention here. And maybe, just maybe, Dan was slightly jealous of Lani’s close relationship with the boy. Now two months short of his fourteenth birthday, Gabe seemed to have come to a critical fork in the road. The kid, one who had always been amenable to direction and biddable by his elders, had suddenly developed a rebellious streak and morphed into a preteen Tohono O’odham version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Delia and Leo Ortiz, Gabe’s frustrated and worried parents, had turned to Lani for help in steering him away from serious trouble. Since Gabe was the grandson of Lani’s own beloved mentor, Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz, she was determined to do whatever she could to fix the problem.
“I stopped by the garage earlier today and talked to Leo about this,” Dan said. “He’s afraid Gabe is a lost cause, and so am I. Leo’s not even sure Gabe will agree to go.”
“He’ll go,” Lani said determinedly. “I’ll see to it that he does. Not going is not an option.”
“Then let me go with you,” Dan said, “please. If I ask Mrs. Hendricks, I’m sure she’d be happy to look after Micah and Angie. I promise, I’ll stay in the background and won’t get in the way of whatever you two need to do.”
Angie was Dan and Lani’s ten-year-old adopted daughter. She was a responsible kid, but she was still far too young to be left in charge of her little brother overnight.
“No,” Lani said firmly, “this is a private transaction between Gabe and me. It has to be just the two of us.”
Dan was inordinately proud of Lani’s role as a physician on the reservation, but he was somewhat less enthusiastic about her status as a traditional medicine woman. Although they had both been raised and educated off the reservation, Lani was the one who seemed to cling to the old ways and honor them, while Dan was more likely to shrug them off.
Still, Dan wouldn’t give up. “But why does it have to be now?” he asked. “It’s still cold as hell out there at night, freezing in fact. Couldn’t all this wait until after it warms up a little?”
“It can’t,” Lani said simply. “The next time we both have the weekend off, it’ll be the middle of May. This has to be done tonight, Dan. Gabe and I will spend the night sharing stories—I’itoi stories. Tomorrow at midnight it’ll already be the middle of March. After that, it’ll be too late.”
Dan knew then that he was licked. When it came to storytelling, Lani was a strict observer of all applicable rules and rituals. Among the Desert People, stories were traditionally called “winter-telling tales.” They were to be shared only in the wintertime. That meant they could be told between the middle of November and the middle of March. The rest of the year they were off-limits.
“Got it,” Dan said, capitulating at last. “But you will take your Glock, right?”
In the past several months, at least two Tohono O’odham women driving home alone from shopping trips to Tucson had been forced off Highway 86 at gunpoint by bands of illegal immigrants. One woman had been raped by the men who had jacked her car. The other had been beaten and left for dead. After the second incident, Dan had insisted that Lani obtain a concealed carry permit. He had purchased a Glock for her and made sure she knew how to use it.
“Even if you’re not worried about smugglers, then have it along in case you run into a snake fresh out of hibernation.”
“Yes, sir,” Lani said, giving her concerned husband a smile and a mock salute. “Wouldn’t leave home without it. Now, how about helping me drag this stuff out front? Leo and Gabe will be by any minute to pick me up.”
“You’re sure you don’t need my help carrying gear up the mountain and making your campsite?”
“Stop worrying,” Lani said. “Leo promised to handle all that.”
Dan sighed. “All right then,” he said. “Have it your way.” With that, he picked up Lani’s loaded backpack and headed for the front door.
“DO I HAVE to go?” Gabe Ortiz whined. He was lying on the bed, playing with the controls on his Xbox. “Why can’t I just stay here? It’s going to be cold out there. We’ll probably freeze to death up on the mountain.”
Delia Cachora Ortiz, hands on her sturdy hips, glared at her son. “You won’t freeze, and yes, you have to go. As for why? Because I said so.”
As tribal chairman, Delia Ortiz wielded a good deal of influence all over the vast Tohono O’odham Nation. Her husband, Leo, was on the tribal council—a representative from the Sells District. The respect Gabe and Delia were shown outside their home didn’t necessarily carry over into what went on inside. Delia knew she bore most of the responsibility for what had happened. Gabe was an only child. She had coddled him, spoiled him. For a time, that hadn’t mattered, but once he turned twelve, it seemed as though someone had flipped a switch. Up till then, the boy, named in honor of his grandfather, Gabe “Fat Crack” Ortiz, had always been an excellent student and a good kid. Now his grades had fallen through the floor, and he was palling around with a bad bunch of kids.
Delia and Leo had tried their best to warn Gabe that he was headed for trouble. They had reasoned with him, threatened, and cajoled until they were blue in the face, but nothing they said had the least effect. As a last resort, they had turned to Lani for help, hoping she could somehow work a miracle. The geographical cure she suggested wasn’t at all what Delia and Leo had expected. Packing the boy off to what amounted to a boarding-school situation in Tucson sounded like a last resort, but it would be better than his ending up in juvie.
That was what tonight was all about. Lani was determined to take Gabe into the desert and try to convince him to turn his life around. His parents’ other option to help him avoid juvie was to send him to live with Delia’s mother and attend school on the East Coast. Leo had told his wife straight out that he didn’t believe having Lani Walker-Pardee “shake a few feathers” at the boy would do the least bit of good, but Delia was desperate, and a dose of Lani’s medicine-woman treatment was their last hope.
“Put down that game, get off your butt, and pack up,” Delia ordered. “You’ll need a coat, a scarf, and probably some extra pairs of socks.”
“You expect me to stay out all night in this weather?” Gabe grumbled. “How’s that possible? I don’t even have a sleeping bag.”
“You won’t need a sleeping bag,” Delia countered. “Your dad got out a couple of his father’s wool blankets for you to use.”
The several colorful and tightly woven Navajo blankets that had once belonged to Fat Crack Ortiz were now among Leo Ortiz’s most prized possessions. The garage and towing company that had once belonged to Fat Crack had been left to both his sons, Leo and Richard. Over time, Leo had bought out Richard’s share of the business. The blankets, though, had been his alone from the beginning, inherited outright. They were kept in a cedar-lined chest, safe from damage by moths and other insects, and were only brought out on special occasions. Gabe should have been honored that he would be allowed to use them tonight, but he was not.
“Great,” Gabe sneered. “Those scratchy old things? I’d rather freeze.”
“Suit yourself then,” his mother told him angrily. “That’s totally up to you.”