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.
But now the detective had gone up the mountain to oversee the removal of the body, and Ernesto was left with a young hotshot deputy who couldn't resist swaggering.
"How come you bit that poor lady's boob off, Big Man?
Do you know what happens to guys like you once you're inside?"
Ernesto didn't need the deputy to draw him any pictures.
He remembered all too well a former schoolmate from Sacaton who, accused of raping a white woman, had turned up dead in a charco, suffocated on his own balls.
"I want a lawyer," Ernesto said quietly. "I don't have to say anything more until I have a lawyer."
"The judge will be only too happy to appoint you one, if you live that long," the deputy told him with a leering grin. "He'll do it by Monday or Tuesday at the latest, but it's a long time between now and then, chief If I were you, I'd be good-very, very good."
They brought squares of Jell-O for lunch, and Juanita tried to feed them to her, but Rita shook her head and closed her eyes once more.
The next years passed happily for Dancing Quail, although no one called her that anymore. She became Understanding Woman's ehkthag, her shadow, Dancing Quail kept busy caring for her little sister, looking after the fields, and helping her grandmother make baskets and pottery.
At age six S-kehegaj herself went off to school, taking her turn at riding to Chuk Shon in Big Eddie's wagon. Pretty One thrived in the new environment. She returned home the following summer wishing to be called only by her new Anglo name, Juanita, and refusing to part with her stiff leather shoes.
When Dancing Quail's young charge went off to school, no one thought to send her. People forgot that Dancing Quail was little more than a child herself. By then, her grandmother was so frail that she needed someone with her most of the time. Dancing Quail was happy to be that someone.
She spent all her waking hours with Understanding Woman, caring for her and reaming whatever lessons her grandmother cared to teach.
Dancing Quail was fourteen and had passed her first menstruation with all due ceremony the summer Father John rode into her life. He had hair the color of autumn grass and funny red skin that sometimes peeled and flaked off in the hot sun.
Father John came to Ban Thak because the sisters at Topawa had sent him.
They worried that Alice Antone's orphaned daughter was growin up too much under her grandmother's pagan influence. The girl never came to church anymore, not even at Christmas and Easter. The sisters sent Father John in hopes that by offering the girl a cleaning job at the mission in Topawa, they might also coax her back into the fold.
Father John, fresh out of seminary, was an earnest young man on his first assignment. When he saw Rita with her long black hair flowing loose and glossy around her shoulders, when he saw her dancing brown eyes and bright white teeth against tawny skin, he thought her the loveliest, most exotic creature he had ever encountered. He was intrigued by the fact that, despite the heat, she didn't wear shoes.
When he rode into the village in his dusty, coughing touring car, she ran beside it barefoot, along with the other village children, laughing and making fun of him because they could run faster than he could drive.
He spoke to Understanding Woman that afternoon as best he could.
Unable to communicate in a common language, they were forced to call upon Dancing Quail to translate in her own inadequate English. She giggled as she did so.
Father John trotted out all his best arguments, including the one he thought would make the most difference. "If you work at the mission," he said, "the sisters will pay you money so you can buy nice things for yourself and for your grandmother."
"Where?" she asked. "Where will I buy these things?
The trading post is far from here. I have no horse and no car."
I could give you a ride sometimes," he offered.
,No," Dancing Quad said decisively. "I will stay here."
"What did he say?" Understanding Woman asked anxiously. There had been several exchanges during which Dancing Quail had translated nothing.
"He wants me to work- at the mission. I told him no. MY place is here with you."
"Good," Understanding Woman said, patting her young granddaughter's hand. "It is better that you stay in Ban Thak."
A Mormon missionary, dressed in a stiffly pressed white shirt and wearing a carefully knotted tie, brought word to Rebecca Tashquinth that her son, S-abamk, the Lucky One, was being held in the Pinal County jail in Florence and that he would most likely be charged with the brutal murder of Margaret Danielson. It was thought, the missionary reported dutifully, that the woman had been raped as well, but no one knew that for sure. Not yet.
Rebecca was well aware of the kinds of lawyers local judges appointed for Indian defendants, particularly those accused of serious crimes against Anglos. She didn't waste time on a useless trip to Florence.
The guards at the jail wouldn't have let her see her son anyway.
Instead, she got in the car and drove to Ahngam, Desert Broom Village, to speak to her father.
Eduardo Jose was a man of some standing in the community, a man with both livestock and a thriving bootleg-liquor business. Eduardo knew how to deal with Anglos. He had even hired himself an Anglo lawyer once to help him when the cops had caught him transporting illegal tequila across nonreservation land to the annual O'odam Tash celebration in Casa Grande.