They say it happened long ago that Young Girl—Chehia—from Rattlesnake Skull village, was out walking in the desert where she found a young man who was injured. He was lying under a mesquite tree, crying. Young Girl knew at once that Young Man was Apache, Ohb. Even though she did not speak Young Man’s language, Young Girl knew that he needed help.
You must understand, nawoj, my friend, that the Apache and the Desert People have always been enemies. When I’itoi created everything, he loved the Tohono O’odham, the Desert People. They were friendly and industrious, so I’itoi kept them living close to his sacred mountain, Ioligam, where they stayed busy in their fields, growing corn and wheat, melons and squash.
But I’itoi found the Apache troublesome. They quarreled a lot and they were very lazy, so I’itoi sent them to live on the far side of the desert. There they found plenty of animals to hunt, but it was hard to grow food. And so, whenever the Apaches grew too hungry, they would ride across the desert to steal the food the Desert People had grown.
When Chehia, Young Girl, found the injured man, she could have just walked away. But he cried so piteously that she did not. Instead, she helped him to a nearby cave and hid him there. Every day, she would slip away from the village and bring him water to drink and food to eat. Soon he grew well enough to return to his own people, but by then Young Man and Young Girl had fallen in love. He asked Chehia to run away with him, but she was afraid to leave her own people.
One day, when she brought Young Man’s food, he pointed off across the valley to a place where smoke was rising in the air. “Those signals are signs that my people are coming,” he said. “You must run back to the village and warn yours that they are in danger.”
LANI’S BODY TENSED with unease as Leo Ortiz turned the Toyota Tundra off the highway and headed down Coleman Road. The three of them—Leo Ortiz, Lani, and Leo’s son, Gabe—had driven the whole way from Sells in almost total silence, one broken only by incessant clicks from the video game Gabe was playing on his phone in the backseat.
Off to the left, Lani could see the charco, the water hole, that in her mind still belonged to the long-abandoned village of Rattlesnake Skull. Now, as often happened when she was upset, the almost invisible pin-sized flaws on Lani’s face—ones she covered each morning with deftly applied makeup—began to prickle and itch. She knew what was causing the old ant bites to burn—Rattlesnake Skull charco was where all this had started so many years ago. The water hole was where the authorities had found the body of Gina Antone, a teenage Tohono O’odham girl who had been tortured and murdered by an evil ohb-like Anglo named Andrew Carlisle. Garrison Ladd, Lani’s mother’s first husband, had been a suspect in that case right along with Carlisle.
In the course of the homicide investigation, Diana and the dead girl’s grandmother, Rita Antone, had been thrown together. To everyone’s amazement and to the dismay of the people on the reservation, the two women—the Indian and the Anglo, the old Tohono O’odham widow and the young Milgahn one—had become fast friends.
On the reservation, Rita Antone, originally from Topawa, had long been known as Hejel Wi i’thag, Left Alone. At the time, Diana, a teacher on the reservation, had been living in a teachers’ compound mobile home in the same village. United in their mutual loss and grief, the two women had left the reservation behind and moved to Tucson, where they had worked together to rehab a ramshackle river-rock house in the Tucson Mountains. When Diana’s son, Davy, was born, Rita looked after him and became the boy’s beloved Nana Dahd, his godmother. Years later, when Lani was adopted into the Ladd/Walker household, Rita Antone became Lani’s godmother, too.
Lani was eleven years younger than Davy. Even though Rita was elderly by the time Lani showed up, it was Rita who had schooled both children in the sacred traditions and legends of the Tohono O’odham. She was the one who had taught them the endangered ancient art of basketmaking and had pointed out and given names to the various herbs, plants, and fruits that were at home in the Arizona desert. Rita had carefully described how some of the plants were useful in the healing arts while others were used in religious ceremonies. She also made sure they could easily recognize and avoid the ones that were poisonous and even deadly.
And it was through Rita that Lani had come to the attention of Brandon Walker and Diana Ladd.
Lani had begun life on the Tohono O’odham as the neglected child of a jailed father and a runaway mother. Abandoned while still a toddler, Clemencia Escalante, as Lani was known back then, had been left in the care of an impoverished, aged, and exceedingly deaf grandmother in the village of Nolic, which means The Bend. During the summer months, the older children in Nolic had helped look after Clemencia, but once school started, the baby, little more than a year old, had been the only child left in the village.
On a warm September afternoon with her caretaker sound asleep, Clemencia had somehow made her way outside—probably through a door left open to allow a bit of breeze into the rough adobe house. Outside and unsupervised, the child had wandered away from the house. Eventually she had become trapped in a nest of Maricopa harvester ants, whose venom is legendary. There was little doubt that she had screamed as the ants bit into her because she was still screaming an hour or so later when the school bus dropped off the other children. The children were the ones who found her, not the grandmother. Lack of hearing was the reason the grandmother hadn’t heard the child screaming, but for the authorities, an even greater concern was that she had failed to notice that the little girl had gone missing.
Close to death from the poison of literally hundreds of bites, Clemencia had been transported first to the Sells Indian Hospital. When her condition worsened, she was taken to the ER at Tucson Medical Center. At the time, Wanda Ortiz, Fat Crack’s wife and Gabe’s grandmother, had been the social worker in charge of Clemencia’s case.
Clemencia was still hospitalized in Tucson when, on a trip back to Sells from seeing her, Wanda and Fat Crack had stopped by the house to see Rita Antone, Fat Crack’s auntie. In the course of the conversation, Wanda had mentioned the situation with the little ant-bit girl. By now the grandmother had been deemed an unsuitable guardian. Even though some of Clemencia’s other relatives still lived in Nolic, none of them was willing to take the child in once she was released from the hospital.
“Why not?” Rita had asked.
“They’re a superstitious lot,” Wanda explained. “They remember the story of Kulani O’oks, the Woman Who Was Kissed by the Bees who, under the name of Mualig Siakam—Forever Spinning—went on to become the Tohono O’odham’s greatest medicine woman. They’re afraid that the ant bites have made Clemencia a dangerous object, one who will bring Kuadagi Mumkithag, Ant Sickness, to the village.”
“What will become of her then?” Rita wanted to know.
“There’s an orphanage in Phoenix,” Wanda said, “one operated by the Baptist Church. They take in children from any number of tribes.”
“Who runs the orphanage,” Rita had asked, “Indians or Milgahn?”
“Anglos, I’m sure,” Wanda answered with a shrug.
“No,” Rita said, speaking with surprising forcefulness. “That cannot be. She needs to be raised here.”
Wanda was aghast. It would have been rude, of course, to point out that Rita was far too old to adopt the child and raise Clemencia on her own, but Rita had already come to the same conclusion.
“Mrs. Ladd and Mr. Walker can adopt her,” Rita declared. “I’ll be here to see that she learns what she needs to know about her people.”
“Diana Ladd and Brandon Walker may be great friends of the tribe, but they’re Anglos,” Wanda had objected. “Tribal courts are discouraging Anglo adoptions these days.”
“Why?” Rita had retorted. “Do they think Baptists who run orphanages will do a better job of raising her than these two people will, especially if they have my help?”
In the end and much to Wanda Ortiz’s amazement, Rita’s wishes had won the day. Brandon Walker and Diana Ladd had become first Clemencia Escalante’s foster parents and eventually her adoptive ones. At Rita Antone’s insistence, they had given their adopted daughter a new name—Lanita Dolores Walker.
Much later, while Rita and Lani wandered hand in hand along the paths of the Arizona/Sonora Desert Museum, Rita had related the story of how, in a time of terrible drought, a young Tohono O’odham woman named Kulani O’oks had been saved from death by the beating of the wings of the Ali-chu’uchum O’odham, the Little People—the bees and wasps, the butterflies and moths. Rita had gone on to explain how, back when Rita herself had been a child, her grandmother, S’Amichuda O’oks—Understanding Woman—had predicted that someday Rita would find a girl who would grow up to be a trusted medicine woman, someone just like Kulani O’oks, the Woman Who Was Kissed by the Bees.
“You’re only a little girl now,” Rita had said, “but I hope that you will grow up to be that medicine woman.”
“Kulani O’oks,” Lani had repeated the words several times, letting the strange and yet familiar collection of syllables roll across her tongue. Suddenly she understood. “Is that why people call me Lani—because of her, Kulani?”
Rita’s wrinkled brown face had beamed with satisfaction. “Yes, my child,” she had said, “that’s it exactly.”
A NARROW STRIP of roadway had been carved into the foothills leading up Ioligam’s eastern flank. Winter rains had left it rutted, uneven, and washed out in spots. Even in four-wheel drive, Leo’s Toyota struggled to make the climb. Closing her eyes, Lani shut out the noise of the laboring engine and prayed that Rita Antone had been right and that somehow the spirit of Kulani O’oks would be with her.
They drove past the small clearing where Fat Crack had pitched the tent while Lani had lived through her sixteen days of exile, her e lihmhun—the traditional Tohono O’odham purification ceremony required after the killing of an enemy. Because Lani Walker had indeed taken a human life. Andrew Carlisle, in one last bid for vengeance against Lani’s mother, had sent a fellow inmate, Mitch Johnson, to kidnap and kill Lani. In a final confrontation inside Ioligam’s network of caverns, Lani had managed to turn the tables on her would-be killer. The crew of experienced rock climbers that had finally removed Mitch Johnson’s remains from the depths of the cavern had reported that he had died in a fall.
For years only Lani and Fat Crack Ortiz had known the whole truth about what had happened—that she was the one responsible for the man’s death. She had used her bare feet to push a fragile stalagmite loose from its moorings and send it plunging into the depths. Johnson had still been alive and moaning until the rock hit him. Had anyone examined the remains of the rock, they no doubt would have found Lani’s footprints on it, but the medical examiner and the detectives—who had zero interest in climbing down into the abyss—had been satisfied with the idea that the fall alone had killed him.
During those long and lonely sixteen days with her face painted black, Lani had fasted during the day. In the evenings, Fat Crack brought her the only meal she was allowed—a dish of salt-free food.
It was during that period of time that she had come to truly understand her relationship to Kulani O’oks, that long-ago medicine woman, whose given name was Mualig Siakam—Forever Spinning.
That was the secret Indian name Rita Antone, Lani’s beloved Nana Dahd, had given the child long ago just as the old woman had also given Davy, Lani’s older brother, his secret name Olhoni—Little Orphaned Calf. As a child Lani had believed that she’d been called Mualig Siakam because of her love of dancing and twirling. It was only on those nights with Fat Crack that she came to understand that Kulani O’oks and Mualig Siakam had been one and the same.
After the confrontation in the cavern, two more secret names had become part of Lani Walker’s store of names: Gagdathag O’oks—Betraying Woman, the name of the girl the people of Rattlesnake Skull village had left to die in a cave as punishment for her treachery—and Nanakumal Namkam—Bat Meeter. That was the spirit of Betraying Woman, a ghostly presence that had kept Lani company during the terrible hours she’d been locked in the limestone cavern with a killer. It was the fluttering wings of a tiny bat that had given her the courage to fight back.
Now traveling up that narrow road for the first time in many years, Lani understood she would need help from all those names and spirits if she was to accomplish her goal that night. She would need them, and so would Gabe Ortiz. If Lani’s plan worked as she hoped, he would come away from this night with a secret Indian name too—Ali Gihg Tahpani, Baby Fat Crack, in honor of his grandfather, and also after his uncle Richard, who shared the same name but who was simply called Baby.
The Toyota ground to a halt. “This is as far as we go,” Leo announced. “Everybody out. From here on we walk.”
Lani stepped out onto a shoulder that was so rough she had to struggle to maintain her footing. When Gabe finally clambered out of the backseat, she stood there waiting for him with her hand outstretched.
“What?” he asked.
“Phone,” she answered. “Give it to me.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re leaving it with your dad.”
“But what if I decide I want to go home? What if I need to call him?”
“Then you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way,” Lani told him. “Try smoke signals.”
Reluctantly Gabe handed over the phone. “That’s not fair,” he said.
“This isn’t about fair,” Lani replied, dropping the phone on the passenger seat of the truck. “It never has been.”
By then Leo was at the back of the vehicle unloading gear from the luggage compartment. Leo gave a snort of suppressed laughter. Lani heard it and hoped Gabe had not.
“Oi g hihm,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“Where to?” Gabe asked.
“There’s a clearing up there,” she answered, pointing first to a point farther up the mountain and then to a spot nearby where a faint path disappeared into the brush. “It’s not all that far, but it’s steep. You’ll need to watch your step.”
“YOU GONNA BE all right now?” Aubrey Bayless asked, pushing John Lassiter’s bulky wheelchair into his cell and locking the wheels close enough to the metal cot that the prisoner would be able to manage the last bit of distance on his own.
“I’m fine, Aubrey,” Lassiter said, levering his heavy frame out of the chair and onto the narrow bed. “Thank you for bringing me back.”
Big Bad John Lassiter was still big, but the bad part had largely disappeared. Multiple sclerosis had turned him into a wheelchair-bound mass of mostly uncooperative muscles. It was hard to tell if he was still bad because, on occasion, he was also virtually helpless. He lived alone in a cell not because he was a danger to himself or others, but because none of the other inmates at the Arizona State Prison in Florence was willing to help him with his ever-increasing physical deficits.
That job usually fell to Aubrey Bayless, a kind, grizzle-haired old black man who primarily functioned as an orderly inside the prison’s infirmary. It was there the two men—prisoner and caregiver—had gradually developed a friendship. On those occasions when John wasn’t confined to a hospital bed, Aubrey voluntarily helped him in and out of his cell as well as back and forth to the dining room and elsewhere.
“When you gonna agree to see that daughter of yours?” Aubrey wanted to know. “Those guys in the visitors’ office tell me she keeps asking and asking.”
“How many times do I have to tell you?” John replied wearily. “I don’t have a daughter. I signed away my parental rights to that girl the moment she was born.”
“You maybe signed ’em away, but I don’t think she be listening,” Aubrey countered. “They say she even gots the same thing you got. She’s what, not even forty years old, and she already stuck on one of them scooters.”
That hurt. The idea that MS was hereditary and that he’d most likely passed his own ailment along to an offspring he’d never met seemed grossly unfair. All Big Bad John knew about his daughter was her name—the name her adoptive parents had given her—Amanda Wasser.
Years had passed between the time Amos Warren disappeared and when his remains had been found. By the time John was charged with his murder, his onetime girlfriend, Ava Martin—the one who had caused all the trouble—was years in his rearview mirror. At the time John was taken into custody, he and his then girlfriend, Bernadette Benson, had actually started thinking about getting married. By the time the baby was born, he’d been found guilty and sentenced to life without parole for Amos’s murder.
Bernadette had come to the prison visitors’ room, hugely pregnant. She had begged him to marry her and give the baby his last name, promising that she’d keep the child and raise it on her own, but John had steadfastly refused. Why give the poor kid the name of a guy who would be spending the rest of his life in prison? Bernadette had no education beyond high school. Without John’s support, she was barely scratching out a meager existence working as a waitress.
“Why not give the kid up for adoption?” he had asked her. “Why not let him have half a chance at a decent life?”
Of course, the baby had turned out to be a girl rather than a boy, but Bernadette had come around to John’s way of thinking. He’d been surprised when she had put the baby up for adoption, signing away her parental rights at the same time John gave up his. He knew how much Bernadette regretted that decision because she herself had told him so, saying over and over that, more than anything, she wished she had kept the baby after all.
The other thing about Bernadette Benson that had surprised John Lassiter was that, although she had let their child go, she had continued to love him no matter what. For years she had faithfully driven back and forth between Tucson and Florence once a week to spend a few short minutes talking to him through a plexiglass barrier. Bernadette’s visits had ceased abruptly in 1983 when she had been fatally injured in a late-afternoon one-car rollover on her way back home from the prison.
John’s mind had drifted away. When he came back to the present, Aubrey Bayless was still talking.
“And she be the one who been talking to them JFA folks about getting your ass sprung out of here. You should be givin’ her a chance to at least know you, man. Seems like you owe her that much.”
John Lassiter had no idea how Amanda had reinserted herself into his life. He had refused to meet with her mostly because he was too ashamed to do so. He didn’t want to have to sit there, as a convicted killer, and look her in the eye. And he had no idea how or why she had managed to persuade the people from Justice for All to go to bat for him, but her efforts on his behalf hadn’t and wouldn’t make him change his mind about seeing her.
The old Big Bad John would have jumped all over Aubrey and told him to give it a rest and mind his own damned business, but this John Lassiter was painfully aware of how much he depended on the kindness of this good-hearted old man.
“I’m not making any promises,” John said as Aubrey backed out of the cell and slammed the barred door shut behind him. “I’ll think about it.”