At Marana, he got off and walked back under the freeway to the entrance ramp on the other side.
He put down his bag and stuck out his thumb, angling for a ride northbound to Phoenix.
He'd go to Tucson eventually, when he was ready, but first he wanted to talk to his mother. Myrna Louise would be surprised and happy to see him. She was always good for a handout.
Davy Ladd knew his mother was working, so he spent the morning outside, along with Bone, a scrawny black-and-tan mutt with predominantly Irish wolfhound bloodlines. The dog, fierce-looking and bristle-faced, with a squared-off, rectangular head the size of a basketball, was never far from the boy's heels.
The two of them hiked up the mountain behind Davy's house, scrambling over warm red cliffs, straying further than they should have from the house. As the hot sun rose higher overhead, both boy and dog went looking for shade. Bone crept under a scrubby mesquite, while Davy hunkered down in the narrow band of shade at the foot of a perpendicular outcropping of rock.
It was there he found the cave with an opening so small he didn't see it for a while even though he was sitting right next to it. Poking his head in, he decided it wasn't a cave after all, because caves were flat, and this one went up and down like a tall chimney in the rock. A circle of blue sky showed at the very top. He wiggled through the small opening and found that, once inside, there was barely room enough for him to stand up straight. Despite its small, confined size, the place was surprisingly cool. Davy warily checked it for snakes.
People and dogs weren't the only ones who needed to escape the heat.
Suddenly, outside, Bone set up a frantic barking. Peering out, Davy saw the dog, nose to the ground, searching around wildly.
Hide-and-seek was a game they played sometimes-the solitary child and his singularly ugly dog pretending to be scouts heading off a band of marauding Apaches, maybe, or hunters stalking mule deer in the mountains.
With a joyous bark, the dog discovered the boy's hiding place.
Panting, he thrust his big head into the opening and tried to climb in as well. There wasn't room for both of them to be inside at once, and Davy came out laughing.
It was then he heard Rita calling him from far below.
"Come on, Bone," the boy said. "Maybe it's time for lunch."
But it wasn't. Rita Antone, the Indian woman who lived with them and took care of him, waited in the yard with both hands planted sternly on her hips as the boy and the dog returned from the mountain.
“Where were you?" she asked.
“Playing."
“It's time to come in now. I'm going to the reservation to sell baskets. If you want to go, you'd better ask your mother."
Davy's eyes widened with excitement. "I can come with you?"
"First go ask."
Worried about disturbing her, Davy crept into his mother's makeshift office. For a minute or so, the boy stood transfixed, watching Diana Ladd's nimble fingers dance across the keys. How could her fingers move so fast?
His mother's shoulders stiffened with annoyance when she sensed his presence behind her. "What is it, Davy?" she asked.
He sidled up beside her, standing with his fingers moving tentatively along the smooth wooden edge of the door that served as her desk. The child knew his mother wrote books at that desk during the summers when she wasn't teaching.
He didn't know exactly what the books were about-he had never seen one of them-but Rita said it was true, so it had to be. Rita never told fibs.
She had explained that his mother's work was important, and that when she was busy at her typewriter, he wasn't to interrupt or disturb her unless absolutely necessary. This time it must be okay. Rita had told him to do it.
"What is it, Davy?" Diana Ladd repeated sharply. "Can't you see I'm busy? I've got to finish this chapter today."
Sometimes his mother's voice could be soothing and gentle, but not now when she was impatient and eager to be rid of him. Hot tears welled up in Davy's eyes. He stood with his face averted so his mother wouldn't see them.
"It's Rita," he said uncertainly. "She's going to the reservation today to sell baskets. Can I go along, please?"
Davy's mother seemed to exist in a place far beyond his short-armed reach. He was never exactly sure how she would react. He had learned to maintain a certain distance, to be wary of her sudden outbursts.
Rita was far more approachable.
During the school year, Davy got home from school long before his mother arrived home from her teaching job on the reservation. The child spent most afternoons in Rita's single-roomed house, little more than a glorified cook shack, which was situated off the back of the kitchen of the main house. There, he ate meals at a worn wooden table, all the while devouring the stories the Indian woman told him.
Often he spent hours watching in fascination while she used her owij, her awl, to weave intricate yucca and bear-grass baskets. Other times he stood at mouth-watering attention while she patted out tortillas and popovers to cook on an ancient wood-burning range that she much preferred to the modern gas stove in the main house.
While she worked, Rita heard Davy's stories as well.
Unlike his mother's writing or paper-correcting, which demanded total concentration, Rita's manual tasks were performed automatically, while her heart and mind were free with the gift of listening. Rita's heavy, stolid presence was the single constant in Davy's young life. She was the healer of all his childish hurts, the recipient of his daily joys and woes For once Diana Ladd broke through her own self-imposed reserve and affectionately ruffled her son's lank yellow hair.
"Rita's going to turn you into more of an Indian than she is," Diana commented with a short laugh.
"Really?" the boy asked, his blue eyes lighting up at the prospect.
"Will my hair turn black and straight and everything?"
"It might," Diana returned lightly. "If you eat too many popovers at the feast tonight, it'll happen for sure."
"Feast?" Davy asked. "What feast?"
"Didn't Rita tell you? There's a feast tonight at Ban Thak. That's the other reason she's going today."
Ban Thak, Coyote Sitting, was the name of Rita's home village. Davy could hardly believe his good fortune. "You mean I get to go to the feast, too?"
Rita and Diana Ladd had evidently already discussed it and reached a decision, but the Indian woman always insisted that the child ask his mother, that he show her the respect she deserved.
The boy could barely contain his excitement as Diana kissed him and shooed him on his way. "Go on now. Get out of here. I've got work to do."
Davy Ladd scampered eagerly out of the room. Bone, black as a shadow and almost as big as his six-year-old owner, waited patiently outside the door. The two of them raced through the house looking for Rita.
Davy was quiet about it, though. He didn't shout or make too much noise.
Rita had taught him better manners than that. Children were never to shout after their elders. It wasn't polite.
He found Rita in the backyard loading boxes laden with finely crafted handmade baskets into the bed of an old blue GMC. She stopped working long enough to wipe the running sweat from her wrinkled brown face.
"Well now, Olhoni," she said, standing looking down on him with both hands folded over her faded apron. "What did your mother say?"
Only Rita called Davy Ladd by the name Olhoni, which, in Papago, means Maverick or Orphaned Calf. That name, the one he called his Indian name, was a jealously guarded secret shared by the boy and the old woman. Not even Davy's mother knew Rita called him that.
"I can go, Nana Dahd," he told her breathlessly.
Dahd was Papago for "Godmother," but the title was strictly honorary.
Davy had never seen the inside of a church, and there had been no formal ceremony. Like her name for him, however, Nana Dahd was a form of address Davy used only when the two of them were alone together.