Auntie was sitting on the porch when Thomas pulled Reuben’s pickup into their yard. Santana hopped out of the cab. She slammed the car door closed and three large black birds perched on the banister near Auntie Leila’s chair flew off into the evening air. In the poor light Thomas couldn’t tell if they were ravens or Yellowrock Canyon crows. Santana didn’t seem to notice them. She stopped long enough to give Auntie a kiss and a hug, then went inside. Thomas followed at a slower pace.
“Ohla, Auntie,” he said. “Talking to the birds again?”
When he bent down to give her a kiss, she sniffed at him.
“Huh,” she said. “At least you didn’t run off with her.”
Thomas straightened up. “Run off with who?”
“The ma’inawo girl you’ve been stepping out with.”
“I’m not stepping out with anybody.”
“Then how come you have the smell of the otherworld on you?”
There was a smell? Thomas thought.
“We were delivering a propane tank to Steve and his girlfriend Calico,” he said.
“Ah, Calico. You be careful around that girl.”
“She seemed nice.”
“She probably is. It’s her friends that can be trouble. Deer women and jackrabbit girls. Be especially careful around them.”
“I will, Auntie.”
He started to go into the house, but she caught his arm. “Will you do an old lady a favour?” she asked.
Thomas had to smile. Auntie only ever referred to herself as old when she wanted you to do something for her that you probably didn’t want to do.
“What’s that?” he asked, keeping his tone noncommittal.
Auntie glanced toward the house then beckoned him to bend down closer. “You’re a good man,” she said, “taking care of your family when you’d rather be a thousand miles away from the rez.”
“It’s no burden.”
She waved that off. “You and I both know what’s true. And we know you like to keep your distance from the traditions of your people.”
“I’m going to the sweat tomorrow,” he said, not sure why he felt the need to say that. “At Aggie’s.”
It was enough to distract Auntie. “Have you met some girl? What’s her family?”
“Why would you think that?”
“Why else would you be going to a sweat?”
“Reuben asked me. He thought I should go.”
“Huh. It’s because of Reuben I have to ask you this favour. Did you hear about Derek Two Trees?”
Thomas shook his head.
“One of Sammy’s white man hunters shot him, up in the mountains.”
“Is he—is he okay?”
Auntie shook her head. “He’s dead. They cut off his head as a trophy and brought it back to the lodge.”
“What?”
Thomas rocked back on his heels and put a hand on the railing to keep his balance.
“They didn’t know it was Derek,” Auntie said. “He was in his bighorn shape.”
“I never knew...” Thomas began, but then he thought of the bighorn aura he always saw settled over Derek’s shoulders like a plains tribe chief’s headdress.
“That’s terrible.”
Auntie nodded in agreement. “And now Reuben’s heading up to the lodge with a gang of his dog boys to take the trophy away from them. You know what that means. It doesn’t matter which way it goes, Sammy will be down at the center to confront Morago before the sun rises.”
Thomas tried to take this all in. “What favour do you want from me?” he asked.
“Your mother wouldn’t want me to ask you this,” she said, “but I was hoping you’d go down the center to stand by Morago as a sign of solidarity. If Sammy comes down with a gang, Morago will need his own show of force.”
“You think there’ll be fighting?”
“I hope not. But that’s why you’ll be there. If Morago has enough men with him, Sammy won’t want to start anything.”
“And you think Mom won’t want me to—”
Auntie didn’t let him finish. “This younger Women’s Council needs to grow a backbone. If they had, Sammy would never have been able to build his casino and everything that came with it. And we wouldn’t have this problem that we have now.”
Thomas didn’t know what to say.
“I understand how you feel about our traditions,” Auntie went on. “I’m only asking you to stand with Morago tonight. What he doesn’t need supporting him is a gang of dog boy hotheads.”
“Auntie, I don’t disrespect the traditions,” Thomas told her. “I’m not ashamed of the tribe or who I am.”
“You just want to see some of the world.”
Thomas nodded. Did everybody know? He thought he’d kept this pretty well to himself.
“All young men need the chance to run in other deserts, not just the one in which they were born. You’ll get your chance. But tonight I ask you to stand with Morago.”
“Of course,” Thomas said. He straightened up. “I’ll just grab something to eat and—”
Auntie reached beside her chair and offered him a fat tube covered in foil.
“A burrito…for the drive,” she said. “It should still be a little warm.”
“But Mom—”
“Will only ask you not to go. If you go without seeing her, you won’t have to decide between the wishes of your mother and this old woman.”
Thomas hid a smile. “Of course, Auntie,” he said. He took the burrito and returned to the pickup.
“I knew I could count on you,” Auntie called after him.
Thomas gave her a wave and got back into the truck. As he was pulling out onto the road he looked in his rearview mirror to see his mother step out onto the porch.
He gave the truck a little more gas, but slowed down as soon as the house was out of sight. He was in no hurry to reach the community center.
It was a little ironic. He’d spent forever trying to stay off Morago’s radar, and now here he was, on his way to visit the shaman. At Auntie’s request, true enough, but that didn’t change anything.
But it probably didn’t matter, not the way this day was going. The shaman probably knew everything about him, the same way everybody else seemed to. And if he did, then maybe Morago also knew this Corn Eyes boy was the worst candidate to be an apprentice that he would ever find.
Which didn’t make pulling into the dirt parking lot of the community center any easier.
There was already a fire burning, with at least a dozen lawn chairs set around it. Around half were occupied. Other men stood near a silent powwow drum. Rez dogs sprawled in the dirt. All heads turned in his direction as he killed the engine and stepped out of the pickup.
Morago moved away from the group of standing men and walked toward him. He clasped Thomas’s forearms and gave them a squeeze. “One thing the People know,” Morago said, “is that in a time of need, they can always count on the men of the Corn Eyes Clan. Welcome, brother. Ohla.”
Thomas had spent half his life trying to figure out a way to get out of the rez, but at this moment, he didn’t know why. An unfamiliar pride filled him. He squared his shoulders and stood straighter.
Morago smiled and stepped back. “Come,” he said. “We have tea by the fire.”
Thomas knew all the men here, but tonight it seemed as though they looked at him differently. They smiled and clapped his back as he followed Morago to the fire. Charlie Green—related to Thomas’s mother through marriage to a cousin—sat in the closest lawn chair and handed him a metal cup. The scent of herbal tea wafted up from the warm liquid.
“Ohla, Thomas,” Charlie said.
Thomas nodded his thanks. “Ohla. It’s been a while.”
Charlie shrugged. He dug into his pocket and came up with a pack of cigarettes. Thomas didn’t smoke, but he accepted one anyway, bent down for the light Charlie offered and took a drag. He held the smoke in for a moment, then exhaled and offered the cigarette back to Charlie.
“A terrible business, this,” somebody behind him said.
It was William Strong Bow. Settled on William’s shoulders, superimposed over his own features, was the vague outline of a bighorn’s head. Thomas hadn’t realized the man was kin to Derek.
“It makes no sense,” Thomas agreed. “I’m sorry to hear about Derek.”
William just shook his head and stared at the ground.
Thomas took an empty chair beside Charlie and sipped his tea while Charlie smoked. One by one, the other men came to the fire and stood or sat around it, the firelight flickering on their faces. The only one who didn’t join them was Jerry Five Hawks, the deputy on duty from the rez’s tribal police. He stood by the community center, leaning against a wall of the building, arms folded across his chest. Thomas supposed he couldn’t appear to take sides, but it was good to know he was present in case of trouble.
There were none of the jokes and kidding around that usually accompanied a gathering on the rez. The men spoke quietly or kept their own counsel, as Morago did. The shaman stared into the flames, his thoughts unreadable. Thomas amused himself by searching each of the men for their animal aura. A few had them—he marked bighorn, bobcat, packrat, rattler, cactus wren—and some didn’t. The only one he couldn’t read was Morago’s.
After a while, Petey Jojoba took his chair over to the powwow drum. Petey was a weaver who lived down the road from Aggie White Horse’s place, but he was also a hoop dancer, storyteller and drummer. He knew over a hundred stories about the Kikimi trickster Jimmy Cholla—always a favourite around the fires—but tonight when Petey woke a soft heartbeat from the drum, he began to tell of the time Hummingbird tricked the magpie girls into giving him all of their collected treasures.
The men fell silent, nodding their heads as they listened. Like the rest, Thomas had heard this story before. He’d grown up on stories like this, first hearing them from Auntie and his mother. But tonight it felt as though he was hearing it for the first time. Tonight he could almost see the cocky hummingbird swaggering around with his pockets full of rings and trinkets.
He wasn’t sure what was different. He was older, so he should have found it harder to immerse himself so completely in its well-worn telling. Maybe it was the night, or the unusual company. Or just the situation. He had no idea. The only thing he knew for sure was that everyone here felt the same, listening to Petey’s voice and the soft heartbeat of his mallet tapping the big powwow drum. Even the dogs lay with ears twitching, their eyes open and fixed on Petey as he spoke.
And they weren’t alone, the men and dogs, Thomas realized. As the story unfolded he became aware of animals gathering at the edges of the parking lot, half hidden in the cacti and brush. Jackrabbits. A bobcat. A pair of owls. Innumerable mice and packrats. Many of the cacti seemed to be closer to the parking lot than they had been when he’d first arrived. All of them following the rise and fall of Petey’s voice.
Petey had just reached the part where the magpie girls were getting their revenge, when something disturbed the animals and they melted back into the brush. The dogs stood up, turning their muzzles to the west. The story stopped and Petey’s drum went still. His gaze followed those of the dogs. When Thomas looked himself, he saw headlights coming up the road from the highway.
“Who’s that?” Charlie said. “It seems too early for Sammy to be on the warpath.”
One of the other men nodded. “And Thomas has Reuben’s truck.”
The mystery was solved a few moments later when a Kikimi County Sheriff’s cruiser pulled into the parking lot followed by an unmarked car. The men by the fire had to shield their eyes against the glare of the headlights. The driver of the cruiser shut off his engine, but left the headlights on as he stepped out of his car.
Nobody got up from their chairs, but Jerry pushed away from the wall where he’d been leaning. He adjusted his holster and walked across the parking lot to meet the other police officer.
“Looks like Sammy called the cops on us,” William murmured. “Coward.”
The door of the unmarked car opened and a white man got out. Thomas didn’t recognize him, but he knew the deputy from the sheriff’s office. Bob Hernandez. He came into the trading post from time to time to talk to Reuben.
“Hey, Bob,” Jerry said to the deputy. “What brings you out this way tonight?”
Bob jerked a thumb behind him. “Mr. Higgins here says his daughter’s been kidnapped and that she’s being held here on the rez. You think anybody here knows anything about it?”
Thomas and the other men exchanged glances. This was serious.
“You have anything more to go on?” Jerry asked. “What she looks like? When she went missing?”
“Her name’s Sadie. She’s sixteen, white, dark-haired, about yay high.”
Bob put out a hand to indicate a girl of about five-two or three.
“How long has she been missing?” Jerry asked.
“Twenty-four hours or so.”
“Do you have a picture?”
“I’ll have the office email one to you.”
Jerry nodded. “Good. I’ll get the word out and see what we can find.”
“Appreciate it,” Bob said.
He started to turn away, but Higgins pushed forward.
“That’s it?” Higgins said.
Both officers simply looked at him.
“You’re just leaving?” Higgins went on. “My little girl could be in any kind of trouble. For all we know, they could have her all doped up and be whoring her out. Hell, they could’ve sold her to some wetbacks in Mexico by now. You need to be busting down doors, putting the fear of God into them.”
“Those are some pretty serious accusations, Mr. Higgins,” Bob said. “You really need to dial it down.”
That was the polite way to put it, Thomas thought. All around him he could feel the other men bristling.
“If you’re telling me I need to shut up,” Higgins said, “I’m telling you hell no.”
“What makes you think she’s on the rez?” Jerry asked.
Higgins rolled his eyes. “I saw some big Indian grab her and throw her in a white van. Where else would he go to?”
“Can you give us a description of the abductor?”
“What kind of question is that? He looked like you.” Higgins nodded to the fire. “He looked like those bucks. How the hell am I supposed to know the difference?”
“That’s enough,” Bob said.
“Enough of what? Higgins asked. “You need to start doing something.”
The deputy shook his head. “If you don’t shut up,” he told Higgins, “I’m going to cuff you and throw you in the back of my car.”
“You can’t talk to me like that. I pay taxes. The sheriff’s going to hear about this—don’t think he won’t. You should be getting the Bureau of Indian Affairs on this. You should have the FBI in here right now, going door-to-door. You need choppers in the air. Let these Indians know they can’t get away with shit like this.”
Bob took a step in the man’s direction and Higgins scuttled back out of reach.
“I’m sorry about this,” Bob told Jerry.
“I’ll tell you who’s going to be sorry,” Higgins began.
Before he could finish, the deputy had him up against the side of his car. It took him only a moment to cuff Higgins and put him in the back of the cruiser.
“What’re you going to do with him?” Jerry asked.
The deputy shrugged. “Damned if I know. There’s something hinky about this whole business, but Higgins strikes me as a guy who knows how to work the system. I don’t think this is going away in any kind of a hurry.”
“We’ll do what we can here,” Jerry assured him.
“I know you will. Okay if I leave his car here overnight? I’ll get somebody to come by and get it tomorrow.”
“Not a problem.”
The deputy moved Higgins’ car to the far end of the parking lot, then drove away in his own vehicle. Once they were gone, Jerry regarded the men by the fire. “You don’t know anything about this, right?”
He asked the men in general, but his gaze was on Morago. Everybody knew the dorm held a half-dozen or so undocumented kids from Mexico. Kids with no family to call their own. And Morago ran the dorm as well as the school.
“There’s no white girl in the dorm,” the shaman said. “Not a kidnapped girl or a runaway.”
“If that was my old man,” somebody said, “I’d pay somebody to take me away.”
The men chuckled.
Jerry nodded. “Maybe Petey could finish his story.”
He returned to his position by the community center, leaning against the wall. Petey glanced at Morago. When the shaman nodded, he woke the heartbeat on the powwow drum once again, the padded mallet tapping the big drum’s skin.
“Now where was I?” he said.
Thomas smiled. As though Petey didn’t know.
“The magpie girls were about to give Hummingbird the what for,” William said.
Petey smiled. “So they were.”
He went back to the story, but this time Thomas had trouble concentrating. He kept glancing at Morago. The shaman stared into the coals of the fire, just as he had before. It was as though the interruption had never happened and all he was interested in was hearing the end of Petey’s story. But Thomas had the sense Morago knew more about this missing girl than he’d admitted to Jerry.
He was pretty sure he didn’t want to know what Morago was up to. It wasn’t his business. It was breaking some serious laws. But the truth was, now that his curiosity had been woken, he couldn’t not find out.
The only thing he knew for certain was he’d probably regret it.